34 Years Ago: Sonic Youth’s Goo Made Alternative Rock Happen
How a New York noise band led to Nirvana’s takeover of the early ’90s music scene
In 2024, it doesn’t even occur to an indie band to sign to a major label, because there’s nothing they can do for them in a post-streaming world. But in 1990, “sellout” was still a dirty word in indie circles. So it was an act of bravery for Sonic Youth to have signed to Geffen Records — home to Guns ‘N Roses, Aerosmith, Elton John, and Don Henley — and it was one that paid off. Goo, released 34 years ago, was the album that led directly to the alternative rock explosion that followed.
At that point, the band may have felt they had little choice, because they hadn’t been well served by indie labels up to that point. Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon formed Sonic Youth on New York’s Lower East Side in 1981. Second guitarist Lee Ranaldo joined following their first gig, and Ranaldo’s mentor, avant-garde composer Glenn Branca, signed the band to his label Neutral Records. The 1982 EP Sonic Youth and 1983’s full-length Confusion Is Sex capture the band as primal noisemakers, using volume and distortion alongside Moore and Ranaldo’s soon-to-be-trademark unconventional tunings and strange playing methods, using drumsticks, glass bottles, and even power tools on their instruments. But Neutral…
