By the time Sonic Youth formed in 1981, my musical tastes had left the Dead behind, but I was always very proud of the fact that we had three different singers singing individually from different points of view, like the Dead.
When I was in the first years of university, I fell in more with the visual arts crowd because it was more interesting than where music was.
Whenever I work on an album and the time comes to do all the artwork, the only thing I think of is the LP artwork. When we worked on the 'Electric Trim' artwork, we spent weeks and weeks making the LP artwork great, and then the CD artwork came together in a day or two. The LP is what's important to me.
When Sonic Youth writes music, we write everything in a very communal way. It doesn't matter who brought something in initially; it all gets transformed by the band.
When Sonic Youth wrote music, we would rehearse for months before anybody heard anything.
Obviously, Sonic Youth has been a huge part of my life for many, many years, and I love all those guys dearly.
