Kim Gordon, Tribute to Hal Willner
After we’d signed to a major label, Geffen, we were asked to be on this show called Night Music. We were nubies to the whole major label thing and skeptical of everything mainstream, except late-nite TV shows and getting to play on them. Hal Willner we knew by reputation to be a cool guy, but we had never met him. We were told he really wanted us to be on. There was—as with everything Hal curated—an eclectic grouping of people on this Night Music. The Indigo Girls, Diamanda Galas, Daniel Lanois, and Sonic Youth. Also the Late Nite band was there and maybe we were supposed to integrate them into our song?
We also brought Don Fleming along as our faux keyboardist/manager. We didn’t have a manager at the time, and I guess we decided to be playful about the whole thing. Hal humored us and let us do what we wanted. We played “Silver Rocket” and then for the finale of the show we did a cover of The Stooges “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (at that point it was the only cover we knew). Everyone played with us except Diamanda Galas—maybe a wise choice on her part. But we hung out and it was great getting to know her.
At the time our A&R person wanted Daniel Lanois to produce our record but all we could think of was “we don’t want to sound like U2.” We gave him one of our tuned guitars to play. I remember it being completely chaotic, and at the end Thurston went up with some big shears and cut all the strings off the guitar that Lanois was playing. I’m not sure what he thought, but by then the credits had rolled out…
Luckily Hal didn’t hate us for the joyous mess and after that he asked us along on several projects, the William Burroughs record being one. I can’t say I remember much about specific interactions with him that night except that he was incredibly sweet and easy going and didn’t seem surprised by anything we did. I feel like he was the first person to support us in the mainstream. Of course it took someone as special as Hal, who was drawn to the dark edges and saw the whole picture.
I’ll miss his sweetness and brilliance, and his intuitive imagination. Most of all the chance to work with him again and just hang and laugh.