Lee Ranaldo

Lee Mark Ranaldo (born February 3, 1956) is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, best known as a co-founder of the rock band Sonic Youth.

He has three sons, Cody, Sage and Frey, and is married twice, first with Amanda Linn in 1981 but later divorced, and now with experimental artist Leah Singer.

Ranaldo started his career in New York in several bands, including The Flucts, and by playing guitar in Guitar Trio with Rhys Chatham before joining the electric guitar orchestra of Glenn Branca.

In Branca's orchestra he played mainly electric guitar, but he also played some of the harmonic guitars Branca designed and built.

In 1981, Ranaldo and David Linton briefly joined the band Plus Instruments that had been formed by Truus de Groot.

With this line-up they recorded the album February - April 1981, released on the Dutch Kremlin label.

After the release of the album, Ranaldo left the band and started Sonic Youth with Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon.

In 1987, Ranaldo released his first solo album, From Here to Infinity, compositions which ended in locked grooves.

The second side of the album also featured an unplayable engraving by Savage Pencil.

Among Ranaldo's solo records are Dirty Windows, a collection of spoken texts with music, Amarillo Ramp (For Robert Smithson), pieces for the guitar, and Scriptures of the Golden Eternity.

His books include several with art or photography by Leah Singer, including Drift, Bookstore, Road Movies, and Moroccan Journal: Jajouka excerpt (from a full-length book of writings on Moroccan travels and music).

Ranaldo has also published Jrnls80s (published by Soft Skull Press), as well as a book of poems, Lengths & Breaths, with photography by Cynthia Connolly.

He has edited a volume of tour journals from the 1995 Lollapalooza tour written by himself, Thurston Moore, Beck, Stephen Malkmus, Courtney Love, and others.

Ranaldo has worked with jazz drummer William Hooker on improvised music, and reading and improvising poetry and released several records together.

His main side projects are Drift and Text of Light.

In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Ranaldo at number 33 on its "Greatest Guitarists of All Time" list.

His most recent book of poetry, Against Refusing, was published by Water Row Press in April 2010 with cover artwork by Leah Singer.

His visual and sound works have been shown at galleries and museums in Paris, Toronto, New York, London, Sydney, Los Angeles, Vienna, and elsewhere.

After Sonic Youth went on hiatus in 2011, Ranaldo released Between the Times and the Tides in early 2012 on Matador Records.

The record was the first under his own name to feature comparatively straightforward, vocal pop rock songs.

Contributors to the record include Jim O'Rourke, Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, former Sonic Youth drummer Bob Bert, Wilco's Nels Cline, Alan Licht, John Medeski, and bassist Irwin Menken.

Preceded by a 2012 event at Nuit Blanche, on October 21, 2011, The Music Gallery, InterAccess and the Images Festival presented the North American premiere of Ranaldo's Contre Jour, a performance piece for swinging guitar, with visuals by longtime partner and collaborator Leah Singer.

This performance was also done in Paris, Rotterdam, during IFFR, and Madrid.

In May 2012, Spin published a staff-selected top 100 guitarist list, ranking Ranaldo and his Sonic Youth bandmate Thurston Moore together at number 1.

Ranaldo was born in Glen Cove, Long Island, studied art and graduated from Binghamton University.

In 2012, he performed a solo concert at Parisian music club La Maroquinerie where he was photographed by Jean-Pierre Domingue.

To tour for the album, Ranaldo organized The Dust as his formal group, featuring Licht, Shelley, and bassist Tim Lüntzel.

In 2013, his follow-up album Last Night on Earth was released, credited to Lee Ranaldo and the Dust.

In 2014 Ranaldo and the Dust spent one week in Barcelona with producer Raül Refree and cut a full-band, all-acoustic album, Acoustic Dust, consisting of songs from Between The Times and the Tides and Last Night On Earth, plus cover songs including Neil Young's Revolution Blues, Sandy Denny's Bushes and Briars, and Mike Nesmith (The Monkee)'s You Just May Be The One.

In September 2017, Ranaldo released Electric Trim, his third proper solo album, made in collaboration with Barcelona Musician/Producer Raül Refree, on Mute records.

The album featured 9 songs, many of the lyrics co-written with American author Jonathan Lethem.

Musical contributors included Nels Cline, Sharon Van Etten, Alan Licht, Tim Luntzel, Kid Millions and Steve Shelley.

A film about the making of the album HELLO HELLO HELLO : LEE RANALDO : ELECTRIC TRIM was directed by Fred Riedel.

Besides working as a guitarist, Ranaldo has frequently produced sound, performance and visual art independently of Sonic Youth.

He has released over fifty solo, band and collaborative recordings, and a dozen books; including travel journals, poetry and artists' books.

His work has been exhibited at numerous galleries and museums, including the Hayward Gallery in London, the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art, NSCAD in Halifax, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Mercer Union in Toronto, and Printed Matter, Inc., Artspace and White Columns in New York.

In 2017 there was a large overview exhibition in Menen, Belgium about his visual art.

In 2019 he was the curator for a concert series in Fondation Feltrinelli in Milan, Italy, under the umbrella name of Natural Disruptors.

In 2021, Ranaldo released In Virus Times, an EP of solo acoustic guitar pieces recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ranaldo has produced albums for artists including Babes in Toyland, You Am I, Magik Markers, Deity Guns, and Dutch art rock-ensemble Kleg.