Lee Ranaldo

Listening to the Beatles' music figures into pretty much all of my childhood memories.

— Lee Ranaldo

People assumed we called the record 'Murray Street' because of its proximity to the World Trade Centre, but that wasn't it at…

— Lee Ranaldo

When I was in grade school and high school, I did a lot of chorale singing. And the chorus would be tenor,…

— Lee Ranaldo

What Nirvana's success means is that certain radio stations now have their ear more cocked to bands like us; they're more open…

— Lee Ranaldo

We're obviously not a platinum-selling band, and yet we've managed to maintain a career on a major label through all this time,…

— Lee Ranaldo

I'm married to a Canadianm so I have a lot of fond thoughts about Canada. I think about the prairies of Manitoba,…

— Lee Ranaldo

One thing I always hated with CDs is when people started putting 65 to 75 minutes on their albums.

— Lee Ranaldo

We used to have endless discussions with journalists about that: 'Why are you calling it noise? It's not noise, it's music,' and…

— Lee Ranaldo

I've always been an acoustic guitar player, and I've pretty much continued to play acoustic guitar throughout all of the Sonic Youth…

— Lee Ranaldo

Like everybody else, I love a good pop song. You know, there's nothing like it. I also just really like music that…

— Lee Ranaldo

Signing to a major, there weren't many bands from our sphere that were doing it. I mean, obviously R.E.M. had done it,…

— Lee Ranaldo

Every band runs its course.

— Lee Ranaldo

Probably the most fun thing we do in our lives is getting up on stage.

— Lee Ranaldo

In the week following Sandy, we weren't flooded, but we were without everything else - I ended up living by candlelight -…

— Lee Ranaldo

I've been lucky enough to be in this amazing band, and to me, a band is really a collaborative unit, and that's…

— Lee Ranaldo

I guess, from the beginning, Thurston and Kim were the dominant singers in the band, and although I was singing in bands…

— Lee Ranaldo

Sonic Youth has always been the vehicle for my writing, you know, because it's a collective songwriting entity: we write our songs…

— Lee Ranaldo

When Sonic Youth wrote music, we would rehearse for months before anybody heard anything.

— Lee Ranaldo

One of the key guitars in my career has been an early-Seventies Fender Telecaster Deluxe that I had before Sonic Youth started…

— Lee Ranaldo

Of course you want to keep making good records, but I think there were certain aspects to the indie rock situation at…

— Lee Ranaldo

After Hurricane Sandy, my family and I stayed in our apartment in lower Manhattan before things normalized. We're lucky enough to live…

— Lee Ranaldo

We find that the more you talk about it, the more you head off any spontaneous inspiration that might happen.

— Lee Ranaldo

Songs seem to always spring from improvisation.

— Lee Ranaldo

I don't mourn the old, romantic, dirty Times Square, although it was more unique.

— Lee Ranaldo

I'm very interested in the distance and the space between those two poles: very concrete, song-based stuff on the one hand and…

— Lee Ranaldo