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Kim Gordon is getting her own signature Fender, a white Jazzmaster — but she’s quick to admit, “It’s not like I saw myself as a guitarist.” The project was ten years in the making and sold out when it hit Fender’s site in October.
The founding member of Sonic Youth was best known for playing bass in the band but has typically favored guitar on stage during her solo career. She’s long been a fan of the Jazzmaster, in part for practical reasons. “Jazzmasters were workhorses; [you could] put in different pickups and change the bridge, and they would hold heavier strings for different tunings better,” says Gordon when we talk over Zoom. “They weren’t precious, you know? They sounded good; they could be loud.”
Fender Limited Kim Gordon Jazzmaster Electric Guitar – Olympic White
The guitar is sold out at Fender, but can be found from other retailers.
Gordon worked with friend and fellow musician Salar Rajabnik on designing her signature guitar, looking to replicate a Mexican Jazzmaster she used in 2008. Gordon delves into the details, explaining why the guitar’s Seymour Duncan humbucker pickups paired with standard single-coil pickups for the neck are “the best of both worlds.” But she quickly caveats that it was more about a sound than specs. “I don’t really care about this shit — the technical stuff. I learned a lot about it, but it just sounds good. I’m really happy with the way it came out.”
Before the bass, she recalls picking up the guitar during Sonic Youth’s early days. “When Lee [Ranaldo] and Thurston [Moore] and I started playing together, I might have been playing guitar,” she says. “But I was basically kind of playing bass lines on the guitar, so it just made sense to play bass. I love the bass; it’s just so mysterious, and it’s the glue and the sound.” Fittingly, that informed her signature guitar. “It had to have enough low end; it’s a full sound, you know? It’s got a lot of bass, actually. I hate to say [that] — it’s a little misleading — but it’s just a very meaty sound that you can really just kick out the jams, as they used to say.”
As she’s said in other interviews, she never saw herself as a traditional rock star. “I moved to New York to make art, and I basically always saw myself as an artist who plays music. I still do.” Her sense of experimentation has continued into her solo work, which is driven by hip hop-inspired beats from collaborator Justin Raisen, the producer of No Home Record, The Collective, and this year’s Play Me. Now, she’s tinkering with what their collaboration should look like for the next project. ”I think we’re kind of at a moment where we’re rethinking everything,” she says. “And we’ve already made maybe three things for the next record, but also we’re thinking about how to approach it differently to keep the fun going.” I ask what she means. “Maybe it would be just me turning all the knobs, you know? Or turning the knobs with him.”
These days, Gordon seems to be rethinking a few things. “I never would have made a solo record like this if I hadn’t been in L.A. And in a way, working with a producer and collaborating is to me such an L.A. thing. I was very resistant to the idea. The industry I really associate with L.A.; being nominated for Grammys and seeing that world and kind of getting too close to it has kind of left me with a bad taste,” says Gordon, with characteristic candor. “I feel like it just fucks with your head a bit. Makes me want to go back to New York.”
