Few musicians have more indie rock credibility than Thurston Moore, co-founder of Sonic Youth and the band’s guitarist for 30 years. But despite his onstage and recording bona fides and boyish appearance, Moore, 65, does not use the pages of “Sonic Life” to spill too many tales of rock ’n’ roll glory or a young man’s fancy. Nor does he impart advice from lessons learned. Rather, Moore uses nearly two-thirds of a long book to take the reader on a detailed walk through his New York, the Lower East Side of the ’70s and ’80s — the milieu that made him.

Like others of his generation, Moore started off a rock ’n’ roller. As a boy in Florida, he was enamored of the timeless and primitive style of garage rock (in the vein of “Louie Louie”). By the time his family relocated to Bethel, Conn., he’d graduated to the harder stuff — the Stooges and the New York Dolls — while holding space for more banal rock, like Kiss. And then came Patti Smith. And Television, the Ramones and Blondie. Smitten, and with Fender Stratocaster in hand, in 1977 Moore left the suburbs for New York City, to get down to the business of making the scene and eventually records of his own.

Moore goes to great lengths to name-check New York’s downtown artists and nightclub habitues, the clubs and hubs for underground culture of his time. From visual artists Jenny Holzer, Jean Michel-Basquiat and Keith Haring to performers like the upwardly mobile Madonna and her underground twin, Lydia Lunch, the book’s action is rooted in clubland: CBGB, Max’s Kansas City, the Pyramid Club and Danceteria, among others. The epoch Moore lived to describe encompasses the birth of punk rock, the emergence of new wave and his own decision to embrace no wave, the edgier, noisier alternative to alternatives in sound. Moore describes a performance in 1979 by guitar composer Glenn Branca as the moment he realized it was possible to play the kind of music he was hearing in his own head.

“It was what had been gestating in my heart and brain — primal, experimental guitar action, propulsive, manic, negative, and beautiful, loud enough to create unlikely harmonics and dissonant tonal colors that could work their magic into and out of my bones,” he writes.

Chasing that glorious din is the thread that runs through “Sonic Life.” Less about success, disappointment or failure and more like a fan’s notes, Moore’s listings are comprehensive, from the influential records and people he met along the way, whether obscure downtown bands like the Bush Tetras and 8 Eyed Spy, to the more recognizable members of Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys and the Sex Pistols. Moore lived inside music in New York City. Sonic Youth took him around the world.

Moore became endeared with California, introduced to the state’s art and landscape by Kim Gordon, his wife of 30 years and Sonic Youth’s bassist, who grew up largely in Los Angeles.

“Mostly I preserved my East Coast snootiness, but I was intrigued by West Coast punk,” he writes.

In the Bay Area, Moore’s ties were bound to record stores like Amoeba and Rather Ripped Records (a punk-era store in Berkeley after which Sonic Youth named its 2006 album). He revered Mills College’s experimental composer Pauline Oliveros, and feedback king Neil Young, who embraced the band without reservation. Young invited Sonic Youth to tour with Crazy Horse, and to appear twice at the Bridge School Benefit at Shoreline Amphitheatre, even after an ill-fated debut there. Moore recounts that gig as a rare lowlight on the boards. (I remember the sound problems and the band’s onstage frustration as far worse than he describes.) He also regrets missing out on an invitation to meet up with the Grateful Dead on the road.

He caught on to the young Metallica and fell hard for Slayer, both emergent metal bands in the ’80s. Moore also notes the contribution of Northwest grunge bands to loud and furious music, and touches on his friendship with Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain. It’s within these stories, told from the perspective of a rock ’n’ roll lifer, that Moore often returns to his baseline stance: Though he appreciates bands who get by on charisma and accessible tunes, he’d rather make a ruckus.

As the indie underground joined the mainstream with the success of Nirvana in the ’90s, Moore concedes he would find more to identify with among avant-garde music than his indie rock pals in Mudhoney, Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement, to name but a fraction of the bands who appear in “Sonic Life,” alongside the names of music industry personnel (a curious choice for an adamant outsider).

With just enough specificity about tunings and lyrics, and by deflecting personal details in favor of the virtue of living and playing spontaneously, Moore writes self-assuredly and aware but without conceit. Framing himself as a music geek, he telegraphs the feeling he hit the jackpot with bandmates as erudite as Gordon, as simpatico as guitarist Lee Ranaldo, and as steady and long-standing as drummer Steve Shelley. Their combined energies contributed to Sonic Youth’s unique corner of success.

“Sonic Youth, by 2007, was regarded as a ‘heritage act’ — a gentle way of saying we were long in the sonic tooth,” writes Moore. “But I liked that. I liked being the older folks in a world where the young and the new constantly took the spotlight.”

当事情不可避免地开始拆卸,摩尔avoids blame and the usual “artistic differences” to explain away the band’s dissolution. A mere 10 pages are devoted to Sonic Youth’s protracted wind-down after 9/11, the losses they suffered to their cache of instruments, the decimation of their studio and the remaking of downtown Manhattan. Adding additional players Jim O’Rourke and Mark Ibold temporarily invigorated team spirit, but in 2011, after a 30-year run, Sonic Youth was over, as was Gordon and Moore’s marriage.

Moore doesn’t dwell on the details of the marriage’s end, though in the book’s final pages he recounts falling in love over time with his editor, Eva Prinz (it’s to her the book is dedicated).

Throughout “Sonic Life,” Moore generally undersells himself and the band and their place on the continuum of noise rock and art, and yet a couple of years before they call it a wrap, he is able to clearly see Sonic Youth’s role in the big picture.

As he tells it, “I knew we had made our mark.”

Note:Thurston Moore’s author tour, which included San Francisco, has beencanceledbecause of a health issue.

Denise Sullivan is a freelance writer.