At least that's what you said

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I’ve been listening to Sky Blue Sky for a while, and it feels really cohesive. It makes me think of R.E.M’s Automatic for the People, which has really a unified feel. Was that a conscious effort?
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s something we’ve attempted on every record. Maybe it just came out a little closer to what we intended this time. But almost everything is approached the same way, all the songs are mixed really similarly, to the point where I think if you listen in to the song, you can kind of hear where everybody is in the room. It generally don’t change, like if Nels is in this speaker, he’s gonna be there for most of the record. It sounds like a set of material and that was intentional.

To me, it felt like an older sound from a previous era. Was there any particular sound you were going for?
Not really. I chalk it up to us being a band, as a whole, that has a little bit older median age then maybe some other bands. We’ve all kind of come from similar backgrounds, but obviously Nels has a lot of background in a lot of improvisation and experimental music. That goes from there to someone like Pat who’s very, very interested in really produced pop music. But I think the common ground that we all have is that we all grew up listening to rock music, and like most people between 60 and 15, rock music is our vocabulary. And for all intents and purposes it’s our first record for this band, and maybe some of his arrangement are centered around classic kind of shapes just because that’s an easier way for us to communicate and just kind of find some common ground. I think it worked out really well.

How old are you now?
I’m 39.

When do you turn 40?
August.

You mentioned that everyone in the band is older, so do you think that kind of explains the mellower feel to the album?
I don’t get that. I’ve heard people say that about the record, but I honestly don’t get it sounding mellow. I guess there’s quiet material on the record, and I don’t know I just don’t hear it as being a mellow record, but whatever.

How would you define it then?
I describe it as beautiful. Beautiful isn’t mellow to me, I think we wanted to make a beautiful record, and people have this idea that beauty is somehow muted or somehow not as vibrant or not as intense. I find it very emotional—I don’t think emotional is mellow either. It’s just whatever people’s perceptions are, I don’t have any control over that. Beyond just arguing sematics I just don’t think that word is…

I don’t mean to say “mellow” in a pejorative sense.
I hear it as pejorative, that’s probably my problem. I hear it as something that just sounds limp. That’s probably my problem.

I didn’t mean to say that.
I wasn’t taking offense with you, I was just more just like, I’ve seen it already described as being mellow by people the few times it’s been written about. And I’m just like “what, really?”

Well, there’s no “Casino Queen” on it.
Well, God forbid.

Maybe they need to re-release it, you can put a couple of remixes of “Casino Queen” on Sky Blue Sky.
Well, I think that you know we’re always a record ahead. I think maybe now we should just go ahead and before the record comes out add the 15 minutes of noise and people will be ready for it and really like it, over the entire record. (Laughs)

I read Kot’s book, Learning How to Die, and looking at it again there was a quote that kind of jumped out at me, it was something to the effect of, you feel like your work will be more appreciated three years down the road. Does that ring a bell?
Not really—I mean I do believe that it’s a really, really ridiculous expectation to have upon a piece of music that you’re gonna get everything, it’s gonna be defined and it’s gonna be everything it’s ever gonna be in the first three months when everybody’s writing about it, whenever it’s just brought into the world. None of the music that means anything to me has come to me that way. Now most music that really means a lot to me came to me after decades of being around and me finding it. It takes a long time for a piece of music to weave itself into someone’s life, and in a way that enhanced it or becomes integrated into it, where it means something or takes it someplace. The initial impression is very, very little of what I think an overall artistic work might be for a piece of music. The initial impression is nice, and it’s great if people like it.

As you look back on Summerteeth, that album was not the next 4/4-rock-and-roll sound of Being There. And I don’t mean to diminish Being There, but Summerteeth was definitely a change in direction. Do you hear people saying that, that the band is constantly turning people’s expectations?
Well yeah, I could definitely say that. I think it’d be a pretty accurate quote to say that it’s felt like that with almost every Wilco record. That the initial reaction is always worse from the fans than it is from just people coming into the band fresh with that record. People finding the band and being able to treat it as just the first record they hear, it’s a lot more honest reaction to me, that’s much more a first impression. When people, they’re fans of the band, I feel really privileged that a lot of our fans have become really fanatical and very defining of the word “fan.” We just can’t come at it like we’re trying to make something we’ve already done. We’re trying to redefine or re-refine something we’ve already done. For one thing, it hasn’t even been the same band each time. There are constants in what we do, and that’s what I hear the most. I hear all the records as being very similar in that sense, but the environments that they’re all in, I think we just try to react honestly.  Maybe it’s just easier for us to get used to it because we don’t like ourselves as much as somebody that likes the band likes us. (laughs) Speaking for myself, personally.

It must be tough for you—so you put on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and that’s the greatest album in the world for someone. And then you come out with A Ghost Is Born and they’re like, “this isn’t that.” And there might be someone automatic resentment—like, “you’ve dashed my expectations.” Do you get that?
At this point I feel like we’re not making Wilco records if people’s expectations aren’t dashed in some way. I mean, it seems like it’s easier and easier though to honest with you to dash people’s expectations. I mean there’s no doubt in my mind that if we had mad a very harsh, angular, challenging, noisy record, people would be having their expectations dashed. People would be very hurt that we didn’t go back to Mermaid Avenue. And in the same way, we have a couple songs that sound very similar to some of the older material we did, in terms of like elements of pedal steel-type sounding guitars and these things and it’s like “oh my God, they’re backtracking.” It’s like, now I know that it’s gonna be the reaction to some people. I think at this point we’re probably doing wrong if that’s now there. Actually I don’t even know how we could possibly make anything where that would be there, some kind of feeling of disappointment for some people.

And so you accept that?
What can you do about it? I think it’s just, there’s people paying attention. When people are paying attention, you’re gonna have that, both sides. At any given moment in Wilco’s history, you could find evidence that we’re the fucking most horrible, bloated, pretentious band in the world, or you could find evidence that we’re the most gifted, Messianic thing ever to exist.

Well the GQ story about you when Being There came out was pretty close to that….
Well I think you can find evidence of those things. So I think they kind of cancel each other out, and what you’re left with ultimately is yeah, am I happy? Not necessarily am I happy, but am I fulfilled? Has the band grown, or have we done something we didn’t feel like we were capable of a year ago? There’s a much more simple criteria for if whether or not what we’re doing is worthwhile. And to be honest the bottom line is that you ain’t gonna hurt anybody by making a shitty record. It’s never gonna hurt anybody for real. In fact, it might be better for ’em to hear a shitty record. Maybe having those expectations dashed every now and then is a good thing for some people. That and maybe they’d go out and get your own guitar.

In Kot’s book—I hate to keep bringing it up, but it was really thorough—there was some guy who called you a “twat,” some record exec, and the point was he felt that you were deliberately confounding. Basically, it seemed he thought the band had this great rock song, and then you’d tweak it to make it less radio-friendly. So I’m wondering if you try to deliberately confound people’s expectations?
Who knows what those people think? Who cares, man? Obviously this guy has a set criteria for what he thinks is a worthy piece of music and I don’t fit into that, so naturally I must be doing something willfully to subvert his idea of what a song should be. That’s absurd. Wasn’t that guy like not even a guy that I work with, it was like a record executive for some other label? What the fuck does he know, man? I’ve been called worse—well, that might be the worst but I’m happy with it.

There was a point after one show, and someone said something about how you guys could be great, how you could be next Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Is that a pejorative thing, to be saying how you could be like Tom Petty?
No, I think it was a compliment. For him, the pinnacle of the American band, the most well put together and just tight, really architecturally sound rock band is the Heartbreakers. And he’s right, they’re fucking great for Tom Petty’s music, they were built around Tom Petty’s songs and there’s nobody better at playing Heartbreaker’s music than them. But I think that’s what he meant is that we could have a similar situation with a primary songwriter, and I knew what he meant but it was going in a direction that wasn’t that at all, it was much more chaotic. And it was what we needed to do, but it was hard for anybody to see at the time.

What I thought he was saying is that you could make every album a variation on Damn the Torpedoes. You could make everything kind of Being There-esque. And maybe add a theramin or maybe add something else to diversify the sound a little, and then it’d be really great and everyone would love it. That’s what I took it to mean.
Well I honestly think that’s not exactly what he meant. The way record people talk to you, they’re not dumb. They really try and appeal to your artistic side and they appeal to your sense of ambition. And in his mind I think he probably knew that I had respect for the Heartbreakers as a band, and that would be something that would be flattering, that we could become as good as that band. I don’t think he meant it in the long-term career path that we should be like that. I just think he thought we weren’t being a good band. We were not playing good. We weren’t tight, we were terrible. And he was right, but that wasn’t the point of what we were doing.

Did you ever think well, you know, they want to see “Casino Queen,” so let’s give them what they want?
I had somebody say that they wanted us to be their Hootie. That was much more offensive to me at the time, we kind of look at you guys as our Hootie. You know, meaning that another label has Hootie and the Blowfish so we need a Hootie. That’s about as crass as it’s ever gotten. Those are nice guys though.

I thought it was funny because I was reading the Reader story from a couple years ago, and they posted this note from Nels when he first joined Wilco. He posted this note saying, “you know, they’re not just another generic roots-rock band, Jeff’s been doing some really interesting stuff.” Do you know where that came from?
I think it came from Nels’s website.

Yeah, it did. But where did the sentiment come from?
Well I that Nels really took a big chance joining the band, in terms of what he had built up for himself over many, many years. I think he had a fully formed identity, and he had a fully formed base of fans and people interested in what he was doing, and I think that he was well aware as anybody would be that a lot of those people would be very dismissive of a band like Wilco. And so yeah, I think he was a little defensive at the time. I remember feeling like that. But I can’t begrudge him that, it was a scary time for him, and certainly a challenge to his identity to do it. Even though I think he believed in it, he didn’t really know what was going to happen. So I think he needed to rationalize it a little bit to other people and maybe even to himself.

And so how has it worked out?
I think it’s worked out famously. It’s fucking great. I think that Nels is completely integrated into the band, I feel like it’s special for us to make music together, I think he looks at this as his priority. I mean I can’t speak for Nels but I think he’s really happy. And he gets to do all the things he’s always done and probably has a little bit, he doesn’t have as much time as he wanted to have to do those things, but I think he has a little broader palette to work from.

He must give the band a broader palette then certainly, given his training.
I think everybody in the band has brought an enormous amount of experience. The band has a real latitude musically that I find really inspiring. There’s not to much stuff that would be difficult for us to draw upon, if we needed to or felt like we wanted to. There might be things that would be ridiculous to draw upon, but there’s not too much that I think would be out of our reach completely, which is pretty excited about that.

How do you feel when you go back and listen to A.M. or Being There?
I’ve really never been able to understand this concept of high art and low art and simple and complex. To me, that’s just boring. That’s not very much imagination goes into those kind of distinctions. I think “You are my Sunshine” would be as complex as anything, depending on what you wanted to do with it as a listener. I don’t see why everything isn’t, and by the same token I think you could make a pretty solid argument that avant-garde music is probably the only music that hasn’t changed. It’s ironic, but since the twenties or something, so it’s the same concept-driven art, and it produces the same types of things. But I think when I listen to those records, for A.M. I’m always kind of surprised to how maligned the record is, but I feel like it’s really enjoyable. And with Being There, I honestly haven’t listened to that one in a while, I thought Being There was, I don’t know, I guess I don’t see any reason that I feel like I can’t enjoy them. I like listening to them. I don’t put them on all the time, but I mean that’s why we made them. I tried to make a record that I didn’t feel like I already have.

And that was the thinking behind Being There?
In every record. Just feel like you get to make something that wasn’t there each day. You make something that wasn’t there each day, You know you get to make something in a song that wasn’t there when you woke up that morning, that’s like the most gratifying thing I think anybody can do. It’s like as spiritual as anything in my life. It’s creation. And to get to do that, that to me really transcends the judgment, at the end of the day the judgment really can’t mean as much to you. That was the act of creation. That’s what that represents to me, that’s what those albums represent to me. We created that stuff. Does it matter if it’s good or bad, or that it’s simple? I don’t see why it would to anybody.

I don’t look at [those albums] as simplistic, but I just thought that you’re talking about the broadening of the palette, and the palette really seemed smaller then. And so I’m wondering if you look back on that, going “I wonder what Nels could do with something like Box Full of Letters” or whatever.
Yeah, but at the same time, listening to a lot of records in my life seems like, it’s generally pretty much easier to make great art out of a smaller palette. I’m not saying that Wilco has a really broad palette like it’s just an inherently good thing, an intrinsically, like that’s the superior way to be as a band. I just think for me it’s personally kind of exciting.

Have your approach to the lyrics changed at all? It seemed more kind of impressionistic than…I read in Chuck Klosterman’s story about Wilco, he talked about the story behind “Heavy Metal Drummer, and there was a linear story almost, whereas this seemed more kind of impressionist.
It’s interesting, I really feel that the lyrics on this record are much more like “Heavy Metal Drummer” as a whole than anything else. I think they’re much more direct than the last few records. I mean “Heavy Metal Drummer” is on one of the last two records. I think that’s an anomaly on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It’s definitely the most direct song on that album. There are elements that are kind of impressionistic, like you said, lyric writing on this record, but in general I think the landscape is pretty clear. To me the one song isn’t about “Impossible Germany” or “Unlikely Japan.” It’s about, “Now I know that someone’s listening.” I could tell you about 100 different conceptual ideas that went into wanting those lyrics to mean something one way or the other. But I think the key line in that song is “now I know the someone’s listening.” Maybe that just meant that all this other confusing stuff was just there to grab your attention.

So if this is a more straight-ahead record lyrically, what would you say is the lyrical theme running through it then? Is there one?
I think it’s about as simply as it gets. I think that almost every song on the record seems like a very open kind of conversation, or a way to relate with someone you love. I think a lot of songs I just feel like I’m singing to my wife, or something. They’re kind of love songs in some ways. That’s about as simply as it gets.

Well I would say the sound of the album, and kind of the title too, that the title kind of connotes a certain contentment, and that’s kind of the feeling I get from the songs. Where would you say you are emotionally? Would say you’re happy?
Well this would be a much better way to describe what kind of theme there might be in this record, would be acceptance. You know you can read whatever you want into that in terms of what I said before. My wife’s listened to a lot of hard to listen to record, and so there’s something nice about singing directly to her some things that might be nicer to hear. But in general I think there’s an idea of acceptance on the record, and being content with the way things are, good or bad, and that’s pretty much stated as simple as it could be in the first song, “Either Way.” If I look at the title as being something that is a hint as to what kind of lyrical slant is happening. As for contentment, I look at it more as—well I guess that’s not a bad word. Fulfillment, maybe. But I think about the album cover a lot in terms of what might be a good hint for people. I don’t think there’s really any heavy concept of what’s going on. I think it’s just a desire to sit down and play some people, and I think that’s always been enough, but I’m also really good at being Baroque and coming up with really heavily conceptualized ideas. That’s something I just tend to do. And I’ll like share something that I like to think about that relates to what you’re saying, and that’s when I look at the record, there’s a black-and-white photo of a peregrine falcon chasing a flock of starlings. And you can read into that a lot—there’s a lot of violence in that picture, there’s a lot of kinetic energy. There’s a lot of things to infer about what do the starlings do as protection, they join together, they become one, they amass themselves. But I think the ultimate point of that picture is the blue sky. Even though it’s a black-and-white photo, it’s what’s always there, it’s there just beyond that, it’s what you’re not seeing, it’s a blue sky. And it’s always there, literally. I don’t think it’s corny at all to say it’s something that probably benefits us to stay focused on, and at least be reminded of occasionally.

It’s funny because you’re saying that these are songs you’re singing to your wife and they’re like love songs, and what flashed in my mind was, “this is the same guy who sang, ‘I dreamed about killing you again last night and it felt alright to me.’”
Well none of that was autobiographical, but you know there certainly has been a long string of songs that are closer to that type of sentiment that I think that it would be hard for any wife to put up with for a number of years.

Have you noticed any sort of change in your fans, in who they are? Are they older, have they grown with you age-wise, or are they younger? Is it all over the place?
No, I haven’t noticed any change. They only perceptible change is the sheer number of them. It just seems like there’s more of them, and I guess good for us. I would never be able to characterize the typical type of Wilco fan. It seems like it’s pretty diverse, not necessarily ethnically but in terms of age and gender, and just background, it just seems like very, very diverse.

A friend of mine sent me a link to the time you were playing and the guy tried to jump up on the stage. It was hard to tell because it was kind of fuzzy, it looked like he tried to hug you from behind?
Yeah, I couldn’t see any of that, apparently he was trying to give me a kiss. The whole night was crazy, like there was really no security, so just a few moments before that happened, there was a girl that climbed up on stage very drunk and starting playing the piano during the song.

Where was this?
Springfield, Missouri. And while we were dealing with her, that was actually the last song of the set that happened. We were still dealing with her, we went out to do the encore, that’s the song I’m playing when that happens. Earlier in the evening there were like people getting really pushing around by these crazy guys in the front row. There was no security all night long. So at that moment I watched this guy climb up onto the stage on a wheelchair, there was a girl sitting in the front row in a wheel. He popped himself up on the wheelchair, got onstage, I kept playing. You know, when you’re playing a guitar it’s like you’re wearing handcuffs, basically I want to keep playing, keep the show going, my hands are tied. Any other moment I would have expected at any moment a couple of big guys in yellow shirt to escort this guy gently off the stage or not so gently. But by the time he moved behind me, I put my guard down and really just thought “well he’s leaving, thank goodness, he’s gonna get off the stage, he realizes…” Most people get up on stage and you know, hey how’s it going, and then they get right back down. But he didn’t disappear, he grabbed me from behind, and he grabbed my forehead from behind, which I don’t know how anybody else, I don’t know how they could have reacted any differently. I didn’t know if he was gonna slit my throat or give me a kiss or whatever. I think on any other night I would have probably let him fondle me or something if I had know that there were gonna be people there immediately.

That’s so much different than the way it was written about.
No, the initial articles about it were that I beat up a fan, I beat up this guy who tried to give me a kiss, and I didn’t want him to give me a kiss. It had nothing to do with the reality. It’s just the way the culture works. There’s a few myths that people love to reinforce, and that’s anybody who’s famous is a drug addict and is gonna pay a very heavy price for having all the riches and glory. And another one is that rock stars are assholes. These are all simple myths that you can’t do anything. I mean it was basically yeah, I was Axl Rose. But the way they described it in the article I saw was like that it happened a half hour into the show, that I punched this guy out and we left. It was at the end of the show, it couldn’t be more off-base than that.

That was what I heard, that some guy came up and you decked him, and then hearing what you said, it just seems like the band was so shocked. Did you go back to playing?
I didn’t even deck him. I just kind of pushed him away. Yeah, that’s the other thing, we stopped the show. No, I talked, and then the only part of it that I’m embarrassed about is that I was so keyed up afterwards like “what the fuck?” I haven’t had physical violence enter into my direct experience, in my life, since I was in grade school. Sort of just like, “guys, stay down there, please.” Because it was the second person to get onstage, and I said jokingly, was “we’re not used to this!” But we played no only the rest of the songs, but also the rest of the set, we had like four more songs.

So there’s been a lot written about you going into rehab. How is that going?
I mean, I haven’t relapsed, if that’s a pretty direct way to answer that. I think that my life is better than it’s ever been—I’m really healthy and in shape, and I don’t even smoke anymore. For me rehab was half of it, and the other half of it was like getting a pre-existing psychiatric condition under control for the first time in my life. And I never really had gotten help for depression or panic disorder, and that was a big part of why I was in the hospital. I mean obviously I needed rehabilitation for addiction. But the addiction really kind of stemmed  from those problems, and the migraines stemmed from those problems. Since I’ve been able to manage that part of my life I haven’t had a migraine.

How do you manage it?
I get help, professional help. I take the right medication, not self-prescribed medication, and I do the things I need to do to take care of myself.

So how does it feel when you’re right about to go onstage now? Is it different than it was when you’d get nervous or throw up before each show?
I still can get pretty nervous or whatever. On any given night it might just be something that feels completely effortless. Generally with the band it’s more common than by myself and so acoustic shows I tend to feel a little bit more anxious. There’s just a lot more weight to make it happen obviously. And it’s also kind of like an old, well-learned trigger response. There’s really no difference physiologically between excitement and anxiety, a lot of times it’s hard to distinguish. A lot of times I’m mostly just excited but it feels kind of icky to me because anxiety is kind of debilitating in my life at different times.

Here’s another thing, happy is always a really weird thing for me. I don’t want to perpetuate some idea that that’s what everybody’s goal should be to be happy all the time. I think that’s really unnatural, and unrealistic. It may be something that addicts need to learn a lot. When addicts feel good they think they need to feel better than everybody, when they feel bad, they think that there’s something really, really wrong. But that’s the part, feel bad sometimes, that’s pretty ok. I think, or more accurately, I feel more comfortable in my skin.

If happiness isn’t something people should be striving for, what do you think they should be striving for then?
Presence, participation. I think the pursuit of happiness precludes a lot of experience that’s really valuable about life. This idea that that’s what your ultimate goal is tends to ruin a lot of people and certainly allows people to dismiss a lot of really powerful in their lives, that they somehow have to make a lot of judgments about feeling good or bad, they need to avoid feeling bad. A lot of people do a lot to avoid feeling bad. There’s a reason that it hurts to put your hand on the stove, there’s really a purpose for things. I think that the fact of the matter is you can’t avoid it. It’s part of the human experience, you’re gonna have some fuckin’ shitty times. If you’re going to life to have a full life that’s going to be part of it, there’s gonna be some pretty dismal periods. I guess the challenge is how you react to it, how you transcend them. I’m pretty plain-spoken about it, and I’m not saying I have it figured out, but I certainly feel like these are things I need to say to myself a lot of the time, and I think it’s definitely true.

Does great art need some sort of creative tension? Do you feel like you can go the same way without the push me-pull you thing happening?
Well I don’t really know what the answer to that is psychologically. Well the answer to your question is no, absolutely not, great art doesn’t need anything. Great art can happen without somebody being conscious of it. In fact I think it probably happens more often when someone’s not actually conscious of themselves doing it, it’s actually impossible for it to be otherwise. So that kind of defeats that whole idea that there’s actually an ego at work that needs some sort of friction. I think probably the friction that people generate is to distract themselves from the fact that they don’t have much control over it.

They don’t have much control over…
Whether or not it’s great. Ultimately it’s going to come down to what the world makes of it, and I think that can be just really troubling.

What can be troubling?
That idea, that they don’t have control over how people are going to react to it. They don’t even have control over how they are going to react to it.

So you think that you don’t need some sort of chaos?
I think the creative side of any person that is striving to make art is going to be there, whether the friction is there or not. I think it’s like an innate part of humans, not just artist, that want to create and make something. And I think that for some people, the frustration that comes with the realization that the harder you try to do that, the less successful you’re gonna be creates for some people a real desire to trick themselves into not being there, into just doing it. I think that one way that people choose more often than not to distract themselves from that process is to have other things going on around them, like friction, like drug addiction, like anything. Those things all tend to happen when things are going pretty well for most people.

Maybe you want to channel more into the music and get more into the process?
Well I’m not saying that, well actually yeah that could happen too. I think that music can end up being a conflict-free zone for a lot of people, it can channel a lot of energy and feel somewhat in control of their lives. But I think that perpetuates the myth because that can grow out of that experience, it perpetuates the myth that you have to have that experience for art to happen. There’s a lot of different ways to get to it, and that seems to be the prevalent idea is that’s how you get to great art. I’ve thought about it a lot. Tried to figure out, because I was willing to make that trade, as a zero-sum game, I would have been willing to trade, when I went into the hospital, that was the bargain I was making. I thought, I will be happy, and healthy in my life, and I don’t’ give a shit if I ever write another song because it’s not worth it. I just want to feel good. And I meant that, I was sincere about that, with that bargain. But that was not the case, and as I got healthier I realized that it isn’t a zero-sum game, it isn’t that at all. I think it it’s a myth people like to really tell themselves, so they can either, I don’t know. As a culture we just seem so obsessed with it, we have all these VH1 shows, everything, Behind the Music, every single thing this culture does seems to perpetuate the idea that if you’re gonna do something like that, really believe yourself and make some art and stick your neck out, you’re gonna fuckin’ pay a heavy price. You’re gonna end up in the ditch and you’re gonna get screwed up and you’re gonna do drugs, and I think it’s a myth to kind of keep people from trying. Maybe it’s a good thing to tell yourself at the end of the day when you’re in the checkout line at the grocery store, going through the drudgery of another fuckin’ day, you buy one of those magazines and go, “well at least I don’t have to do that.” It’s probably better, because it would have been a bloodbath if I had gotten famous. Don’t you think that would be a pretty convenient thing to tell yourself?