Nels Cline

Nels Cline is one of those guitarists I keep circling back to. He came up in the Los Angeles jazz scene of the 1980s, often alongside his twin brother, then refused to stay in any single lane, crossing into punk and alternative rock before joining Wilco in 2004. That fearless disregard for genre boundaries is what makes him so compelling to me. He can summon walls of noise or whisper the most delicate phrase, and his curiosity has never dimmed with age. I admire artists who treat a single instrument as an endless frontier, and Cline plays like there is always more terrain to explore.

Name (English)

Nels Cline

Name (Japanese)

ネルス・クライン

Reading

ねるす・くらいん

Born

January 4, 1956 (age 70)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Monkey

Origin

Los Angeles, California, United States

Occupation

composer / guitarist / jazz musician / jazz guitarist / musician

High school

University High School

University

University High School

• Official sitehttps://www.nelscline.com
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/nelscline/
• Xhttps://x.com/nelscline
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nels%20Cline
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%8D%E3%83%AB%E3%82%B9%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AF%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q617368

Tags

• California
• composer
• guitarist
• jazz musician

Last updated

2026-06-21

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.