She Is Not Alone

The third song on Sonic Youth's self titled EP is called "She Is Not Alone."

In  late 1981 Sonic Youth decided to stop rehearsing and begin using their performances as practice. Most of the live set was improvised and the band was tired of paying to rent a space to practice. This caused Richard Edsen to question whether he wanted to continue with the band. "She Is Not Alone" was a song that started off in a free form improvised state.

The earliest known performance of this song was in July 1981.  The "Confusion is Next" book and the liner notes to the Sonic Youth EP indicate that this song was debuted without drums in a very noisy state. Drums were added and the earliest known recording was the 9-18-81 performance.

The recording features some simple bass lines with Thurston repeating the line "She is not alone....today!" He starts off soft and then his voices raises but never above the soft whisper. For the record Lee put down his drill (often used on stage for the song) and made some interesting "clinking" sounds by dropping lead pipes onto the floor is various parts of the song. The song is 4:05 long. It has been known to go on for 15 minutes.

The song was brought back into the live set in 1999 after an 16 year absence.  It was often used as the encore during the A Thousand Leaves tour. The song took on a different form and would be an all out jam ending in a noise jam. The song came back in 2002-03 and played frequently during the Sonic Nurse tour in 2004.