Picked this up because I'm a fan of Wilco, even if I'm not a fan of rock music biographies. As a specimen of that genre, it's not bad. Jeff Tweedy is a good storyteller and the result is a confessional memoir about growing up blue collar, joining bands with teenage friends, an unlikely but happy marriage, and struggles with mental health and opioid addiction. ( )

“That’s what made me feel like I could be a songwriter. It’s not about being able to write the perfect lyrics or a melody that will crawl up inside a listener’s head and never leave. It was realizing that I’m okay being vulnerable. I don’t care. My comfort level with being vulnerable is probably my superpower. I wasn’t the cool kid. I wasn’t the strongest. I wasn’t the one you could depend on if things went wrong. I wasn’t the smartest person. I wasn’t the one you could turn to if you had a question. I wasn’t ruggedly handsome or boyishly charming. I wasn’t the captain of the football team, or the kind everybody in school voted was the most likely to succeed. I was the guy who could burst into tears in front of his peers and not care what they thought. I had a bone-crushing earnestness, a weaponized sincerity, and I was learning how to put all of those feelings into songs. That may not sound like a superpowr, but when I discovered it, it was not any less remarkable than Peter Parker realizing he could walk on walls. That was the moment of reckoning. I was different. I had something to offer. I was impervious to my peers’ shame. They couldn’t make me recoil with their snickering or judgmental sneers. I’d sung these same songs to my mother, in the quiet of our kitchen, and if I could open up to her and not be destroyed by a disapproving arch of an eyebrow, what could a crowd of strangers possibly do?
I became a songwriter not when I composed that perfect couplet, or when I experienced the right amount of pain. It’s when I realized that whatever I wrote, even if it meant gutting myself in front of strangers, letting all those raw emotions come flooding out, making a fool of myself with my own words, was exactly what I always wanted to do with my life.”

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“Peter asked us to meet him after the show at a place called the Grit, a nearby vegetarian restaurant. When we walked in, there was no sign of him, but I saw Michael Stipe sitting alone at the bar, so I tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Mr. Stipe, do you know if Peter is here?” He turned to me and replied, with no facial expression or emotion, “I’m not Peter’s keeper.” Ah, okay, noted. We eventually found Peter, and we hung out deep into the night, bonding over records and books and southern diner food. At some point he offered to help us make a record. We’d only made one record, so we weren’t quite aware how generous and sweet an offer that was.”

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“I used to assume that the people who were great at writing songs were just more talented than everybody else, and that they always had a very clear understanding of what they were trying to accomplish and the intent behind it. As I’ve gotten older I’ve concluded that this is rarely the case. The people who seem the most like geniuses are not geniuses. They’re just more comfortable with failing. They try more and they try harder than most people, and so they stumble onto more songs. It’s pretty simple. People who don’t pick up a pencil never write a poem. People who don’t pick up a guitar and try every day don’t write a whole lot of great songs."

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“But if Kermit the Frog and Pepe the King Prawn want to interview us and coax us into singing “Rainbow Connection,” were probably going to sing along, because not singing "Rainbow Connection" with Kermit means you're garbage.”

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"Her death was unexpected. She didn't take great care of her health, but she was happy and vibrant. She had a heart attack while playing cards with friends-the same social circle of women she played cards with once a month for more than forty years. One of them told me, "She went down like a ballerina and she was gone." So I guess it was the kind of death we'd all sign up for. A good death, if there is such a thing. There were no bedroom vigils, no praying for a recovery, no whispered conversations with doctors. Just a bunch of "old broads" (in their words) sitting around card tables, slapping down cards, and eating gooey butter cake, until one of them decided to cut the game short."

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"It's hard to drive a car safely when you're crying harder than you've ever cried. I was so proud of Sammy. I don't know where he gained the emotional insight that the dying might not want to let go because they're worried about the living, but it was poignant and beautiful. In the end, we were able to make it to his side. Sammy and Spencer and I sang "I Shall Be Released" together, and I tried to sing "Hummingbird," my dad's favorite Wilco song, but I don't think I got very far. My dad died about a half hour after we'd made it back from Chicago, with his girlfriend, Melba, holding his right hand and me and Sammy and Spencer holding his left; family at his side, and a stereo we hadn't even noticed was on, playing Wilco softly in the strange new silence."
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I giggled my way through the first half and teared up through the second half. Very funny, poignant, and wise. You'll get more out of this if you love Wilco and Uncle Tupelo but anyone who loves music will enjoy Tweedy's story and the way he writes about what the creative process means to him.

Here's one of my favorite parts:
"I think just making stuff is important. It doesn't have to be art. Making something out of your imagination that wasn't there before you thought it up and plopped it out in your notebook or your tape recorder puts you squarely on the side of creation. You are closer to "god," or at the very least the concept of a creator. I understand destruction can be creative, too, but I think it becomes a lot more thoughtful and intentional when you've allowed yourself to be a creator. I'm pretty naive, I admit, but I'll always believe that destruction would be an impulse a lot more difficult to indulge if more people were encouraged to participate in their own tiny acts of creation." ( )

This made me laugh out loud. Some of the darker times in Tweedy's life could have been hard to read if not for his delivery and honesty. ( )

Normally musician biographies inspire you to go back and listen to the artist's music. Maybe the prose inspires you to discoveran an aspect you missed which leads to greater appreciation. I must confess I've never been a fan of Jeff Tweedy's musical output and a well written biography doesn't change that. That said, Let's Go is the unique biography that is enjoyable whether you like the artists's music or not.

Tweedy is an extremely interesting fella.His recollections about growing up a punk rocker in the Midwest in the late 70's/ early 80's should strike a chord of familiarity with anyone else who came of age in that era. Tweedy fearlessly tackles the good and bad throughout the years, never shying away from retelling incidents that might not put himself in the best light. In doing so he reveals a little bit of the humanity in all of us. .

This one ranks in the top 10 of music biographies that I have read.Well done Mr. Tweedy.Well done. ( )