Bonus Track: Nels Cline on His Love for Theme Time Radio Hour

"It's one of my favorite things ever in the history of media"

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My next Bonus Track interview from the Bob Dylan Center’s ‘Going Electric’ concerts is guitarist Nels Cline. He’s probably best known as Wilco’s lead guitarist since 2004, but he boasts an extensive discography outside the band showcasing his more experimental and/or jazz sides.

Backstage at Cain’s Ballroom, we started off talking about that evening’s concerts, but soon moved on to missed Jimi Hendrix concerts, Roger McGuinn’s guitar technique, and how much he loves Theme Time Radio Hour. Since everyone was hanging in the same area backstage, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth each popped into the conversation too.

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(If you missed my earlier Bonus Track conversations with Lee and Steve, catch up here)

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So how did you get roped into this event?

I heard about it through [Wilco keyboardist] Mikael Jorgensen, as he was on board. I'm free, he's free, we start a Wilco tour on Friday.

A Wilco tour with Bob Dylan!

Well, three gigs. That's how we start. That's pretty nuts.

Is this the first time you guys have been on a bill since Americanarama?

Definitely. Six weeks we did.

Did you have any Bob run-ins during those six weeks?

No. I never met him.

I saw one of the shows where Jeff [Tweedy] and Jim James came out to do "The Weight" with Dylan.

Mostly they were gospel tunes that they were doing. The first time they got asked to sing, the key changed I think four times before they actually went out there. And everything is in flat keys, because Bob wasn't playing guitar at that point. So it's all black keys, piano keys. It's all E-flat, D-flat.

Some tour manager person would come in and say, whatever the name of the song was, "A-flat." Then he'd leave, and then he came back and said, "B-flat!" And then five minutes later: "No, E flat!" Really hilarious.

Lee Ranaldo: I think it's just that he's such a transposing genius. Like he just sees all that stuff. He can call it out like that and know exactly all the chords.

And he does it a little bit to fuck with people and to keep people on their toes. Like he doesn't want shit rehearsed. He wants you to bring your first-thought game to it. I know there's a lot of stories of him changing keys all of a sudden, many times. I just always think that like it's a little bit of a game.

Nels: I think it was difficult for Jim. It wasn't difficult for Jeff. I think Jim was panicking.

Lee: Really? So Jeff's got that kind of a mind too?

Nels: Yeah. I mean, it doesn't matter in a way if you're just singing.

But they were learning the song, which I think Jeff knew. Maybe the few songs that they got us to do, Jeff knew most of them. So that helps.

What is your approach to playing all these Dylan songs tonight? Are you trying to do it more or less like the record?

It's pretty reverent. I feel like everybody's being pretty reverent to various either live or studio recordings.

I'm definitely not trying to bring the language that I use in my own music to this. I have a different guitar. I have like three pedals, a volume pedal, a boost pedal, and a tuner. And it's really fun. I'm bending notes, which I don't do a whole lot of in my own music. I do it with Wilco, but I can't do it much with my own stuff.

So I am thinking about Mike Bloomfield, but I'm not trying to play his exact stuff. I don't think I even know it.

Was he an inspiration? I know you come from a different sonic world.

Well, I was a rock and roll kid growing up. I'm the old man of Wilco, so I was around when Bloomfield was around. He wasn't one of the biggies for me, honestly, but the Butterfield Blues Band, I mean come on. They were just incredible.

I was a blues-rock guy. Folk-rock and blues, that was my music before I heard so-called jazz and prog-rock, which changed my palate.

Speaking of Butterfield, do you have any memories of hearing Dylan going electric?

The first time I heard that music, I couldn't stand it.

What about it?

It was the sound. It was the frequencies. Also the monodynamic nature of the tracks.

I liked sonic excitement. I'm a Hendrix guy. Psychedelic rock. The Byrds, folk-rock which was very sonically beautiful. So the raw nature if it was baffling and irritating honestly. It was a long time before I realized what was really going on in the music and how phenomenal it is.

Certainly being in Wilco, obviously Bob Dylan is a huge factor in Jeff's songwriting and aesthetics. Everybody in the band, except for probably Mikael and me, are really kind of like deep Dylan scholars. That's why it's almost ironic that I'm here playing, but it's also really cool because I like getting inside things and learning about them. And I quite often end up doing things that are not exactly in my wheelhouse because I have respect for it and I need to know more.

Of course over time I've just become more and more fascinated with Bob Dylan. And it's not because of just this material that we're doing. It's because of the incredibly circuitous and unpredictable and bizarre nature of his whole journey.

You know, I was definitely aware of all his music. Everybody I knew who loved Bob Dylan when I was 12, 13, 14 was older than me. Or they had older siblings that listened to Bob Dylan and indoctrinated my friends.

So it wasn't until I started working in a record store. I worked at this record store in West Los Angeles for 10 years called Rhino Records from like '76 to '86. He went through his born-again phase, and that was fascinating.

So, you were on board with that from day one?

I mean, I heard it. I wasn't on board with it. I was completely baffled by this. But also, he was hanging out with a man who's no longer alive, the owner of Walecki's Westwood Music, which was a block away from the record store and a place where I bought two acoustic guitars in the '70s that I still own. And Fred [Walecki] was part of Bob's whole—they were going to church together and stuff.

Fred was an incredible guy, beautiful guy. He got born again around the same time. I think in Fred's case, it helped him stop doing cocaine or something. I don't really know, but I know that when Lindsey Buckingham would come into the store, they would just blow lines. I heard stories from the employees that they had whole baggies full of cocaine that they were turning everybody on to. I mean Mick Fleetwood I think lost millions just to cocaine use. It's completely nuts.

Fred was really tight with that world. Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt and some of the Little Feet guys, they were all part of his scene. And then I heard that that Fred and Bob were going to church together. I was fascinated to a certain extent, but also thought it was pretty weird.

Anyway, that just makes him so much more interesting than just the kind of irascible tormenter person that you see in Don't Look Back. Poor Donovan, you know?