"Thurston Hearts the One Per Cent."

No old fool quite like an old tool.

No old fool quite like Thurston.
No decrepit old farm tool quite as gnarled and befuddled as Thurston the singer from Sonic Youth!

I fucking hate David Bowie and I fucking hate Sonic Youth—they always struck me as art-wank bullshit, just so complacent. I think [Thurston Moore] is a cunt and I told him so. He was like, “Get this guy away from me…” And that remix he did [Moore remixed the Blur song Essex Dogs] …God…

Alex James

ROLLING STONE LICKSPITTLE: What inspired the Occupy theme in the "Lip" video?

THRUSTON [sic]: It was the idea of the director, Eva Prinz. She's a cracker of a girl. A really splendid dynamite firecracker. She's my protege. Ha... I’m fucking her, you see. But I don't want to talk about that. Wanna talk about politics. It's a protest song I wrote for all the Occupy people I know, and she's very involved with Occupy in a very activist way. Activistical. Activistic...  She’s married to a member of the Dutch royalty so it’s only natural that she is interested in the plight of poor Americans. Kind of benevolent. She's married to him but he lets her run around as she will and lucky me, she runs straight into my loving arms! She's a really terrific go-getter. Anyway, when I went down there, there was so much celebration and theater going on, lots of minor foreign royalty, and I really responded to that. I felt like the new Allen Ginsberg. I felt benevolent. You know, getting all clammy-handed with my finger-cymbals and trying to fuck everything within gnawing distance. All in the name of free love. You know I split with my old lady right? Right. I’m fucking a new lay and she’s young and rich and loaded and she thinks I’m a fucking poet and we love to go down Wall Street and, you know, empathize with the so-called dirt-poor. By which I mean the filthy rich. You know, those One Per Centers who sympathize terribly with the Unwashed 99. I mean I guess we think it’s an awful shame that people are unable to afford Record Day reissues of vintage HC seven inches on eBay man. You'd go down and there was poetry being read and a library being built and an ad hoc parade would go around. So I wrote a song somewhat based on that with the chorus, "Get fucking mad/Too fucking bad." Or, something like, “Don’t be a clown/Get down.” “Don’t get mad/Get even.” You know the drill man. I'm not very articulate. I mean, I’m a lousy fucking writer but I’ve spun out this mindless goo-goo NY pop-art sludge for lo thirty years now and look what it’s got me, it’s got me fucking minor Dutch royalty.  I mean where’s Gibby Haynes now? Anyway as far as the Occupy movement, I really don’t know much about what the complaints are, but...  Eva wanted to show aspects of it as a filmmaker. Does that last sentence mean anything? Or is it empty verbiage from my mouth? The image of the burning bus in London is a very loaded image. You can quote me on that. How is it loaded, why is it loaded, don’t ask me. I went to a liberal arts college upstate somewhere. We just say images are “loaded” and move respectfully on. Making a video of a song with a chorus of "Fuck fuck fuck" is a little ridiculous. Even I admit that.  You can't show the thing. You can’t listen to the thing if I’m honest. But it was a creative moment. I learnt to say that at college too. “It was a creative moment.”