Nels Cline is a modern-day guitar wizard. He conjures the spirit of free jazz with the technical prowess of prog rock, and his innovative compositions are full of both hooks and Sonic Youth-inspired noise. Cline made a name for himself with his solo work and his collaborations with artists including Mike Watt, Thurston Moore, and Willie Nelson. In 2004 he joined Chicago-bred indie giant Wilco, who were working with another avant-garde hot-shot at the time, Jim O’Rourke. Cline’s mind-bending guitar technique pushed Wilco’s sound to a higher plane. While in town for Wilco’s five-show stint (with sold-out gigs at the Civic Opera House, the Vic, Riviera, Metro, and Lincoln Hall) Cline was interviewed by Chicagoan (and British expat) Jim Elkington, who plays with Brokeback, Eleventh Dream Day, Jon Langford, and the Horse’s Ha. Wilco plays Metro on Fri 12/16 and Lincoln Hall on Sun 12/18. —Luca Cimarusti
Yesterday I left my guitar on the street thinking I’d put it in the car and then drove away. I was wondering if you ever lost any instruments that were important to you and whether you could help in my time of darkness. Well, I’m apparently not going to be of any help to you, Jim. In all my years, as the old man of Wilco, even—far exceeding the age of my comrades—I have never had that happen. I still have the same nylon-string guitar I got as a high school graduation present. And I still have the same two acoustic guitars that I got in the 70s.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I want to think if I found one in the street I would figure out how to get it back to its owner. So I’m hoping someone like me found it. There’s actually a fantastic story that Nick Lowe tells. We just spent a marvelous run that ended last night with Mr. Lowe. Besides his beauty as a musician, he’s one of the most delightful people on the planet. He told a story when we were playing in Maryland; he played there with Elvis Costello, and some kid stole his bass. His mom saw it in his bedroom the next day and gave him a huge amount of grief and got it back to Nick, and all was forgiven. So there you go. You never know.
I just figured you had lived in Chicago because I feel like I saw you at Lula having breakfast many times. It’s not really that far from the Wilco loft to Lula, and it’s not all that far from our bassist and his family’s house in Humboldt Park to Lula, so Lula can be a destination. I’ve spent a great deal of time in Chicago since joining Wilco almost eight years ago, and it seems like making records with Wilco takes a long time. We do demos, and then we record, record, record. The whole process of making a rock ‘n’ roll pop-music record is far more elaborate than my own kind of records, which are kind of capturing performances of semi-improvised, semi-organized music. I’ve enjoyed the whole time I’ve spent here, certainly. I have musician friends and some other friends, so it’s been very rewarding. I seem to always be here in the winter. That’s less rewarding.
I can definitely see that, because with a guitar you’re talking about an extremely imperfect system for creating pitches. As much as guitarists try to make it accurate, it’s always a little bit inaccurate, and actually, the more accurate ones don’t really resonate with people the same way. Yeah, I definitely have a love for what I call the ugly duckling guitars. I have a couple of fancy ones, but I’ve never been able to get much use out of them.
I didn’t even get into progressive rock until I was quite old. It was when I moved here, right at the end of the 90s. One of the differences culturally between listening to music in England and America is that we don’t have classic rock radio. As a kid and into my teens, no one was listening to Led Zeppelin; it was just a done thing. God forbid you listened to Yes or King Crimson. That happened here too, but only with snobby musicians and hipsters.
