“It really discouraged me when I was young”: Jeff Tweedy reveals he nearly gave up on guitar because the instruments his parents bought him were “like child abuse”
Warped necks, sky-high action, and impossible truss rods – first guitars are often more of a battle than a blessing. It’s a struggle Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy knows all too well, as his first electric was so clunky and unwieldy, it felt like “child abuse to put it on your body”.
In a new interview with Reverb, Tweedy takes a trip down memory lane, revisiting the gear that shaped his early years – and nearly turned him off guitar altogether.
“My first acoustic guitar was… I don’t think it had a name brand,” the Wilco guitarist and vocalist recalls. “[It was a] very, very difficult instrument to play; it really discouraged me when I was really young, so it sat in the closet for a long time – from six years old till about 11 or 12 years old it sat in the closet haunting me.”
READ MORE: Brian May recalls the time he tried to play through a Marshall stack: “It sounded so awful. I could hardly play”
Ironically, it wasn’t passion that finally got him playing – it was a combination of misfortune and a little white lie. After a nasty bicycle accident left him bedridden for “most of the summer”, young Tweedy realised he had a problem: he’d told everyone at school he already knew how to play the guitar. With nothing but time on his hands, he decided to make good on his own myth.
“That was my opportunity to actually learn how to play the guitar a little bit, so if I get called out on it I’d at least look like I knew some chords,” Tweedy says . “And I did that enough that my parents got me a guitar.”
“It was a Peavey T-60 that was like, child abuse to put it on your body,” he adds, “especially for someone recovering from a bike injury. They’re probably better as boat anchors at this point, a lot of them. I never even understood how they made a guitar that heavy.”
“So yeah I kept playing it ‘cause it was all I had. But I was disappointed when it showed up, to be honest. It wasn’t what I was looking for. I wanted a Telecaster.”
As Tweedy explains, his luck eventually took a turn when his older brother received a payout from a job site accident. With his newfound workman’s comp money, he surprised Tweedy with the guitar he had been eyeing – a black and white Fender Telecaster that “ended up being almost as heavy as the Peavey T-60”.
Watch the full interview below.
The post “It really discouraged me when I was young”: Jeff Tweedy reveals he nearly gave up on guitar because the instruments his parents bought him were “like child abuse” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
