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?

That one scene has followed him around for 60 years.

It's pretty brutal. And then there were the books. Like Mikael was looking at Tarantula in the office at the Bob Dylan Center yesterday. I remember when that came out; it was in all the hippie bookstores. Impulse-buy was being born at that point. So they would put these really small books on the counter where you were checking out. So there'd be Grapefruit, Yoko Ono, or it'd be Ed Ruche's Twentysix Gasoline Stations, and then Tarantula would be there too, 'cause it was small. I remember opening it up and reading a few pages and thinking to myself, "Hmm, amphetamines?"

I didn't know much about this sort of thing at the time, though I did dabble in junior high school later.

Yeah, that's quite a book. I honestly don't know if I've ever made it all the way through.

I wonder who did!

I guess it's like free jazz in the seventies where everybody was starting their own record labels in that scene. Somebody could put out a solo snare drum record, and I'd be interested. I'm really interested in what other people perceive as excess or some kind of weird, luxurious vanity thing. So I try to encourage that. [laughs]

Bob Dylan has never done any solo snare drum records. Is there any part of his catalog that scratches that itch for you?

I don't know. Nothing comes to mind at the moment because it's all pretty lucid upon investigation. Even if a song's 12 minutes long with a million verses, it's not going nowhere. It's actually really brilliantly constructed. So I think that's a different thing.

There is that aspect to what we're calling Going Electric today that reminds me of Neil Young and Crazy Horse. First take, first blush kind of approach. Which when I was younger and trying to learn how to play, I didn't get that. And I loved Neil, but I didn't get why that was interesting. Because I was trying so hard. I just thought that people should play really well, you know? Because I was trying to play really well.

Now I totally get that. There's something really magical that can come out of that.

It's just one of those things as one grows and keeps listening, opinions change, viewpoints change. It's one of the greatest things about still being alive, actually, for me. For example, just playing these songs and studying them. I never played them growing up. I didn't play in cover bands much. I didn't play in bar bands.

Had you played any of these songs before?

I don't think so. Not even "Like a Rolling Stone." I don't think I ever played it anywhere. I certainly remember Jimi Hendrix's version. But Hendrix is why I play guitar. And Jeff Beck, Duane Allman, Roger McGuinn. They were my guys. They were my initial inspiration.

Did you ever see Hendrix?

No. I could have, but I was too young. I almost saw him in '67 in Central Park, but my family drove out of New York the day that Jimi was playing. I was crushed.

Then when he played at the Forum at Devonshire Downs in Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley, I just couldn't get there. I was 13. That's how I missed so much music. My twin brother and I, he's a musician also, we were aware of all these gigs, but we couldn't get anyone to take us there.

I did see The Byrds in Central Park in '67 before they fired Dave Crosby.

I just interviewed Roger a couple months ago. He's still going strong.

He's really important as a guitarist, not just as the dude in The Byrds with that voice.

What about the guitar playing?

If you listen to "Eight Miles High," everyone knows that he was inspired by Coltrane when he did that. But you cannot imitate that. There's no way. It's just so singular.

Then later on records like Notorious Byrds Brothers where he's experimenting with early synthesizers and fuzz and reverse guitar, very early on. That's the sound I never get tired of.

One slightly off-the-wall question I wanted to ask: How do you decide whether to play [the Wilco deep cut] "Bob Dylan's 49th Beard" when you’re on a show with Bob Dylan?

Did we do that?

Once on the Americanarama tour. Are you worried he's going to hear it? I assume he doesn't know it. Maybe he does.

He's played Wilco on Theme Time Radio Hour. So he was very aware of Wilco, some aspects of Wilco. So I think he'd dig it.

Also just mentioning Theme Time Radio Hour, it's one of my favorite things ever in the history of media. I love radio in general. I love freeform radio the most, having grown up with underground FM. But that is one of the most delightful experiences. Every episode. Friends who knew I loved this so much, but I didn't have satellite [radio], would try to burn CD-Rs for me back when you had a CD player in your car.

I don't know if you know who the guitarist Julian Lage is, but Julian and I had a duo for years.

I was supposed to see you two in Burlington Vermont, where I live, and he got sick. So it was just you.

You were at that?? Oh my god, I was so terrified. He was really sick. He got real influenza. I went and got him his medicine the next day, and then the day after that, we cancelled all the gigs and I drove him back to the city.

Anyways, Julian and I, we would just rent a car. We could rent a sedan because it was just two guitars and two little lunchbox amps and two suitcases. And I turned him on to the few CD-Rs I had of Theme Time Radio Hour. We listened to them a lot. 'Cause I don't get tired of him. I'll listen to them over and over again. I don't care if it's Dogs or California or Skin and Bone. I love them.

Have you discovered any songs that you didn't know through these?

Oh, there's a million. There's so many from the ‘20s and ‘30s.

Steve Shelley: What are you talking about Nels?

Nels: Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour.

Steve: Oh yeah, that's so good.

Nels: It's one of the greatest things ever.

Steve: I thought so too. I thought the writers for the dialogue were so so good.

Nels: I don't care how many people helped him. It's genius. His delivery of everything is genius. And he's talking between every song, and most of the songs were two or three minutes long, and so you get a lot of Bob. It's just one of those great things.

I guess nowadays we have podcasts that are maybe about something that you don't even know you're interested in. My wife likes to listen to these podcasts, and we just pick a topic—especially driving because we drive so much now because we live in the middle of New York State. So we're constantly driving up and down from the city to do our work. Podcasts make the miles go by.

Sort of similarly, you listen to something like this that might just be some off-the-wall topic for you and then you learn about it and realize that you are completely hooked. You're fascinated. We just heard a whole thing about mosquitoes. Two-parter. The whole thing was it was incredible to listen to.

And Theme Time was just like that, because there were so many backstory facts worked into it, but also with this delightful often puckish delivery. I just can't say enough about it. It's like one of the greatest things ever in the history of Western culture.

One of my favorite songs of all time I learned from Theme Time Radio Hour: Billy Stewart's "Summertime." The MP3 I have of it I got during this era where people were ripping it, and it has Bob's intro and outro. And I've never bothered to get another version. So I've never heard the song without Bob's intro.

That's hilarious. And it's a great story.

He does a little thing at the beginning, and then at the end, he's talking about the car crash and everything.

Yeah! I forgot about that. That is an incredible moment. That's something you learn, and it's compelling. All my record store friends were completely obsessed.

“Summertime” on Theme Time Radio Hour:

Steve: Did you guys ever hear that Cocaine and Rhinestones podcast? I'm not a real big podcast person, but that one I really enjoyed.

Nels: Yeah, it's right up there with Tales from the Tour Bus.

Was that that video that—

Nels: Mike Judge. Spectacular. If you haven't seen the Johnny Paycheck one, oh my God. It's just next level insanity.

Steve: When Mikael was telling me about his movie, which I'm amazed by—

Nels: Are you talking about Idiocracy? Mike Judge's movie?

Steve: No, your Mikael, the movie he's working on.

Nels: Oh, about Bob James.

Steve: Yeah. I was thinking, the next Tales from the Tour Bus should be prog.

Nels: Who's the fly on the wall that knows about that stuff?

Steve: There's stories like Herbie Mann and people who came from a grittier era, but then things got smoothed out in the '70s.

Nels: He became a record executive, Herbie Mann. But if you hear his band at Newport Jazz Festival in the '60s, he's got Sonny Sharrock on guitar and Roy Ayers on vibraphone.

Steve: See, everybody who went into prog got bigger and smoother. They all played with cool people early, or most of them.

Nels: It's interesting to me, and now we're really off topic, I was working at the record store at this point. All these people were making instrumental music, whether smooth or not—the smoothish ones, they were selling a lot of records. It was incredible.

Growing up. I used to go hear King Crimson and Mahavishnu Orchestra and Oregon or these bands. And I thought, "This is where I belong. I'll be doing great." Then by the time the Reagan years came along, all these people, except for a handful, were playing tiny pads and nobody's listening to them in America.

Reagan ruined everything, man. It started with that for me, the destruction of culture in America and a kind of curiosity. That is my soapbox statement for the day.

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Thanks Nels! If you missed it, here are my Bonus Track conversations with Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley. More coming soon…