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'A Girl In a Band' - The Seven Stages of Kim Gordon

To celebrate the release of Kim Gordon's autobiography—out next week—we break down her life into seven stages.

All hail Kim Gordon. Rock star, artist, fashion designer, and now author, the co-founder of Sonic Youth has penned one of 2015’s must-read books, which is now available to everyone, everywhere today. A fascinating cultural document, Girl In a Band, proves she’s so much more than that title. Sure, it contains all the gossip you’ve no doubt heard by now—Billy Corgan’s a crybaby, Courtney Love’s nuts and Thurston Moore’s a midlife crisis cheater—but it also tracks Kim’s own artistic evolution, and offers a salacious insight into the life of a woman who’s spent most of her 61 years casually skipping along the cutting edge of alt culture. Here are just a few of the many phases of Kim Gordon.

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Teenage Flower Child

Growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, this Kim was a long-haired hippy in her youth is hardly a surprise. Though born in Rochester, New York, at the age of five her father was offered a professorship in UCLA’s sociology department and the family upped sticks to the West Coast. As a teenager she’d wear pants crafted by her seamstress mother out of an old Indian bedspread and moon over pictures of Joni Mitchell and Marianne Faithfull, listen to avant-garde jazz with her surfer dude older brother and go camping in Yosemite with her boyfriend Danny Elfman. Yes, that Danny Elfman.

Experimental Art Student

Choreographing freeform modern dance pieces at her high school—where My So-Called Life was filmed decades later—to a Frank Zappa soundtrack kick-started Kim’s love of visual art. While studying at Santa Monica College a boyfriend introduced her to Larry Gagosian, and she worked for the nascent art dealer as a framer. She moved to Venice Beach where her landlord was also a roadie of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and then headed to York University in Toronto to study under Fluxus filmmaker George Manupelli and made a surrealist film about Patty Hearst. Fully fixed in her nomadic 20-something status, she then headed back to Los Angeles, attending a downtown art institute and simultaneously becoming romantically involved with the prolific artist Mike Kelley and falling under the spell of acclaimed artist Dan Graham, the pair attending a formative Black Flag show—with Keith Morris up front—in Orange County.

Manhattan Art Maven

In 1980, Kim traveled to New York, a ratty metropolis but a place where modern art and experimental dance was thriving. “Everything seemed to be happening in New York,” writes Kim, who was able to move to the city after coming into a hefty chunk of insurance money following a car accident in Culver City. She drove there cross country with Mike Kelley riding shotgun via New Orleans, crashing at Cindy Sherman’s place on Fulton Street on arrival, before subletting a corner of Jenny Holzer’s loft. Again, she became an employee of the significantly more successful at this point Larry Gagosian, working on reception at his Broadway gallery. She admits she was useless at the job, hardly ever answering the phone, but she certainly dressed the part, in—“Swedish clear glasses, bad clothes, and short blond-brown hair”—and while she “worked” there, however half-assedly, she became firm friends with the up-and-coming Richard Prince. Just running with the who’s-who of the art world. NBD.

No Wave Newcomer

Guided through New York’s caustic, anti-everything no wave arts and music mash-up scene by Dan Graham, Kim was introduced to long-gone clubs like Tier 3 and arts organization Franklin Furnace, as well as being taken to see acts like Theoretical Girls, the one-single band founded by Glenn Branca and Jeffrey Lohn. “Its sheer freedom and blazing-ness made me think, I can do that,” she writes. Kim ended up taking part in one of Dan Graham’s performance art pieces, putting together a girl band to appear in Audience Performer Mirror. The band only lasted for as long as the performance, but bassist Miranda Stanton proved to be instrumental in Kim’s life, introducing her to a young guitar player called Thurston Moore.

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Sonic Youth Guitar Goddess

Kim met Thurston at his last ever show with The Coachmen. He was the first younger man—by five years—she had ever dated. They soon began playing music together, joining forces with Lee Ranaldo under the name Male Bonding before settling on Sonic Youth, with Kim on bass. The band were to become the first word in experimental alt rock throughout the 80s and 90s, until they fizzled out in 2011 on account of Kim and Thurston’s separation following his affair. Thirty years is nonetheless a pretty impressive innings for any creative endeavor, and the band progressed through the music industry ranks never once losing their integrity, touring the world with everyone from Nirvana to Neil Young, signing with Geffen and securing slots on the bills of the world’s biggest festivals. They can also claim the dubious honor of being behind one of the most popular band t-shirts ever, with Raymond Pettibon’s graphic getaway artwork for their Goo album now a mass-produced Urban Outfitters staple, worn by kids who probably couldn’t hum the “Kool Thing” riff if their life depended on it.

X-Girl Fashion Icon

In 1993 Kim joined up with stylist Daisy Cafritz, the sister of Pussy Galore’s Julie Cafritz, to launch clothing line X-Girl, as a response to the limited fashion options in downtown Manhattan. “At a time when oversized, shaggy-looking, grunge-inspired skatewear was a prevailing trend, Daisy and I were forever on the hunt for a closer-fitting, cleaner, more casual look,” she writes. The label was inspired by Anna Karina in Godard’s Pierrot le Fou and Anita Pallenburg in the Exile on Main Street-era. They teamed up with X-Large Streetwear via Beastie Boys Mike D and produced a preppy, yet rock ’n’ roll inspired line, which Kim debuted in Sonic Youth’s “Bull In The Heather” video while four months pregnant, alongside Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna. A store opened on Lafayette Street and Kim’s mate Chloe Sevigny typified the line’s look.

Kool Mom

Kim gave birth to her and Thurston’s only child, Coco Gordon Moore, in the early 90s, and whenever Kurt and Courtney were in New York, their nanny would bring Frances Bean over and the two babies would play together. Deciding they didn’t want to raise Coco in the hectic bustle of Manhattan, the family moved to Northampton, Massachusetts. She might have been in white-picket fenced New England, but Kim still ended up talking about Yoko Ono at the school gates and hanging out with new neighbors like J. Mascis. In her teens, Coco formed her own band, Big Nils, but banned her parents from attending her gigs and is currently studying art in Chicago. Like mother, like daughter…

Leonie Cooper is a kick-ass London-based writer. Follow her on Twitter.