Ahead of his new album Consentrik Quartet, the storied guitarist of Wilco talks Chris Connor through the songs which have helped shape his career of over forty years.
Nels Cline has explored a myriad of musical worlds, from punk to folk, from country to jazz, and his musical tastes reflect the wealth of styles he has worked in.
Raised in L.A., Cline is perhaps best known for being a member of Chicago’s Wilco since 2004, a group that, like Cline himself is musically restless, blending everything from indie folk to alternative country and art rock. Never content to stand still, Wilco have continued to experiment with different styles, through to 2024’s Hot Sun Cool Shroud EP. Cline has been at the forefront of their story with his distinctive guitar tone.
Across his career, Cline has recorded in a wealth of different genres, branching out into punk and jazz. Alongside his work with Wilco, he leads an array of other musical projects, including The Nels Cline Singers, Nels Cline Trio, and The Nels Cline 4.
He’s currently preparing for the release of his fourth album on the legendary Jazz label Blue Note, the double LP Consentrik Quartet. The project, which started in lockdown, is a work of virtuosity and precision that sees Cline collaborating with saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Tom Rainey.
Cline’s relationship with Blue Note started when the labels president, Don Was, heard the finished version of Lovers, a paean to chamber-orchestra and the Great American Songbook, that he originally planned to release independently. It was a moment that started what is now almost a decade of working together. But his alma mater Wilco is never far from his mind however, with an extensive tour planned for later in the year.
Cline’s eclectic musical career is mirrored in his Nine Songs selections, which cover everything from Brazilian music to Blue Note Jazz recordings, classical piano music, film scores and much more. It’s clear some of the choices have had a direct influence on his own guitar playing, but as an avid fan of music of all genres from all corners of the globe, his love of music goes beyond his chosen instrument. Indeed, six strings weren’t his initial choice of musical expression, Cline tells me he initially wanted to be a sitarist.
To call Cline’s musical knowledge encyclopaedic is a profound understatement. His Nine Songs are reflective of the diversity of his output, with some of them orthodox and plenty that might not be expected. Our conversation spotlights his love of an endless range of music, where the songs dovetail across each other, taking in key musical moments have influenced his life, the importance of his shared musical passion with his Wilco bandmates and with his wife Yuka Honda, who is also a musician.
His L.A. upbringing is clear in his love of The Byrds, who were a formative musical influence. “The Byrds were my first rock and roll band obsession when I was 10 years old”, he explains. His life in LA is also captured in his love of Sonic Youth, discovered when he was working in a record store.
The hour we spend talking is a deep dive into the breadth of styles Cline himself has explored and the stories behind them, charting his days working in a record store and discovering Sonic Youth to piano lessons as a youth and his lifelong love of Ravel. There’s clearly a shared love of music of all sorts with his twin brother Alex, also a musician, with whom Cline made his tentative steps with the excellently named Homogenized Goo.
A key theme he returns to throughout is a love of the the sonic sublime and rich harmonic content, which he feels brings a continuity across a range of genres and of his song choices, despite each of them being so eclectic.
“I think for me there's a combination of sonic interests that I find transporting, and emotion that makes me feel that I'm happy to be alive. I'm happy to know anything relating to musical endeavours, and we're lucky to have recordings.”
“Dearly Beloved" by John Coltrane
NELS CLINE: John Coltrane was my jazz ‘Aha’ experience, specifically the song “Africa”, which I first heard in an edited version from his Greatest Years, Volume One, and I've talked about that a lot. When I heard “Africa” in 1971, he had already passed, which I was very upset about, and it led me and my twin brother Alex into a whole other jazz-related field of interest and endeavour, which is honestly fantastic.
So, I wanted to pick the track “Dearly Beloved” from Sun Ship, which is one of my favourites of the Quartet recordings, which was released posthumously, I believe in 1971.
I love the intro with John Coltrane talking to Elvin Jones, giving him instruction to keep the thing happening and then they launch into this sustained ecstatic musical foray. I think it says a lot about the Quartet at the time, even though it doesn't have any straight groove.
And it says a lot about the power and eloquence of John Coltrane's tenor saxophone, which for me was a life-changing experience to hear, because I didn't know anything about John Coltrane.
BEST FIT: You've recorded on Blue Note, how does it feel to be part of that lineage, which John Coltrane was at the forefront of?
It's pretty nutty, I certainly didn't see that one coming and they're very nice people. It was a completely unplanned, surprise event related to my then manager Ben Levin running into Don (Was) after a show in Los Angeles and mentioning that I had this record finished and ready to go.
I was going to self-release it, but he wanted to hear it and the rest is history. So now I'm on album number four for Blue Note.
"Canto de Iemanjá" by Baden Powell
Well, interestingly, I listened to Baden Powell so much in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but I'd not heard this record, which I learned later is his best-known record. It was my wife Yuka who turned me on to it. She was listening to it, and I became so incredibly enchanted by the entire record.
It’s an absolute classic, but it's also a very unique record, in as far as I can tell in his oeuvre, because of the way the arrangements are done, but particularly the presence and prominence of the bassoonist and the beautiful singing group behind him. I think it might be Quarteto em Cy, which was a very famous Brazilian women's quartet.
The song itself is my favourite from the record. I think that this will be a recurring theme on the tracks we’re discussing, it inspires a combination of the thrill of the beauty of it, but it also makes me very emotional. I think the beauty of this track, the mood of this track, is spellbinding, and it chokes me up a little bit. It gives me what Quincy Jones would call ‘truth bumps’ instead of goosebumps.
You mentioned Yuka's influence on discovering this track. How much do your tastes overlap?
Well, the one area that we find the most commonality in is, I think, Brazilian music. She's very well informed about Brazilian pop music, meaning everything from Samba to Bossa Nova to Tropicália.
It informs her music, and this informs our love of certain kinds of rich harmony, not just fascinating and hypnotic or sometimes rhythmic, but the harmonic content in even a straightforward Brazilian pop song from the ‘70s and ‘80s, especially well before that, because of Bossa Nova, but the harmonic content is always astonishing.
Yuka's much more up on Hip-Hop than I am, and she's definitely in the electronic music world, which I've been exposed to and enjoyed a lot of the artists that she listens to, but there are so many, and I just can't keep up with all these monikers!
She recently did some improvised recording with a man who goes by the name Fauci, and we've listened to some of Four Tet's music, for example, that's some electronic music I can get with and my fascination with that world continues, but it's far from scholarly at this point. We like groove, we like funk, all kinds of soul music and rock and roll.
"Le Petit Poucet" by Maurice Ravel
Ravel is perhaps a departure from some of the music you’ve chosen so far, what is about this that captivates you?
Once again, we’re talking about rich harmonic content and some of the most brilliant orchestration ever in the history of so-called classical music. I became aware of this suite of pieces for four hands at the piano when I was in a piano class.
I never really learned how to play piano, but the teacher, Joan Mills, played us this with another student. I remember that and every piece of this suite, The Mother Goose suite, when you translate it, it’s gloriously beautiful and well-conceived. The thing about Ravel's music is that it does bring up the word perfection to me, and I don't believe in perfection!
There's this amazing harmonic, melodic, inventive balance that goes on in so much of Ravel’s music, and I think it's very evident in the second movement of this. It's genius to me, and it also gives me truth bumps.
Do you find yourself still listening to Ravel regularly?
There are certain things on this list that travelled with me back in the days when we had CD wallets and I'd be in a band on tour with maybe Mike Watt and Geraldine Fibbers, or The Scott Amendola Band and I would always have certain CDs with me. One of them was a double CD of Ravel piano music, it was primarily there for me to listen to this Mother Goose suite. That was my favourite, and it still is.
Then, of course The Jimmy Giuffre 3, that would be a desert island disc too, and a kind of relief from a lot of sound and a lot of chaos and a sublime factor. The sublime factor, I think, is part of a lot of what's on that list.
"Voodoo Chile" by Jimi Hendrix
You’ve written about and discussed “Manic Depression” previously as a huge influence on you as a guitarist.
I chose “Voodoo Chile” for multiple reasons, because I told the “Manic Depression” story so many times, and I even wrote about it. I put it out in the world for one of John Zorn's Arcana books, where musicians write about music.
The experience of hearing “Manic Depression” was absolutely riveting, galvanising, electrifying, magical, elevating and exciting, and still is when I listen to it now. But I also wanted to put a little focus on “Voodoo Chile”, because it's something I still listen to very frequently.
It is, to my mind, one of the greatest jams ever committed to tape. There's just so much going on there. It's also, I think, some of Hendrix's best blues guitar playing ever documented. There's a lot documented, but it’s mostly live and mostly “Red House”.
I also wanted to note on this track how much I love the recorded sound, the mix and everything. Jimi’s guitar is backed away, a little bit distant compared to Steve Winwood's Hammond Organ and Mitch Mitchell's brilliant drumming. Jack Casady from Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna is on bass.
It's one of those eloquent, long, not in any way boring and extremely exciting documents of people getting together and essaying ideas and experiencing mutuality, and that’s constantly interesting for me. It's one of those things that makes me happy in music. It always sounds good to me.
The lineup you mentioned there is quite mind-boggling, to imagine the synergy in that room.
I’m just grateful it was captured and that we can continue to enjoy it.
"The Bells Of Rhymney" by The Byrds
Once again, we're in the in the realm of the purely sublime. From my perspective, The Byrds were my first rock and roll band obsession when I was 10 years old. Coming from Los Angeles, where I grew up, they're very much a Los Angeles band, even though they became international superstars.
“The Bells of Rhymney” to me is an example of pure sonic beauty. If you want to talk about jingle jangle - which everyone started using as a term to describe them at that time - it’s Jim McGuinn’s 12-string, he became Roger McGuinn a little later. I love the vocal harmonies and the mix. It's probably Hal Blaine on drums, I don't think that's Mike Clarke. There’s a really nice tanging of the hump on there, the bell, the cymbal at the end.
It's just beautiful on every level. It's one of those things why The Byrds in general, up to their big personnel changes, are hugely influential on me and the way I think about overtones, not just songs and those vocal harmonies, that blend on the “Bells of Rhymney” is next level.
This a deep cut compared to some Byrds tracks.
I think there's something about it that I return to again and again, because it’s perfect. I don't believe in perfection, but now I'm using this 'perfect' word again! There's something absolutely pristine and perfectly formed about it, and I like it just as much as say, “Eight Miles High” or and I have to say, I almost chose “Change Is Now” from The Notorious Byrd Brothers.
Choosing Byrds songs is not as difficult as choosing Hendrix songs or Bob Dylan songs. This is just another sonic event to me, it’s not just eloquent. It's sonically transporting for me.
“Theme from ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’" by Elmer Bernstein
This is less grandiose than Bernstein’s work on The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven, that are so instantly recognisable.
It's a really important movie for me. I don't know if it's my favourite movie of all time, but it's certainly up there, and there were times in my life when I thought it was my favourite movie. It's just such a beautiful story told so well, and a rare event in the adaptation from novel to film world which doesn't always work. For me, it usually seems it doesn’t, maybe because Hollywood always changes the endings.
The film is much like the Ravel piece is to me, absolute crystalline beauty, and it speaks to the mood of the movie, the content of the movie, and the characters in such a clear way.
As you're hearing that, and you're seeing Boo Radley's box of items that he had, that they put in the tree and the whole story is just another truth bumps moment for me. I think this piece is quite widely imitated with the use of the Lydian mode in the initial theme, and then the surging of the strings with the modulation. The key change is so incredibly moving. It’s certainly not just moving to me, and that's why so many people have imitated it.
When you hear that opening piano melody, I think that sound has been so imitated, or that mood even, but nothing compares to this piece. I’m sure some of the imitators did a nice job, but the original piece is one of those forever things for me.
It almost feels toned down compared to some of his other work?
I mean, the movies you mentioned are big, big movies. I also want to toss out The Grifters, a little later Elmer Bernstein assignment which had a lot of novel, cool and not super powerful, dramatic, pounding music.
His back catalogue really showcases his variety within a range of film genres, doesn’t it?
It definitely does. If you think of guys like Jerry Goldsmith too, not just the big ones. He did so much music that was so diverse and that's just part of the gig. Some people seem to do more with the assignment than others, like with Planet of the Apes, the Jerry Goldsmith score with Emil Richards’ percussion and all that amazing flavour and experimentation. It’s big and it's really different.
When I did “The Search For Cat” on Lovers, it’s taken from Henry Mancini from Breakfast at Tiffany's and it's another example that didn't even have a title. He had never titled this cue, it's just a cue. It's not even on the soundtrack album.
Along with my good friend Dougie Bowne and my pal Michael Leonhart, who arranged Lovers, we found out that we were all obsessed with this cue. So when Michael went to the Mancini family estate and asked, ‘Well, what's the real title?’ They told him it didn't have a title. We called it “The Search For Cat”, and we were allowed to use it.
Is film score something you've wanted to dabble in yourself?
I've done it to an extent. I scored two really, really bad movies in the '90s that nobody saw, and I played on a few movie soundtracks. I worked once for Danny Elfman, and then I worked I guess a couple of times for Mark Isham, with whom I used to play Miles Davis’s music in his band. I also played on some soundtracks for my good friend Vinny Golia.
My favourite is probably Blood & Concrete: A Love Story. It's just absolutely brilliant trash, a very funny movie, very low brow. There's a lot of fun music on that. I don't see scoring films as anything I want to do, because I don't take orders very lightly from people who don't know what they're talking about. I think I would tear my hair out after a while.
I also have no computer music skills, and nowadays you'd have to change things and edit them 400 times before it gets, ‘quote, unquote’, finished. I don't even have that skill.
"Hearts & Flowers" by John McLaughlin
You’ve mentioned Miles Davis and John McLaughlin played with him on some of those seminal Psychedelic Jazz/Rock records.
My first exposure to John McLaughlin was In a Silent Way by Miles Davis. It was around the same time the Tony Williams Lifetime Turn It Over album, which my brother had heard the opening track “To Whom It May Concern” on Underground Rock Radio one day, and he immediately had to find this record.
Then I started hearing it at home pretty much every day, because he got obsessed with everything by Tony Williams and John McLaughlin at that point, and in 1971 The Inner Mounting Flame album came out.
Around that time he released the record that “Hearts and Flowers” is on, an acoustic guitar record called My Goal’s Beyond. I was not only fascinated with how beautiful this record was in its relationship - somewhat tangentially - to Indian Classical music on side one, with which I've been obsessed since I was about 10 years old. It was what I wanted to do at first, to play sitar, and I'm glad I didn't do that by the way.
The second side of My Goal’s Beyond is overdub guitar, where he duets with himself with some percussion and bells here and there. It's an example, to me, of a virtuosic guitar piece. “Hearts and Flowers” is a standard of sorts mostly in the UK, but it’s the way he plays beautiful music with astonishing technique, and it's also incredibly concise.
There's an almost flamenco feel to that track which harkens back to the World Music we discussed earlier.
There are other tracks on side two of My Goal’s Beyond that have this kind of flamenco element, and I think that later in life, when he did records like “Bella Horizonte”, there was this kind of breezy, Brazilian, Mediterranean sound.
So maybe it's a guitar thing that we love these sounds, and certainly, the guitar and Spain go hand in hand. So that element I think, sneaks in quite often to the guitarist world.
And I wanted to put something guitaristic in here. It was very hard to choose a guitaristic track, but I wanted to give props to John McLaughlin, certainly his playing on Live-Evil by Miles Davis for example, is incredibly important to me, as is his playing on “Bitches Brew” and “Big Fun”. I wanted to have some acoustic guitar music, but I couldn't come up with a Ralph Towner piece. There were too many I wanted to choose, so I went with John McLaughlin.
It was a time my life when I was aspiring to play pretty serious guitar, whereas before I was this Rock and Blues Rock guy who played with two fingers. It's still always inspiring to hear John play like this, and to hear him play anything.
"Disappearer" by Sonic Youth
How formative was Sonic Youth for you? I suppose they’ve fed into your later work with Wilco?
Sonic Youth are huge for me. My first exposure to them was their first EP on Neutral, just called Sonic Youth. I was working in an import record distributor called Bonaparte that carried, for some reason I have never figured out, three domestic labels, Neutral, Raw Cassettes, and Twin/Tone.
Perhaps ironically, all the three favourite records I had back in those days working in that record distributor were this EP, the Bad Brains cassette and the first Replacements album, Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash. I guess I missed the imports, which was the rest of the whole scene there, but they were all British imports actually.
That's when I heard Sonic Youth the first time. I wasn't moved as much as I was when I heard Confusion Is Sex, the second album - well, first full-length album - and I heard that because the writer Byron Coley was working with me in the record store.
It was amazing that he worked in this record store, thinking back on it. He played the record one day, and when I heard “(She's in A) Bad Mood" and particularly “Shaking Hell,” I just thought, ‘Wow, this is very interesting. I want to follow these guys’, and that led to the Sensor EP that has “Brother James” on it. Then EVOL and Sister.
I chose their major label debut record Goo and the song “Disappearer” because I think it exhibits a kind of sophistication that they were developing on Daydream Nation.
I remember when I first saw tuners on stage with them before they played on the Daydream Nation tour, and I got scared that all that microtonal flavour was going to be absent, but I was completely wrong, so that was nice.
“Disappearer” has musical sophistication, but it also has that incredible drama. The middle instrumental section with the accelerating groove and the Sonic Youth guitars of Lee and Thurston changed the way I play the guitar. They changed the way I think about sounds coming out of electric guitar.
So, I adapted certain things, even about my own technique, to try to emulate some of these sounds - like playing unison strings slightly out of tune with each other, to try to get that unison string sound that they have in their open tunings, and strings behind the bridge, playing with objects.
In their case, the drumstick was the main thing for Thurston. So I changed my approach, changed my way of thinking about the sound of the guitar. I also love bands, and I just fell in love with them as a band. I thought ‘Oh, man, they're the coolest.’
"History Lesson – Part II" by The Minutemen
It's a very simple piece, but it was also a very unexpected piece when it showed up on Double Nickels on the Dime. I guess it's a folk-rock song, but it's just the chord progression with this narration of D. Boon telling the story of where they come from, what their aspirations are and what they're doing in this really charming and very moving way.
I really love the Minutemen, and they represented a huge change in my perception about so-called punk rock when I finally saw them live.
They were from San Pedro, the town where my dad grew up, and they didn't look like punks. They're wearing flannels, they didn't have safety pins in their nose or mohawks or anything, and they're one of the greatest live bands ever.
I think that their poetic eloquence, their unpredictability, are how they’re represented in this track just makes me cry. Listening to it now, because D. Boon was gone not long after this, which was in Los Angeles, and I can tell you it was a powerfully upsetting time.
Minutemen are one of my favourite bands of all time. I'm a band kind of guy as we’ve established. I also know that Jeff Tweedy loves Minutemen too, and he loves this song. How could he not? It’s incredibly moving.
Speaking of Jeff Tweedy, do you find your tastes overlap heavily with the rest of Wilco's?
There's tons of stuff we all love. Jeff has a very broad taste, so he might be more up on say, Fire! Orchestra than I am for example. We love Television, that's an obvious one. Marquee Moon and Adventure are very important, and I love Tom's solo work.
For John, Patrick, and Jeff there’s a huge Big Star influence looming at all times. As much as I love Big Star, I was a little too old I think, to just latch on to them. I used to hear them at the record store all the time and admired those records.
Also, Reverend Gary Davis, that’s another one, but I could go on and on. In the band we like a lot of the same music, we get along and we're all different. The emphasis is all different, because we're all different people, but the mutual feeling is we have any kind of commonalities, which are part of how we could still be the same six guys playing for almost 21 years.
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