SPIEGEL: Jeff Tweedy, they say you would write at least one new song every day. What is the subject of today?
Tweedy: Um, well - the day is not over yet. Maybe I'll write a little tonight before the concert, otherwise I'll go to sleep. I can not handle myself when I take a day off, but I just feel better. It's like brushing your teeth: if I do not, it feels like I forgot something.
SPIEGEL: So you compare songwriting with personal hygiene. Mental tooth brushing?
Tweedy: Yeah, that's psychological hygiene: let the stuff out in your head, do not judge it. When I get home, I always listen to the recordings in my studio that I made with the phone. I can not remember many of them. This is a great luxury: to work with material created without much effort from one's own ego and to react to it as if it were the music of another. I became addicted to it. And since I already talk about it: I am addicted to illness. Although I have not taken opioids for 15 years, I will always be addicted to addiction. The decision to write a song every day is definitely an outlet for me to cultivate a more harmless addiction.
SPIEGEL: In "One and a Half Stars", a new song by your band Wilco, you sing: "I can not escape my domain." What is this: your domain? And why can not you escape her?
Tweedy: The song is somehow about my dad and that I recognize his social phobia. Such a phobia makes it necessary to have one's own realm in which one can be alone. I have always been like that. Maybe not ideal for the people around me, but it is psychologically necessary for me to have my own feel-good zone. The song wishes that this would not be so, but at the same time he accepts that as well. It is not uncommon to feel that way. Many people just want a place to sit, their own armchair.
SPIEGEL: Do you also see this chair metaphorically: its domain as a musician and artist?
Tweedy: I do not pretend to have an area exclusively for myself. There are also certain types of music that I am influenced by, but which I should not prefer. Because it's not my music and because it does not make sense. But I let it inspire me.
SPIEGEL: Earlier, you enthusiastically heard John Cage and Krautrock. What influences you today?
Tweedy: Hip-Hop. This always-forward thinking, the excitement, the disrespect for the legacies and traditions that this music usually has - that's really inspiring. But if I took over certain production techniques or something like that, that would be humiliating. For all involved.
SPIEGEL: To whom do you really think so?
Tweedy: I like a lot of indie rap artists and experimental hip-hop acts, the trio clipping for example. I also made friends with Jpegmafia. Other friends of mine are writers. I am inspired by such people without wanting to imitate them. They just show me where the bar is, and I think, "I should aim in that direction, I want to jump over that bar!"
SPIEGEL: You could say that you, too, have hung the bar for many other songwriters.
Tweedy: Apparently that's the case. At least the friends who are creative themselves have already told me. I think that's a nice way to have a little competition. A healthy giving and taking, without it only being concerned: I beat you, I will win.
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Ode to Joy
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SPIEGEL: Wilco's new album is called "Ode to Joy": Ode to Joy. Do you want to make fun of this reference to the EU anthem about your fans in the UK?
Tweedy: No, that's just an added bonus. I have only noticed the political context after we had agreed on the title. I thought about it and thought it was great. In my opinion, we are on the right side of the story as we stand up for more cohesion, more coexistence and tolerance worldwide. Against division and national pride.
SPIEGEL: Do you think: we, humanity?
Tweedy: No, we are the band. When people realize we're on this page with Wilco, I do not see that as a problem. That's something good!
SPIEGEL: Does the album title also reflect your current state of mind?
Tweedy: For the last ten years, I've often thought, "I've never been so happy." That's not true at all. As a child, I was happy more often. But I have never tried to show that happiness all my life. It has become more difficult and important for me to just make it clear that sometimes I have this idea: "Wow, I'm happy!" In the old days, I was so scared that it would disappear and something terrible would happen. Does it then too. But whatever? You can not decide that yourself. But you can prepare for it. Many people seem to think that they can choose to be happy all the time. That is impossible.
SPIEGEL: In your autobiography you declare that you are often ambivalent about your feelings. That many people can not stand this ambiguity makes you crazy.
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Jeff Tweedy
Let's Go: Recording and Crashing with Wilco, etc.
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Kiepenheuer & Witsch
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304
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EUR 22,00
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Tweedy: I think the ambivalence many are struggling with is not so much emotional, it's fact. Not knowing something makes you crazy. Where do we go when we die? What's right, what's wrong? People cling to dogmas, religions and political ideologies to eradicate this ambiguity in their lives. The fear of not knowing something can be easily exploited. The healthier you are, the more relaxed you are about not knowing anything. Nothing at all. Just to know what you do not know.
SPIEGEL: That sounds very philosophical.
Tweedy: It's pretty philosophical , too!
SPIEGEL: You claim that your secret - or maybe not so secret - superpower is your vulnerability.
Tweedy: That I called her superpower was meant as a joke. I never felt brave enough to be vulnerable. This is somehow innate to me. As a child, I realized that everyone else just babbles shit and is just as vulnerable. It's not always good that everyone struggles all the time to do their best. Many were simply given no example of what makes a good dad or a loving relationship. How should one guess such things on their own?
SPIEGEL: When did you cry the last time?
Tweedy: Oh, I still cry a lot. Yesterday I read an article about the dogs of 9/11: rescue dogs, search dogs, dogs that were simply taken to hang out with the firefighters looking for survivors in the rubble. These dogs found carcasses and body parts, they had emotional reactions. Some of them have stopped eating. I had to cry when I read that. You would cry too! We are a bit dulled in the face of all the sensational pictures of the destruction. This article has made the suffering very real again.
SPIEGEL: Do you generally regard deafness as a problem of our society? For example, when one thinks of the widespread abuse of opioids in the US, which also affected you.
Tweedy: We live in a society that requires a certain amount of detachment. Capitalism requires it. We are only at the beginning of an era when we have access to suffering across the planet, to every conceivable bad thing that can happen to anyone, 24 hours a day. Man has not yet developed that much to process that. When you have a terrible accident or a parent dies, you suffer a trauma or a shock: a reaction of our body to bring us another day through life. I believe that we all constantly suffer small shocks, every day.
SPIEGEL: Speaking of trauma: Because of a house dust allergy, as a child you had to lock your teddy bear Toby into a mason jar - a heartbreaking passage in your book. How is Toby today?
Tweedy: He's still in the mason jar and standing in my wife's office. Maybe she lifted it once. But I can not look at it, it's just too sad.