JT no. 8 of 20 heroes for German Rolling Stone's 20th Anniversary

[Albert Tatlock]

http://www.rollingstone.de/news/meldungen/article583583/rolling-stone-wird-20-unsere-helden-teil-8-jeff-tweedy.html

 

 

According to Google Translate:-

 

 

We are 20! And start with a series for the anniversary year - over 20 heroes that were important to us in the past 20 years. Part Eight: Jeff Tweedy. A portrait of Maik Brüggemeyer

 

On a freezing cold night in February 2002, Jeff Tweedy gave a concert in the small dance hall in St. Pauli . Only with guitar and harmonica , he stood there and played songs from an album that was not released yet and almost never published , because the record company that had paid for it , did not want to have it. They had Tweedy's band Wilco thrown out due to lack of commercial potential , and which were purely through the back door and had their album a subdivision of the same company sold again. Wilco had outwitted the system , and Jeff Tweedy was the ultimate outlaw. While on his guitar was not "This guitar kills capitalists" , but it was thought that with this evening. " As from the Dust Bowl right " he had looked , I wrote in my review that he was " the legitimate successor of Woody Guthrie " . And indeed, were the songs of the finally published in April 2002, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot " in this tradition , because singing about America was after 9/11 again more than a chic retro gesture in memory of Gram Parsons and The Band , it was about the non-violent defense of a dream and a utopia, which had nothing in common with George W. Bush's " war on terror" .

Tweedy sang " Ashes Of American Flags " , the song that sounded as if he had written it until after the American fateful day , and yet it was created long before. So the great prophetic songs were found not only on old plates and in the books by Greil Marcus , they were still written and sung .

"Yankee Hotel Foxtrot " was a little later a revelation. Tweedy's folk songs about the aura of the nocturnal metropolis , skyscrapers erzitternde , alienation , loneliness and violence , ATMs, calorie-free soft drinks and a heavy metal sounded urban youth by Jim O'Rourke's production suddenly , combined tradition and modernity . In the editorial , the time was not without controversy , one hung on the palatable Wilco - Americana of " Being There " and the opulent pop of " Summerteeth " . For me, Wilco were only with "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot " to a favorite band.

Meeting, I wanted Tweedy but not necessarily . He was a difficult guy told you at that time , talking rather taciturn and boorish , so I left the interview like colleagues and held me to the all meaningless plates. The dark , torn "A Ghost Is Born" hinted that his creator was not necessarily a bubbling source of joy . A year later, Tweedy ran me at a concert in Munich on the way , he seemed a bit erratic , we talked about earlier and on my Buffalo Springfield T -shirt, but we had not much to say. The next interview - to " Sky Blue Sky ," a transcendent sadness album - was allowed to like Birgit lead , in their impressive report of Tweedy's " little more eloquently , rather brusque way of speaking " reported .

When Arne two years later on the occasion of the filigree showcase " Wilco ( The Album ) " asked if anyone wanted to travel to Chicago to visit the band in the studio , I had but then get on the plane , because the place where these magical songs were written , I wanted to see . With "In The Heart Of The Heart Of The Country " by William H. Gass and a piece of paper with 50 questions in the backpack I went on my way . At the doorbell of an inconspicuous warehouse in northern Chicago I finally found the words " Foxtrot " . Behind it " The Loft " , Wilco's rehearsal room and studio hid . " A kind of student living room," I wrote at the time , with posters on the walls, shelves full of records, books and DVDs, a PlayStation and a wide guitar landscape. Tweedy , " denim jacket , t-shirt , baseball cap , stubble islands in the face" , opened a huge fridge which was filled from top to bottom with cola light bottles, and offered me a . He seemed friendly resolved, and the mention of my airplane reading brought the otherwise musty man even laugh : I had read that the magazine GQ ' him the "perfect modern rock star" had declared . " We are very very stylish, suave and sophisticated ," he said with a grin and turned like a " GNTM " candidate.

Tweedy told me very frankly of his vanquished painkillers examined and his fear of losing control of his life . But he is doing better now , he said. "People still make a big deal about it that songwriters get through inner struggles and to suffer greatly in order to create great things. I think that's a pretty shabby myth. Now that I feel better , I suffer at the same time much more intense than before, namely because I can now approach can also be bad things to me. If you have made ​​peace to suffer with the suffering and allowed himself instead to resort to any means , even the art is better. "

Two years later on the occasion of "The Whole Love " was on the next trip to Chicago. I checked out downtown one at the Hard Rock Hotel and got the Eurythmics room. Then I made my way to the loft . It was like after coming home .

 

[Magnetized]

Google Translate makes my head hurt. Anybody on this board able to actually read German? I mean, I guess I got the gist, but it would be nice if someone could provide a more elegant translation. I did have to chuckle at the "stubble islands in the face" line. That's a good way to describe Jeff's patchy beard!

 

I wonder why Jeff gets more respect in Germany than here? He was on the cover there--here, never.

 

Thanks for posting.

[Albert Tatlock]

I wonder why Jeff gets more respect in Germany than here?

 

Pretty obvious really ...

 

[Magnetized]

Haha!

[froggie]

kraut-rock?