Is This the Woman Who Broke Up Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore?

This week, Kim Gordon opened up for the first time about the breakup of her marriage to Thurston Moore, confirming to Elle that, after 30 years together as punk rock royalty, “it ended in a kind of normal way—midlife crisis, starstruck woman,” referring to a mysterious other woman who had allegedly wormed her way into the couple’s inner circle. Naturally, music geeks took to the Internet to opine about her identity, and, through a source, we’ve confirmed who it is.

From Gordon’s interview in Elle:

Some years ago, a woman Gordon declines to name became a part of the Sonic Youth world, first as the girlfriend of an erstwhile band member and later as a partner on a literary project with Moore. Eventually, Gordon discovered a text message and confronted him about having an affair. They went to counseling, but he kept seeing the other woman. “We never got to the point where we could just get rid of her so I could decide what I wanted to do,” Gordon says. “Thurston was carrying on this whole double life with her. He was really like a lost soul.” Moore moved out.

With some decent clues to go on, the gossip started almost immediately among Sonic Youth fans, with names like Abby Banks (photographer), Elaine Kahn (poet), and Jemina Pearl (from Be Your Own Pet) being bandied about on message boards, but the woman in question is actually 34-year-old art book editor Eva Prinz, 20 years Moore’s junior.

Prinz first began working with Moore when she commissioned him to do a book about mix tape culture that was published in 2005. They began to do more books together and founded the small “art and culture press” Ecstatic Peace Library. This 2010 interview with them describes their meeting, and it makes your heart kind of break for Gordon:

TM: Eva solicited Kim to do a book in the early 2000s, and Kim was intrigued but told Eva that I was completely involved with … book lust … and that she should talk to me. Eva had me come up to her office … [s]he said, Before you show me any of that stuff I want you to consider editing this project on mixtape culture … it was really successful and I love how it came out.

EP: That Christmas I got a mixtape from Thurston.

TM: In the book I wrote about a mixtape I made but couldn’t find … in the early ’80s I spent an inordinate amount of time making mix tapes of hardcore 7-inches. I was ensconced in the US hardcore scene of the time. But I eventually found the tape in a box and gifted it to Eva.

We got along really well and had a lot of mutual interests and friends.

A 2009 New York Times piece that was supposed to be about Moore’s protege, musician Jemina Pearl, read more like a snapshot of his midlife crisis, and subtly hinted at the impropriety of his relationship with Prinz.

Afterward, in the lobby, she found that Mr. Moore and Ms. Prinz had left without a goodbye. “That’s Thurston,” she sighed.

That same year, Prinz was interviewed for PMc, alongside a photo of her cozying up to Kim Gordon at an event. Here’s a taste of her personality from that piece:

Where are you from and where are you going?

I’m from Venus and I will explore the Milky Way.

Born Eva Valdez, she married Andrew Prinz from the band Mahogany in Texas in late 2000. She apparently began a relationship with “erstwhile band member” of Sonic Youth Jim O’Rourke before divorcing her first husband in 2007.

In September 2009 (around the time of the aforementioned Times piece), Prinz married Dutch royalty: Bernardo Federico Tomás Guillermo grandson of the late Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and eldest son of Princess Christina. She had given birth to their daughter the prior April.

Our source believes that Prinz, hilariously described as “very sensual,” has an open marriage with Guillermo.