Other segments from the episode on December 23, 2020
Transcript
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. While millions of Americans have lost their jobs because of the pandemic, the combined wealth of just 10 billionaires has increased by more than $127 billion since the beginning of the pandemic. Those billionaires include the principal owners of Amazon, Instacart, Walmart and Tyson Foods. My guest, Chuck Collins, has been writing about that and how the pandemic has increased income inequality in the U.S. Economic inequality has been his subject since he was 26 and gave away his inheritance. Collins is the great-grandson of Oscar Mayer, the founder of the meatpacking company famous for its hot dogs, the Oscar Mayer wiener, and the Wienermobile.
Collins is the director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-edits inequality.org. His books include "Born On Third Base: A One Percenter Makes The Case For Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, And Committing To The Common Good" and the forthcoming "The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions To Hide Trillions." That book is scheduled for publication in March. Chuck Collins, welcome to FRESH AIR. It's a pleasure to have you on our show.
CHUCK COLLINS: Thanks for having me.
GROSS: Who are the billionaires who made the most money since the start of the pandemic?
COLLINS: Well, there's an overall trend. You know, 657 billionaires have seen their combined wealth go up a trillion since mid-March. But there's a couple that have just seen their wealth surge. Elon Musk seen his wealth go up almost 500%, 120 billion. Jeff Bezos has seen his wealth go up about 74 billion, an increase of 65%. And there's a guy, Dan Gilbert, who's the Quicken Loans founder, CEO, his wealth has gone up 600% - almost 38 billion. So it's a surge of wealth for some. You know, some have ridden the stock market. But others have just seen - they've kind of delinked from the amount of wealth they had before.
GROSS: So is the numbers that you're giving us, is that linked to the stock market? - because the stock market fluctuates so much. It can go up, you know, hundreds of points or go down hundreds of points.
COLLINS: Yeah. The stock market has been steadily going up as well. But some of these billionaires have just seen their wealth surge, you know, in the double digits or much higher than the market itself. I mean, four billionaires - Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg - now have a net worth of about 550 billion combined. And the whole group of U.S. billionaires now has a combined wealth of 4 trillion, which is double the wealth of the bottom half of all U.S. households, you know, in the United States. So they are seeing their fortunes accelerate during the pandemic.
GROSS: So some of the companies that have had their, you know, wealth increased vastly during the pandemic are providing services so many people are using, like Amazon and Instacart, helping people get what they need without having to go to stores where they could be exposed to the virus. In that sense, it's no surprise that they're doing really well during the pandemic. But is the money that the companies are making being reflected in the pay or the protection of the workers who are making these services possible?
COLLINS: No. And that's one of the things I think we've been trying to point out in our reports is that these companies are benefiting from having their competition effectively shut down during the pandemic. And they're seeing their own - you know, we're thankful that some of them are in business and able to provide, you know, online retail services and food delivery. But they're not really sharing those enormous gains with their workforce. So they're essentially sending their workers into kind of the viral line of fire while the owners are reaping enormous rewards in kind of a, you know, unprecedented circumstance.
GROSS: You have some recommendations for what the leaders of these companies could be doing to help protect their workers and acknowledge the risk that they're taking in providing the services that they provide.
COLLINS: Absolutely. I mean, they should be paying hazard pay. If you remember, at the beginning of the pandemic, there was a much broader societal recognition of the role of essential, front line workers, that they should be paid better, that they should have access to health care and paid family leave and hazard pay. And they should share in the wealth that they're creating for these companies. And as we go into this winter of, you know, more infections and more disruption, we should be reinstituting that. And if the companies can't figure out how to do that, then the government should play an important role in mandating that.
GROSS: So do you have any idea of how many workers at Amazon or Instacart or Tyson Foods have gotten COVID or have died from COVID? And do you think those companies could have done more to protect them?
COLLINS: Amazon, by its own admission, has had over 20,000 employees infected with COVID. Several of them have died. That was in October. I've talked to lots of Amazon workers, Amazon workers who work in warehouses, who say, you know, initially, Amazon didn't do enough to protect them. Now Amazon has hired, you know, 350,000 new workers. And it's wedging them into the same warehouses and infrastructure. And it's impossible to do kind of social distancing and proper protection. So there's just more Amazon could do.
Tyson Foods also has had, you know, over 11,000 employees infected. You know, the meatpacking industry, which is something our family knows something about, is a side-by-side worker, elbow-to-elbow industry. And it is very difficult. And that's another industry where - the Tyson family members have seen their wealth go up, you know, half a billion dollars in a couple months. And they can afford to spend more to protect their workers, their front line workers.
GROSS: If you had your way, you'd want to institute an emergency pandemic wealth tax on billionaires. What would your intention be if you had your way, which you don't? And I should say, the suggestion you're about to make is probably never going to happen in the near future.
COLLINS: I think it's important to talk about it even if our captured political system isn't capable of it. I think it's a commonsense idea. You know, you have a group of 650 people whose wealth has gone up a trillion dollars since mid-March. Why wouldn't we - like any kind of windfall profit during a time of war or crisis, we should tax away a portion of that gain and invest it in something that's going to help people, like the stimulus package or the recovery package that's recently been passed. One of the ways to pay for it is by taxing folks who've gotten a tremendous windfall in this moment.
GROSS: Jeff Bezos is a centibillionaire, which means he has over $100 billion. Several other people became centibillionaires during the course of the pandemic. Who are they?
COLLINS: Well, they are the the top four in the U.S., Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg. And there's one centibillionaire in France. But that's a new thing. I mean, we - you know, Jeff Bezos was the first centibillionaire, maybe, in 2017. It's a new trend. I mean, just for perspective, in 1983, there were only 18 billionaires in the United States. And now there are 657 today. So - and I don't consider that a good economic indicator. I think it's a troubling sign that too much of society's wealth and income is flowing upwards to that small group of people.
GROSS: Meanwhile, MacKenzie Scott, who used to be married to Jeff Bezos, gave away $6 billion in gifts to hundreds of organizations this year alone. What is her approach to giving away parts of her fortune?
COLLINS: Well, I think she's made a couple of really great first moves. You know, unlike a lot of these billionaires, she's not creating a kind of perpetual legacy foundation that's going to be around for generations, you know, where her great-grandchildren will be giving the money away still. She's moving the money directly to charities. She's enlisted a lot of advisers who are not wealthy, who understand the issues in underrepresented communities, communities of color. Her first wave of giving was primarily to racial justice groups. And this most recent 4.2 billion is mostly going to what we could call the works of mercy - you know, food banks and shelters and YWCAs and groups that are sort of on the front lines of helping people right now. And she's done it in a very low-key way. She hasn't created this vast, you know, infrastructure. In a way, she's - I think she's saying, come on, boys, let's go here, you know. This is an urgent moment. And she's stepping up in a way that, I think, embarrassing to the other billionaires who are sitting on their vast treasure during this pandemic.
GROSS: Another thing she's doing is giving away this money with no strings attached. Often when you get a grant, it's for a very specific purpose, and that purpose might not be what your organization most needs to survive. It might be just what's most fundable. But she has no strings attached. You don't have to pledge to use it for a specific purpose. You can - I think she's been saying, use your judgment. I trust you.
COLLINS: Yeah, she's communicating with a bit of humility that she doesn't understand all the issues. But basically she's communicating that I trust you to do the right thing with this money. And I'm not going to try to control it. And this is my first couple of big donations. And she's - I think we're going to see billions more moving in the next couple years. But what's striking is her response is in pitch to the times, you know? Short of giving hazard pay to Amazon workers - which is the source of her wealth, which I think she still should do - she's made a bold move to do direct-giving and really doing it in a way that a lot of - you know, many of these billionaires have foundations with, you know, thousands of staff, hundreds of staff who are part of the decision-making process. And they're giving away less money than she gave away in one year.
GROSS: I've heard you make an interesting comparison between the tax laws of the 1950s and the programs of the 1950s that help bring people into the middle class compared to the tax system that we have now.
COLLINS: Yeah. I mean, in a way, the tax system of the post-war - post-World War II era helped fund a shared prosperity economy. You know, we taxed the wealthy, and it was invested in infrastructure, access to education, help for first-time homebuyers - with a huge caveat, which is that it was racially exclusive. Many people of color were not able to benefit from the low-cost education and housing benefits. But it was a model for how we could have, you know, an economic policy that was about broadening middle class wealth and opportunity.
And really, since the late '70s, inequality has grown. And since the '80s, tax policy has kind of - we've seen massive reductions in taxes paid by the super wealthy, the wealthiest segments, to the point where last year, billionaires paid an effective tax rate, you know, lower than middle-income workers. So we've seen taxes go down for the most wealthy people in society.
GROSS: So let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Chuck Collins. He's the director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-edits inequality.org. We'll be back after we take a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Chuck Collins, who's been writing about how the pandemic has widened the gap between the super rich and everyone else. He directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-edits inequality.org. He's the author of the forthcoming book, "The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions To Hide Trillions." That's scheduled for publication in March.
You've been working against economic inequality for most of your adult life. Your great-grandfather was Oscar Mayer of the meatpacking company, famous for its hot dogs, the Oscar Mayer Wiener. People might remember the Wienermobile, which was like a hot dog on wheels - a huge hot dog on wheels that would travel around. You inherited money when, I think, you were 21. Five years later, you decided to give it away. Why did you decide to do that?
COLLINS: Well, I think in my 20s, I had kind of a revelation, which was, you know, I'd been, like a lot of wealthy people, raised in a bubble - suburban Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Occasionally I would notice that there was the city of Detroit there with this incredible racial and economic divide. But, you know, I grew up in comfort and a kind of a narrative, if you will, that we're all well here, and we're all deserving of the wealth we have. And then I got this job in my 20s helping tenants who were facing eviction, trying to buy their buildings or mobile home parks and own them as residents. And I got very immersed in a lot of people's personal financial information. And then I would come home, and I would open up a statement - a financial statement - about my own wealth. And it would be like, oh, your wealth just increased 25% through no sweat of your own. So I had this bizarre, intimate front row seat in the 1980s to how wages were going down for a lot of people and wealth was rising for people like me.
And then I later worked in a refugee camp in El Salvador, which kind of gave me a window into the global inequality. And it was around when I was 25 or 26. I just couldn't come up with a theory or justification for the gap between my good fortune and the circumstances of these people. I just couldn't - all the, sort of, stories of deservedness and meritocracy and we're from a virtuous family - all that kind of rang not true. And so I just couldn't live with that contradiction. I didn't really want to be the beneficiary anymore of a system where some people were inheriting vast amounts of wealth and others were just struggling to survive.
GROSS: Did you save a financial cushion for yourself?
COLLINS: You know, I grew up in a sort of a Catholic worker, Dorothy Day culture, and I just felt like the wealth was almost a spiritual barrier to making my own way. Now, in retrospect - so the answer is no, I didn't maintain the large reserve - any reserve. I really wanted to make it on my own. That, I later realized, was ridiculous, that I had so much other forms of advantage, you know, growing up white and male and multigenerational sort of security and financial training and literacy and 101 other advantages that had helped propel me along so the money being just one of them. But, you know, I've kind of been focused on not depending on something that happened generations ago.
GROSS: I know that some people told you that you were being selfish in giving away your money because you were depriving the next generation of your family from inheriting the money that you inherited and inheriting those advantages that you inherited. What's your response to that?
COLLINS: Yeah, you know, within wealthy families, there are several cardinal rules, and one of them is don't touch the principle. Don't touch the corpus of assets because we're all just passing through, and if you're from a kind of dynastically wealthy family, your responsibility is to keep passing the wealth on so that the next generation - you know, my view is we shouldn't have dynastically wealthy families in the United States, you know?
We should - it should be shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. That's the idea. And if a family is four or five generations into seeing their wealth accelerate, then it starts to undermine kind of core American principles of, you know, mobility and, you know, work in exchange for wealth, and in the end, you know, you start to see now these dynastically wealthy families in the United States that use their wealth and power to rig the rules of the economy to get more wealth and power. And that's the ultimate risk when you have great concentrations of wealth over generations.
GROSS: Can you be more specific about that point, about how the wealthy use the levers of power to keep their wealth?
COLLINS: Yeah. I mean, if you look at the list of billionaires, there's some fairly wealthy families. I mean, we're seeing the Mars candy family in the fourth generation on the Forbes list, you know, the Koch brothers, the Koch family, the Waltons of Walmart, the Cox family. There are these dynastic American families, and they're very politically engaged. And they use their power to give to political candidates, to think tanks and other groups to advocate for an agenda of low taxation.
And I got a lesson in this when I was in my 30s because there was a whole movement to abolish the inheritance tax, the U.S. estate tax. And, you know, I got involved in that working with Bill Gates's dad to coordinate a campaign to defend the estate tax, but what I noticed was on the other side were these wealthy, dynastic families who were using their clout to ensure that their great-grandchildren were still going to be billionaires. So it's not just about wealth. It's about the power that goes with it to shape the culture, including philanthropy, how they use their philanthropy and political giving to rig the rules of the economy.
GROSS: Are you finding that there's a culture of people who are wealthy who want to do good things with their money and who want to have progressive tax policies, people who, perhaps, you're working with?
COLLINS: Yeah. There's actually a network called the Patriotic Millionaires, which is a couple hundred, you know, high-net-worth business leaders and millionaires and billionaires who are actually publicly lobbying for fair tax policies to eliminate these kind of hidden wealth systems because they understand on some level that extreme inequality is undermining the whole society. It's undermining the quality of life for everybody, including the very wealthy.
Now, during this pandemic, I think it's even more complicated because the wealthy have socially distanced, economically distanced even more, so that gap, that understanding, that proximateness that's required to have empathetic society is kind of eroded by the fact that people are not in connection right now. But there are plenty of wealthy people I talk to every day who are saying, how can we reverse these extreme inequalities, rebuild some kind of social safety net and not keep going down this road toward economic Jenga and precariousness?
GROSS: Chuck Collins, thank you so much for coming on our show. I wish you a healthy 2021 and a year better than this year has been.
COLLINS: Wishing you and everyone else the same.
GROSS: My guest has been Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-edits inequality.org. After we take a short break, we'll hear from Jeff Tweedy of the band Wilco. He has a new book about songwriting and his approach to writing songs. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAVE MCKENNA'S "IT CAME UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR")
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Our next guest is singer-songwriter and guitarist Jeff Tweedy, the frontman of Wilco. This year, in spite of COVID, he's managed to release a solo album, publish a new book and performed from his living room couch. He spoke with FRESH AIR's Ann Marie Baldonado.
ANN MARIE BALDONADO, BYLINE: Like most professional musicians, when lockdown started, Jeff Tweedy found himself at home - a lot. That's quite a difference from the constant touring he was doing for most of his decades-long career. So he wrote and published a new book about songwriting called "How To Write One Song." He also recorded and released a new album, "Love Is The King," with the help of his two sons, Spencer, who's 25, played drums, and Sammy, who just turned 21, provided background vocals. Yet perhaps the best way Jeff Tweedy is connecting with fans is through something called The Tweedy Show. Back in March, Jeff's wife, Suzy Miller (ph), started filming Jeff and his sons performing in their house.
At first, the Tweedys did an Instagram show every night. You might hear a Wilco song or a cover version of songs by people like Neil Young, Pavement, The Band or the Beatles. After some breaks and a COVID scare over Thanksgiving, they still perform four nights a week. They may have been playing music together, laughing, poking fun and telling stories even if the iPhone wasn't rolling, but the show lets fans become part of it. Hanging out with the Tweedys has been one of my favorite ways of getting through this year. We'll talk about the show in a bit. But first, let's start with a track from the album "Love Is The King." It's called "Gwendolyn."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GWENDOLYN")
JEFF TWEEDY: (Singing) I don't think I can take another day. Oh, I don't know how I could ever say. I'm OK being so far away. Oh, I don't think that I can take another day. And Gwendolyn, when she starts to speak to a county police with a plastic cup between her teeth. The sun beating down like a big trombone. That's right when I start missing home. She holds my hand between her knees. It's like a dream. I never know what it means. I only know I'm feeling alone. That's right when I start missing home.
BALDONADO: That's "Gwendolyn" off the new album "Love Is The King." Jeff Tweedy, welcome back to FRESH AIR.
TWEEDY: Thanks for having me back.
BALDONADO: Now, since quarantine started, you and your family have been doing a live Instagram show called The Tweedy Show or you call it The Tweedy Show. Can you describe it for people who haven't seen it?
TWEEDY: It's just basically like inviting people over to our house to hang out with us in our living room and just hang out with a family that I think enjoys spending time with each other and can definitely get on each other's nerves and do a little bit of bickering and sniping. And at the same time, I - you know, I think it's a warm atmosphere to share with everybody. And I think that it felt so intimate to us right away. I mean, the first episode, I'm in the bathtub. So I think that's part of the reason we started calling the people that would come to watch it our clients as opposed to fans, because I think there was some impulse to keep some professional distance.
Sometimes we do a bunch of songs, sometimes we only do a few. But for the most part, we just try and push the outside world away a little bit. We don't really dwell upon the things that are happening in the news or stuff like that very much, because for a lot of reasons, I don't think people should come to us for a commentary on those things. I think a lot of people are feeling the same things. And what we need more of is connection and just some ritual of - I don't know - just being reminded that there are normal moments and things like that. It's like this really, really intimate-feeling thing, but it's not serious.
BALDONADO: Now, watching the show, one of the joys of it is how much you all enjoy spending time together. And I kind of feel like that's like - that's family goals. You know, I wish I could get my family to get along like that and want to spend that much time with me (laughter).
TWEEDY: Oh, it's - the shows have resulted in some, like, just knockdown, drag-out fights, though. I mean, we're on our best behavior with this show, you know (laughter).
BALDONADO: So otherwise, like as soon as that camera is off, you guys are not talking or fighting?
TWEEDY: Well, no, you know what? I mean, it's all - it's good. What it has done is sometimes it dislodges some resentment from something that happened weeks ago. And it's actually kind of good family therapy because you have this camera there and you're kind of trying not to show some of these tensions. Then you have to let them out when the camera goes off. And it's resulted in a lot of, I think, conflict resolution. And I don't - like, I don't want to paint a picture like our family has a lot of issues that we really need to work through. I think we do sincerely love being together and having a good - you know, we do have a good time together.
But every family gets on each other's nerves, and you'd be really weird if you didn't, I think. But not every family gets good at figuring that stuff out. And sometimes maybe I guess you could go your whole life and you don't need to figure it out. But I tend to think it's probably strengthening when you can, you know, say, hey, you're - like, I know you're just my big brother telling me what to do, but when, you know, you do that, like, makes me look like I'm incapable or, you know, like just little - I don't know - philosophical things about birth order and stuff like that. It's amazing (laughter).
BALDONADO: There's this review of The Tweedy Show in The New Yorker. And one of the things the reviewer said I appreciated because I think, you know, you guys seem to be enjoying each other so much and playing music together. And, you know, as the reviewer pointed out, it's like, you guys have had hard times and recently. You know, you had to deal with your wife, Suzy Miller's cancer diagnosis. You also struggled with addiction. And, you know, watching you guys all together, it's just very kind of, you know, heartwarming and sweet. And one of the things you say in your book about the time when Suzy was sick was that playing music together with your kids was a way of holding each other without hugging all the time. And I thought that was so sad and sweet. Like, this - making music was something that you could do when there was nothing else to do.
TWEEDY: That's true. And it's also - I mean, I don't know of any activity as healing as playing music. I don't know what else there is to do that - I mean, I think maybe exercise helps for a lot of people when they're really suffering psychologically, really sad, really struggling. Anything that kind of gets you out of your head and into your body is probably really good for you. But music doesn't quite get you out of your head. It just makes everything lighter. And I'm not the first person to say this, obviously. It's just a real consolation. And it always has been.
Even before I could play music, I really think that I was a lonely, lonely kid and that music was a real consolation to me and developed that bond with me that formed that deep need and connection or maybe just as - you know, just made me aware of how powerful that just listening to music can be for - as far as like just healing yourself and making yourself a little bit more whole when you feel broken. And it's invariable in a way. A lot of times I don't expect it to work because I feel like things are so bad and I feel so sad that I don't think it's going to work. And the struggle then is to actually pick up the guitar or to put something on to listen to. And once you get over that hurdle, it works. And I just have a lot of evidence over a lot of years now that that's a constant and a pretty reliable thing. It's really the most reliable thing I can think of in the world.
BALDONADO: My guest is Jeff Tweedy. He has a new book called "How To Write One Song" and a new album called "Love Is The King." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BALDONADO: This is FRESH AIR. My guest is musician and Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy. He has a new book about songwriting called "How To Write One Song." And he has a new album he recorded with the help of his sons, Spencer and Sammy. It's called "Love Is The King."
Now, you wrote that your dad would have a favorite song that he would listen to over and over like for weeks to the exclusion of any other songs. Can you talk about what some of those songs were? And do you think you learned anything from that?
TWEEDY: I mean, I must have learned something from it. I mean, you certainly get to know a song pretty well when your dad plays it 50 times a night, you know. And you start to hear different things each time, I think, probably. You tend to focus on different things just to keep your sanity. But, I mean, a lot of times it would just be - he's a real lyrics guy. So it would be "I Love" by Tom T. Hall. You know, (singing) I love little baby ducks - you know, like something like that, which has some really amazing lines in it. And Mac Davis - it's hard to be humble when you're perfect in every way. Let's see - "Southern Nights" - he just loved - I think he just loved the sound of that one. It was really unpleasant and frustrating as a family, to be honest, when my dad - you know, my dad - it was - and, you know, I think my dad, you know, went through his entire life with a lot of the same mood disorders that I've had, maybe but in an undiagnosed state and clumsily medicated with light beer.
And so I think that you could add the repetition of the songs that he would fall in love with as some part of a coping strategy that involved a routine, you know. I could psychoanalyze it even more if you want me to, but it's - but I think that there is, you know, something pathological about it. And it was loud. He wouldn't listen to things quiet, either. It was loud and dominant in the entire house. And I could probably handle it a lot more than my mom could, you know, the 600th time that "It's Hard To Be Humble," you know, is getting spun on the turntable, my mom's probably - you know, part of the reason she probably had a fairly short life.
BALDONADO: I know for me, like, one of the things I'm worried about is, like, I would love to pass creativity on to my children, you know, or fostered in them. But I'm a little bit afraid of passing on what's bad about me to them, whether that's like anxiety or - I don't know - darkness tendencies or, you know, just - I don't know. So you just talked about how your dad had, like, perhaps undiagnosed mood disorders. And, you know, you've talked about your mood disorders and addiction. And I'm just wondering if you're worried about - I don't know. I mean, I can't remember. You call it the Tweedy curse. I can't remember in the book what you call it, but like a - I don't know - a Tweedy predeliction to these kinds of things.
TWEEDY: Well, yeah. I mean, alcoholism runs in my family for many generations. And it's certainly genetic and something to be concerned about. On top of that, I think that there's some really strong correlation between some mood disorders and our tendency to have an addiction of some sort. They seem to be related. So as a parent, there's a lot of concern that you're passing along those things.
I think that the main thing that will be different for them if that was their, you know, struggles that they encounter in their life, the difference between me and them would be that I only knew the struggle. I didn't know how to avoid it. But I also didn't - I never had any evidence or witness to someone getting better or even acknowledging it, you know, as a problem, you know? So I mean, it was obviously a problem for my family, and, you know, it caused a lot of heartache and a lot of misery. But the person themselves that was going through it, in most cases, was pretty firmly in denial of it being a problem.
So what my children have witnessed, on the other hand, is someone getting help and someone admitting that there's a problem and, I guess, modeling some behavior of vulnerability and struggle and endurance, you know, and ultimately some ability to transcend that suffering that they witnessed. And so that gives me some comfort to know that that is in there as firmly as anything else that might be inside them - you know? - and how they are wired to handle the world.
BALDONADO: My guest is Jeff Tweedy. He has a new book called "How To Write One Song" and a new album called "Love Is The King." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BALDONADO: This is FRESH AIR. My guest is musician and Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy. He has a new album he recorded with the help of his sons, Spencer and Sammy. It's called "Love Is The King."
Now, you know, the new book is about songwriting, but it's really about - I don't know - valuing a creative outlet, you know, like, making - carving out time to do something creative. And, you know, I gather it's because, you know, it's been so important to you. But you have this story about someone who you were in the rehab facility with who was very unresponsive and when, you know, sort of this opportunity for a small creative outlet really helped her. I was wondering if you could tell that story.
TWEEDY: Yeah. I was in a dual diagnosis facility, you know, primarily being treated for addiction but, for the first time in my life, really being treated seriously for my depression and anxiety as well. And I was in - you know, it was a city hospital, and it was not full of investment bankers and car salesmen getting over their coke addictions. It was some really seriously damaged people that had maybe last - I don't know, maybe it had been the first time they lived inside a building for a long time, a lot of homeless people and really some really hurting people, hurt people.
And this woman who was a heroin addict, maybe in her 60s and was catatonic for most of the time the first week or so that I was in the hospital with her - in group therapy sessions, she would never say anything. And at one point, we were taken to some art therapy class, and she was given a pencil and asked to draw a self-portrait. And she said it was the first time she'd held a pencil in 20 years or something. And she - I mean, it might be one of the only true miracles I've witnessed in my life because it really felt miraculous to watch somebody become completely human again in such a short period of time.
She drew a pretty rudimentary drawing of herself. It was, you know, kind of charming, you know, outsider art-looking, primitive thing, and - but she was smiling. And she was talking. And she actually was able to name what it was that had made her - I don't know - had unburdened her, and it was that she felt like she had made something that wasn't there. And that - in her words, that puts her closer to God than she was. And a lot of that doesn't make sense to me in terms of my belief system, but the idea of putting yourself closer to creation puts you in the realm of something godlike absolutely makes sense to me.
BALDONADO: Did you work on music when you were there?
TWEEDY: No because, I mean, I wasn't in a hospital where they wanted any guitar strings around (laughter).
BALDONADO: Of course.
(LAUGHTER)
TWEEDY: Yeah. Yeah.
BALDONADO: How - but in your mind, were you?
(LAUGHTER)
TWEEDY: No, I did - I think one day they let me in the recreation area. But one of the counselors had brought a guitar. And they let me strum it for a little while. But no, not in the hospital. After the hospital, when I spent some time in a halfway house, I was able to play guitar again. And that was - I mean, that's - it was really nice to know that I still could.
BALDONADO: And in your memoir, you write about that time - and I wonder if it was strange to sort of be working out what you were working out. But at the same time, I think "Ghost Is Born" was - is that the...
TWEEDY: Yeah.
BALDONADO: Yeah, was starting to be promoted. And you say your photo was on - I don't know - bus shelters. Was that kind of a weird thing, to be working out something for yourself but sort of have this other thing kind of out in the world?
TWEEDY: Well, it was a little bit after I was out of the woods. I mean, I was out of the hospital. And I was back home. And I'd spent a little bit of time in a transitional, like, facility. But, yeah, some of - I mean, it definitely was all gearing up because it would look like I was going to make it (laughter), you know? And so - but, yeah, the bus - the local weekly paper had me on the cover. And that was, maybe, a week or so after I left the transitional facility.
And one of the things I thought about while, you know, seeing that everywhere I went was if any of the guys that I was hanging out with in the laundry room were going to stumble across this picture of me and think, wow, he really made a pretty quick rebound (laughter) or something. I don't think they had any - nobody had any awareness at all that I was from a band that was, you know, putting records out and visible in the outside world or anything.
BALDONADO: Was it hard to perform the songs from "A Ghost Is Born" like right after because those were songs that were born of the time right before you went into the facility, like, you know, sort of songs that you write at a time where, you know, you're sort of in a bad place?
TWEEDY: No, actually. I think that that was one of the - that's one of the lessons I learned, I think, from that whole experience is it kind of led me to my belief that my - the part of me that writes songs, the part of me that engages in a creative act is is way ahead of me, is usually the best part of me. And it was really - I was really worried about it. And then, when I started singing those songs, they started making more sense, somehow, in the context of having gotten healthier than they would have to me - actually, it maybe made more sense to me than the way they felt to me going down in the studio. In a lot of cases, I felt like they were ahead of me. And they were striving towards something, you know, like a better idea of who I could be in a lot of cases.
BALDONADO: Well, Jeff Tweedy, thank you so much.
TWEEDY: Thank you.
GROSS: Jeff Tweedy spoke with FRESH AIR's Ann Marie Baldonado. You can find "The Tweedy Show" most nights on Suzy Miller's Instagram feed @stuffinourhouse. Jeff Tweedy's new book is called "How To Write One Song." And his new album is called "Love Is The King." Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, we'll look back at this crazy year in movies and TV, a year with theaters mostly closed and so many productions shut down. I'll talk with our TV critic, David Bianculli, and our film critic, Justin Chang. They'll also tell us what's on their 10 best lists. I hope you'll join us. We'll close with a track from the Wilco album "Summerteeth." A deluxe 20th anniversary reissue of the album was released last month.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'M ALWAYS IN LOVE")
WILCO: (Singing) Why, I wonder, is my heart full of holes? The feeling goes but my hair keeps growing. Will I set the sun on a big-wheeled wagon? Oh, I'm bragging - I'm always in love
GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer this week is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Kayla Lattimore. Our associate producer of digital media is Molly Seavey-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. I'm Terry Gross.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'M ALWAYS IN LOVE")
WILCO: (Singing) Like a bird in a cage, it's for you I swoon. I'm always in love. I don't get the connection. This is only a test. I hope I do my best. You know I won't forget.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE PARKER'S "WHITE CHRISTMAS")
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