‘In my own music I?just wank away’ — guitarist Nels Cline (third from left) has to restrain himself in Wilco.
Improv heavyweight Nels Cline keeps the chaos controlled
Legendary Los Angeles recording artist Nes Cline has been playing guitar upwards of 42 years. After initial experimentation as a child and a growing reputation in the ’80s and early ’90s that led to collaborations with the likes of Mike Watt and Jane’s Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins Cline really rose to prominence as the guitarist for Carla Bozulich’s alt-country outfit The Geraldine Fibbers which he joined in 1996. That band eventually disintegrated with members going on to play in Evangelista A Silver Mt. Zion and other noted experimental groups.
Since then Cline’s penchant for collaboration has flourished. The guitarist has performed with jazz greats like Charlie Haden Gregg Bendian and Eric Von Essen as well as indie rock heroes like Thurston Moore Lee Ranaldo Mike Watt and Chris Corsano. Most notably though Cline started his most high-profile collaboration to date when he was asked to join Wilco in 2004.
Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy first met the guitarist and saw him perform when he was still a member of the Fibbers. The exact details of how Cline ended up becoming a full-fledged member of Wilco are fuzzy; even Cline doesn’t seem to remember. It’s a fitting representation of Cline’s role in the band: His contributions work so well it’s as if he was always there.
“I’m not told what to do” Cline says of his work in Wilco. “It’s kind of incumbent on all of us to dip into our most creative bag and come up with something that makes the song happen. Every song has its own life. There’s no one thing other than my willingness to play the song and make it sound as coherent or beautiful as possible.”
“Sometimes Jeff will have to pull it out of me because I think the song sounds great without me” he continues. “It’s not always easy to know what to do and other times I just jump right in. I just want to be part of the orchestra and play the music.”
Playing with this particular orchestra means restricting any virtuoso tendencies to make room for emotion. The specific controlled playing that Wilco requires is contrasted by Cline’s work outside the band where he has the freedom to get out all of his ideas.
“Playing in a rock ’n’ roll band I’ve been asked sometimes very directly not to play virtuosically because it just sounds wanky. In my own music I just wank away” he explains. “There’s sort of this multi-note thing I have in my head which basically came from the excitement I got from listening to Indian classical music and subsequently John Coltrane and John McLaughlin.”
While his collaborations with Wilco have resulted in two critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums Cline sees his own improvised collaborative work outside of the band as an instant loss for any label that releases it. As he puts it“Anyone who wants to put it out is some kind of elegant and generous masochist at this point.”
Still his solo and collaborative discography makes up for hundreds of releases with a new Nels Cline Trio double-album on the way in April. For someone who has performed and recorded with hundreds of different musicians Cline racks his brain to think of the collaborator that got away.
“There’s probably someone but I don’t really think about it” he says. “My life gets taken in these quite marvellous directions and the next thing you know I’m playing with someone I’ve never met before. It might be a singer-songwriter or an improviser but it’s often just as exciting as whoever I was dreaming about.”
