The Song That Changed My Life

Here’s the song – and the album, and the moment I came across it – that changed everything.
A 9/11 Soundtrack

In order to talk about the song that changed my life, I should talk about the weekend that changed everything. It starts with opening the mail on September 8, 2001, on one of those hot, early September, Florida afternoons. 

My friend had just gotten an internship at Matador Records in New York City, and he sent me a copy of Wilco’s newest (unreleased) album. At the time, Matador was recruiting Wilco because the Chicago band had just been dropped by their label after turning in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

When I headed inside and put the disk in, I stood pretty much transfixed. And that was just the first song, “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”, a burbling, sonic experiment that sounded worlds apart form the rather alt-country band I’d known.

After I listened, I put it away for a few days, because I was headed down to a wedding. I needed something a little more familiar for that ride; something with a few more hooks, and so I packed Wilco’s sing-song-y Summerteeth. 

I got back from the wedding on September 10, and on September 11, 2001, I woke up to a very different world, as we all did. After a class that evening, I put in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot for the second time, and the third, and the fourth, and was never really quite the same again. 

“Jesus, Etc.” 

Very soon after, everything became associated with that album. 

I wouldn’t be walking down College Avenue; I would “assassin down the avenue.” 

I turned up “War on War” as loud as I could. Everyone cried all over, overseas. 

Funny, I even stopped believing in touchdowns – when you are in Gainesville, FL during football season, you know how hard this might be. 

I would go for long walks with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on my Discman, wondering what was going on. 

That’s when I wrapped all my faith around “Jesus, Etc.”. I played it over and over again, not as a song, but a eulogy. 

Even now, I can’t possibly put into words what that song did to me over the course of the three months that I only listened to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. 

Listening to the song’s opening strings, I’d stop in the street, paralyzed at the American-ness of the song; just to be alone with these words:

“Jesus, don’t cry…”

“Tall buildings shake, voices escape…”

“Skyscapers are scraping together…” 

You couldn’t listen to “Jesus, Etc.” in the days after 9/11 and not be moved. The production is about as fine as the band would ever achieve; a keyboard and bass line bounce over a snare drum; the string section melts over Tweedy’s lost landscapes. A pedal steel comes in at 2:00. Our love? It’s all of God’s money. Bitter melodies – turning our orbit around.

In another of one of those coincidences that propped up from every corner of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the song after “Jesus, Etc.” is the autumnal “Ashes of American Flags”. 

It’s almost two decades since 9/11. I hear “Jesus, Etc.” now as a small light from those confusing days.

Time has moved on, new songs have been made. Different events have unfolded. And Jeff Tweedy was right about the stars. Each one is a setting sun.