If you’re like us, you’ve probably wondered what everyday stuff famous people add to their carts — like hair spray or an electric toothbrush. We asked musician Thurston Moore — whose album Flow Critical Lucidity is out now — about the fox-deterring fertilizer, guitar picks, and German foot cream he can’t live without.
I require a physical New York Times for the crossword puzzle. I’ve attempted to do it on the app, but I felt really removed. It was like streaming music as opposed to listening to music on a record. There’s a certain physical interplay with the newspaper itself which I really find lacking online.
But it’s getting hard to find the newspaper physically, even when I’m in New York City. You go past these storefronts and bodegas and places that used to have newspapers. And they all say “newspaper” out front, but then you go in and the staff say, “Oh, no, we don’t have them.” Why don’t you take the sign down? Or at least put the word “no” in front of it? But they don’t care. Finding print media has become really boutique and specific. Sometimes you’ll see stores that sell all these high-priced culture magazines that are four inches thick and cost $40. Who’s actually buying that stuff? A good weekly culture magazine meanwhile is becoming really rare.
I generally don’t start doing the crossword until Wednesday. Monday and Tuesday are too easy. By Thursday is starts getting crazy. Friday is pretty hard, Saturday is impenetrable, and Sunday is kind of boring because it’s just more, and it’s usually not that challenging. It’s like too much ice cream. I don’t really need that much of a crossword puzzle.
I was never a drinker’s drinker, to tell you the truth. I always felt like I was spending money that I should have been spending on secondhand books and records. That’s why I never became a drug addict. Why would you spend your money on that when you could spend your money on, like, a Ramones record?
When I decided that I wasn’t going to drink alcohol anymore, I figured I would try a couple nonalcoholic beers. I knew I liked Guinness already, and here in England over the summer I found myself going to local pubs to cool off. That’s where I first ordered one of these 00 cans. Immediately, I just found it to be so refreshing. Then I realized that I can just drink it all day and not worry about getting inebriated or poisoning my system with alcohol. It’s still probably not the best thing for your diet, but Guinness really is its own libation. It is almost medicinal to some degree, you know, if not physically, then psychologically.
I started using them in the mid-’80s. They’re the right size and the right flexibility for my liking. So I just sort of stuck with it. It was never about being brand-conscious at all; it’s all about personal taste. My brother, who’s a high-technique guitar player, uses these tiny little plastic picks that he shreds with. But if I use a plastic pick like that, I’ll cut my finger or snap the pick in half. I was a thrasher in the ’80s, so I had to figure out how to stop brutalizing my hands. The Dunlop pick has protected me a bit.
It has really become an extension of me. If I leave the house without one, it’s like leaving my iPhone at home. I turn around and go back. What happens if I go somewhere and there’s a guitar and I can’t check it out? It’s a very real feeling and very strange. I’m holding one right now. Because I tend to hold onto it like a talisman. When I’m talking with people, I’ll take it out, or if I’m nervous or anxious or something like that. I’ll buy a bag of 100 of them. I need them in every room that I’m in. If I can’t find a plectrum, it’s the only thing that really un-anchors me. It is probably the most essential thing that I have in my small treasury of needs.
I’m very particular about hand lotion because sometimes it dries your hands out. Being a guitar player, I’m very careful with my hands but also very reckless, in the sense that I’ll pick up any heavy amplifier and haul it onstage. And all it would take is for something to slam down on my hand and then the gig is not going to happen. If I can’t play guitar, what am I going to do? So I do think about that.
It’s not like I’m really fetishistic about hand cream, but I like this one. I’ve found that it moisturizes without being greasy. I fly a lot, and it’s good especially on airplanes. You can’t find it everywhere; it’s a rather bespoke hand cream. But when you use certain things all the time and they cost a little more than the generic versions, it’s okay. I spend a little too much money on books and records and magazines, but I don’t spend money on drugs and booze, you know? So I always use that as an excuse.
Santa Maria Novella has an outpost in New York, there’s one on Lafayette Street, and I used to live right across from it. My wife’s name is Eva, and they have this really great perfume called Eva. So I always gift her with that when I can. She was the one who told me about it. I’d never really been in there. And I was like, Oh, this place is amazing. I’ve also been into the OG one in Florence a couple of times, and it’s fantastic. It’s all these products made by nuns to support their convent, and it’s interesting, in a way. What is in these products that’s making them so desirable? Is it just because we think we’re getting closer to God by purchasing them? Maybe.
Aesthetically they’re really beautiful and for me with products, it’s primarily about the packaging and the presentation. I love soap culture and bespoke soaps. I’ve been thinking of doing a soap line, in fact. I would love to make some really beautiful soaps with proper holistic ingredients that actually cleanse and bring a sense of meditation to somebody. Products that bring beneficial lifestyle qualities to a person have to be commended. I think the company is pretty cool. It also makes a really good shaving cream. It’s not overly foamy, like some of them are, and has a modest and surprising quality to it.
I have two incredible dogs, Apollo and Vinkenoog. Vinkenoog is named after a poet who was kind of like the Allen Ginsberg of Holland. Apollo is a slightly more reasonable name. They’re a Dutch breed called Stabyhoun. They’re really popular in the Netherlands but hardly anywhere else. We found a breeder just south of Edinburgh and went up there to get one of the litter, and there were three dogs left. The breeder wanted to keep the female, so it was between these two males and they were just pouncing on top of each other and wrestling. I was like, There’s no way we can separate these two. And they’re just amazing, but they’re also savage beasts, and they do poop everywhere. Taking them for walks in our neighborhood, you need to learn the art of poop cleanup. Poop bags are a gross thing to talk about, but they are an essential. If you’re out on the high street and you don’t have that baggy with you, you are in trouble. You can’t walk away from that. You have to figure out what you’re going to do. Take the shirt off your back and use that.
It’s remarkably holistic to have animals in the house, specifically dogs. They sleep with us, they’ll curl up with us, and they’re very protective. They’re very loyal. It’s actually not the poop bags that are essential to me. It’s the dogs themselves.
Being so tall and jumping around a lot and thrashing around onstage — I kind of never had any issues with my body reacting to that until I got into my 50s. I started having a lot of issues with my feet hurting. I actually have really large feet. Size 14, that’s big. So there’s more pain.
I found this cream. I’ve tried various ones and this is the salve that is most calming. What’s in this stuff that makes it great is it has eucalyptus, rosemary, lavender, and thyme. It’s this herbal concoction and it really works wonders. A German pharmacist in a white lab coat told me to get it. It’s cheap, it works, it’s German. I recommend it.
You just sprinkle lion dung around where you don’t want foxes to cohabitate. And they certainly like to cohabitate in gardens in London. Foxes are everywhere here, and they do come into back gardens and dig them up and drop a lot of poo. It’s not one of my favorite scents, let’s put it that way.
Lion dung doesn’t have that kind of scent. It’s an old-school way of repelling foxes from gardens without being abusive. Foxes just don’t like it for whatever reason. Some garden stores that I’ve been to say that it doesn’t work and that you need to sprinkle chile powder around instead because they don’t like the spice and it burns their tongues. But I don’t want to burn their tongues! Some innocent fox that’s sniffing around for some food for its children? I don’t want to burn its tongue. The lion dung, they just don’t like the smell of it, so they go somewhere else. It’s a more humane and gentle way. And no, my dogs aren’t deterred by it. Nothing deters them.
I never wear them onstage. And I probably should have early on, because now I have tinnitus. They are actually most useful to me for travel. I’m always traveling, and in such close quarters to so much humanity and no matter what flight I’m on, it’s always like the screaming baby express. So I put these in and then I’ll put headphones over the top. The headphones are usually just a gesture to whoever’s sitting next to me that I’m not available. I don’t really like those Earplanes ones that they sell at airports because they’re too hard. They hurt. I like the generic soft plush ones.
I also write a lot and I need the earplugs for that because if I hear any distraction going on sonically around me, it just takes me away. When I was writing my memoir, Sonic Life, it was all about earplugs. Some people have them on their merch tables on tour, and I usually reach my hand in there and grab about 20 of them and stick them in my pocket. I’m kind of an earplug thief. If you are in a band and you have these on your merch table and you see me coming, you might want to keep an eye on me.
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