Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

by Jeff Tweedy

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.

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.

I wasn’t the one you turned to if you had a question. I wasn’t ruggedly handsome or boyishly charming. I wasn’t the captain of the football team, or the kid everybody in school voted was the most likely to succeed. I was the guy who could burst into tears in front of his peers and not care what they thought. I had a bone-crushing earnestness, a weaponized sincerity, and I was learning how to put all of those feelings into songs. That may not sound like a superpower, but when I discovered it, it was not any less remarkable than Peter Parker realizing he could walk on walls. That was the moment of reckoning. I was different. I had something to offer. I was impervious to my peers’ shame.

Sometimes I’ll read a book about a book without even once feeling like a fraud for not having read the book the book is about. You understand.

If we do show up and we’re walking down the red carpet and somebody tries to get us to pose for the Glam Cam 360, there’s a pretty good chance we’re going to say, “Fuck no.” But if Kermit the Frog and Pepé the King Prawn want to interview us and coax us into singing “Rainbow Connection,” we’re probably going to sing along, because not singing “Rainbow Connection” with Kermit means you’re garbage. We’re getting better at recognizing when to say yes and when to say no.

We didn’t meet him and June Carter before the show, but we could hear them during our set, watching through the curtains on either side of the stage and shouting, “Woo-hoo,” between songs. It was startling. There is nothing in this world that can prepare you for Johnny Cash shouting “Woo-hoo” at you while you’re trying to remember how to play the bass. Backstage after the show they were so complimentary and sweet. They were impressed we were playing old songs like “Moonshiner” and “No Depression,” which was written by June’s father, A. P. Carter. I don’t know about the other guys, but I don’t remember saying much. What was there to say to Johnny Cash? It was like talking to the Empire State Building or a bald eagle.