'Wilco' history captures a young man as tortured artist

What emerges is a deftly drawn portrait of Tweedy as a hard-working artist jabbing convention with his guitar pick.

Tweedy, born in 1967, established a career-defining pattern when he rejected the blue collar expectations of Belleville, Ill. "I saw the life my dad had, and I knew I didn't want it," he tells Kot. "He had to take care of a family basically since he was seventeen, and the only real outlet he had was a twelve-pack after working all day. I saw the guitar as my outlet."

In the tradition of teenage insurgents, Tweedy turned to rock 'n' roll -- "I was maimed by rock 'n' roll," he would later sing -- and found a kindred spirit in Jay Farrar. At least for a spell. With dollops of country and punk, Farrar and Tweedy built the band Uncle Tupelo, whose first album, "No Depression," was recorded in Boston and released in 1990. Farrar, stern and driven, was the band's artistic leader, but Tweedy, a self-described "late bloomer," gradually matured as a singer-songwriter, and a nasty cocktail of ambitions poisoned their friendship.

From a distance Uncle Tupelo now looks like a passing thunderstorm: loud, gloomy, and gone. But its hoarse aesthetic incited the "alternative-country" movement, and Tweedy claimed two personal victories -- the courtship of his wife, Sue Miller, and the end of an incipient love affair with alcohol -- before Farrar pulled the plug on the band. Tweedy "wanted to nip it in the bud, to avoid having to deal with more serious issues down the road," Miller says. "He's a very emotional person anyway, and alcohol isn't a good thing for him to be around."