Later this month, Wilco’s fifth album A Ghost Is Born is being given a deluxe 20th anniversary makeover, with 9 CD and 2 LP variations shining a new light on the band’s second straight masterpiece following 2002’s daring Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
Ahead of the release, band leader Jeff Tweedy speaks to MOJO’s Bob Mehr about the treasures within new reissue, the battles with addiction and mental health that plagued the sessions and why there’s not much that Wilco now can’t make a good show of...
There’s a wealth of material on this box set that precedes the making of the album. Did you conceive of all that work as “demos” for the record?
“No, I’ve rarely thought of any recordings as just demos. Almost everything I’ve recorded I was always under the impression it could very well end up being on the album. Or, at the very least, it could be something that teaches you how to approach the song from some other angle. Ultimately, you want to discover something you didn’t know how to say, or didn’t know you could say. That’s sort of what the process was for [A Ghost Is Born].”
On Wilco’s previous album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot , Jim O’Rourke came in late in the process and mixed the record. On A Ghost Is Born you were working with him from the start – what did you take from that experience?
“I learned a lot about pacing, about arrangements. I was always interested in figuring out how old records were constructed and put together. I never really had a music teacher that inspired me, the way a really good teacher kind of opens the door for somebody. Jim was that for me as far as making records. I think it was a good collaboration between us. Jim’s still in the back of my head whenever I’m in the studio.”
The story of A Ghost Is Born is also the story of your mental health and addiction struggles – you ended up in hospital at the end of the sessions.
“A lot of people have mood disorders, mental health issues, but the artist is lucky, because they have a place to put a lot of that energy and focus on something outside of themselves. It’s not like the art grows out of that illness, but it is a comfort. It’s a consolation that maybe other people don’t have. But my illness was getting to the point where it had overwhelmed the desire to create. The feeling that there was any consolation there was gone – and that scared me to death. To go into the hospital was a decision made around the idea that maybe I never make music again, but anything is better than this.”
Obviously, you recovered and continued making music. The Ghost Is Born box ends with a live recording of the then newly expanded line-up with Nels Cline and Pat Sansone – that’s remained consistent for 20-plus years now.
“I think that longevity has happened because the group was assembled as an orchestra to play anything that I’d ever come up with to that point. And then, as it turns out, the band that we put together can kind of play anything. So there’s been no reason to re-imagine it, because this group is capable and game for whatever we can figure out. There’s not that much that Wilco couldn’t make a good show of.”
Read David Fricke's review of the new 20th Anniversary Edition of A Ghost Is Born only in the latest issue of MOJO. More info and to order a copy HERE.
