Lee Ranaldo
American rock musician (born 1956)
Lee Mark Ranaldo (born February 3, 1956) is an American musician, singer and songwriter best known as guitarist and vocalist of alternative rock band Sonic Youth. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Ranaldo at number 33 on its "Greatest Guitarists of All Time" list. In May 2012, Spin published a staff-selected top 100 guitarist list, ranking Ranaldo and his Sonic Youth bandmate Thurston Moore together at number 1.
Biography
Ranaldo was born in Glen Cove, Long Island, studied art and graduated from Binghamton University. He has three sons, Cody, Sage and Frey, and has been married twice: first to Amanda Linn in 1981 (divorced) and later to experimental artist Leah Singer since 1989.
Ranaldo started his career in New York in several bands, including The Flucts, and by playing guitar in Guitar Trio with Rhys Chatham before joining the electric guitar orchestra of Glenn Branca. In Branca's orchestra he played mainly electric guitar, but he also played some of the harmonic guitars Branca designed and built. In 1981, Ranaldo and David Linton briefly joined the band Plus Instruments that had been formed by Truus de Groot. With this line-up they recorded the album February - April 1981, released on the Dutch Kremlin label. After the release of the album, Ranaldo left the band and started Sonic Youth with Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon.
The public source identifies “Lee Ranaldo” as american rock musician (born 1956). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ranaldo, American and rock.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q352087. VIAF identifies the subject as 46362134. The Library of Congress control number is no97005928. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 2004, 2012 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lee Ranaldo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.