Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has two birthdays, and Under the Radar has chosen the earlier one. The album began streaming free on the band's own website on 18 September 2001, a week after the 11 September date Reprise had intended to release it on, and seven months before Nonesuch put it in shops on 23 April 2002.
The free stream was not a marketing idea. Wilco and Reprise had separated, and the label let the band leave with the rights to the masters, which meant the record existed with nobody to sell it. Putting it online was the only way to let anyone hear it, and it turned a contract dispute into one of the better-known stories in American rock.
The band that made it had already changed shape several times. Wilco came out of Uncle Tupelo, the group that did much to establish alternative country, and their 1995 debut A.M. stayed close to that template. Being There, the 1996 double album the band insisted on pricing as a single record, mixed that sound with Jeff Tweedy's punk background.
Summerteeth, in 1999, was the turn. Tweedy and the multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett made a genre-bending pop record that former drummer Ken Coomer described as the work of "two guys losing their minds in the studio". That description also fits what happened next.
The band began assembling Yankee Hotel Foxtrot at the Loft, their Chicago studio, and let the filmmaker Sam Jones record the process. On his first day of shooting he learned that Coomer had been fired and replaced by Glenn Kotche, whom Tweedy had met while playing with Jim O'Rourke at Chicago's Noise Pop Festival.
What Jones captured was a band pulling straightforward rock songs apart into something harder to like. The mixing produced repeated arguments between Tweedy and Bennett, one of them over the transition out of the nostalgic Heavy Metal Drummer and into the distortion of I'm the Man Who Loves You. Bennett left the band.
The result got Wilco labelled the American Radiohead, a comparison that says more about the moment than about the music. Under the Radar's writer describes not understanding the album at first, being put off by the chaotic drums and opaque lyrics of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, and coming round only after repeated listens, as Jesus, Etc. and Reservations and War on War each opened up.
Which date counts is a real question rather than a pedantic one. If the album is 25 this month, it is 25 as a free stream from a band with no label. If it is 25 next April, it is 25 as a Nonesuch record. More on the band's catalogue sits on our indie hub and our rock hub.
The facts
- Wilco began streaming Yankee Hotel Foxtrot free on their website on 18 September 2001.
- Reprise had intended to release it on 11 September 2001.
- The band and Reprise separated and Wilco kept the rights to the masters.
- Nonesuch gave the album a retail release on 23 April 2002.
- The album was recorded at the band's Chicago studio, the Loft.
- Ken Coomer was replaced on drums by Glenn Kotche during the sessions.
- Sam Jones filmed the making of the record.
- Jay Bennett left the band after arguments during the mixing.
How this checks out
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