Sonic Youth was not a singer-songwriter band. It was an electric collective. And, whatever else people's perceptions of Sonic Youth were, it was always about putting together a time-based composition - and that is exactly what songwriting is, in its classic form.

Sonic Youth could never really get it together acoustically - quite frankly, it wasn't something we were really that interested in.

During the whole time in Sonic Youth, I was happy to put my energy into that. It would have been very difficult to do a solo project.

Lee Ranaldo Quotes