by Jessi Colter
Making my way through the rest of the day, I silently repeated the phrase.
One modest thought.
One plain idea.
One path forward.
One startling insight.
Five heartfelt words.
Oh well, there’s always God.
Chapter 15
STORMS NEVER LAST
THE STORY OF MY RELATIONSHIP WITH WAYLON IS ALL IN MY songs. In the first half of the seventies, a dynamically creative period for us both, I wrote more prolifically than at any time before or since. I wrote because I had to. Writing was the only way to voice the warring factions in my mind. Writing was my way of crying and coping, of celebrating and mourning, of hoping and healing. Writing kept me from reacting with impulsive rage or vindictive anger. Writing kept me from morbidity or depression. Writing kept me sane.
Because I was reconsidering my faith, I was already in an introspective space. Taken as a whole, the songs I birthed bear all my contradictory attitudes. I wrote enough original songs to fill two whole albums, thus eschewing the need for covers. Both those albums—I’m Jessi Colter and Jessi—were recorded for Capitol and coproduced by Waylon and Ken Mansfield, a leading producer who’d worked with the Beach Boys and the Beatles, not to mention Merle Haggard and Buck Owens.
Some wondered why Waylon himself didn’t produce me. The reason was wisdom. When it came to my music, he knew that he lacked objectivity. He thought everything I did was great, even those songs that expressed my equivocation about him. He figured that a more dispassionate and experienced producer would serve me better.
Ken was great. Like Chet Atkins, he was extremely supportive of my artistry. He saw my deep involvement in writing and saw no reason to include outside songs.
“Your record needs to make a personal statement,” he said. “And since your songs couldn’t be more personal, let’s include them all.”
That statement was music to my ears—the music I had made and was going to make in my own peculiar mode of self-therapy.
I suppose the most therapeutic of this early batch of songs was one I wrote based on a caption from a magazine I’d seen in a doctor’s office. After a tornado had devastated her home, in a moment of brave hope, a resident said, “Storms never last.”
Well, due to rumors regarding Waylon, my marriage had already suffered several tornadoes. Yet he was always happy to have me on the road with him where he featured me as part of the show.
I made most of those trips, but not all. There were times when my responsibility for Jennifer and for Waylon’s children required that I stay home. When Waylon was home, he was always respectful of me. But when on those very few occasions he was out on the road without me, the rumors would start again—he was with still another willing woman. Those stories led to a series of ongoing storms.
When Waylon first heard the song, he rightly predicted it would be a standard. But he didn’t like the first line—“Storms never last, do they, Waylon?”
“Change ‘Waylon’ to ‘baby’ so it won’t be personal.”
I followed his advice and, as a result, the song has been sung by many other artists. But nonetheless it was written with Waylon in mind. It is our duet version, sung some years after my initial solo effort, that I cherish above all others:
Storms never last do they, baby
Bad times all pass with the winds
Your hand in mine steals the thunder
You make the sun want to shine
I followed you down so many roads, baby
I picked wild flowers and sung you soft sad songs
And every road we took, God knows,
our search was for the truth
And the storm brewin’ now won’t be the last
The last line—“the storm brewin’ now won’t be the last”—proved prophetic.
As I listen to many of the songs that emerged from the early years of my marriage to Waylon, I distinctly remember first feeling one way, and then another. In songs like “You Ain’t Never Been Loved (Like I’m Going to Love You),” I expressed steely determination that the strength of my love was great enough for the both of us. Yet in “Is There Any Way You’ll Stay Forever?”—a soul rocker—uncertainty crops up:
You’re a man who does his walkin’ like
he’s got some place to go
You’re a man who does his talkin’ like he
knows something I don’t know
You’re a man whose hand I’d hold down any lonely road
Is there any way you’ll stay forever?
Some of these songs can be understood literally. I really did believe that Waylon had never been loved by anyone as I loved him; I really did worry whether he would stay forever. Yet other songs employed stories with other proper names. I employed these other names not to mask my feelings, but to create more dramatic settings. Underneath the mask, the writer’s emotions were on full display.
The most complex and at the same time simplest of these songs turned out later to be among my best known. It was a slow, mournful ballad and didn’t become a hit until years after I wrote it. Its theme concerned confused identity. I called it “I’m Not Lisa.”
I’m not Lisa, my name is Julie
Lisa left you years ago
My eyes are not blue, but mine won’t leave you
Till the sunlight has touched your face
She was your morning light
Her smile told of no night
Your love for her grew
With each rising sun
And then one winter day, his hand led her away
She left you here drowning in your tears
Here, where you’ve stayed for years
Crying, Lisa, Lisa
Of course I’m not Lisa or Julie. In fact, I’m not really Jessi. I’m Mirriam. But Jessi the writer imagined Julie the lover whose man confused her for another. I could picture Waylon easily confusing me for someone else in his past. I didn’t accuse him of doing so—and I wasn’t even convinced that he had. But I could imagine it. I could imagine it enough to weave the story into a song.
I could also imagine a woman searching for a man who had left her but now seeks to find her. Waylon had deep brown eyes, so in this song—to make certain it would not be taken literally—I took poetic license in depicting lost love. I asked, “What’s Happened to Blue Eyes?”
I’m looking for blue eyes, has anyone seen him?
Don’t you tell me, he gave up on me
I’m looking for blue eyes, I’ve got to find him
Oh something tells me, he’s looking for me
There was a time when blue eyes
said there was no other
His one and only love he swore I’d be
There was a time when his blue eyes
saw clearer than mine did
Storms and rain, tears and pain, bring me back his way
Love lost and found, passing storms, uncertain identity, certain commitments, broken promises, unbroken devotion—these were the subjects that preoccupied me as I settled into my unsettling roles as writer, wife, mother, lover, recording artist, and costar.
Chapter 16
OUTLAW
MY OWN CAREER, AS EXCITING AS IT WAS IN THE EARLY SEVENTIES, never took precedent over my primary concern, my family.
My mother, then sixty-nine, was not in the best physical health, while her spiritual health was more robust than ever. Waylon would often fly her and Dad to Nashville for long visits. Many were the times Waylon and I came crawling in from an all-night songwriting session in the studio, only to be greeted by my mother, fresh as a daisy. When she looked at me with those loving eyes of hers, I never felt ridicule or judgment. I saw Jesus.
I cherish the memory of coming upon Mother, who, spotting a pair of Waylon’s boots in the hall closet, took them out, lay hands over them, and blessed them.
“These boots represent the man’s strength,” she said. “Now I ask God to watch over him and let him know the true source of s
trength.”
My parents also enjoyed coming to our shows and had nothing but praise for our music.
After one particular show, Mother came into my dressing room.
“I know that God is doing a work in you,” she said.
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“I had a dream and God showed me you saying, ‘It’s so hard coming home.’ I can feel your spirit lightening, sweetheart. You’ve been carrying some heavy baggage. I can only imagine the freedom that comes when you put down the bags and walk in the light.”
“I can’t explain why I ever moved away from that light.”
“You don’t have to explain. People move in and out of shadows. Some get stuck in the darkness. But you’re not the kind to get stuck, Mirriam. You’re always on the go. You’ve been that way ever since you were a little girl. You’re a searcher. And you know what you’re searching for.”
“I do?”
“Of course you do, dear. You’re searching for yourself in God. God surrounds us. He’s everywhere. He doesn’t get lost. We do.”
When I mentioned to Mother that I had attended church in Nashville, it didn’t at all bother her that, unlike her nondenominational pentecostal services, this congregation was Baptist.
“I bet they sing some of the same hymns you sang growing up,” said Mother.
“Yes, and I love them!”
“It’s music that brought you to God, Mirriam, and it’s music that will bring you back.”
Waylon’s music was evolving in ways I found thrilling. But the thrills had come at a cost. In 1972, he contracted hepatitis from a dental treatment gone awry. For months he walked around in pain. After so many years of exhausting travel, he was spent.
“Sometimes I feel like it’s over,” he told me. “How many years can I keep bangin’ around the honky-tonks? The IRS is on my tail, not to mention my ex-wives. Far as record sales, I never get ahead of the studio costs and packaging fees they pile on. Besides, I think I’ve gone about as far as I can go with Chet.”
I’m certain that Chet Atkins loved Waylon. The two men had great respect for each other. But Chet had had a hard time with artists who, like Waylon, he labeled as pill-heads. The designation wasn’t inaccurate. Brilliant singer-songwriters like Don Gibson and Roger Miller, the funniest man in Nashville, had given Chet fits. Their volatility ran counter to Chet’s laid-back disposition. Chet trafficked in calmness while these guys were nothing if not hyper.
After several years of working with Waylon, Chet grew weary. He wanted to put Waylon on a schedule while making sure Waylon’s sound conformed with Chet’s highly successful Nashville sound. That often meant imposing sweet strings—often sugary sweet strings—and background singers for soothing harmonies.
But Waylon wasn’t interested in anything sugary or smooth. He often said that in those days Nashville’s kind of assembly-line music was trying too hard to be pretty, while he was determined to stay raw. Waylon wanted to rock. Waylon wanted to lay bare his troubled soul in songs that did not necessarily fit in with Chet’s time-honored system. Waylon also didn’t want to be restricted to recording in Chet’s corporate studio. He found that environment stifling. Finally, and most critically, Waylon wanted to challenge Nashville’s locked-in business procedures. He thought his contract was weighted on the side of the record company. He wanted creative freedom and a bigger piece of the financial pie.
As long as Lucky Moeller was running Waylon’s career, nothing much changed. Lucky was a get-along, go-along fixture in the country music establishment. It was enough if his artists kept touring and recording. He had no interest in rewriting the playbook.
Neil Reshen, an accountant-manager from New York City, relished rewriting the playbook. Waylon’s drummer Richie Albright had made the introduction, telling Waylon, “You’re not going to like or trust this guy, but hire him. It’ll be the best thing you ever did.”
When Waylon and I met Neil, we understood what Richie meant. He was a fast-talking New Yorker with a distinctly un-Nashville demeanor. Nothing laid-back about him. From the first remark on, Neil was in your face.
“I need to be in RCA’s face,” he said. “I need to be in Chet Aktins’s face. I need to hit RCA with an audit.”
The audit was Neil’s specialty. He explained how in working with clients as different as Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, and the Mothers of Invention, he had assaulted record companies head-on.
“They’re snakes,” he said. “They cheat, they connive, they hide money, they generate rigged royalty statements. Their chief goal is to charge every possible expense against you so you wind up with minus earnings.”
“Hoss,” Waylon told Neil, “you’re preaching to the choir.”
Then Waylon turned to me and asked, “What do you think, hon?”
“I think Mr. Neil Reshen is just the man we need.”
Our instincts proved right. Neil’s energy boosted Waylon out of the doldrums. Unlike Lucky Moeller, Neil couldn’t care less about alienating the powers-that-be. His forceful negotiations turned the Nashville establishment on its ear. Within a remarkably short period of time, he’d renegotiated Waylon’s royalty rate, improving it dramatically. He also won his demands that Waylon be given creative freedom and the right to record wherever he wanted. In short, it was an across-the-board victory.
Lonesome, On’ry and Mean was the first in a series of brilliant Waylon records to come. He sang scorching versions of Johnny Cash’s “Gone to Denver,” Willie Nelson’s “Pretend I Never Happened,” and Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee.” The most startling thing about the album, though, might have been the cover. The clean-cut Waylon was gone. The new Waylon had long hair and a scruffy beard.
“Hope you don’t mind the new look, darlin’,” he said to me.
I couldn’t have cared less. “You couldn’t be bad-looking if you tried,” I said.
When Mother saw the new image, though, she was less forgiving.
“Son,” she said, “that beard and mustache sure looks like a bunch of nasty ants going to a funeral.”
It was a little shocking to hear Mother talk that way. On the other hand, for all her spiritual devotion, she had no problem telling it like it is.
Neil Reshen did more than rewrite Waylon’s record deal. He also booked him in places he’d never played before—like Max’s Kansas City in Manhattan, the home of cutting-edge rock like the New York Dolls and Velvet Underground. Waylon looked out into the audience and saw a gender-bender crowd of freakish proportions. He almost freaked himself.
“What are they gonna think of me?” he asked.
“They’re gonna love you,” I answered.
And sure enough, the downtown avant-garde hipsters loved Waylon and laughed when he told them, “Hope you like my music, but if you don’t, don’t say nothing mean ’cause if you do and ever show up in Nashville, we’ll kick your backside.”
From that point on, there was virtually no venue Waylon couldn’t play and no audience he couldn’t win over.
We worked the Troubadour in Hollywood, ground zero for the LA singer-songwriter crowd, and opened for the Grateful Dead on a national tour. The deadheads loved Waylon, and so did the Hell’s Angels, who began showing up in droves. Two Hell’s Angels—Boomer Baker and Deakon Proudfoot—became the backbone of our devoted security team. When Waylon sang his sad songs, the Angels weren’t ashamed to cry openly.
In addition to upgrading Waylon’s bookings, Neil also garnered him national press in Time and Newsweek. Somewhere along the line, Hazel Smith, a local publicist who championed Waylon’s music, christened his art as Outlaw. The name stuck. It seemed to apply not only to Waylon but to other artists working outside the tight-and-narrow Nashville box—Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Tompall Glaser.
Waylon wasn’t entirely comfortable with the designation because of his inherent dislike of all labels. At the same time, when he saw it catching on, he understood its value.
“After all,” he said,
“when Bob Dylan wrote in ‘John Wesley Harding’ that ‘to live outside the law you must be honest,’ I could certainly relate.”
When it came to Outlaw Country, Waylon never claimed to be its first practitioner. He credited Hank Williams. He always spoke lovingly of Hank’s Luke the Drifter recitations, “Pictures from Life’s Other Side” and “Too Many Parties and Too Many Pals.”
“Anything I do in Nashville,” Waylon would say in practically every interview, “is nothing compared to Hank. We’re all living in his long, lanky shadow.”
Waylon’s most abiding Outlaw buddy was Willie Nelson. Leaving Nashville for Austin, Willie had tapped into a younger alternative audience without alienating more traditional fans. Willie and Waylon had more in common than their Texas birthrights. They were both rebels, both rugged individualists, both tied to the deepest roots of American music without conforming to any one style. They both thought they could sing anything. And they could.
Also like Waylon, Willie never fit into the Nashville mode. It wasn’t until he left Chet Atkins and RCA and started making records like Shotgun Willie, Phases and Stages, and Red Headed Stranger that he came into his own as a solo artist. These were albums that both influenced and were influenced by the classic Waylon records that were released in the same early seventies time frame: Honky Tonk Heroes, This Time, The Ramblin’ Man, and Dreaming My Dreams.
Willie’s first Fourth of July Picnic in Dripping Springs, Texas, in 1973 was a watershed event, bringing together hillbillies, hippies, rednecks, radicals, and everyone in between. Waylon and I were on the bill.
Waylon’s friendship with Willie, like his friendship with Johnny Cash, was deep. They had only an occasional disagreement. I used to say, “Willie and Waylon have a stupid love.” No doubt, Waylon had a soft spot for Willie. At the same time, there was a slight undercurrent of competition, but their musical souls were aligned. When it came to taking on the music business, they were comrades in arms. I saw them as daring and brave artists who forged the future of country music, even as they honored its past.