At 66, musician and visual artist Kim Gordon is as radical as ever on her first solo album No Home Record.
Kim Hill asks the former Sonic Youth bassist about her work, her fascination with Airbnb, and how she ended up making a cameo on Gilmore Girls.
Kim Gordon Photo: 2018 Getty Images
"Airbnb, come set me free!" Gordon sings on the track 'Air BNB'.
She tells Kim Hill that she likes checking out short-term housing rentals online and is interested in how they seem to offer a place to start over or pretend you're someone else.
"It's sort of the opposite of one's home which is curated by oneself, surrounded by objects of love or sentimentality, things you pick out."
After years in New York, Gordon moved back to her childhood home city of Los Angeles after separating from her husband of 27 years, Sonic Youth bandmate Thurston Moore. (She wrote about the divorce in her 2015 memoir Girl in a Band.)
Gordon says she made the move partly because she was sick of the harsh New York winters and was hearing good things about the LA art scene.
- See some of Kim Gordon's recent artwork here
She's happy enough there now, apart from missing her daughter Coco – a writer and sometime-model who lives in Brooklyn.
While Gordon describes herself as sensitive and a people-pleaser, she says she'd never "do something generic" just to fit in.
"In that sense, I don't care what people think."
As an art student in her 20s, Gordon didn't have a backup plan for if a creative career didn't eventuate (which she now thinks is crazy) but she's always had self-belief.
"I guess I never questioned that I would succeed at something."
