Anniversary Cheers: Nonesuch Records gives Wilco’s “A Ghost Is Born” super deluxe packaging to celebrate 20 years

artwork for A Ghost Is Born
photos by Danny Clinch

artwork for A Ghost Is BornLet’s be sure all the i’s are crossed and the t’s dotted before getting into the whys and wherefores of Wilco in concert with Nonesuch Records releasing the 20th anniversary super deluxe package of their Grammy-winning album, “A Ghost Is Born.” February 7th 2025 is the due date for the extravaganza that will certainly rival all special edition releases for its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink design. The forthcoming box set will include either nine vinyl LPs and four CDs or nine CDs (including the album, alternate versions, outtakes and demos) that present the full making of the album, as well as a concert recording from Wilco’s show at the Wang Center in Boston and their “fundamentals” workshop sessions. The release will also include liner notes written by Bob Mehr and a 48-page hardcover book of previously unpublished photos. Mehr had won a Grammy for writing the liner notes on the super deluxe edition of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” in 2023.

It’s a wonder the original album was even made twenty years ago. Jeff Tweedy, Wilco’s creative hub, was in depression and self-medicating with potentially lethal doses of Vicodin to fill the black hole of his emotional abyss. “I thought I was going to die”, Tweedy said in his memoir, “Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back)”.  “Every song we recorded seemed likely to be my last. Every note felt final.” To obtain a supply of the narcotic painkillers, he was trading Wilco tickets to a kid who worked at a pharmacy in Chicago. Tweedy may have immortalized that arrangement in ‘Handshake Drugs’, proclaiming he “felt like a clown they were translating poorly, I looked like someone I used to know. I felt alright and if I ever was myself, I wasn’t that night”.

In his hotel room, Tweedy would “lie in the tub until the bathwater would get cold,” telling himself that “if I fall asleep right now, there’s a pretty good chance I’m not waking up.” Consequently, “A Ghost is Born” is a record about leaving made by somebody convinced he’d never be able to stay. The album was supposed to come out in June of 2004, but its release was delayed after Tweedy entered rehab in May. His constant battle with migraines and anxiety attacks led to painkillers as a solution, but modern psychiatry knows the root of addiction usually lies elsewhere.

A therapist told Tweedy to let his opiate addiction colour his art, which didn’t sit well. Tweedy called this therapist the devil and then had a panic attack and had to ask him for a lift home. That interaction sounds a lot like what he’s singing about in ‘Hell is Chrome’, “When the devil came, He was not red. He was chrome, and he said come with me”.

Tweedy used the incident to quit drugs entirely, going cold turkey. He lost 30 pounds and practically went catatonic, hiding away in bed and having recurring panic attacks or wandering aimlessly around a nearby park. “I couldn’t play music anymore, couldn’t be a father or a husband,” he said. But the worst was yet to come as he suffered a total mental breakdown and was hospitalized. It probably seemed as if “A Ghost Is Born” was foreshadowing a disaster. One of the bonus tracks (‘Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard’) shed some light on the situation -“I refuse to cry, on roads that are paved, with men who behave, like they know where they’re goin'”.

Months earlier, Tweedy had gathered John Stirratt, Leroy Bach, Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen and Jim O’Rourke at Sear Sound in Manhattan to make the follow-up to “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”, already a daunting task, a tough act to follow. Jay Bennett had either left the band or been asked to leave depending upon whose version rings truest. Wilco never would have recorded a song like ‘Spiders (Kidsmoke)’, eleven minutes of deranged, distressing squeals and squeaks, actually sounding quite close to Brian Eno’s ‘The True Wheel’ with its similar rhythm and keyboard lines. Tweedy played nearly every messy guitar part; no surprise given his fragile state of mind. There has been a lot of speculation about the line “It’s not my problem, there’s no blood on my hands. I just do as I’m told”. One thought is this was the most common defense of ordinary Germans turned into Nazis. Think Sergeant Schultz from ‘Hogan’s Heroes’, and his signature statement, “I know nothing.” From there it becomes a commentary on American complacency in response to school shootings and why children have become so violent – “The sun will rise, we’ll climb into cars, The future has a valley and a shortcut around”.

Some have called this album Wilco’s version of Noah’s Ark what with all the insects and other critters like ‘Spiders’ in the song titles: ‘Muzzle of Bees,’ ‘Hummingbird,’ and the fly in the lyrics of ‘Company in My Back.’ Another song that wasn’t on the original release is ‘Panthers’, where Tweedy showed regret for any hurt his addiction caused his wife and children – “Panthers build their blood to bury, Daughters leave their dads to marry”. “The dread I was feeling was profound and definitely biblical in its scope”, Tweedy wrote. “It felt like a big flood was coming, something no one could survive. So, I was saving anything I could, piling it all onto this ark as a way to salvage whatever I could of myself. I was a goner, but I didn’t have to lose everything”.

That sounds pretty maudlin and grim. On the 15-minute extravaganza, ‘Less Than You Think’, the outro is constructed with drones and cataclysmic alienating soundscapes meant to mimic his migraines: When the pain wraps itself so tightly around your skull, it starts to warp your perception of light and time. His panic attacks are addressed in ‘At Least That’s What You Said’, as he goes all Crazy Horse with the distorted, soul-crushing guitar solo towards the end. It’s a message to his wife: “When I sat down on the bed next to you, you started to cry, I said, maybe if I leave, you’ll want me, to come back home”.

In ‘Hummingbird’ Tweedy delivered some of his most earnest lyrics: “In a sleeping bag underneath the stars, he would lie awake and count them, and the gray fountain spray of the great Milky Way, would never let him die alone. He asked listeners, Remember to remember me”.

No matter what mood you’re in or what handshakes you’ve made lately, listening to “A Ghost Is Born” from start to finish, all 57 minutes of it is challenging enough. Now throw in all the extras that come with the deluxe package and you’ve got something to reckon with over weeks, maybe months. Small doses are the key, whether in drugs or this album, or you run the risk of winding up like Tweedy twenty years ago as he sings on ‘Handshake Drugs,’I was buried in sound, the taxicabs were driving me around, to the handshake drugs, I bought downtown”.

This album is a white-fisted, strap yourself in ride like a cross between “Grand Theft Auto” and “Call to Battle.” Its songwriter was beset with fears he wouldn’t make it out alive, so survival is paramount: “Oh, in so many ways, I find more missing every day. I’m going away where you will look for me. Where I’m going, you cannot come”, Tweedy groans on ‘Theologians.’

The consensus in 2004 among critics for “A Ghost Is Born” was not positive, “sullen,” “dreary” were adjectives popping up like unexpected storms blowing in over the icy waters of Lake Michigan. “Strung-out ramblings” was another stinging rebuke from critics who had been expecting a superb complement to “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” and instead got The Doors’ “Waiting for the Sun.” There is no ‘Jesus, etc.’ on Ghost, nevertheless as with the poetic ramblings (on ‘Kidsmoke’) “You can be the stone, that raises from the dead and carries us all home”.

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andy riggs

Great album