Lee Ranaldo

My wife's from Canada, and we're Canadian citizens.

— Lee Ranaldo

I don't know what the vintage Sonic Youth sound is.

— Lee Ranaldo

Songs seem to always spring from improvisation.

— Lee Ranaldo

New York always has a lot of creativity going on.

— Lee Ranaldo

My solo shows require a sit-down, indoor space.

— Lee Ranaldo

Change is always good. It brings you to a new place.

— Lee Ranaldo

Every band runs its course.

— Lee Ranaldo

Sometimes, you don't know where your inspiration's going to come from.

— Lee Ranaldo

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

— Lee Ranaldo

To some degree, I consider myself a writer, and so I have a strong relationship with literature.

— Lee Ranaldo

We're not really an underground band anymore, and we're not a mainstream band, either.

— Lee Ranaldo

You don't work in isolation anymore. Anybody can write a song and put it up on the Internet the next day.

— Lee Ranaldo

There is still nothing under the sun quite like a Grateful Dead concert.

— Lee Ranaldo

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

— Lee Ranaldo

The Strokes will never get anywhere after that first record.

— Lee Ranaldo

One of the things I loved - or I love still - about this Occupy movement is it's got a very gentle…

— Lee Ranaldo

Obviously, for Geffen, if it wasn't for us, it's quite possible that bands like Nirvana or Beck would not be on the…

— Lee Ranaldo

It's not like we set out to antagonize the audience in any way. We're just presenting our music; it's really much more…

— Lee Ranaldo

I came late to Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention. I don't know why, but that's the beauty of music - songs and…

— Lee Ranaldo

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

— Lee Ranaldo

I ride a bicycle. I make artwork and do other kinds of stuff - but in terms of unwind, I like to…

— Lee Ranaldo

I gravitated to New York City in the late '70s to pursue a career in visual art, which is what I trained…

— Lee Ranaldo

Obviously, Sonic Youth has been a huge part of my life for many, many years, and I love all those guys dearly.

— Lee Ranaldo

Certainly our records could be found in most of the mom and pop indie stores, but we still found there were a…

— Lee Ranaldo

Sonic Youth was not a singer-songwriter band. It was an electric collective. And, whatever else people's perceptions of Sonic Youth were, it…

— 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

In a certain way, we felt almost like spies in the major label world. We were coming from some other world, and…

— Lee Ranaldo

By the time Sonic Youth formed in 1981, my musical tastes had left the Dead behind, but I was always very proud…

— 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

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

I've been sort of writing sketches for songs on my own forever and putting them down on cassette tapes. Yet for years…

— Lee Ranaldo

This was early '90s and in New York hip-hop was coming on really strong; that was the sort of urban folk music…

— 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

We got our first significant pieces of press in the 'New York Rocker' from early gigs at CBGB.

— Lee Ranaldo

I absolutely love Las Vegas. I've been there a bunch of times on my own.

— Lee Ranaldo

We're a rock band. We're proud of it. We're not an art band, a noise band, or an extreme band.

— Lee Ranaldo

Usually my records are made trying to capture the essence of a band playing in a room.

— Lee Ranaldo

The Grateful Dead always had their iconography down pat.

— Lee Ranaldo

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

— Lee Ranaldo

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

— Lee Ranaldo