Jeff Tweedy > Quotes

“I like to believe most people's natural state is to be creative. It definitely was when we were kids, when being spontaneously and joyfully creative was just our default setting. As we grow we learn to evaluate and judge, to navigate the world with some discretion, and then we turn on ourselves. Creating can't just be for the sake of creating anymore. It has to be good, or it has to mean something. We get scared out of our wits by the possibility of someone rejecting our creation.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“I think that may be the highest purpose of any work of art, to inspire someone else to save themselves through art. Creating creates creators.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“Learning how to play guitar is the one thing I always look back on with wonderment. I’m reminded of “What ifs?” every time I pick up a guitar. Where would I be? I have sort of a survivor’s guilt about it that makes me want it for everyone. Not the “guitar” exactly, but something like it for everybody. Something that would love them back the more they love it. Something that would remind them of how far they’ve come and provide clear evidence that the future is always unfolding toward some small treasure worth waiting for. At the very least, I wish everyone had a way to kill time without hurting anyone, including themselves. That’s what I wish. That’s what the guitar became for me that summer and is to me still.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“You have to learn how to die if you wanna be alive.”
― Jeff Tweedy

“You were right about the stars, each one is a setting sun.”
― Jeff Tweedy

“That’s one of the problems with humans—that we can be talked out of loving something. That we can be talked out of loving something that we do, and we can be talked out of loving ourselves. Easily, unfortunately.”
― Jeff Tweedy, How to Write One Song

“And I would guess there’s a lot more similarity in how we suffer than the way we experience joy. Rejection stays with you, but I don’t think people register it when they’re happy. They don’t say, “I need to remember what this feels like.” It just goes by, and it’s perfect and awesome, and you feel grateful that you get to experience even a fleeting moment of pure, unbridled, unsarcastic bliss. But when we experience pain or trauma, we’re acutely aware that something is wrong. You want answers. “What is this? How do I get rid of this? Why is this happening to me? I don’t want this.” That’s why so much art, and music, in particular, becomes a great commiserating balm for pain. Joy doesn’t need to be audited. We’re just grateful to have had it at all. But pain, goddammit, we demand to know Who’s responsible for this?”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“If there’s one thing that’s 100 percent true about every intoxicated person in world history, it’s that you shouldn’t believe them when they say they love you. The only difference between you and that slice of cold pizza back at their apartment is that they haven’t met the pizza yet.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“Your ego wants to conceal your insecurity and your fear. And that’s why it can be such an unwelcome intrusion when we’re trying to create or perform. You need your human frailty to be at least somewhat visible if you want to connect on an emotional level”
― Jeff Tweedy, How to Write One Song

“Music is most magical when everyone can lose the burden of self and be put back together as a part of something bigger, or other. I think of it as egos blending, singer into musician into listener. Something like that feels right to me. Anyway, it’s something worth aiming for.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“The Chicago historian Studs Terkel asked Bob Dylan in the sixties about how he went about writing a song and trying to outdo himself, or at least being as good as the last song he wrote, and his response was pretty damn perfect. “I’m content with the same old piece of wood,” he said. “I just want to find another place to pound a nail . . . Music, my writing, is something special, not sacred.” If the songs Bob Dylan wrote aren’t sacred, then nobody’s songs are sacred. Nobody’s. No one has ever laid on their deathbed thinking, “Thank god I didn’t make that song. Thank god I didn’t make that piece of art. Thank god I avoided the embarrassment of putting a bad poem into the world.” Nobody reaches the end of their life and regrets even a single moment of creating something, no matter how shitty or unappreciated that something might have been. I’m writing this just weeks after returning from Belleville, where I sat next to my dad’s bed in my childhood house and watched him die. I can guarantee you that in the final moments of his life, he wasn’t kicking himself for all those times when he dared to make a fool of himself by singing too loud.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“she's a jar with a heavy lid
my pop-quiz kid
a sleepy kisser, a pretty war
you know she begs me not to miss her”
― Jeff Tweedy

“But when we experience pain or trauma, we’re acutely aware that something is wrong. You want answers. “What is this? How do I get rid of this? Why is this happening to me? I don’t want this.” That’s why so much art, and music, in particular, becomes a great commiserating balm for pain. Joy doesn’t need to be audited. We’re just grateful to have had it at all. But pain, goddammit, we demand to know Who’s responsible for this?”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“No work of art is ever finished; it can only be abandoned in an interesting place.”
― Jeff Tweedy, How to Write One Song

“search for “Rich Kelly & Friendship” and “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.” Then watch it. In its entirety. But if you’re in a hurry, fast-forward to the 1:35 mark, when the bassist breaks into a happy foot solo.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“Don’t undervalue things that come easy. Sometimes they’re the things that would be the hardest for someone else to do and often they are the things that would be almost impossible to do when you try too hard.”
― Jeff Tweedy, How to Write One Song

“It seems to me that the only wrong thing I could do with whatever gifts I've been given as a musician or an artist would be to let curiosity die.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“I am an American aquarium drinker”
― Jeff Tweedy

“Melody is king. Songs are ruled by melody. I believe that melody, more than lyrics, is what does all the heavy lifting emotionally. When I write lyrics, or when I adapt a poem to a song, my goal is to interfere as little as possible with whatever spell is being cast by the melody. At the same time, I hope, at best, that the words enhance the song somehow, add meaning or clarify and underline what the melody is making me feel.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“Music isn't a loaf of bread.”
― Jeff Tweedy

“Now, isn’t that neat.” Midwestern sarcasm, when it’s done correctly, can be a thing of rare beauty. It’s like performance art. Everywhere else in the world, you can identify sarcasm if you’re paying attention. Even if the hostility isn’t overt, you can read the signs. There’ll be slightly elongated syllables or a pitch that’s just a little off. It’s like a trombone player with a plunger head. There’s that slight “wah-wah” tone-bending to let you know not to take this too seriously. Midwestern sarcasm plays it straight and makes you listen more closely. You have to treat every conversation like a safecracker. Unless your ears have been trained to recognize it, you’ll miss the hint of a minor key. Sometimes you don’t realize what’s happened until hours later, when it’s 3:00 a.m. and you’re half-asleep, and it suddenly hits you. “Aw, crap, they didn’t mean any of that, did they?” Midwestern sarcasm becomes even more deadly when it’s combined with small-town isolationism. These women had been cheerleaders at our high school, they weren’t indie rock aficionados, and Wilco isn’t exactly a household name. So on the one hand, it wasn’t surprising that they hadn’t followed every turn in my career. It’s shocking that they even remembered I played music at all.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“learning how to disappear is the best way I’ve found to make my true self visible to myself and others.”
― Jeff Tweedy, How to Write One Song

“There's an amazing opportunity that so few people ever have in their lives to fulfill a wish for somebody. It's so rare that such a simple act, like playing a song someone loves, can make someone so happy. If you have that opportunity—the power to do that for anyone—that's an incredible gift.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“It’s just a matter of telling yourself that your creation is OK, no matter what it is.”
― Jeff Tweedy, How to Write One Song

“Hey! I'm A Cherry Ghost!”
― Jeff Tweedy

“I became a songwriter not when I composed that perfect couplet, or experienced the right amount of pain. It’s when I realized that whatever I wrote, even if it meant gutting myself in front of strangers, letting all those raw emotions come flooding out, making a fool of myself with my own words, was exactly what I always wanted to do with my life.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“I have sort of a survivor’s guilt about it that makes me want it for everyone. Not the “guitar” exactly, but something like it for everybody. Something that would love them back the more they love it. Something that would remind them of how far they’ve come and provide clear evidence that the future is always unfolding toward some small treasure worth waiting for. At the very least, I wish everyone had a way to kill time without hurting anyone, including themselves. That’s what I wish.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“Allowing something you’ve created to be undermined to a point where you can no longer believe in it or stand behind it feels suicidal to me.”
― Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

“Walking tends to unravel the knots in my thinking, and I’ll always recommend a leisurely stroll or even a brisk one around the block to alleviate almost any kind of mental stress.”
― Jeff Tweedy, How to Write One Song

“So if you’re doing something with your free time other than writing a song, it’s because you really don’t want to write a song.”
― Jeff Tweedy, How to Write One Song