Jeff Tweedy: Don't look back in anger
Jeff Tweedy says his upcoming gig in Ireland will feature a mix of his solo material and some of Wilco’s early albums, writes .
He is the kind of complicated troubadour they don’t make any more. As frontman of American alternative institution Wilco he has throughout his career fought running battles with the music industry and with himself.
That he’s still around to tell the tale might be considered a miracle of sorts.
Most notoriously, in 2001 Wilco had a public falling out with their label, Warner Music, over their abrasively experimental fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
Warner wanted something light and catchy — a chart-friendly companion piece to the group’s previous LP Summerteeth. Tweedy wasn’t for turning.
These were still the days when record companies had incredible clout. In refusing to back down Tweedy became a symbol of artistic resistance (the record’s opening track, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart might have been addressed to the board of Warner).
He had the final chuckle as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was picked up by Nonesuch — which just happened to be owned by Warner. It had paid twice for the same suite of songs.
But the dark side of Tweedy’s individualism was unfortunately highlighted in 2004 when he went into rehab for addiction to prescription painkillers. He had for years been prone to panic attacks and depression, his dependency compounded by the crippling migraines he’d suffered since adolescence.
With painkillers identified as a cause in the death of Prince and, more recently, Tom Petty, it’s clear Tweedy had a close brush with tragedy. He has since made the most of his second chance.
He’s cleaned up his personal life and pushed Wilco towards ever more impressive heights. A decade on, the band stand tall as one of the great forces in American independent music.
What he hasn’t done is stopped to reflect on Wilco’s highs and lows.
Thank you, London. @BarbicanCentre is sold out. Get tickets now for upcoming Jeff Tweedy shows in Dublin, Edinburgh and Manchester: https://t.co/27w30dwoMK - HQ pic.twitter.com/nEnluVZ1v6
— Jeff Tweedy (@JeffTweedy) January 19, 2018
“I’m really just not that into nostalgia,” Tweedy, 50, says, ahead of a solo acoustic show in Dublin at which he will perform stripped-down versions of tracks from across the Wilco catalogue.
“I don’t get get too wrapped up in the emotions of looking back. It is, on the other hand, satisfying that the old songs stand up.”
Lessons have nonetheless been learned. With Summerteeth Wilco were hyped as saviours of the underground scene. Rolling Stone hailed the album as “the roots-rock answer to Beck’s Odelay”.
The Chicago Tribune praised it as “pop so gorgeous it belies the intricate studio experimentation that brought it to life”.
By the late 1990s, alternative rock was undoubtedly in need of rescuing. Nirvana were a fading memory; closer to home, Britpop had descended into jingoism. With their catchy, though never simplistic, take on the form Wilco were the right musicians at the right time.
Yet they refused to embrace the acclaim. With Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Wilco instead shrugged, moved on, determined to do their own thing.
“I don’t trust the public,” Tweedy says today. “I don’t think it would be helpful for me. I always think I can do better. That’s a healthy feeling to have, as a musician, I think. ”
He has played Vicar Street on many occasions and is looking forward to returning to Ireland. But Tweedy’s memories of Dublin are not entirely positive.
In 1997, when his depression was at its height, Wilco spent some time in the city, recording an album of Woody Guthrie songs with Billy Bragg at Totally Wired Studio on Barrow Street, close to Google’s present-day complex.
“It was early in the year and pretty dismal, to be honest,” he says. “I love Dublin, love Ireland. And since then I’ve had much better experiences. That was really dire. I wasn’t a particularly healthy person at that point in my life. I don’t think I saw the sun once. I was reading a lot of depressing books.”
Wilco and Bragg would reunite for several more collections of Guthrie tracks. The left-wing folkie’s message of solidarity and resistance has always struck a chord with liberal Americans. Now more than ever, feels Tweedy, it is a rallying cry that should be delivered from the roof-tops.
“It’s always relevant. Hopefully there won’t always be inequality and injustice. Those are the things that motivated Woody to write a lot of what he wrote.
"We’re being confronted with [inequality] in a pretty profound way — maybe a way that this country hasn’t experienced in a long time… Woody’s songs provide a lot of strength and motivation to participate.
"That’s the real takeaway from this time for me — I’m seeing a lot more people participating and rallying. Hopefully that’s a trend that will continue.”
Wilco’s record label has just reissued the band’s first two albums, A.M. (1995) and Being There (1996). Tweedy will be performing material from both in Dublin.
As he says, he’s not one for glancing over his shoulder. But that was a fraught period. He finds it instructive to look back and reflect.
Wilco had emerged from the ashes of Uncle Tupelo. That group had been acclaimed and tipped for imminent greatness.
Alas things had fallen apart amid bad blood between Tweedy and Jay Farrar, with whom he shared singing and writing.
“Around this time, I would say something into a microphone onstage, and afterward [Farrar would] pull me aside and say, ‘Don’t you ever f***ing talk into that microphone again’,’” Tweedy said later.
“He would misconstrue me talking into the microphone as more evidence of my out-of-control, rampant ego, more evidence of me feeling like I didn’t have to be so f***ing afraid anymore.
Wilco was what Tweedy did next. On A.M. you can hear him figuring out, almost in real time, the kind of project he needed it to be. Even more stressful was the follow-up Being There.
The singer had become a father for the first time and was wrestling with both the responsibilities of leading a band and providing for a family.
“Being There reminds me a lot of being a new father. There were moments in those recordings where I say, ‘I just have to leave. I have to go and be with my kid so my wife can get to work’.
“There’s a song called Dreamer In My Dreams — by the end of the session I literally have one foot out the door.”
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