I did another vocal, and Richie came out to the studio, on the excuse that he had to adjust my microphone. He made sure to turn it off before he joined me.
“Where is that shit?” he hissed.
I said, “First of all, you don’t need to know.”
“Where is it at?” he asked again.
“It’s all right,” I told him. “It just went flat in there,” and I motioned with my eyes toward the baseboard, behind the vocal booth.
He moved a few baffles around and grabbed the outer package. He invented some pretext and took it away down in the basement. He got rid of it in a crawl space under the stairs, right in front of their eyes.
Then Richie came back for the package containing the coke. They would’ve followed us to the bathroom; they were starting to get suspicious about all the movement. We needed a diversion. George Lappe, who had introduced us to Neil, came in the studio about this time, ranting and raving. He worked for us, and I started chewing his ass out, telling him “George, goddamnit, settle down.” Everybody was watching me give him the business, shouting back and forth across the room. As I held their attention, Richie snuck into the toilet and gave it a good flush.
When he heard that water going down, the DEA guy flinched. “Waylon, where is that shit?”
I said, “If it was ever here, it’s gone now.” And he knew it.
Richie came out grinning, drying his hands off.
They never did find anything, but sometimes people just see what they’re programmed to see. When I returned to the studio the next morning, there, plain as the sun, was one of those cocaine vials lying right next to my stool.
It was touch-and-go for about three or four days. They had found a couple of plastic bags in a trash can to the left of the toilet, which had a cocaine “presence.” I was clean. Still, the next morning they took me downtown to be fingerprinted at the federal marshal’s office. “Damn, I hate this,” said the marshal as he was rolling my fingers through the ink.
I said, “Shit, well don’t do it.”
They arrested me for possession and conspiracy. Any time they’d ask me about the drugs I’d say, “Where I come from, possession means ‘got it,’ and you ain’t got it.”
I didn’t have it, either. I was so mad, because I knew what had happened. The whole thing could have been avoided. It all started because Neil had been out of the country getting a quickie divorce. In fact, I’ve always believed that it was his soon-to-be ex-wife who tipped the DEA that there were drugs being shipped.
Before he left, Neil was supposed to take care of a personal matter for me. I had met this girl who had brain cancer, and I had bought her a trip to Jamaica with a friend of hers. She had never been anywhere. Neil was supposed to set it up, but in his rush to get out of the country he hadn’t gotten to it, and he’d entrusted it to his assistant. It was almost time for the girls to get on the plane, and nothing had been done. I called his assistant and let him have it, both barrels.
To make me happy, this assistant sent me a “package.” It was a peacemaking thing, because I usually got my drugs from California. I didn’t take off-the-street stuff. The path led from Colombia to L.A. to me, usually delivered personally. But in this case, he had sent it via air courier.
When it didn’t come the next day, he called me wondering if I’d gotten a package from him. He still didn’t let on what it was. He wanted it to be a surprise. Neither one of us knew it had lain in the delivery office overnight unopened, and suspicious, they’d called in the DEA to see it. The Feds took some of the cocaine out and shipped it on, then called to say it would arrive at so-and-so time. But they slipped up when the girls brought it over to the studio instead of my office; they didn’t have a search warrant for the studio.
Still, it didn’t matter. They had showed their hand, and they couldn’t back down now. Nor could I. When you see yourself spread across the front pages—”Waylon Jennings Arrested for Possession of Cocaine, Facing Up to Fifteen Years”—it gets to you a little bit. I was feeling hunted, like an animal. I wouldn’t go home. I checked into a hotel, and they parked agents in the rooms on either side of me.
It was a media feeding frenzy, like sharks smelling blood in the water. I couldn’t go anywhere without a swarm of reporters clustered around me. Richie whacked one camera man with a Coke can when I was going to see my lawyer, and got himself charged with assault and battery. He was a hotheaded little fart. We always accused him of picking on people he had to leap up to hit. He wasn’t afraid of anything.
There was still no evidence. As wild-in-the-streets as I’d been, they couldn’t dig up any additional dirt on me. Hal Hardin was the federal district attorney who was given the job of prosecuting me, and he called all my friends in, trying to scare them. Finally he had to admit he couldn’t get anybody to say anything bad about me. I was glad to hear that. No one knew much of anything.
Neil thought we should get any possible witnesses ready for the lawyers. “Leave those people alone,” I told him. They had already given immunity to one of the girls who picked up the package, even though she had no idea what she was carrying. “They don’t know one damn thing.”
I told everyone who might be summoned, “If they get you in that room, asking a bunch of questions, tell them the truth if you know the answer. Don’t try to save me. I’m going to be all right. But if they catch you in a lie, I won’t be fine, because they’re going to say to me that they’ve got you for perjury. If I don’t come clean, they’re going to put you in jail. And that’s when I’m going to have to tell anything I know.
“Just don’t lie. Don’t speculate. If they ask you a question, and you do know what the answer is, tell them, because they probably know you know. If you don’t know, you’re in no trouble at all.”
I found out right there that if you’re ever in a situation where they try to scare you, you’re dead if you show fear. But if you don’t fade under their pressure, you scare them. It helps to be a good card player. I saw that. They got nervous, and I was never nervous. There’s only two things they can do, I thought: put me in jail or leave me alone.
The longer it took for them to find the evidence, the more popular I became. In the black bars over on Jefferson Street they’d be watching the news on television, and when the announcer would say “Waylon Jennings arrested … and they still have not found any cocaine,” they’d all whoop and holler and go crazy. I was becoming a folk hero. Everywhere I went, to my lawyer’s office, to have a cup of coffee across the street, television cameras and reporters would be chasing me. Chet Atkins once told me that I was getting so much free publicity that he thought about committing a crime himself.
After four or five days of this, they still hadn’t found any cocaine. Finally, at one station, the newscaster turned the whole question around. “You know,” he said, “we haven’t ever thought about one thing. What if Waylon’s innocent?” And I was, until proven guilty. The case and subsequent brouhaha would continue for months, and wind up costing me about a hundred thousand dollars in legal fees, but from then on I knew the charges wouldn’t stick.
Jay Goldberg orchestrated my defense. He’s one of the greatest lawyers in the world, and when he got into his legal mode, he was an artist. He worked with Robert Kennedy when the Justice Department went after the Teamsters, and has represented everyone from Donald Trump to names that had best be left unsaid. He came down on his own when he heard I was arrested, and showed up for the preliminary hearing. He practically stunned the courtroom when he walked in; the prosecutors knew they didn’t have a chance against him.
I even wrote a song about the bust. “Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out of Hand” talked about a “New York posse” that came down “protecting you from me…. Was it singing through my nose that got me busted by the man?” Jay almost jumped out of a building when he first heard the song. “You can’t put that out,” he said. “All that is is a confession.” It was the first hit confession, that’s for sure.
The thing about it was that people knew I wouldn’t sell drugs. I might have been hooked on them, but the only way I could “distribute” them was by offering a spoon to some of my good-time buddies, of which I had more than a few. Hal Hardin had to finally admit that “He does drugs, but he’s not a criminal.”
I even had a preacher send me the word: “Waylon, just because you’re a drug addict don’t mean you can’t go to heaven.”
It was getting caught that made me mad. It brought on a paranoia of getting trapped with my pants down again. I knew they were tapping my phones; I knew when they had people following me. I had “friends” alerting me to what was happening. I’d get a call and the voice would say “C’mon, let’s go for a ride,” and when we’d get in the car they’d tell me who was checking my phone, and on what line. I had a couple of ex-FBI guys periodically inspect my home and office. After a while, finding out a lot of nothing, they just let me alone.
* * *
One thing the bust didn’t do was slow down my drug use. I thought that I could handle it and not let it handle me. But sometimes you can get very insulated and isolated in this business. There were weeks I would not get off the tour bus except to take a shower in the hotel. It was my safe haven. Pretty soon you begin to think you’re above society’s rules, and subconsciously you’re not one of “them.” It’s a form of ivory tower.
All that mattered to me was having a good stash. If I got down to a quarter of an ounce, I’d start freaking. I’d hide little security bundles in briefcases around the house, only to come on them years later. With the pills, I was always chasing the high amphetamines gave me during the first six months. I lost it somewhere along the way, that feeling. And then along came cocaine, and it’s the same thing, only smoother. And more often.
I kept a constant level of drugs inside me. I’d do a two- or three-inch line every twenty minutes or so; more than that sometimes. I always made sure to ground it up right, so it wouldn’t eat holes in my nose, but I inhaled it with such force I’d bypass my sinuses. It just went right down in my lungs. I’d put it in a straw and sniff it so hard it would shoot straight back into my brain.
Maybe speeding like that was a way I could keep up with all my ideas. I needed a lot of energy to match my own inner momentum. Once I got in the studio it was hard for me to stop chasing my tail. Sometimes I’d work so long and so hard that I’d be hearing things. Once I decided to produce, engineer, mix, and master my own album. I was so deep into it, four or five days with hardly a break, that at one point I thought I was hearing a bass from another track. I was cussing and pulling faders up and down and looking for that little devil, and finally I found it wasn’t on there at all. I looked around and there was nobody but me who was hearing it. Whoops.
The only time I felt in tune with myself was playing on stage. That was my norm, under the hot lights and with the band loud and full in back of me. Nobody knew how I did it some nights. I’d be on the bus, and they’d be trying to get me to wash my face before I went on. I’d be hyperventilating and it didn’t look like I was going to make it. Then I’d get my hat on and grab my guitar, walk out there, and everything would settle down. It was like the pulsing in my blood duplicated the rush of performance adrenaline.
I was on the loose. I didn’t know what I intended to do; I didn’t intend to do anything, which is exactly what it amounted to. I knew I was going to die if I kept it up, burning the candle at both ends and the middle for a week and more, week after month after year. I thought, well, I’ll die, but that’ll be all right. The last thing I cared about was that it was wrecking my health, or that it was illegal. I’d heard about experiments with rats and cocaine. They’d put food in one corner and cocaine in the other, and the rats would eat that cocaine until they died.
I was chasing the high, but I never could catch it. I’d be recording and I’d tell the band and engineers that I’d be back in a minute. Everybody would be waiting and I wouldn’t show up until the next day. I’d go out driving, park the car somewhere, and forget where I left it. I lost four or five cars that way. I’d order a dozen cheeseburgers, take a snort, and pass out for two days. I guess there’s a little bit of Elvis in all of us.
The first time I knew I had a problem was in the back of a limousine going from the hotel to the gig. Richie was riding with me. I had only been doing cocaine for a couple of years, but he looked at me with the concern of someone who had spent a dozen lifetimes on the road bearing witness to my every mood swing and sway.
“You’ve got to get back and lighten up,” he said simply. “You’re really into it too hard.” That’s all he wrote. It kind of pissed me off, but I did slow down.
For a week or two I didn’t do anything. He knew how to trick me into it. He’d tell me, “You’ll notice that if you’re off for a couple of weeks you can get that good high again.” I was all for that.
Now if I could only figure out where I put my Cadillac.
* * *
A couple of weeks after the bust, the CMA released its nominations for the year. Despite the fact that I refused to participate in the proceedings, claiming that artists shouldn’t compete with each other, they went ahead and put me up in six categories, including Entertainer of the Year, Male Vocalist, Vocal Duo (with Willie), and Album of the Year (for Wanted: The Outlaws).
If anything, it proved that maybe the CMA needed me more than they thought.
The CMA wouldn’t agree to withdraw my name. Willie and I decided not to attend. I told him, “I didn’t go when they weren’t giving me awards, and I’m not going when they do.”
Willie said he wouldn’t either, unless they changed the dress code to where nobody wears a tuxedo. The next thing I know, he’s running up and down the aisles, dressed in his Sunday best. All the while, they were making jokes about me. Jerry Reed said I’d rather park cars at Opryland than come inside. Tennessee Ernie Ford added some pretty rough things about people who didn’t support their industry.
I believed then, and I do now, that the best way you pay tribute to the music you love is by doing good work within it. Not by picking up a goddamn bowling trophy.
Still, there wasn’t much doubt, CMA or no, that we were Duo of the Year. Waylon and Willie. Willie and Waylon. And we had “Luckenbach, Texas” to prove it.
Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas
With Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we’re living’s
Got us feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys
Chips Moman had co-written the song, and when he showed it to me, he used the right approach: “I got a song here and you can’t do it because your name’s in it.” I knew it was a hit song, even though I didn’t like it, and still don’t. It reminded me too much of “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues,” and it had a laidback rhythm I kept wanting to rush. I’ve never been to Luckenbach. Neither had Chips or his co-writer, Bobby Emmons.
An hour’s drive west of Austin, Luckenbach was mostly owned by one Hondo Crouch, who bought it because he wanted to keep the local honky-tonk post office open. Its population was in the single digits, which matched the song’s chart position throughout the spring of 1977, including número uno on the country charts for six weeks, and even heading into the Top Thirty of the pop charts. Jerry Jeff Walker had recorded his Viva Terlingua in Luckenbach, which had put it on the country map, a simple symbol of goin’ home. Every state has a Luckenbach; a place to get away from things.
That’s why it succeeded. Our rough brotherhood, especially as we idealized ourselves, was about “the basics of love” and the finer things in an on-the-road life: “guitars that are tuned good and firm-feeling women.” “Luckenbach” brought us geographically and spiritually back to Texas. The song was New Country—name checking Mickey Newbury and Jerry Jeff, Willie joining in on the final chorus to salute our twin W’s—and Old, with Hank Sr.’s “pain songs” our soundtrack as we rolled along the highway to a life that sidestepped our success, and made us more human.
It was making our own myth, only in a way that touched people who were themselves caught keeping up with the joneses, whether drug-induced or materially possessed. Certainly success was causing a family feud within the Outlaws; I still wasn’t talking to Tompall. Even after we settled the lawsuit, we stayed apart. I called him to say that though we’d hurt each other, and would probably never be friends again, I didn’t want him to think that I hated him. You can’t carry those feelings around with you. That’s a bigger burden than the original conflict. Tompall wouldn’t listen. I think he thought I was trying to get something out of him.
Through it all, Willie and Waylon stayed Waylon and Willie. One RCA executive kept mixing up the two. When he came to Nashville, a bean counter that had worked his way up the corporate ladder, I called him on it. “I heard that you thought Willie and Waylon were one person.”
“Ah,” he laughed. “But I know better now.”
“All us hillbillies look alike,” I told him. “So what you need to do, when you don’t know their names, is just call ’em Hoss.”
“Oh, Horse?”
I said, “No, not horse. It’s Hoss.”
“Hass?”
No, Hoss, and perhaps you better not come down here no more. I first heard the term from Ferlin Husky when I was real young. It’s a sign of respect, an affectionate nickname that means somebody who’s great at what they do. A thoroughbred, or a champion. A trusted friend.
That kind of describes Willie, though he’ll be the first to admit that he actually enjoys getting me in trouble. “It keeps Waylon alert,” he likes to say. “He could sit over there and get old and weak. I keep him young by sending him problems.”
If that was the case, I’d be a babe in arms now. I write a lot of songs about Willie, because I have never thoroughly understood him. He’s like a cartoon to me. I’ll be the first to his door when he’s in trouble, but he could screw up a two-car funeral. He’s so smart, but he never learns a thing from anything that happens to him.
Waylon Page 27