Chords for Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (in 5 Minutes) | Liner Notes

_ _ _ [D] _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [G] As one of the founders of Uncle Tupelo,
Jeff Tweedy helped jumpstart the alt country movement
in the early [C] 1990s.
But in Wilco, the band that rose from Uncle Tupelo's ashes,
[Eb] the singer-songwriter set his sights
on more ambitious musical adventures.
_ _ [C] 1996's Being There was a sprawling postmodern
classic rock double LP.
The follow-up, Summer Teeth,
saw Wilco's multi-instrumentalist wizard, Jay Bennett,
layering an array of vintage keyboard and synth sounds
over Tweedy's increasingly dark and fragmented lyrics.
It was all building up to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,
[Eb] which, after a troubled gestation period,
was finally released in the spring of [A] 2002.
♪ So what I'm not, so what I'm not, there's what I'm ♪
♪ You're [E] gonna lose, _ _ _ you [Bm] have to lose.
♪ _ _
[C] Recorded at the band's gear-stuffed Chicago loft,
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot saw Wilco indulging
its [Eb] most experimental tendencies,
breaking the songs down to their barest elements
and building them back up again.
The album's opener,
the seven-minute I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,
begins with a cacophony of disorienting noise
before coalescing, barely,
around Tweedy's up-all-night vocal
and drummer Glenn Cochise's off-kilter beat.
By the song's end, randomness rules again,
with Tweedy hollering over the sound of his band
unraveling into [B] chaos.
♪ And I fell asleep and the city kept blinking ♪
♪ What was I thinking when I let you back in?
[Ab] ♪
♪ I am trying [Gbm] to break your heart.
[G] ♪
A similar sledgehammer was taken to Poor Places,
a lovely song that drifts into dissonance
as a disembodied female voice,
lifted from the mysterious Conant Project recordings,
intones the album's [Dbm] title phrase
over [G] a bed of hair-raising sonic destruction.
♪ [Gb] It's hard [Ab]
to put this into [Bb] words. _ _ _
[Gb] ♪
♪ I'm not [Ab] going outside.
[Bb] _
[Bb] ♪
♪ _ [Gb] I'm not [Ab]
going [Bb] outside.
_ _ _ _ _ [Gb]
[G] ♪
Cochise, who replaced Wilco's original drummer Ken Coomer
during the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sessions,
was essential in bringing the band's new ideas to fruition.
A virtuoso [Eb] player as comfortable
with both straight-ahead roots rock
as with the hypnotic minimalism of Steve Riley,
his keen rhythmic instincts [G] gave the album's songs
a fresh flavor, whether on the krautrock-inspired camera
in War on War, or the barn-burning rave-up
I'm [Eb] the Man Who Loves You,
or on the album's poppiest number,
the nostalgic heavy metal drummer.
[D] ♪ Oh, I sincerely miss those [C] heavy metal bands.
♪
♪ We used to go see [A] on the landing in [B] the summer.
♪
♪ [D] She fell in love with the drummer.
♪
♪ [C] She fell in love with another.
♪
♪ She fell in love.
♪
The Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sessions yielded
some of Wilco's most powerful music,
but it also marked the end of the close partnership
between Tweedy and Jay Bennett,
as [G] depicted unflinchingly in Sam Jones's 2002 documentary,
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.
[Gm] _ Bennett left the band before the album's release,
and tragically passed away in 2009,
the result of an accidental painkiller overdose.
Despite the personal friction between Tweedy and Bennett,
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is their crowning achievement.
Co-writes such as Jesus Etc.
and Ashes of American [C] Flags
remain fan favorite mainstays
of the band's live sets to this day.
[B] ♪ I'm down on my hands and [D]
knees.
[A] ♪
♪ Every time the doorbell rings. _
[D] ♪
♪ I shake like a toothache.
[Gb]
♪
[G] ♪ When I hear myself sing. _
[C] ♪
Despite its offhanded title,
Jesus Etc.
is one of Wilco's most wrenching tunes.
[Eb] It's already world weary lyrics
[G] taking on new significance in the days
following the tragic events of September 11th, 2001.
[Dm] ♪ Jesus [Am] don't cry.
_ _ [Dm] _ _ _ ♪
♪ You [Bb] can rely on me [F] honey.
♪
♪ You can [Gm] come back anything [C] you want.
♪
_ [G] The finishing touches on Yankee [C] Hotel Foxtrot
were provided by Jim O'Rourke,
whose 1997 Bad Timing LP Tweedy
had recently fallen under the spell of.
When Tweedy invited the avant-garde musician producer
to mix the album's tracks,
O'Rourke [C] told him,
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Reprise [G] Records rejected Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
when Wilco delivered the final product in mid-2001,
leaving the band [Eb] without a label.
But after Yankee Hotel Foxtrot began streaming for free
on Wilco's [G] website in September of 2001,
the album became a cause celeb among [Eb] critics and fans
and soon found a home at Nonesuch Records.
Ironically, a label that shared a parent company with Reprise.
With Sam Jones's evocative portrait
of Chicago's Marina City Towers on its [G] cover,
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot topped countless year-end lists
[Eb] and went on to become Wilco's best-selling LP,
cementing Tweedy and co.'s.' reputation as one of [C] America's most consistently rewarding rock [B] bands. ♪ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ I need a camera tonight, _ _ [E] _ tonight,