Anniversary Album: 20 Years of ‘A Ghost Is Born’ by Wilco

The follow-up to the masterpiece is always a tricky bit of business. For Wilco, the efforts to follow up Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, an album that gained them massive acclaim, were complicated by band turnover and the health issues of Jeff Tweedy, the group’s artistic leader as singer and songwriter. Throw in the pressure of raised expectations, and A Ghost Is Born, released in June 2004, had every right to be a disaster.

The album instead proved captivating in an entirely different manner than its predecessor. It managed to be experimental without relying on nearly as much digital chicanery as the previous record. You don’t get any vibes of it being “troubled” in any way. Instead, it sounds like a band operating on all cylinders, from songwriting through performance to production. Let’s venture back to A Ghost Is Born.

Giving Us the Ghost

Not only was Yankee Hotel Foxtrot hailed as a masterpiece, but it also had a fascinating backstory, one of a band in turmoil fighting against record company indifference. When Wilco triumphed over all that, you might have assumed the next record would be smoother sailing. But this band always seems to attract some kind of tumult (although significantly less so in recent years).

First, Wilco was proceeding without Jay Bennett, who had been a member of the band since its inception. Bennett had fallen out with Tweedy over the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Mikal Jorgensen joined for A Ghost Is Born as a multi-instrumentalist focusing on keyboards.

Then there were Tweedy’s health problems. Migraine headaches became such a burden for him during the making of the album that he eventually required prescription painkillers. When he quit the painkillers, the migraines returned, and it eventually required a stay in rehab (which took place after the album was complete but right around the time it was released).

Headaches and Headbangers

For the most part, A Ghost is Born steers clear of the digitalized additions that characterized Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. (We say for the most part, because you have to account for the dozen minutes or so of bleeps and blips tacked on to “Less Than You Think,” which were meant to simulate Tweedy’s migraine symptoms.) It feels like a lot more live playing and interplay between the band took place on this record.

That feeling really comes to the fore on songs like “At Least That’s What You Said” and “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” which evolve from relatively sedate beginnings into Tweedy-led guitar jams that make them sound like the second coming of Crazy Horse. But one of the cool aspects of A Ghost Is Born is it’s never any one thing for very long.

There’s a lovely baroque pop feel to “Hummingbird.” Not long after that, “I’m a Wheel” storms out of the gate with punkish abandon. There are just a few nods to alt-country, most notably on the picture-perfect closer “The Late Greats,” but you’d never know that was supposed to be Wilco’s stock in trade if you listened without knowing who they were. A Ghost is Born is way too elusive for simple categorizing, and is all the better for it.

Tweedy’s Thoughts

On top of all the musical goodies the album provides, A Ghost is Born features an outstanding set of Tweedy lyrics. They’re hard to pin down, which has always been a part of his approach. But you’ll come away hearing someone struggling with the bigger topics that bedevil us all: love, death, health, the impact we make on this spinning blue globe (if we do at all).

Whatever problems Tweedy might have been experiencing, he comes away sounding thoughtful, resilient, and sneakily funny. No one’s ever gonna take my life from me, he sings. I lay it down / A ghost is born. So too was an album born 20 years ago, one that proved Wilco could overcome all manner of distractions and expectations and still deliver the goods.

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Photo by Stephen Lovekin/FilmMagic