Trivia / Wilco

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• Breakup Breakout: Jeff Tweedy formed the band after the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, but nowadays people are more familiar with Wilco.
• Creator Backlash: Members have flip-flopped on whether they hate A.M. or not several times, but they do agree that they were disappointed in the album's commercial failure.
  • Drummer Ken Coomer was disappointed in the fact that he and John Stirratt had reduced roles in the group starting with Summerteeth. Since Summerteeth itself was largely the work of Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett, Coomer once called the album "just two guys losing their minds in the studio".
• Creator Breakdown: Jeff Tweedy was under the influence of painkillers due to migraines, had panic attacks and depression and went to rehab in 2004 shortly before the release of A Ghost Is Born. Notably, one of his major panic attacks happened about 12 hours after he was interviewed by Chuck Klosterman for SPIN. Klosterman noted in his article that Tweedy seemed completely normal during his interview.
• Executive Meddling: The story behind Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The band was signed to Reprise Records, and upon the final master of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot being played to label executives, they claimed that they heard no single on the album and asked the band to record the album again. They refused. After a bit of wrangling, the band was able to leave Reprise with the masters to their album. They put the album's tracks up for streaming on their website while the band looked to find a new label. They chose Nonesuch Records, a much more artist-friendly label with a roster full of similar artists. However, Nonesuch was owned by Warner Music, who also owned Reprise. Jeff Tweedy loves to point out that Warner basically paid twice for an album they initially turned down.
  • There's a bit of a happy ending to this story: The execs at Warner Music and Reprise felt really ashamed after the album's release about how they treated Wilco ^note  Yes, their feelings did partially have to do with the fact that the album that they dismissed as "uncommercial" wound up selling more than any other Wilco or Nonesuch Records album up to that point, in addition to being a critical smash, and they later decreed that other acclaimed but uncommercial alternative bands on their roster, such as The Flaming Lips, would never again feel like they were being unappreciated by Warner.
  • Earlier, Reprise Records had wanted a hit from the band after the commercial failure of A.M. , so they asked them to work with an outside Record Producer, David Kahne, to remix "Can't Stand It" from Summerteeth to be more radio friendly - the band agreed to it because the label had otherwise been allowing them creative freedom. "Can't Stand It" failed to get much airplay, and the band's original mix still remains unheard. For similar reasons, "Can't Stand It" was placed at the front of the album, when the band's originally proposed track-list started with "She's A Jar" - Jeff Tweedy would admit this aspect improved the album's accessibility, as a song where the narrator casually alludes to committing Domestic Abuse might have not been the most welcoming opening number.
• Troubled Production: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was sort of one even before the aforementioned label issues, as revealed in the I Am Trying to Break Your Heart film, which contains some of the most excruciatingly awkward moments in a rock documentary (specifically, the scenes showing Tweedy and Jay Bennett at utter cross-purposes with each other.)
• What Could Have Been: They expected to do some Writing Around Trademarks with the album title Star Wars - if any legal action was threatened they had an alternate title ready: Cease and Desist. No such action was taken, so the original title stayed.
  • John Stirratt submitted three songs to the band during the A.M. sessions, but only one, "It's Just That Simple", was included on the album.^note The other two songs, "Myrna Lee" and "When You Find Trouble", were later released on the deluxe version of A.M.. Jeff Tweedy originally intended to make the band a collaborative project, but this was eventually scrapped, though Stirratt and the other members of Wilco have received co-writer's credit on other occasions.
  • A.M. could have been a fifth Uncle Tupelo album - that is, they briefly considered holding on to the name, since the core lineup at the time was the same one that had appeared on Uncle Tupelo's Anodyne minus Jay Farrar.
• Working Title: "Jesus, Etc." started out being called "Jesus, Don't Cry" - at one point while the album was still being worked on, someone abbreviated it as "Jesus, Etc.", and it stuck.

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