Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo on Neil Young

Over on Blogcritics' StarPolish Interview with Sonic Youth, some interesting comments by Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo guitarist on alienating fans with musical experimentation:

LEE RANALDO: "I don't think that's true. In fact, I think it sort of happens in a kind of the reverse -- it's easy to alienate the fans that have kind of come recently and sort of dip in and check it out, and then move on to something else. I think especially for a band like us, our hardcore fans are really interested in the different directions that we go, and the same goes for us; if we like an artist, even if they go through a period that has you scratching your heads and wondering, 'What the fuck are they doing?' -- like with Neil Young or someone like that when he goes off on these crazy tangents -- you still like something about who they are and what they're enough doing that you keep coming back to see where they're going. Hopefully they come around and do stuff you really love again, as Young has for sure. So I think that because we've been around for so long, there have been fans that have been with us for a really long period of time, and in general they look for us to do different things and sort of challenge their expectations of who we are and what we are."

More on Sonic Youth and Neil Young's influences on the 1991 Weld Tour. Also, Frank over on Chromewaves has a few thoughts on Sonic Youth and a link to Uncut with an article stating that "Sonic Youth taught Neil Young the art of feedback".

As Frank points out in his comment below, this sentiment comes from Neil being inspired to assemble the "Arc" record after touring with Sonic Youth in 1991 on the Weld Tour.

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