The Wilco Interview
by Gregg LaGambina | 00.00.0000

AFTER VAN GOGH painted "Crows over the Wheatfields, he strolled out into the middle of that wheat field and shot himself in the chest. Or so the story goes.

Professors like to withhold this from their Art History 101 students… for a few minutes, It’s supposed to make them separate the painting from the painter, and make them better critics. It goes like this. You dim the lecture hall lights, you throw up a slide of “Crows”, and you go around the room asking all these neophytes what they think. You get words like “pretty”, “scenic”, “soothing,” “nice” – words you soon learn are totally meaningless. Meaningless, because you then tell these hungover trust fund teens that the man who made it leaned his easel against a haystack, put down his brush to pick up a revolver, took a short walk and ended his days with a sharp bullet blast just beneath his heart. Go around the room again, Now you get words like “dark”, “haunting”, “sad”, “not nice”—more meaningless words that have little to do with the actual oil on the canvas.

The point is: A Ghost is Born will forever be branded as the Wilco album Jeff Tweedy made before he checked himself into rehab to kick his addiction to painkillers. Here’s a song called “Handshake Drugs”. Oh boy. Did you know this was the album Jeff Tweedy made before he went into rehab? Hmm. Hey, look, there’s even a song called “Hell is Chrome” and “Muzzle of Bees” and “I’m a Wheel” and (gasp) “The Late Greats”. Must get to Tweedy. Must help him. Easy, now. Easy.

It is easy. Too easy. The best thing about Jeff Tweedy is that he’s already helped himself. He’s been helping himself for years, with music. It’s strange when other human beings decide to plant themselves in your sightlines, offering up a bit of their personality through songs, prose, poems and paintings. There’s the easy temptation to hold them up like a window, glance through the murky pane and take some guesses about the person that made them. It’s fine. It’s to be expected. But truthfully, the best thing about a great Wilco record – which A Ghost is Born certainly is – is that it gives you something to use for your own survival.

So, on the eve of the release of Wilco’s fifth album, Jeff Tweedy sat down to explain what can be explained and to shake his head at the things we’ve tried to explain for him. It’s only been days since he was released from treatment, but Tweedy is laughing and smiling and proud of the music he’s made. He’s nice. And this time, we’re going to make an exception for that word, because it means everything now. It means here is a man who is just trying to survive like the rest of us. It means here is a man that is also taking the time to make the rest of us feel better by sharing the music he’s made and the things he’s been through. And that is very nice indeed. So quit trying to unfold a few couplets into a quilt that spells “tragedy.” Listen to this music for yourself and leave Jeff Tweedy out of it.

It wasn’t until you started getting really weird that I got interested in Wilco. With Summerteeth as a kind of turning point, then Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and now A Ghost is Born, you’ve fully become a strange and challenging band in all the best ways. I guess the question is, why are you so weird – how did you get from A.M. to now?
[Laughs] I don’t know. I think it’s just a matter of getting more confident and feeling more sure of myself in the idea that I can incorporate different things and use them to communicate. A.M. was a really rushed situation. I had spent a long time in my life playing music with Jay Farrar and Mike Heidorn and Uncle Tupelo, and right after that broke up, within a couple of months, we were in the studio making A.M.. There was a lot of residue of the approach that Uncle Tupelo had taken for so long. Around Being There, I started thinking, “Man, I loved music before I ever met Jay Farrar.”[Laughs] I loved music my whole life and I used to listen to all kinds of shit. I mean, I love country music, I love folk music, it’s really a big part of my life, but nowhere near as big a part of my life as punk rock and fucked-up music has been. That’s the stuff I’ve sought out way more. I’ve learned a lot from folk music, but the whole idea of expressing yourself with sound… I just never had an outlet for it. Starting with Being There, I just started to embrace that side of my listening tastes. You know, I have just as much right to do this as anybody, what’s the big fucking deal? It’s just making shit up [laughs].

How much has Jim O’Rourke [musician/producer recruited for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost…] influenced this shift in the band’s sound?
He’s been a huge catalyst in my life. Most importantly, he’s like my best friend and a guy I love hanging out with and talking with about music. He’s such an avid collector and is always a really generous person as far as turning me onto stuff he’s into. He was really instrumental in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot becoming what it became. And with this record, it was just more of the same. I got to sit down with Jim in the mixing room on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and he’d really understand a lot of the stupid stuff I had to say about how everything should sound. I would say, “I want to pull the spine out of it!” and he’d know what I meant. This time we really wanted to concentrate on playing live as much as possible, recording things as naked and passionate as we could. So, it just kind of turned everything on that side of our brains off and let Jim sit in the control room and go, “That sucked,” or “That was great.” Jim’s been a huge ally when we’ve tried to pursue some more adventurous approaches to music making.

You say “adventurous”, others might say, “dark.”
God, it’s weird. People always say that about my records [laughs]. They always say they’re dark and I’m always like, “No! They’re hopeful!” I really feel like that about this one too. I just feel like there’s so much space in the recordings. To me, that sounds free. Anything that sounds kind of free is hopeful. It doesn’t sound hemmed in, Even if it’s acknowledging some darker subject matter, or some darker environments, I think that there’s an inherent faith that it’s all right. It’s all right, what are you gonna do, man? Let it beat you into submission? Or let it all hang out?

There’s that sound-collage of sorts toward the end of the record. It just goes on and on, until it redeems itself with that unlisted song with the lyrics about it being the greatest hidden track ever…
[Laughs] Yeah.

It got me thinking about how the CD format has come full-circle, and now influences recordings in a similar way to when you had to cut an album in half –side A and side B – and it really determined how the music was sequenced as an entire piece. Do you like playing around with that kind of thing, or were you just filling up the extra space?
I don’t really like sequencing records for CD. I really thought of this record as four sides. It would have been a pretty short double record, but it will be on four sides when it comes out on vinyl. But I don’t mind having the opportunity to have a song like “Less Than You Think,” which is 15 minutes long. First of all, I like the idea that you can have a song on the record to be called “Less Than You Think” [laughs]. Second of all, I like the idea that you can have a song about free will that kind of encourages people to exercise their free will to get off their ass and turn it off. Aside from that, as far as digital technology goes – I’m not like a purist in any way –but analog just sounds better. I just like things pushing air as opposed to just bits and bytes communicating with each other. And even if we used something digital, we blasted it through a speaker out into the tracking room so we could get some air moving.

That brings me to your seeming fascination with old radios…
I like the way AM radio sounds. I still do. I like the way shortwave radios sound. I have some of them. I’m not like a collector or anything, but I think there’s something really, profoundly moving and mysterious about a distant radio signal. Or, between the stations, where you get two stations kind of coming in at the same time – I just get really excited hearing that shit. It’s like found art.

Are you most interested in older music, or do you actively spend time trying to hear what’s going on now?
I don’t really care what’s going on now. I mean, I like a lot of music that’s coming out now, and I guess I do spend time reading about stuff and listening. Everybody in the band buys a lot of records and we share stuff, but I think I stopped worrying about that a pretty long time ago. I remember growing up and feeling like you had to know every fucking last B-side of every independent rock single in the indie rock scene in the whole world. It’s a lot of energy and so much of it was just fucking shit, you know? I came to realize that it’s just cool ‘cause it looks cool. The great stuff will find you and if it doesn’t you’re probably no worse off. I do gravitate toward rediscovering or discovering older stuff because there’s just so much of it. If nothing else, it provides you with the opportunity to listen to music without much hype. I’m sorry to admit it, but hype bothers me. I’m generally a contrarian – if something’s really getting hyped up a lot, it’s really gonna ruin it for me. You know, just by me doing this interview, I’m ruining the chances of our record being pure [chuckles].

Are you fairly guarded about the meanings of your songs
No, I usually try and answer questions that people ask me, but I generally don’t have very good answers for them [laughs].

Has anyone come at you with really off-the-mark interpretations of “Handshake Drugs”?
Well, I think since I just got out of rehab, there’s been a lot of people questioning if that’s a really telling song about my personal life. I just did a bunch of German interviews today and German journalists tend to be really literal about everything. It’s really kind of mind-boggling. It’s like [putting on his best Germanic twang], “On your last vun you were very, very upfront with your political views.” I’m like, “I was? What?” “Yes. Vith de song ‘Ashes uff American Flags.’” And I’m like, “You realize that record was written and finished in July of 2001.” “Yes. But this iss about September 11th.” “No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all.” “Vell, needless to say, you seem to have let go uff your political beliefs with this new record.” “How? MY fucking guitar playing is more political than anything!”

Speaking of Germans, when you take your music to places like Europe, especially now, do you feel any burden of expectation that you’re supposed to be this great artistic representation of what America is? I mean, Wilco is one of those handful of bands that often referred to as one of “America’s best bands.”
I’ve never felt comfortable representing America. To be honest, I mean, the idea of nationality and patriotism is just mind-blowing to me. I don’t get it. I like where I’m from. I like the comfort of being familiar with your surroundings and your culture and that makes sense. But I just don’t get how…[pauses] I don’t know. Say for instance, you turn on the TV and there’s the death toll for the war in Iraq and there’s like 700 or however many people from the United States. There’s 10 thousand Iraqis that got killed! I’m sorry, are they not people? I thought we were liberating them. I think any American traveling abroad these days has to think about how they’re gonna be perceived because they’re American. But for what reason? Because they were born at a certain latitude and longitude on the Earth’s surface?

If you’re not participating patriotic by definition, what sorts of things are you proud of?
I’m proud of my kids. I wouldn’t do this music if I wasn’t proud of it in some way. I think pride is a really dangerous thing to indulge in too much. I think it’s pretty important to stay grounded and feel like there’s a lot more to life than just learning how to play guitar really good. That doesn’t quite sustain you through your life.

Well, you seem to be doing a pretty good job of it…
It brings home the bacon, I guess. Playing music has actually been one of the best things I’ve ever done, as far as my well being. It’s probably one of the healthier things I’ve ever done in my life. But as far as the pride that comes with accomplishments and the outside world and sales figures and critical reviews and stuff like that – I don’t think that stuff carries much weight spiritually.

Before you found music, were you sort of adrift? Did it actually save you from something?
I don’t remember, I was so young. I don’t really remember a time when music wasn’t a driving, motivating force in my life. I think even before I could operate a turntable, I would stand in front of it and cry until my mom put something on [laughs]. I’d just point at it.

Make it work!
Make it work, make it go! Play that “Pop goes the Weasel” bullshit again!

When Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was originally rejected by your label, I’d imagine your pride took a bit of a hit. And then you must have felt redeemed when it was received so well…
Man, I swear to God, I thought they were fucking insane. I got my feelings hurt. I think anybody would get their feelings hurt a little bit when somebody says, “Hey, your record sucks.” I’m human. But when I listen to it again, I was like, “I’m sorry. I dig it, man. I want to put it out.” I don’t know if it’s just a naïve sense of wellbeing, or whatever, but I really thought, “What’s the difference? We never made any money from out records anyway. We’ve always been able to make money touring, at least enough to get by. We could at least do that for another few years while we figure out something else to do.” It didn’t seem like something that was gonna go away overnight just ‘cause Reprise turned out the lights and locked up the doors and said, “See ya later.” Obviously it turned out better than anything we could’ve orchestrated or tried to help ourselves with. It ended up working out like some kind of Machiavellian scheme, you know?

Do you think you’re making difficult music?
See, I don’t ever get that. I’ve even a bit taken aback that I’ve heard from some people that this record is really weird. When we were making it, I was like, “Man, this is more mainstream than Being There.” I don’t know. “Hummingbird?” That’s a weird song? What’s weird about it?

The only, truly weird thing is that opus of noise before the secret track. You have to admit that’s a bit strange to include on anybody’s record, let alone one by Wilco.
Well, nobody says you have to listen to it [chuckles].

Have you even listened to the whole thing, or did you just tell Jim O’Rourke to keep recording it and then leave to get something to eat?
I listened to the whole thing when it was a half hour long! We did a radio edit of that song [laughs].

I’m not sure how much you want to talk about what everyone else seems to want to talk about, so I guess I’ll just ask you: How are you feeling?
That’s all right. I’m feeling really good. I’m feeling a lot better. I haven’t had any migraines in about a month and a half and I just feel a lot better. I think it was a long time coming for me, like it is for a lot of people that have chemical dependencies. I really looked at it like, “Oh, I’m not pursuing oblivion. I’m not like a stay-up-all-night-and-party rock guy; I just want to feel better.” Basically, I just always wanted to be able to get up and function and not fee like shit. But it was definitely a problem.

And these headaches, you’ve had them forever, right?
Yeah, I used to get shots twice a week when I was a little kid.

How do you get to the point where you’re like, “OK, I think I need someone else to help me figure out how to stop taking these things”?
Well, that’s the side of the story that is a little bit unique. I had wanted to stop taking the painkillers for my headaches ‘cause I knew that it was just a bad idea – it wasn’t going to work for much longer. It was already starting to escalate. I was using more and more with diminishing returns to kind of get through the day. So, I was gonna go into treatment, but I resisted it and I managed to detox at home. I had like five weeks of clean time, as they call it, but the problem is that I suffer from – and have for a long time – major depression and a severe panic disorder. It’s just a chemical imbalance, mental illness kinda shit. I was like, “It’s not my fault. It’s just something I gotta deal with.” When I quit taking pills, I got so phobic about taking any kind of medication that I stopped taking all my medications. And you can’t do that. I don’t know if you know anybody that has any of those issues in their life…

Yeah, of course.
You just can’t do that, not unsupervised. But I did it and I was like, “Oh, this is great. I’m gonna be totally pure. I don’t need anything!” And after about four weeks the panic became so severe that I was having trouble getting through two minutes of the day, much less the whole day. I was basically forced to go to the hospital by this panic that had become so severe, I was in the emergency room two days in a row. I just couldn’t function. I was begging them to put me into a mental institution and knock me out, or do something. I just needed some relief and I didn’t want to take drugs. And they referred me to something I had never heard of and that was a dual-diagnosis treatment facility here in Chicago, where they deal with both components – on the addiction side of things and the mental illness side of things. They treat them as two separate things that are related to each other. And that was the first time anybody had put that shit together for me. I jumped at it. I was just like, “Holy shit, man, that makes a lot of sense.”

From what I’ve been told about Elliott Smith’s last days, he had gone through something similar. He had wanted to feel better, so he was quitting everything from the stuff prescribed to him that he needed, right on down to alcohol and even cigarettes. Then the panic and then paranoia…the parallels with your situation that you just described are pretty frightening. You’re very, very lucky.
That was the same thing that happened to me. I feel really fucking lucky I survived because…[pauses] I didn’t want to kill myself, but I wanted to die. I really did. I was so…so, scared. I didn’t think I’d ever be normal again. It’s just terrifying. You just totally destroy your brain chemistry over a long period of time with opiates, and if you’re already predisposed to having some fluctuation in your brain chemistry anyway – it’s a really scary thing. Like I said, I was just amazed and relieved to find people that understood. I just got so much compassion from this place and the other people in treatment – I was just like, “Wow, you’ve done that too? [Laughs] I thought I was the only one!”

Are you feeling the downside of being in this position professionally where you’re out there and now everyone knows about this thing you just went through?
I was a bit surprised at how much attention was given to it. My wife told me it was on MSNBC. I was like, “What?! I’m not Kelly Osbourne!” [Laughs] But no, I don’t care. It’s just about the best thing I’ve ever done as far as getting an education as to how to take better care of myself, to feel better, and to just not worry about things too much. I’m not ashamed of that.