Original subtitles

Do you guys know who the hell I am?

- Anybody, any... - Woo!

Good but I was kinda hoping you didn't, but...

I had been feeling

a bit of an outsider for a little bit of time, you know.

So it wasn't any shocker

that that big conversation came about.

It's as simple as this.

I mean, Jeff all but said,

I want my band back.

May as well have said those words.

He didn't though, you know.

I am not putting words in Jeff's mouth.

I'm not gonna do that.

He did not say I want my band back, but he actually did.

And he had every right in the world to say that, you know.

I think the hyperbolic way that he said it was,

"I think a circle can only have one center."

Well, what does that mean?

I think Jay was the kind of person

who jumps into the deep end of the pool

and swims for survival.

I think that's how he learned a lot of things.

He sorta jumped into them and felt his way.

Very, very intuitively.

Some people play music for the drugs and the chicks

and for all their friends to think they're cool.

Everybody already knew Jay Bennett was cool.

You know, he was a normal dude

that just happened to be an insanely gifted musician.

Here's a guy who lives music. He is the song.

He becomes the part.

Because he and his brother Jeff were so close in age

they were constant playmates

even starting from the point

when we would put one in the crib

with the other one to play.

And that's when they began their hat collection.

They had hats that represented

any kind of male role.

So they were sailors, they were soldiers,

they were astronauts.

Then they were explorers.

I think probably all in total they had about 50 hats.

Jay was probably less than a year old when that started.

So from then on that generated

a lot of their imaginary play.

Sewing with Miss Bennett.

All right, you got this going?

- Yeah. - - Okay.

Step one, thread under that thing,

around that little guy,

and then just push down on the gas pedal

and wind your bobbin.

Push it back over.

Push the little guy back up.

Thread the needle.

You go through that little thing in the foot,

pull it back that way.

Close that.

This is kinda set about right.

That's set about right.

This is straight and zigzag.

And then clamp down on something.

There's the foot lifter.

Besides the hats being some kind of a security thing,

at some point in his preschool years,

he got a button down the front, button collar,

long sleeve red shirt,

sort of a dusty red shirt

and wore it every day.

And it fell apart to the point

where he didn't wear it to bed anymore

but he would put it on in the morning

and it was just a vest

except that the cuffs were still there.

The sleeves weren't there.

And I remember seeing him reaching down

and putting the cuffs on,

which no longer had buttons.

They had safety pins, you know.

So he would put this vest on and put the cuffs on.

Jay was a very good baseball player

and he wound up being a pitcher.

And he was usually in the World Series,

you know, on the winning team.

Oh, this is some of his artwork way back when.

The neat thing about this cartoon character

that he would draw repeatedly

is he would put his pen or something down here

and never pick it up.

And he would start at the bottom

and then he would draw this cartoon character.

One year, he did Christmas cards.

How old was he at that point?

Maybe about eighth grade.

I tried to get him to take some art courses

and he said he didn't need to.

If somebody's doorbell rang,

he would tell you what the key was.

If somebody's cell phone rang,

he would tell you that.

His brother had like six months of piano lessons

and I probably had about six months of piano lessons,

but we played, I would say mathematically

and Jay played intuitively.

The first guitar that he ever owned

was an acoustic guitar

which we purchased when he was in eighth grade.

He had the choice of going on the eighth grade trip

to Washington DC or buying the guitar

and he chose to buy the guitar.

- My parents arranged for him to take lessons

from a guy named Larry Petrillo,

who actually happened to be a teacher

who worked at the school where my father was principal.

He thought Jay had some real talent.

And I didn't believe him.

And my memory is that Larry came over to the house

no more than four or five times.

And after that told my parents,

there was nothing left that he could teach Jay.

He had a band, Wet Pavement,

and then Rebel Ducks and the Robesmen.

I love the Robesmen story

because I think there were three or four of 'em.

They had rented some recording equipment.

They got a good deal on it

if they could rent it from 10:00 at night

to five in the morning.

So they set it all up downstairs in our basement,

which at the time was a new basement

and wasn't heated or air conditioned or anything.

At some point around one or two in the morning

they got cold.

So they came upstairs and got everybody's bathrobes

out of the bedrooms and went back downstairs,

continued their recording.

And recorded what was some pretty interesting music

about half original,

half covers as I recall,

and put it on a tape at the time and called it the Robesmen.

It was just, you know,

a bunch of guys with the love of music,

staying up all night, doing something crazy.

I don't think it was,

it didn't get them a record deal or anything like that.

He went to college,

came home I think for Christmas break,

and there was a wall between the kitchen

and the living room.

And I heard his brother Jeff playing the piano.

I remember saying from the kitchen,

"Gee, Jeff, you musta learned a new song

while you were at college."

And Jay responded and said,

"It's not Jeff playing the piano, Mom, it's me."

He said, "I figured out the piano's just like the guitar."

There was a period in the '70s,

in our early teen years where like most kids,

he rediscovered the classics, the Beatles, the Stones,

the Who, Neil Young, who remained a favorite

for a long, long time.

But I think I noticed a change in the late '70s

in the punk rock,

new wave movement

where Jay really saw something different.

I remember the first time that we would listen

to The Clash, the Talking Heads, Squeeze, Jam,

and just standing in his room,

listening to the record player

over and over on some of those tracks.

I was just enjoying the music.

He was figuring out how to play the guitar solo.

But something clicked in him in that era.

And it's interesting that musically,

he never replicated that exactly

but I think you see elements in all of that

in what he did.

It was the right sort of music at the right time

when he was really just beginning to mature

as a musician himself.

Ah.

Ah, here again, this way.

This doesn't sound good though.

- I knew Jay like 1987, 1989-ish, in that era.

And that was like the height

of the local rock scene at the time

and there was a lot going on.

And I worked for the radio station

at University of Illinois, WPGU, as a DJ.

But my main interaction with him

because I was, I'm a singer.

So he wanted to do a little duet group.

Well, there was this open mic night

at this place called the Alley Cat.

We went every single Monday so we worked up a set.

So my roommate was supposed to get luggage

from her mother for her birthday.

And they sent this camera.

The three of us were good friends.

We hung out a lot and he'd be over at our apartment.

So we just wound up running around campus

with this camera, just being like goofballs.

For it is I.

For it is I, being often known as me.

Here, being alone.

- The first song he did,

we were at our apartment and we realized

that in the song they mentioned a fire escape.

So we're like, "Let's go out and do it on a fire escape.

This'll be great."

Tell me about the first time you met Jay.

Probably the first time I saw him was onstage

with Titanic Love Affair.

I was an editor and reporter at "The Daily Illini",

the local college newspaper,

and was interested in the rock bands

that were playing on campus.

I heard about this group Titanic Love Affair.

Saw them a couple of times at local bars in Champaign,

and just was blown away by how great this band was

and particularly with this guitar player, Jay Bennett,

who was kind of wild on stage at that point.

Titanic Love Affair was on Charisma,

which was a subsidiary of a major label.

They had a fancy video

for the first record

That was in '91.

When they left the label, the band was still together,

Jay wanted to make another record.

And Jay had a really cool idea

where I think generally

when record is made the artists, if they pick a studio

that wants sort of the sonic imprint of the studio

on the record, in terms of the sound of it,

like say the sound of this room.

Like an entire album will be done in this room.

There'll be a certain stamp that comes

from all being recorded in the same place.

So on that record, Jay had a pretty cool idea

where he was like, he wanted to cut

not just songs but instruments for all the songs

in many, many, many different places

so that there would be

no identifiable acoustical fingerprint to the record.

It would just sound like something that was made everywhere.

And it's something that rarely gets done.

I thought it was a great idea.

- For a long time, this was his favorite book,

"Where the Wild Things Are".

His third grade class went to the library once a week.

And I finally got a notice from his third grade teacher

that she was hoping that I would encourage Jay

to check out a different book because each week

he would renew it.

I also sorta always wondered

if the drawings in the book,

of the monsters and stuff,

had any application to the TLA album,

especially this kinda picture.

There's sort of like two covers.

One is the four of them

and one of them is the four of them

as the monsters.

And at some point

after Titanic Love Affair imploded,

Jay got noticed by Jeff Tweed.

We had finished the first Wilco record in Memphis

and we were in St. Louis

and Jeff said, "There's this guitarist in a band

that might be a perfect fit."

It was in this band called Titanic Love Affair.

And I'd heard of that band,

but I wasn't really, I wouldn't say a fan.

But we went and saw him play

and he was playing with the band Steve Pride and the Kin.

Afterwards, we all sorta hung out

and I hear this voice come out of him.

And I'm like, that's a pretty deep, low baritone voice.

And he's talking for awhile and I thought,

when's this guy gonna drop the charade

and talk in his normal voice.

But of course he didn't. That was his voice.

You know, just this rich, deep baritone.

It was Jay.

And a very disarming and kind

and standing there drinking Bud Light like he always did.

Bringing Jay Bennett into the band,

Jay had nothing to do with "A.M.".

Jay Bennett became a touring guitarist basically

after "A.M." was released and playing those songs

basically as the hired gun guitar player.

And obviously it turned much more than that,

again, once they saw his talent and the contribution

he could make.

But then one time I remember we were,

we're at some club that had an old out of tune piano

and we're backstage.

This is on I think the end of the first Wilco tour.

And Jay just sits down and starts playing.

And we're like, "Man, you never told us

you played piano or keys.

What are you doing?"

So then on

the "Being There" record, Jay's all over the Hammond

and that starts to come out and he plays piano,

but his Hammond playing was amazing.

And Jay was kind of like, well, I can play

pretty much anything you throw at me, you know.

There's this multi-instrumentalist kinda guy.

And, and it was a revelation to them

that, hey, this guy's got a little bit more going on

than just the hired gun guitar player.

So we have this guy

who can play like Don Rich

from Buck Owens's band on Telecaster.

He can obviously do

the Pete Townsend thing with the SG.

I mean, he was all about the guitar and tone.

And then you had where he played Hammond

and he sounded like a 63-year-old black man from Brooklyn,

you know, playing a Hammond.

And when he jumped on the drums, he was terrible

but in the best way possible.

Like some of my favorite drummers are drummers

that can't play and they barely make that fill around

and then they'll land and he had

that, like everything, everything mattered

and I'm gonna give you everything

playing the drums 'cause this is what I have.

And he also had, you know, songwriting sensibility

that Jeff encouraged.

He was like, "What else you got?"

But as time went on, he and Jeff

started writing more and more together.

And he was Jeff's catalyst to a world

that Jeff didn't really live in.

And I think it opened up a lot of avenues.

I think that was obvious.

It seemed to me that Tweedy

is this incredible artist who plays amazingly well

when he has a strong opposition of some sort.

So all of a sudden Bennett started filtering

into the lineup.

And I think Jeff was already on this path.

He knew that "Being There" had to step up

from where "A.M. was.

He knew that there was that rivalry there

with Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt.

And Son Volt, in the eyes of many people,

including some of the members of Wilco,

as they told me, clearly won round one.

I thought both made excellent albums,

but I was more of a Son Volt person.

When Jay Bennett started having

a prominent role in Wilco,

like, I didn't know who Jay Bennett was at the time,

but something made me start listening to Wilco more

and really digging Wilco.

And then I was, well, wait,

why am I finding myself drifting over here?

And I started looking at it

and I was like, oh, there's this dude.

And he's playing a bunch of stuff

and helping write a bunch of stuff

and arranging a bunch of stuff.

It's real country music.

I don't buy the whole it's country music

with a rock edge business, do you?

I think it's this real country music.

People aren't used to hearing that.

Does that make sense?

- I know from working with Jay in the studio,

he has a way of bringing out particular things

and exploring musical ideas

that helps, you know,

sort of inspire creativity

and thinking, oh, well, here's another direction

that we could take this.

"Being There" was just winging it.

Those were all rough mixes.

You know, I mean,

there hasn't been a conscious effort to make...

I mean, there's been a conscious effort to make good music.

You know, I mean, on that album,

there's two different versions of-

"Outtamind Outtasite".

Yes, right.

And you know, that being an example

where if the song is good,

you can take it in one direction,

you can take it in another direction

and it's still going to be great.

And you know, when you would see them live

during that period,

they would be pretty fast and loose.

And sometimes they might do a punk rock version of a song

that wasn't that way on the record.

In the salad days when we were in vans

and we'd stop, Jeff would wanna stop at McDonald's

and Jay would always get triple orders of French fries.

He'd be sitting in the back of the van

and he would get 92 ketchups.

Jay Bennett ate a lot of ketchup,

like way more ketchup than you could imagine.

Arguably more ketchup than food.

Jay Bennett would put almost an entire packet

on each bite of fries.

Who uses that much ketchup?

Our first tour to Europe and Jay orders pommes frites,

'cause you know, there's meat everywhere.

I think we're in Germany.

Pommes frites, all these fries come out

and he goes up to get his 92 ketchups

and they charge him.

And he's shelling out doubloons or whatever

buying all of this.

I was like, "Man, you spent $20 on ketchup?"

Yeah. I thought that was funny.

He loved these Toyota Corollas.

The Toyota Corolla,

two-door sedan, probably the most sensible car in the world.

He and his dad,

I think they had four of 'em

and they would always tinker with these cars.

Here's Jay working on one of his cars with his dad

and you'll notice he has to have the hat on.

And it's a summer.

We're in his Corolla brown station wagon

and the thing just bites it.

You know...

So Jay's in the front and it's me, John, and Jeff

pushing this car down the street.

Just like it's the funniest thing

when I think back on it.

Just like, "Okay, keep pushing!"

People honking, "Oh, you losers.

Look at these guys and going nowhere!"

That's a period where we were on the road a lot.

The most we ever went out I think was 300 days.

We would record in different cities

while we were on the road.

We did some stuff in Austin, Portland, Oregon.

We did stuff in Nashville, Chicago.

Now, it was a live band and it was a studio band.

And "Being There" to me was the first time

that it sounded like that band went into the studio.

That's a hard thing to replicate.

"Being There" tour was more like reckless abandon.

At least with "Summerteeth", we had some direction,

but when we cut loose to party, boy, did we.

We used to do this thing called the Sea of Cups.

When we played a lot of festivals,

Jay would be a few Bud Lights in

and he would grab a golf cart.

And we'd just parade

through these cups flying everywhere,

him going too fast, security people

screaming at us. - That's enough of this!

And I was convinced he was gonna flip it

and we were gonna die.

But I was like, well, if I'm going,

this is how I'm going.

Jay was fun. There's no doubt about that.

- "Europe, the Final Countdown", do you have that one?

- How 'bout the Yes one.

That...

But again, at the same time

musically, those were some of the best Wilco shows ever.

And on a few songs,

Jay would start on piano and had his guitar

slung around his back

and then just end the song with a blistering solo.

And you never knew what to expect.

Again, even as basically the closest guy to the fire,

I was amazed.

I'm like, "Did he just do that?"

Not only his chicken picking lead playing

was constantly getting better or he was holding back on us

and none of us knew his true ability,

but every night, and I'm talking everybody in the band,

they would do stuff, we were like,

"Oh, you can do that too?"

And that was the crew.

So it was a magic combination too.

It was combustible at times

but there was a chemistry to that era of Wilco.

And people used to tell us this all the time too.

It was like, you take away one member

and it's not the same.

I was in this other band man

and we made a record called "Mermaid Avenue" and-

I was doing some background vocals

and Billy went out for a cup of tea, mate.

Gin.

I was in the booth doing the background vocals

and as soon as Billy would walk out,

I'd do the background vocals in Billy's voice.

And he walked back in

and everybody would be cracking up

and just, just everybody goes silent

and Billy's like, "What's going on?

What's going on?"

And then he'd leave the room and we'd do it again.

I of course fought for those background vocals

to stay on the record

but I went ahead and sang them him in my own voice

for better or worse.

- This was around 1995.

1994.

I first discovered that there were

about 3000 lyrics of my father's

that had never been heard.

And as I was reading through them,

I thought, "Boy, some of them are more appropriate now

than they were then."

One of the lyrics that I have of my dad

was actually a piece of artwork.

And he often combined lyrics and artwork together.

And there was this one picture

of a kind of a woman

and it said, "You woke up my neighborhood."

And when I was thinking of who to work with,

I'm not sure if somebody mentioned Billy

or I heard Billy on the radio.

And I saw on his CD that he had a song

called "You Woke Up my Neighborhood".

He had been down at the Smithsonian Folkways

and he saw this line that Woody had written

and he loved it.

So he took the line and he wrote a song called it.

Then I started listening to him a lot

and I loved his immediacy.

- Basically my sense of it was that it needed

one group of musicians.

Nora Guthrie had a long list of people

that she thought would be suitable,

but I was really concerned that it would sound

like a tribute album, you know,

if a different person sang every song.

I felt we needed a core, bit like "The Basement Tapes",

so that you've got a bunch of guys playing the songs.

And "Being There" had just come out.

It was clear from that that Wilco could play

all sorts of different styles.

- I remember how excited Jay was

about being able to go into the Woody Guthrie archives.

- He called and he said,

"Mom, I was holding a cocktail napkin in my hand

and Woody had written some potential lyrics

on the cocktail napkin."

He had left it in this facility

or venue or whatever.

Pete Seeger found it.

And Pete had written on the cocktail napkin,

"Woody, you left this behind.

I think you might want it."

And Jay said, "I was holding a napkin that Woody Guthrie

and Pete Seeger had held."

He said, "I felt like I was holding a piece of history

in my hands."

Every night, I just like sit there in the kitchen

with an old recorder like that and throw out ideas.

Like looking at the lyrics,

and these little drawings and his handwriting

and little PSs that he wrote at the end of the things

like "California Stars", man,

at the end of that he just wrote,

"This song doesn't have too many lyrics,

so sing it twice."

And we did. We obeyed his little instructions.

- The real beginning of my relationship with Jay

was in Chicago when we came to ostensibly to demo.

And it was clear from sitting down

when we sort of played each other the songs,

it became clear to me that Jay

was actually the point man on this.

Jay has a scholar air to him

that he knew so much about instruments

and that he came with

a room full of instruments,

just trying all these different things.

They didn't always work.

And he's, "Not that let's do this."

He's the musical undercurrent in a very tough spot

of trying to make these two singers, these two voices,

these two instruments connect.

- Well, because "Mermaid Avenue"

was a collaboration with Billy Bragg

and there were tensions there too,

between those two camps,

There were some ego battles.

Put two bands together like that,

isn't there gonna be some ego battle somewhere?

I would think so.

- You know, but I mean,

it was definitely a situation

where they came in and they performed wonderfully

and those were all supposed to be demos.

And they went to Ireland to actually,

is where they went, I guess,

to do the real recording and Wilco was like,

"We're not gonna redo those songs.

They're just done."

And I'm sure Billy Bragg supposedly was like,

"No, we're gonna rerecord them."

And there was a tension.

And then it was like, "No, those are done.

Those sound great."

Jay, somehow sonically was able

to thread them all together, you know,

and then pull the strings a little bit tighter

so that it would kind of come into a tapestry.

- You gotta understand, "Mermaid Avenue"

was a bit like going every day to the dressing up box

with these songs.

You could be whoever you wanted to be.

One day we could be, you know,

sort of Bob Dylan, The Band,

the next day we could be The Birds,

the next day we could be Tom Waits.

It was just such fun.

So everybody was encouraged to do a little bit like that.

I mean, I remember Jeff playing harmonica over one song

and I said to Jay, "Oh, that's pretty good.

How long he's been doing that?"

And Jay said, "About a week."

You know, it was great.

Everybody had that,

it was that sort of atmosphere.

You could throw anything at these songs, you know.

And I know in particular for him,

it was a very emotional experience

to write the song "California Stars".

That really, he really felt that he was channeling

Woody Guthrie to write what Woody wanted,

which made him work even harder

to make that song perfect.

- At the core, you have the beautiful Woody Guthrie lyrics,

but then you have this arrangement

that it's so deceptively simple

and it, you know, it's perfect.

I mean, I think Jay once told me that an element

that Jeff brought to it,

which I think is key and kind of important,

is the pause.

You know, that little pause moment may not seem like much,

but it's pretty key to the feel of that song.

- And what's so great about "California Stars"

is there's really nothing there.

There's three chords and they just repeat.

I mean, it's such a great song.

Everybody loves that song.

You gotta remember that I went to the archive

and chose my songs.

Jay and Jeff went together to the archive

and chose their songs.

But it has such resonance with people

for a simple song

with pretty nice, sweet enough lyrics.

It's not "This land is Your Land", is it?

- Billy Bragg came up to us in Arlington Heights

after an outdoor concert.

He said, "When we were in the archives with Nora

and Jay chose that song," he said,

"I just told him basically that was stupid.

That was don't waste one of your choices on that song."

And he said, "I have to admit I was wrong."

Yeah, put Jay in a white coat

and he's just reaching for sound.

You kinda get the feeling

like that's the love of his life is sounds.

- Let's punch in the same thing

we've been punching it on all the keyboard tracks.

I wrote this for Billy.

So try to picture Billy singing it.

- This is, I guess you'd call it a paperweight

that his dad and I made for him.

These actually were his baby teeth,

which we embedded in this acrylic case

to make a paperweight.

Did you know how "Summerteeth" got its name?

I did not know.

- Okay.

Well, it was the summer that both Jeff Tweedy and Jay

were having tooth problems.

And every once in a while,

when they were at a concert,

they would ask if there was a dentist

in the audience.

And so that was the summer of teeth,

but they called it "Summerteeth".

Your new album,

it's called "Summerteeth"

and that's a title that at least we Norwegians

don't understand at all.

It's a title we don't understand at all either.

There's no hidden English,

Not everything

has to be understood

is what we're learning with this record.

There was something in the air when we did "Summerteeth".

I know a lot of people will never understand it.

Well, one would be hard pressed to find

a Wilco record that had

more Jay Bennett involvement than "Summerteeth".

Yeah. I mean, he's all over it.

I mean, it's like the Jay Jeff album.

It really is a one of a kind record in the Wilco canon.

I don't think anything else quite sounds like it.

And it was really a Jeff and Jay record.

It's like, Jay's epitome of what he does.

You know, the arrangements,

the, I don't know, making the songs glow, I guess.

And I think with "Summerteeth",

I kinda feel that maybe he was feeling

more comfortable around Jeff

and more like Jeff was giving him more free rein

to do things.

So I think that was his kinda record

to kinda really just take control

and do what he wanted to do.

He's playing all kinds of instruments

at this point.

And of course, you know, he's doing the engineering,

figuring out how they're gonna get

particular sounds to tape.

He ended up, I think doing a lot of the mixing

on it as well.

They gave him the keys to the car

and then later revoked the keys.

But while it was happening, it was magic.

Jay played 90% of the guitars and the keys.

He played drums on one song.

I think he played bass on three.

And then I played timpani on one

that he played drums on.

But I think we all wanted to make that record.

He is in that kitchen sink mode

where on any given song,

let's throw as many textures and sounds and such

at it as we can.

Specifically exactly what we did,

it was just layers and layers of pianos and Mellotron.

We actually had a real Mellotron brought in.

We had two of them at one time.

I think one was brought in from the BBC

and still had the "Dr. Who" stuff on it.

And I don't know if Jay was behind that one,

but I think he bought another Mellotron that was out in LA

and it had all the string patches.

And these were the authentic, real deals.

And that's on the record.

I have a list, probably 20 keyboards,

six drum kits, 20 guitar amps,

two or three Hammond organs.

I filled the truck and drove it down to Whitecliff,

Willie Nelson's studio

outside of Austin, Texas.

And that's where we did "Summerteeth".

None of us wanted to make the same record twice.

I think when I reviewed the record,

I compared it to sorta like a Brian Eno type of approach

to record-making,

completely outside of the realm of country music.

- You know, so we wanted to make a pop record.

We really did.

I mean, what are we gonna pretend

that we didn't grow up in the '70s listening

to good pop music?

It's ridiculous, you know.

I mean, just 'cause we all happen to like

good old country music, you know.

That's great music too.

I mean, I think we don't really make any,

we don't make those divisions that those people make,

so we didn't feel like we were leaving anything behind.

It's never been, you know, we never said

no more twangy guitars

or no more sounds in 6/8 or whatever.

- Yeah.

Ready, here we go.

One!

And again, we're out on the road forever

and we're listening to stuff in the van.

At that point, I think we were in buses,

in the bus and you know, we're getting inspired by stuff.

We're listening to Skip Spence's masterpiece "Oar".

All that kind of real music.

We'd get inspired by stuff and just listen to stuff.

We were listening to Beach Boys' "Smile" a lot too.

The critics talked about that as being equivalent

to what was

The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds"

just really kind of experimenting in the studio.

And there certainly was quite a bit of that.

It's just that it was a culmination

of so many tracks.

Once they're all blended together,

there's just spots where it's just kinda like

there's eight or nine different instruments going on

and they just create one instrument.

And so that's kinda what it is on a lot of those things.

There's so many layers of instruments going on

and vocals and masked vocals

and things that are, you can't quite tell what they are,

but they kinda create kind of a backdrop.

I'm not afraid to make musical references

because to some extent my musical references are archaic.

And I think personally that the bands, songwriters,

whatever have been making musical references

for years and years, you know.

And generationally, I'm making a musical reference there

to like 1978.

That's a long ass time ago.

As every generation goes on,

there's more and more musical history

to get caught up on.

Over time, and especially by the recording

of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot",

did it start wearing on other band members?

Of course it did

'cause Jay took the reins

and we were recording Mellotron overdubs

at four in the morning.

And the band would come back in and be like,

huh, really 18 new tracks of cello on that song

or whatever it was.

- It was Jay and Jeff doing whatever they did

to stay up and they would stay up

till two, three and four working on this stuff.

And John and I were feeling kinda left out to be honest,

you know, cause Jay could jump around on anything.

And so, you know, you kinda start feeling like

where's my ground, what's my, how do I belong

in this whatever.

But yeah, it did start to feel

more like the Jeff and Jay project.

I remember John and I

having a conversation about that so.

You know, it wasn't a band anymore.

You got the sense that these two guys

had sort of closed off the other guys in the band

and in doing the book, that became even more underlined.

No one said stop.

So when it comes out later, "Oh, he overdid it."

Well, he's an artist.

That was his art.

In my opinion, he didn't overdo it.

He was living it.

- It has elements of everything we've done in the past

and it has some new elements.

And I don't completely understand it yet.

I haven't gotten away from it enough

to understand what it is.

To me that record is a big chunk of my life.

It is really hard for me to say

what it is as a consumer might like.

This record is, you know, to me,

it's a year of my life.

"Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" took almost this, you know,

using the studio as an instrument to the Nth degree.

There's like two very different versions of that record,

for example, that are out there.

If anyone asks me, I'm not for the remix.

I thought the original one had elements of the remix,

but still kept the soul of who the band was.

I remember coming in on the early demos for that record

hearing some of that stuff

and what the record ended up sounding like,

you know, I mean, this stuff had gone

through permutation after permutation.

- We ultimately recorded "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" three times.

You're making music.

We have this there's lots of songs written,

you're melding two songs together.

You're rewriting songs.

You're doing seven completely different takes of one song.

You're doing everything.

You know, you're writing songs up until the day

you're supposed to be done and re-tracking and rewriting.

You're doing what you do. It's fun.

We don't need anybody else.

You know, somehow we're kinda living on that level,

this dream, like that's what you dream of

when you're first starting out.

Like, "I wish we had this giant space

with all our gear and our own studio

and all the time in the world."

A lot of the stories I would hear

about kinda those Loft days was obviously immense talent,

but, you know, egos or whatever you wanna call it.

And definitely like when we were working with Jay,

those days his big rule was check your ego at the door.

So I think to some degree he was tiptoeing around people

to try to make great music.

Jeff had a sound in his head for that record

that Jay I think was not always in agreement with.

And you started to see the two of them starting to split.

Yeah, Jeff's lyrics, but behind the scenes,

the avant garde, the reckless careless,

that was all Jay Bennett.

See Jeff was much more interested in the album

as a collection of songs

that worked together.

Whereas Jay was all about, you know,

he had that power pop thing going on.

Like, you know, I want a three-minutes single.

Jay was the one who did all the heavy lifting

on the recording.

He recorded it all.

And he was arranging half the songs,

he's writing a bunch of the songs.

That's when I really started seeing

his mad scientist side,

which was beautiful.

He'd be down on the ground rewiring something.

Everything was kind of hodgepodged together,

which is why ultimately I brought in Chris Brickley.

He knew technically to not distort or hit tape too hard.

He knew the gear.

But Jay's finesse in the studio

is what made that record special.

It's a record that means a lot to a lot of people.

I'm glad I'm part of it.

It's not my favorite one.

And maybe because I know what was going on history-wise

because I was there and it was a bad time

for several members of that band.

Jeff tried to make Wilco the Jeff Tweedy solo band.

I tried to make Wilco my band.

I obviously was up against greater odds.

A lot easier for him to take over the band than for me.

That's it, you know. Jeff wanted more control.

I had very naturally gotten more prominence,

more control, more decision-making authority,

more input on the music very, very gradually.

And at some point that like had to plateau.

If it went beyond that,

then it wouldn't be Jeff's band anymore.

And while it was Wilco, it was still Jeff's band.

And he needed to kinda tighten the reins.

So, and then two things happened.

Glenn Kotche came into the band, Ken Coomer left.

I was told to help move Ken out of the Loft.

That was like the first domino of like,

hey, we're replacing Ken Coomer.

Again, a lot of us were like, "You're what?"

Well, I was there for some of it.

I was there for,

we recorded the whole record

and then Jay was working on that, doing mixing and stuff.

So, yeah and it started getting competitive

and a little weird.

And then, Jeff started collaborating very closely

with Jim O'Rourke,

essentially usurping the role that Jay played

on say "Summerteeth".

- Jay was hurt when Jim O'Rourke was brought in

to mix the record.

Jay took that personally.

But you know, I speculate that there

was a distance growing between

because I was fucking wearing seven different hats

during the making of that record.

It hampered the communication in the band

'cause people didn't know if they were talking

to Jay Bennett the engineer, the producer,

the musician, the songwriter.

Ultimately did it affect the record poorly? No.

They needed a fresh set of ears

as Jeff said,

to figure out what this record was.

And Jim O'Rourke was the guy.

And he and Jeff ended up working very closely

near the end of that record.

And I think Jay kinda felt kinda shoved to the side.

That's just how making music is.

There's a lot of people with a lot of ideas.

At some point, one person's ideas are gonna take precedence.

I engineered the record.

I mean, O'Rourke was not there one single day

while we were recording the record.

You know, what's funny,

even all the weird stuff, it was already there.

Oh, like backwards pianos and noise and crap.

Was already there. He just mixed it.

And there were times when he kinda straightened it out,

like where he kind of de-weirdified it.

We had a hell of a record going.

When the film crew moved in, everything changed.

It's about three

in the morning

and we're either gonna get something great

or lose our fucking minds.

All these things are just blaring in here.

That's when it all kind of like exploded.

So Tony Margarita tells me, he's the manager of Wilco,

he said, "Oh, hey, next week, a film crew's coming in.

But don't worry. B roll, just handheld cameras.

You tell them if they're in your way,

They won't be in your way."

They show up and start laying those railroad tracks,

which is awesome.

Again, Sam Jones, what a talented guy.

The timing was bad.

As their production manager, bad timing.

Let us finish recording the record

then come in and maybe we'll fake it

and walk through like, oh, pretend we're recording.

We didn't know at the time,

but it killed the dynamic.

I never understood critics

who called it a fly on the wall documentary.

I don't know how any documentary could ever pull that off,

but it sure as hell wasn't the case here.

The fly on the wall was unnoticed

but we were acutely aware that there were cameras

following us around.

All of a sudden making a cool film

became as important as making a record, making our art.

But again, it's a phenomenal record.

But my opinion, yeah, things changed.

Young bands, don't let a film crew come in

and film you recording a record.

Are you making a movie?

Are you trying to look cool to your friends?

Or are you bleeding for your art

and making a record.

First Glenn Kotche and then Jim O'Rourke coming along

kind of becoming very close to Jeff,

not only on a artistic level but on a personal level.

And Jay had had that role for a number of years.

Basically since being there,

Jay Bennett had been Jeff's closest collaborator.

And in some ways he's maybe his closest friend.

And I don't think he felt that way on either level

by the time "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" was concluding.

There's just now really room for two towering geniuses

in one band.

And it just makes for conflict.

And the founder is probably going to win in that case.

He felt that he had been,

Jeff was trying to marginalize him

and that his role was being eclipsed

by these two other guys.

And you know, there's two sides of the story.

It's petty jealousy

or it's a genuine feeling of being underappreciated.

Which, who's got the right story?

Well, I think the truth probably lies somewhere

in the middle.

Now, granted, there was real conflict in the air

and they had different opinions and different views,

but both Jay and Jeff changed a little

because the film crew was in the room.

Again, I don't think Jay was expressing

exactly what he meant to say.

And then in typical Jay fashion,

he wasn't gonna back up.

He was moving forward.

The band is in the studio

trying to figure out the transition

from "Ashes of American Flags"

into "Heavy Metal Drummer".

Jay Bennett and I argue about it, I get annoyed with him,

then he gets annoyed with me.

None of this is the revelatory moment.

I shoot a look at the camera.

It's not something he did or I did,

or he said or I said.

It's never as obvious as you think it should be.

There was animosity and weirdness

with Jay and the band.

They intentionally made Jay look bad.

And things were getting a little weird by then.

All of 'em,

Nobody, you didn't have to go out of your way

to make Jay look possessive.

Like, wait, you gave me the keys to the car.

By then it was apparent that we're taking the keys back.

- Whatever. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know what the problem is. I don't.

I just want you to understand me,

like understand why I was-

- angry with you. - Why is it so important?

I don't have to understand you all the time actually.

It's okay.

That moment being on film

and then also, if you saw it in the movie theater,

being literally blown up big

on the movie screen,

turned that into something

that it might not otherwise have been.

And then I remember I saw the movie

talking to Mike Hazelrigg,

a drummer from "Titanic Love Affair",

and he and I kinda had the same reaction.

Like went to see it in the theater,

watching it, it's tense.

The scene is coming up.

And then when it happens, Mike said,

"I just bust out laughing."

I'm like, "Well, that's Jay.

I mean, that's how he was with all of us."

That was how Jay was.

I thought you wanted it to be the noise going over

whatever was really on "Heavy Metal Drummer" there.

See what I'm saying?

I think it's- I don't want the noise,

I don't want the orchestra to go into "Heavy Metal Drummer".

It cuts right there.

Right. And I, what, okay, okay.

Let me try to explain myself.

Jay could be a frustrating person.

We can all be frustrating people

at different moments.

And Jay was very much a stickler for detail.

And I would see this with his fussing

over the particular frequency

or the particular setting on a compressor

or whatever it might be.

So he's bringing that same degree

of fussy precision to this moment

in talking about where does the particular tape loop

and what's the end and what's the beginning

and blah, blah, blah.

And I can understand how that might, you know,

test someone's patience

But can I explain myself, please?

I didn't know until now that you wanted it to start

with a little kit...

big kit.

If there had been no cameras rolling,

when they were having that discussion,

he mighta still been in Wilco, right?

Maybe.

What I hear is Jay saying,

I don't need to be right.

I just need you to acknowledge that there wasn't something

wrong with my thought process.

When you have pieces of footage,

how you choose to edit that footage,

you can create any story you wanna create.

And, you know, there were some things

that were not in chronological order.

Like the Jeff vomiting had happened like two days before.

There were some shortcuts taken

in terms of just presenting material.

And so people took from those little soundbites

or those little moments on the film,

like Jeff and Jay are arguing,

or they're not agreeing.

And then Jeff goes and vomits and they take,

you know, they extrapolate that

into this is what the entire relationship was like.

And that's just a very small moment.

All I know is follow someone around

for three months, they can make you look any way they want.

That's a fact.

Like I can take you from the hour you've been here

and quote, and take like one question of yours

and one answer of mine and one response of yours

and juggle them all up and then do some fake reaction shots.

And like all of a sudden you're a dick, you know.

But I still get the best line in the movie.

Jeff's on his way down.

Alert the media.

So what I saw happen was

they form this kinship and they really created

some great music and then Jeff wanted to move on from it.

And Jay wanted to take it further I think.

I don't think he wanted "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"

the way it was mixed.

That was my impression.

And that was the big break.

- And I'll never forget the day that Jeff,

and actually Tony Margarita pulled me aside

and said, "Hey, we're letting go of Jay Bennett.

If he didn't see it coming, it's his own fault.

Will you hire a truck

and just get all his out of the Loft?

You know, find a new space for him,"

which was ultimately the Pieholden Suite Studios

on the west side.

"But when we come back from a long weekend,

we want all of his shit gone."

So that was pushed into my plate.

Thus started my animosity of like, what are you thinking?

It's Jay Bennett.

It's about, you know, three in the morning or something

and I get a phone call and it is Jay Bennett

telling me that he

has just been dismissed from Wilco

and he's upset and emotional over the situation.

There were many reasons

I didn't wanna make music with Jay Bennett anymore.

For one thing, it wasn't a healthy situation

for either of us.

We sat down and he said,

"I don't think I can make music with you anymore."

And I said, "Why?"

And uh...

I'm not sure I ever got an answer that made any sense.

He liked the work that he did with them

and thought that he still had

more things to contribute

to their sound and their success and all of that.

But I think he was really disappointed.

From the little snippets he'd reveal,

I know that he took a lot of pride

in the impact that he had on Wilco.

And I think he felt a little bit of pride

in how the critics liked "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"

and several of the reviews really spoke

about his contribution.

He was not one to gloat or say I told you so,

but I know that he was proud of that

when all that sorta came out in the press.

And I think he was just deeply, deeply disappointed

that he was a part of something great,

had some personal stake in that,

and a vision of how it could have been even better.

He was pissed.

He couldn't believe it.

We were all dumbfounded that he didn't already know

or that he couldn't see the writing on the wall

that like, hey, if you don't come back

to be part of this entity

rather than a rogue entity doing your own thing,

meaning like not slowing down

that you're working yourself out.

The narrative of "I'm Trying to Break Your Heart"

is, in part, trying to provide cover

or show, you know, cause

for why Jay Bennett had to go.

It's a movie. You gotta have a hero and a villain.

- There was an intention that I don't understand

the root of it, but when they were editing the film later,

it appears that certain things were left out.

And yeah, Jay Bennett was, I don't know why they did this,

but they made him look bad.

They picked certain footage.

I don't know, was Sam Jones

just trying to make Jeff look as good as possible?

Which always confused me, man.

It...

You could have made them both look awesome and artistic

and what they really were.

Did they have to put the scene in the movie

where they go to the little small club

and he's playing for eight people or something?

You know, he was starting over.

Sam also shot footage of Jay and I performing at The Mint

to incorporate that into the film as well.

I think we were performing "My Darling".

And so the camera is tight up on Jay's face.

You hear my voice in the background as well

'cause there's a harmony part going on,

but the visual would seem to suggest

now Jay's all out by himself and alone

playing shows in small clubs.

The place was packed.

And then earlier before we played Ivan Neville played.

That wasn't necessary to me.

That was a low blow.

And I think it hurt him. I think it hurt him badly.

I didn't think it was a bad documentary.

I just thought that you can do a lot in editing

to make a good film.

Like you're about to edit this documentary

and you could take anything

from anybody's emotional thing

and take it out of context.

And you could take me looking down at the chair

in an emotional moment, trying to remember my friend

who's not here anymore

and completely spin it in a dark way.

And that's what making good film is about though,

is that turning point somewhere in the film

that draws you in.

And did I think that it was unfairly edited?

Yeah, slightly because we have a super creative person

and that film didn't even address

the fact that the drummer

was just kicked out of the band.

I told Sam, I was like, "I'm not gonna be in this movie.

They're not gonna, I have nothing to hide.

I'm just telling you what I saw

without throwing people deeply under the bus.

You're asking me questions,

I'm answering them honestly."

And he's like, "Oh, you'll be in it."

I wasn't in it. I knew I wasn't gonna be in it.

But I got a free trip to LA and sushi

and I like sushi.

If I'm honest, I don't know how long,

how long could the Jay throwing the deli meat

at the crowd shtick go on.

I mean, how long are you gonna do that?

We have to explain the rules of the deli tray game now.

Anything that we throw out from this lovely deli tray

provided for us by Irving Plaza

can be thrown back at us.

If it didn't come off that fucking deli tray,

it can't come back at us, okay?

How long is Jay gonna remain

the far more articulate,

educated Bob Stinson of that?

You know, how long are you gonna be the genius

who's the Clown Prince as well.

- I think that it was inevitable

that they went their own ways.

Why?

Because of the strength of their musical talent.

But you know, whatever.

You know, I don't have to tell you that I was hurt,

there was hurt and anger and fear.

I don't have to tell you that.

Of course there was.

It's like asking someone, "How was your divorce?"

"Oh, totally cool.

Ah, just totally cool, yeah.

We just talked and said, 'Hey, let's get divorced.'

And we're like, 'All right, cool.'"

There's no such thing as a happy divorce.

There's such a thing as a happier divorce,

but you know, the second it goes down,

it's not happy.

- When we were trying to express something in "Billions",

that idea just occurred to us

that a good way to explain

a certain kind of relationship

and what happens when something goes missing from it,

would be to talk about Tweedy and Bennett.

Do you like Wilco?

- Yeah.

Yes. I love the one with "Jesus Don't Cry".

- Yeah, me too.

Because in that one, Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett

had found in each other a perfect mind meld.

They communicated on a level few ever reach.

But I don't think there's any argument to be made

that the first Nonesuch record

is the record that Wilco will be remembered for.

- But the thing about Wilco in that moment is

it was never that good again.

Bennett left the group.

Somehow, even though each had to know

the other made him better,

they just couldn't find a way to keep going together.

- Did the band break up?

- No. Even without Bennett, Wilco is Wilco.

It kept trucking along.

And Bennett?

He died.

But this is the second in a long line

of ex-girlfriend songs.

Woo!

Bitter, minor key.

About 10 years ago

I had a breakup

that I really thank God for

'cause I got a lot of songs out of it.

It just, it redeemed the whole relationship though.

You're not gonna believe it,

but you gotta believe it.

We said, "Look, I am Jay Bennett.

I will never finish a record unless you give me a deadline.

I know me. I know me.

Give me a god damn fucking deadline and I'll make it.

Don't give me a deadline, I won't make it."

He gave us a deadline.

He did the math, the release date came out that day,

end of story.

- And as we're getting close to put things out,

we see the announcement that that is the date

that "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" will come out.

We're like, "Well,

we couldn't have planned that any better."

But we didn't actually plan it.

It's just that that's how it happened.

But because it happened that way, like, well,

that's fortunate because, you know,

people covering "Yankee" are probably gonna do

a sidebar on us and it's gonna, you know,

generate a little extra press.

I mean, I'm not gonna say that it's not

a nice little coincidence, but it is a coincidence.

Jay always joked,

"Hey, I had two records come out

on the same day.

There's probably very few people who've had that."

Jay had a bunch of songs in various stages of completion.

We started recording songs.

And at the time, we weren't thinking of it

as that we're recording these to eventually make a record.

It was more just something to occupy our time.

I've often said that it was also about the fact

that it was cheaper than therapy.

Anytime I had time off from Wilco touring

or Wilco recording, I mean, I think Ed and I

did more kinda sitting on the porch,

learning how to harmonize together

and sing together really well

than any other time in my life.

It was actually some of the happiest times of my life

were right after I met Ed and found somebody

I could just, we'd just sit there with acoustic guitars

and play old Louvin Brothers songs and harmonize

and stuff like that.

And we found out that our voices

melded together really well.

So we started recording whenever we had the chance.

We'd find some times like, oh, then we'll work on this song

or that song.

So he came in and he brought boxes and boxes of tapes.

And literally there would be a song

and there would be four drum tracks.

There'd be four bass parts,

there'd be four tambourine parts.

There'd be four of everything.

Like he was just obsessive.

Like, he'd wanna cover all his tracks,

but it was just like,

okay we're gonna be spending most of our time

sifting through this stuff and editing this stuff down.

It was too big of a project for me alone

so we had to bring in

my other business partner at the time, Ken Sluiter.

And so we had two studios working on dividing the album up

'cause there just wasn't enough time to meet this deadline.

Most reviews tended to like it.

I know that there were some who felt

that Jay's kitchen sink element was a bit too much.

I mean, even for me looking back at it now,

I can buy a little bit of that.

I mean, when I listen to that record today,

I think if we'd had a little extra time

and we would have just pulled a few other things back

to create just a little bit more dynamic movement

at certain parts, you know,

it would be even better.

I bought this really cool set

of Deagan Bells, Chicago company.

They're basically orchestra bells that you can play

with a small keyboard and it triggers the bells.

And it was kinda my new fun toy

so perhaps it got overused.

When you say stop, that was my job on "Palace at 4am".

I wish I had had a little more power with that

because I think three or four songs

could have easily been taken off that record.

I think a lot more of those songs

could have been stripped down,

but we did what we could.

He gave me a lot of leeway

and I think he trusted me,

which I really appreciate.

Tell me about "Talk to Me".

That's got a good story.

I had recorded a relatively lame demo version of it

and due to some digital glitch, it played really fast.

There's some sampling rate error and the version he got

was all sped up.

And I was like, "Oh, I'm sorry.

Let me send you a copy where it isn't all sped up."

And he's like, "No, man, it's cool."

So the tempo that you hear it at now

is the tempo that Ed first heard it at.

And, of course, my voice sounded like Mickey Mouse sounded.

By the time we had finished

the tour for the first album,

I think Jay felt a need

to be a bit away from me.

And I think it's because during the end portion

of those tours,

all the usual rock 'n' roll excesses were coming to the fore

with the drugs and too much drinking

and all that kinda stuff.

It's about one o'clock and they'd go off for an encore,

come back on.

And Jay's standing at mic by himself

and he says, "Hey, it's my anniversary."

Everybody's like, "Hey, happy anniversary, Jay."

And he says, "I think I'm gonna call my wife.

She's back home in Arlington Heights."

And he gets out his cell phone

and you hear, "Hi honey.

I'm on stage in St. Louis.

Happy anniversary."

And you hear nothing.

It's like, "Yeah, yeah."

And he's holding the cell phone to the PA

and then you hear click.

This despondent look washes over Jay's face.

"Oh, I think I just fucked up really bad."

And I can't remember what song you guys did,

but it was something really sad.

And Jay was like, his voice is croaking at that point.

And I think that was the end of it.

And it's still one of the strangest shows I've ever seen.

It's really hard to describe the intensity of it.

It's just this beautiful mess going on.

And there was a lot of humor.

The Edward and Jay comedy show was at its best that night,

but the crowd had no idea what to make of it.

The vibe in the crowd was like, what are we seeing?

These guys are insane.

But they played great.

They played really great

amidst all this chaos.

I know he went through a period

where he was committed to kinda playing everything himself.

And so I think while as great as he was,

you lose that spark of collaboration.

I think, you know, some of his greatest works,

there was always at least one other person involved.

And it was really,

I think some of it reflects kinda where his mood was

at that time.

Things were stark and dark

and you know, the world was a not a friendly place.

And so I think some of that comes through

in those songs.

I think he started leaning on things

in his depression

that ultimately were gonna contribute

to the downfall of his health.

I mean, let's be honest.

Jay didn't start drinking again

until after the film came out

because it had humiliated him so much.

So ended up becoming this self-fulfilling prophecy.

Like this film comes out,

portrays you as a fuck-up,

and then you're so humiliated

that you then end up turning to substances.

I think he was in a really dark place,

but he knew it and he was kind of digging into it.

I mean, digging into the dissolution of his marriage.

- He was definitely using music

as a way to express some very difficult things

that he was wrestling with.

You know, the story behind that song

is the lyrics were written out on a door, all in one thing

and that door used to be in the studio.

When I was kinda mixing my band's record with him,

we would mix all day

but Jay was very addicted to working on music nonstop.

And my band was, you know, he was very accommodating.

He would just let us crash there or whatever.

So we mixed all day on "Where the Moon Came From" song.

Then the band kinda crashed out

in the corner of this huge warehouse.

Now, we come into the control room the next morning

and there's all these instruments spread everywhere.

And then there's an entire song written on the door

and when Jay wakes up and he's like,

"Oh, this song came to me in the middle of the night.

And you know, I just had to work on it."

So he just stayed up the rest of the night.

That song has kinda always been there, eating at me.

And I think one day I was thinking about it

and just how, how beautiful the lyrics are.

Like, it's a classic example of just like how

he just tells this story so visually

and so beautifully.

The other thing that cracked me up about that song,

I remember I was like, okay,

I'm gonna learn this song

and I started writing out the chords.

And the chorus

is D-E-A-D.

Whether he did it on purpose or not,

and I think he did, that's just so Jay

to write a murder ballad with the chorus chords

being D-E-A-D.

It's beautiful.

The title of the record, "The Magnificent Defeat",

speaks a little bit to Jay's mindset

and to the mindset of a lot of other musicians

that I would put in a similar category to Jay,

like Paul Westerberg or, you know.

Some of these guys who seem to have this thing

where they almost know

like this would do it,

but I don't, not quite sure

I want it to happen.

It's almost like a self-defeating prophecy.

I mean, one of the things I very typically do

is the second I write a song, I record it.

How do you know what a record's done

or even when a song is done?

I remember actually Jim Scott,

who mixed a couple of Wilco records

gave me the best answer that I've ever heard to this,

I think I read an interview once where Prince said this

that, "If you are trying to decide

if a given overdub

or instrument should be in a song,

you should be able to listen to the whole song

with just the lead vocal and that instrument

and it should be satisfying."

The original plan was to release it

with a, there was a sticker on it that said

something like "New album from",

I think the language was "The sonic architect

behind 'Yankee Foxtrot'."

And that got into the Warner's system

and there were objections.

- We weren't real close during that dark period.

No. And it was...

I think Jay kinda pushed away a lotta people

and I don't really wanna speculate too much

about what he was feeling.

I know there was, you know, it was difficult.

He was going through a divorce then at about the same time

and struggling with, wrestling with his own demons.

And we would talk periodically

and most of the time he'd seem normal

so I didn't see a lot of the darkness,

but I know secondhand

there was plenty of it to go around.

For me, he unlocked sort of that idea

of the studio as an instrument.

This is a dying art.

This was the last gasp of putting,

people still do do this,

but you know, putting the mix up

and the mixes there,

and when you stop, it's over.

Like, you can't just recall that.

Even if you take all your notes,

you might get pretty close,

but it's like, it's being in that moment.

You know, everybody being at the board

like, okay, you grab those two buttons

and then you're gonna like slowly twist this there

like right at the right...

And you're playing the studio, you know.

That's something that I had never really seen

or done nearly with that kind of complexity

of orchestration and stuff.

It was so inspiring.

So we would write and do the deal

where you would go to in the Loft,

a big elevator chute and drop a microphone down

and put a snare drum in the bottom and hit it.

And that kinda stuff we, we would still do.

We would experiment.

Fucking beautiful reverb.

And you have so many places to mic it.

I wanna do a gospel record here.

We were rehearsing in the kitchen of the studio

and he's like, "This is where we need to record it."

And so we recorded one of the tracks on the record

in the kitchen.

I think that Jay definitely influenced us

in certain ways when we were working on the next record,

certainly in terms of microphone placements

and not being afraid to use the room

and different parts of the room or the building.

When a band has its own studio,

and you can go if I hit that radiator

with a metal pipe

and we slow it down on tape,

you know, there's all kinda tricks you can do.

That was fun.

Those are some

of my favorite kinda instruments,

the ones that you hear them and you're like,

"What the hell is that?"

And sometimes to tell you the truth,

if it's been a year and a half since I worked on a song,

I listen back to a track and I go, "What the hell is that?"

He introduced a lotta toy sounds.

Are you aware of that?

And I remember, I remember one summer,

he was at our house for about a month

and he and I went out garage saling

mainly 'cause he was picking up toys.

And then he'd pick up the toy and work the sound.

- Yeah, I mean, you know like this little piano.

After he passed away,

somebody gave it to me and said like,

"Yeah, he put that on some records."

Like anything that would make a noise.

But that era where I really spent a lot of time

and hung out and cut my teeth

it was kind of on the west side here.

It was very similar to the Wilco Loft style

of just a very large open warehouse space

with a lot of this gear and a lot more gear

just spread everywhere.

So it's like, when you talk about the kitchen,

the kitchen was never just the kitchen.

That was maybe the drums got cut in there.

You know, we're talking about 5,000 square feet

of recording space,

the hallway, the elevator shaft, the bathroom.

I mean, there was, yeah, it was all acoustic spaces for Jay.

My old studio is set up so that, you know,

basically everybody could sleep there and live there.

There was a kitchen and everything,

and some makeshift bedrooms

and air mattresses and stuff like that.

- Yeah. So this is one of the studio favorites,

an SG that I feel like shows up in live pictures of Jay

from time to time, although he had a couple.

One of them was smashed and I donated that

to the Rock Hall

and that was infamously smashed somewhere.

But this is just a favorite.

He was such an all or nothing person.

It was like, cool, we can have this space,

but it can be a safe place.

It's not, it doesn't have to be insane.

It could be a creative space

that's not excessive and dangerous, you know?

And I was invested in that

and we got it to a really cool place.

So when he passed away, it was kinda like,

well, we've lost Jay,

but we don't have to lose this thing that we started

or that he started and I believed in

and still believe in

as this creative space

that can have a lot of power.

And he opened it up to other people.

Like there's a whole group of us who,

we got to grow up- - We all know everybody.

- playing these guitars because Jay shared them with us.

He wasn't just like, I'm not gonna trust

these idiots to like go in my studio

and play my guitars.

He got that guitars are meant to be played.

They're meant to be shared.

Like, I remember playing

with a Mellotron once with Jay and having it,

we were just laying the string part down

and I remember it catching on fire.

The power transformer just started burning

and there was smoke and flames.

And Jay just started cracking up.

I mean, he was like laughing

and we just kept playing and kept playing

until it just stopped making sound.

And it's just hilarious to look back on.

I mean, he didn't freak out and we just left it recording.

And I think maybe in the back of his mind,

he was kinda like, I wonder if we're gonna

be able to capture the sound

of this Mellotron dying on tape

and maybe I've never heard that before.

- So this is the recording book

that Jay wrote that he always talked about.

It's more like writing his thoughts on recording down,

most of which are very interesting and relevant.

"Good instrument. Good room.

Good mic, good pre.

Done."

"Don't over fuck."

"AB to AB or not to AB."

"Breaks in long sessions.

Talk about shit other than music."

"If it makes you cry, it's the take,

but let them do one more."

"Save opinions, pick your battles."

I believe a lot of his solo music was cathartic.

I also believe that in the next few years

it would have been more uplifting,

but it was sorta like he needed to get

that part of it out of his system.

- Here's the difference

between like, yeah, some Wilco era stuff and Jay solo.

And this is where, you know, when you wanna talk about,

oh, it was, you know.

Was Jay this talent force that people think he was

or was he not?

Wilco, you've got, I don't know, four or five, six players,

some of the greatest players in the world.

You've got a studio staff.

You've got a record producer, you've got a record label.

You've got engineers, you've got assistant engineers,

you got editors.

You got somebody to go get the beer and the cigarettes.

You got somebody making sure a pizza shows up.

Jay's solo records, not to say all of them obviously,

Ed Burch worked on them a lot.

Mike Hagler, who you guys just spoke with,

hung out a lot.

But some of these records

we're talking about it was Jay alone

at wearing every hat, playing every instrument,

running all the gear.

You know, you're talking about,

you're talking about one man wearing

a lotta hats and, and it being some very impressive music.

There's two things that come out

in the media,

after Jay's death of the typical schmuck musician.

A, that it was drug-related,

B, that he was just some poverty-stricken dude

who couldn't even afford health insurance.

Neither of which were true.

He was planning to get the hip surgery

and he felt it was gonna be like totally life-changing.

Jay had gained some weight

and that his weight was giving him joint problems.

And so he was wearing a pain patch.

But at this time,

none of us really knew what that patch was

that was gonna, you know...

It's a patch you put on your body

and it shoots medicine into your body.

It was fentanyl.

The issue was because of the things that he had done

over the years with his stage gymnastics

and blah, blah, blah

and had previously

had some treatment

done for an injury,

the insurance company saw that as a pre-existing condition.

And so they weren't going to cover the hip replacement.

It's just crazy timing.

The timing of his death is that a bunch of folks

had organized a 20-year music reunion here in Champaign.

And Jay was communicating with us at that time.

He was on the page and he was communicating,

but he was being vague about...

Well, basically he never said he was gonna play.

Like it wasn't in the plans at all for him to,

he wasn't booked.

- And so I had to go over, borrow some drums

from a buddy who actually lived

in the same little courtyard as Jay

over in these little like villas.

It's like 11:00 at night

and I'm loading drums out of my buddy's place

that Thursday and I see Jay's light on,

but I know he'd been in quite a bit of pain

'cause of his hip and stuff.

And I was like gonna go knock on his door

and just say, hey, 'cause I hadn't seen him

in a month or two.

And I was like, ah, I know it's kinda late.

I know he's kinda feeling crappy.

Like I'll see him tomorrow at the party,

there was like a kickoff party at the bar next door.

- You know, the night he passed,

we thought he was gonna show up and play songs

and it was disappointing when he didn't.

- We wanted to see him.

You know, we wanted him to come out

and he lived in Urbana and we were all there.

And then we're gonna show up at his house

and he begged us not to.

Another friend of ours, Alex showed me a text message,

this really long text message.

He was basically saying like,

"Hey Jay, just giving you a heads up.

People are, it's winding down here.

People are full of beer

and it's getting to like torches and pitchforks mode.

People are wanting to come march on your house

and come make you hang out with us."

He wrote this really long message to Alex

and "Hey look, man, just, I'm really in a lot of pain

from my hip.

I just need to get a good night's sleep.

Just please, please, please,

don't come over here, respect my wishes.

I'll see you all tomorrow at the show."

- And then we were like,

all right, we've got to get Jay to come out.

We knew he was still looking at the page

'cause we saw him like, I dunno if he was liking things

or whatever it was.

So we're like, let's make a sign

and we'll post it on the page and he'll see it.

So that's why we did it.

So we went to Walgreens from our hotel

and bought markers.

We bought poster board and we made it.

So we held it up and we put it on the page

and we were hoping he would see it.

But he had already died.

John Gerard called us.

I think it was like one in the afternoon,

something like that and told us.

Yeah, it was, that was hard.

I remember the morning I heard that.

I was in disbelief, you know.

You never wanna hear about a friend dying.

It signals your own mortality.

And then you start thinking about their family

and, man, you know, how does that affect his family?

And my heart went out deeply to Jay's family.

We got out of church

and I usually left my cell phone in the car.

Usually after church, when we got into the car,

there would be a message from Jay

just saying, you know, you're probably in church,

but I wanted you to know we're having a good day

or, you know, a brief message or I'm gonna call dad later

'cause I need to check on some electrical problem

or something at the house.

We got in the car and there was a message

but it was from Kate's mom.

So that's how we found out.

But I hadn't really processed it

until I was at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

And I, they have a bunch of guitars on display there

and I came around the corner and there was his,

and it really hit me then

to see his instrument in a glass case

and to think that he wouldn't be playing anymore.

- He never wrote "Web in Front".

He never recorded "Web in Front".

He never recorded

"Flashes and Cables", you know.

Like, he's ah,

like he wanted to be,

he wanted his songs to be as good as that.

Or maybe you wanted 'em better.

I think quite frankly, his songs were,

you know, the songs that he worked on.

Yeah, I really,

I feel like even if he had lived to be 90,

he probably would have had that his whole life.

And that was probably why he was such a genius.

He was a brilliant man, you know, a brilliant artist.

And I think he had a lot to say

in terms of music, in terms of poetry.

It's just a real shame

that he wasn't able to stick around longer.

I think he could have influenced another generation

of musicians, songwriters, thinkers.

On a personal level, what I miss is the random phone call.

Once in awhile that smile inside

when the cell phone would say it was Jay

and I didn't know what was coming

but it was always some random question, you know.

"Hey, do you remember from physics class,

does the distance that I put the microphone

from the speaker should that be different

with the wavelength of the sound that I wanna emphasize?"

And I could just imagine him with a yellow legal pad

kinda sketching out a formula from high school physics

and wanting to make sure that he got it right.

But again, that was that curiosity and tinkering

and that's, you know, to the end, that's something

we had in common.

- Had we gotten news of his death two or three years before,

people may not have been as surprised.

When we got news

of his death in May of 2009,

it was definitely a shock because everybody

who had interaction with him at that time

and saw how he was doing in his life,

I mean, aside from the fact that he was in pain

from the hip issue,

his head was in a better spot than it had been in years.

The beginning of his life was very happy.

And I was very happy that the end of his life was so happy.

I mean, and I'm not saying that he had horrible times

in between, but you know, ups and downs like everybody did.

And it was, I didn't want him to die,

but I was glad that he died

at one of the, probably the happiest time of his life.

I know that when he passed away,

not only did we have the material

for "Kicking at the Perfumed Air",

there's 60 or 70, maybe a hundred other songs

at some degree of preparation.

There's hundreds of sheets of paper and pizza boxes

and sheets of cardboard with lyrics written on them

in a Sharpie and doors and bits of music and sound.

And you know, the day that he put together

a PVC pipe and duct tape to make a drum set

and just to see what kinda sound he could get out of it,

crazy experimentation that survives

and may never be heard again.

But I think from,

he was in a place where he was enjoying life.

He wasn't, you know, he was moving forward.

He was not dwelling on the past.

And he was doing what he always wanted to do

which was just making the music better.

Sort of take like every Hollywood movie

where there's a really smart guy.

Maybe there's a MacGyver type guy

or where the guys from Apollo 13

who figured out how to fix the spaceship

and then mix in some Brian Wilson

who hears everything in his head

and wants to coax those sounds

and will put a mic on anything.

And then throw in a little bit of,

I don't know, the Three Stooges.

Mix in just a little bit of kinda sadness.

I mean, what I saw in Jay was I think

a lot of what drove him was

he wanted to be the best and he wanted to be

the center of attention.

And he wanted people to like him

and he wanted people to respect him.

He wanted to do something a little different,

a little better, a little cooler, a little whatever.

He wanted you to understand him,

why he was doing it.

Now it's a audience participation time.

Do you want me to do a guitar solo or not?

Totally up to you.

That was kind of tepid

so I'm thinking I'm not gonna do one.

Do it!

Do it, go on.

You know the funniest thing about Jay?

And this has nothing to do with anything.

When you live on the road with somebody,

you find out who they are.

He had the smallest feet of any man I've ever been around.

And he thought I was like Bozo the Clown.

I wear 14s. So I have large feet.

He wore a seven.

And I would take those little shoes off.

He always had those black, what were they like work shoes.

I'm sure he got them at a thrift store

like he and I did everything.

But I'd look at those shoes

and I was like, "Man, these are sevens

and you look normal.

Why are your feet so small, man?"

Used to blow my mind.

He would just say, "I just have small feet."

I was like, "Wow."

I wonder if his dad had small feet,

his family had small.

That has nothing to do with anything by the way.