Kim Gordon

1953–1978: Early life[edit]

Kim Althea Gordon was born April 28, 1953^[2] in Rochester, New York, the second child of Althea (d. 2002) and Calvin Wayne Gordon (1915–1998).^[3][4][5] At the time of her birth, Gordon's father, a native of Kansas,^[5] was a professor in the sociology department at the University of Rochester.^[6][7] Her mother, a descendant of American pioneers of the West Coast,^[8] learned to sew during her upbringing in the Great Depression, and worked as a seamstress throughout Gordon's childhood.^[3][9] She was described by Gordon as "reserved and usually anxious" and "an unfulfilled artist."^[3] Gordon has one older brother, Keller (1949–2023),^[3] whom she described as "brilliant, manipulative, sadistic, arrogant, almost unbearably articulate," and "the person who more than anyone else in the world shaped who I was, and who I turned out to be."^[10]


At the age of five, Gordon and her family relocated to Los Angeles, California when her father was offered a professorship in the sociology department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),^[11][10] where he later became the Dean of Faculty.^[3] As a child, Gordon attended University Elementary School, a progressive elementary school affiliated with UCLA, which she described as "learn[ing] by doing. So we were always making African spears and going down to the river and making mud huts, or skinning a cowhide and drying it and throwing it off the cliff at Dana Point."^[12] In her memoir, Gordon recounts spending summers with her family in Klamath, California, near the Oregon border.^[13] The family also lived in British Hong Kong for one year during her childhood.^[3]


Gordon attended University High School in Los Angeles, and dated classmate Danny Elfman while a student there.^[14] After graduating high school, she attended Santa Monica College for two years^[15] before transferring to York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.^[16] Gordon soon grew homesick and chose to drop out of York at the end of the school year and return to Los Angeles.^[17] "I was less and less happy as the bleak Toronto winter moved in," she recalled. "Without the benefit of California sunshine, my hair grew darker and darker, and I had no idea how to dress for the cold."^[18] She decided to enroll at the Otis College of Art and Design,^[19] which she said "changed my life."^[18] Gordon lived in Culver City and Venice, Los Angeles, and worked at an Indian restaurant to pay her tuition.^[18] She also briefly worked for art dealer Larry Gagosian as a side-job.^[20] She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1977.^[21]


While she was a student at Otis, Gordon's older brother Keller suffered a psychotic episode on the day of his graduation from the University of California, Berkeley, where he had earned a Master's degree in classics.^[3] He was subsequently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and for a time lived in halfway houses before becoming a ward of the state of California.^[3] The song "Schizophrenia," which appeared on Sonic Youth's fourth studio album, Sister (1987), was partly inspired by her brother.^[3]