Picking through my awkward vinyl past with Jeff Tweedy, whose new book is ‘World Within a Song’
CHICAGO — The road manager for Jeff Tweedy looked at me as if he were being solicited at the airport. Or rather, it was a look I’m guessing he reserves for those times when someone thinks of him as a conduit for getting a band’s demo into Wilco’s hands. Wary — that’s the word I’m thinking of. He is good at his job, and I know because he appeared deeply exhausted by me and my idea. I had a high concept for my conversation with Tweedy, I explained, and that’s why I’m carrying my record collection in a plastic crate from Target.
He shrugged. My funeral.
“‘High concept,’” Tweedy said, suddenly at my side, staring at the record bin.
We walked down into the concrete bunker of a green room beneath the Athenaeum Center, a few hours before Tweedy began a short tour for his new book, “World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music.” The book is a funny, generous installment of a pretty smart trend in music autobiographies: Rather than recall a life from birth to success, individual songs serve as entry points into the personal history of performers. Some of these books — Paul McCartney’s “The.
