“Our guitars were so bad, we couldn’t make them work for us. Glenn came over to my apartment with six guitars, three under each arm, and threw them onto the futon”: Sonic Youth are now alternate tunings icons – but the band opted for them out of necessity

Thurston Moore.

Sonic Youth have been dabbling voraciously with alternate tunings for decades, and now, Thurston Moore has recalled the exact moment the band began that journey, revealing that a New York art-rock guitarist helped them achieve their lightbulb moment.

The band had arrived with 1983’s Confusion Is Sex, with all the songs in the old reliable standard tuning. But, as Moore says in the new issue of Guitar World, they were left wanting.