Heavy Metal Drummer

The song looks back on heavy metal bands playing on the landing in summer, which Songfacts places at Laclede's Landing on the St. Louis riverfront. Tweedy said people often assumed he had been the one playing Kiss covers, and that he had not: as a punk and indie fan in Uncle Tupelo he had felt superior to those bands. In 2004 he called it a reminder not to be judgmental and reductive. Rolling Stone, ranking it 411th of the 500 greatest songs in 2021, said it carried the sweetest melody of Wilco's career.

Tweedy wrote it alone, and the band recorded it at The Loft with Tweedy on vocals and guitar, Bennett on keyboards, Stirratt on bass, Kotche on drums and Bach on keyboards and guitar. The ten-second passage from Ashes of American Flags into it is one of the points Tweedy and Bennett fight over in I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. It was issued as a single on the album's release day, 23 April 2002.

Live

setlist.fm counts 966 Wilco performances, making it the band's eighth most played song, most recently in Mantova in September 2026. American Songwriter called it the ultimate crowd-pleaser and noted that Tweedy sometimes swaps Kiss for local bands, such as Phish in Vermont. Live versions appear on Kicking Television and the Pageant show in the 2022 Super Deluxe set. Old School Freight Train played it bluegrass in 2004, Parquet Courts folded it into a collage of Wilco songs, and Slaughter Beach, Dog ended 104 Degrees with a line naming it. The upload in the hypersongs web is the album version.