Waylon

by Waylon Jennings

  I was feeling bad. I couldn’t get my breath. I was losing weight suddenly. I’d get dizzy spells at high altitudes. I’d be driving and have to pull over and get out of the car. We’d be in Lake Tahoe, or Aspen, and I’d turn to Jessi and grab hold of her arm, gripping her tight, leaning on her. We still couldn’t talk about it.

  Robert Duvall had asked me to produce an album. He’s a good singer, but I had to tell him I couldn’t do it. “I’m too far in on drugs,” I told him. “I’m going to have to pull up and pull back. I can’t even cut my own records.”

  Jessi herself felt drained and depleted. She’d been my rock for so long, and she was at the end of her waiting. In her gift of faith, she felt she had been tempered by her Lord, or she wouldn’t have been able to pull back and have the patience to see us through. She had inquired about treatment centers and clinics, and talked to John Cash about how he’d wrestled with his demons. I knew I was in trouble, and my friends and family had me cornered, but Jessi understood that I wasn’t the type of guy to bag and throw in the trunk of a car and get committed. If you tried to make me be something, I was too stubbornly defiant. Strength or weakness, this heel-digging probably caused me as much unnecessary trouble as it has kept me from compromising my music.

  She saw that the spirit was willing, but my flesh was weak, and getting weaker. Still, spirit can beat flesh, just like paper covers rock, or match burns paper. Resolve only flows one way. At least I was heading in the right direction.

  I’m not going to quit. I’m just going to stop.

  I never said I’d quit. I’m not going to get off.

  I’m just going to stop.

  This time. This is the time. I wasn’t even aware my heart had made a hard decision until I said it aloud.

  My body felt like a sewing machine. Always going. I had the frenzies. Every bone and every joint ached.

  “Even unknowing,” as Jessi put it, I had crossed the boundary between my past and future. I thought I would take off the month of April, clean up for thirty days, get my health back and my feet on the ground, and enjoy some of that looking-for-a-feeling when I got back. I told Jessi I’d always be a drug addict, and do cocaine, and that this was just temporary. To slow it down.

  I leased a house in Arizona with the help of my friend Bob Sikora, who was still running clubs like Mr. Lucky’s in Phoenix and owned a string of Bobby McGee’s restaurants. It was out in the desert, and I’ve always respected the spiritual purity of that stark land. Jessi’s dad had lived about eighty miles as the crow flies southeast from Phoenix, down below Superior, around Rey copper mine. It was wilderness. He built a cabin along the Gila River, and in the morning you could get up and see prints in the sand, where mountain lions, rattlesnakes, and wild boar had been.

  I’d go out there to taper off drugs, and it seemed to help. The desert would soothe me; I could exist without stimulants for weeks at a time, drawing on the desert’s silent company. Jessi’s dad built race cars in the twenties, and he had constructed auxiliary motors that ran the electricity and water, along with other gadgets. He’d tinker with them, mining his claims for molybdenum and copper, sure he was going to make a fortune. We knew he already had. In his own way, he was a genius. He had found a piece of the world that he belonged in.

  You had better respect the desert, because the desert leaves it up to you. It’s not going to help. There’s nobody you can pay to find your answer and bring it to you. You can’t set back and wait on it. The desert is going to leave you totally alone, to see if you can find the strength within yourself to survive. There are no distractions. You can’t outfox the desert. You’ll die trying.

  The house was on the desert’s edge, in Paradise Valley up by Tatum Boulevard. Though I didn’t know it, we didn’t yet have a place to go to when we left Nashville for Phoenix. The hideaway we had originally wanted had fallen through, and Bob Sikora literally talked this woman out of her home. By the time we got there, it had been stocked with groceries and was ready for us. When Jessi went into the kitchen, she opened the pantry where the dishes were kept and saw a set of china that she hadn’t seen since she was a small child and her mother had collected them from local gas stations as premiums. She couldn’t believe it, and she took it as a sign, a way of telling her that this was where we were supposed to be.

  On the night of March 31, 1984, I did all the cocaine I could and left twenty thousand dollars worth on the bus. I didn’t think I could handle withdrawal without an escape hatch, though it must’ve been frightening for Jessi to know the drugs were sitting out there, just waiting for me to have a moment of weakness. I parked the bus in the circular driveway and prepared myself to wait it out. A doctor would come in and give me vitamin shots, but otherwise I knew I was on my own.

  My body reacted as if somebody had pulled out the plug. I had sudden convulsions. It was like I was caught in a revolution, with snipers on the rooftops and battles being waged on every corner. My nerves were in a constant grind of readiness, waiting, every cell about to explode with anticipation, for some relief that just wouldn’t come. My bones hurt. I didn’t sleep. I’d wake up at all hours of the night with toxins pouring out of my body. I got sick; it was the first common cold I’d had in years, as my body flushed out the cocaine residues.

  I’d sit out on the swing in the front yard, watching the sun come up. I’d still be there when the stars began to shine. As my mind started to clear, I got to seeing the look on Jessi’s face. It was hopeless and helpless. She was so sad, watching me vacillate between life and death, unable to do more than watch me go through it. I realized then what I was doing to her, that it wasn’t just me who was under the influence of cocaine, and then I looked around at everybody around me who cared anything about me, and basically, that same look was on their faces.

  For two or three weeks, I learned how to feel my emotions again. When you’re normal, you can give as well as receive; on drugs, it all goes inward and never gets let out. I woke up one morning, toward the end, and Jessi was sitting there, by the end of the bed. I had only been asleep ten minutes. “Jessi, my spirit’s dying, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  There wasn’t anything she could do but wait, pray in her fashion, and let me know that she was holding fast, right by my side. I couldn’t have done it without Jessi. She is the most giving person I’ve ever met, and anytime I felt like I just couldn’t stand withdrawing further, she let me know, by her gentle presence, what would be waiting for me on life’s other shore.

  There was a grand piano in the house, and she sang from a big Reader’s Digest book of old songs that was on the music stand. We went for short walks. I clung close to her. She knew I needed somebody to be my partner. Shooter played in the front yard, and I watched him as I sat in the swing, knowing he was my greatest inspiration. Back at the house, Maureen, our “administrator” at Southern Comfort, practiced her art of ritualistic feeding, serving my favorite meals, sometimes six or seven a day, topping them off with peach milkshakes and little prizes for each milestone passed. I must’ve gained twenty-five pounds.

  After about three weeks, I got to where I could sit for a time and feel my mind clearing out. I realized, that’s the end of it. I waited another day to make sure about what I was thinking, though I still felt I had only “stopped.” That was my key word.

  I was in the car with Jessi one afternoon, watching the desert scenery go by, and I turned to her and asked if so-and-so knew “that I quit.” She stared at me. I realized what had just come out of my mouth. I didn’t believe that I had said that.

  “Did you hear me?” I asked her, though I was really directing the question at myself.

  It had come from deep within, and we both understood it was absolutely true. I wasn’t ever going to do drugs again, as amazing as that sounded. I had painted myself into a corner, and when I give my word, I don’t break it.

  A month after entering my own halfway house, I walked out the door, slightly shaky, but feeling strong, at least physical
ly. I was anxious to see what life was going to be like, though I didn’t dwell on the mental hurdles that were sure to come. I sniffed the fresh desert air, crisp in the morning, feeling it rush into my nose and lungs where once drugs had lived and breathed. I felt washed out.

  Back on the bus, there was still that twenty thousand dollars worth of cocaine waiting for me. The last temptation. I didn’t want to deal with it, and I wasn’t about to pass along my troubles to somebody else. I was worried that we might have a wreck and it would be found, or about the consequences if they decided to try and bust me, not knowing I’d quit.

  I went in the back, unearthed the briefcase with the coke, and took it to the front of the bus. I handed it to Jessi. “You, of all people, deserve to do with this whatever you want.”

  She went to the bathroom, poured it in the bowl, and hollered, “Hallelujah!” She was the happiest girl in the world. And I was the happiest boy.

  I had to learn how to walk into a room.

  I didn’t know what I was supposed to be like, who I was supposed to be like, or what was expected of me.

  What I did know was that all I had to do was pick up the cocaine and the straw, and I’d get my old self back.

  I would have night sweats about drugs, getting mad at myself while I slept because I usually took it in my dreams. I hated the way I looked, because once I started gaining weight, I couldn’t stop. I thought I was nothing without cocaine.

  For a long time, it was like I’d lost somebody close to me. I was in mourning, pining away. The best way I can explain it is there’s a guy over there. He’s another person. You can do anything you want to because you can blame it on him. He’s a good-time Charlie, and a lot of fun. You really like him, because he’s your escape from every damn problem you got in the whole world. And when you quit drugs, he dies. Lay out a line, and he’s alive again.

  That’s why you have to stay away from him. Change playmates and playgrounds. It’s like the crabs they sell on street corners in Mexico. If you watch, they’re just milling around, with nothing to keep them in the pan but a lip about an inch high. Until you see one try to get out and another pull him back. Your drug friends don’t want you to quit.

  It had nothing to do with how well I knew them. I called everybody and said, “If you’re going to be around me, you can’t do drugs.” That was it. If they had to do drugs, they would have to find somewhere else to do them. It worked the other way, too. When I quit drugs, the guy who sold them to me stopped dealing. He may have been an angel in disguise, because I could always rely on him to get me cocaine that was pure and hadn’t been stepped on. He kicked the habit, and I got him a job. He and his family are doing great now.

  I got out right before crack, for which I’ve always been thankful. I’d put cocaine on the end of cigarettes and smoked it, but my only experience with freebasing made me know it wasn’t for me.

  A lawyer friend came to a show one time, about three or four years before I quit, and said he had found the most wonderful high on earth. He set up the pipe and we smoked the crack. Within a minute I had a feeling come over me that if I jumped out a window, it would be fine. I could fly. Or if somebody made me mad enough, I could kill them and it would be okay.

  I got out of the chair and sat in the corner. I had enough presence of mind to know that I was in trouble, that I was not in control anymore. I hated that. While I sat there, waiting for the drug to wear off, I had the worst thoughts I ever had in my life, hateful and spiteful and mean. I wanted to bust everybody’s head in the room.

  There was something unholy about it. When the lawyer came up and asked how I liked it, I told him he better get his ass away from crack. It was poison, pure and simple.

  Later on, when Richard Pryor had burned himself freebasing, I remembered that experience. We had known each other for a while, and our mutual friend, Jennifer Lee, had called me with the news. She was distraught, and I was trying to think of something comforting to tell her. Finally, I said, “Look, they’re going to have to do a lot of skin grafting. If they need extra skin, I’ll donate some.”

  It wasn’t until I got off the phone that Basil MacDavid turned to me and said, “What do you think they’re going to do? Call him Spot?”

  I was lucky that my drug use only went so far. I knew a beautiful little girl once, and after talking with her for a while, she excused herself and disappeared into the next room. When she didn’t return I went looking for her. She was sitting at the kitchen table with a needle in her arm. She had just shot up, and the look on that perfect face was so sickening, I couldn’t bear to be in the same room. I left. I could never handle that.

  Every once in a while, to this day, I’ll run into one of my hidden stashes, a vial tucked in the corner of an old suitcase or an inch of cocaine buried in the bottom of a boot bag. Even now, my first instinct is to pick up a straw and snort it. The temptation doesn’t go away.

  When it comes, I don’t try to ignore it or get mad at myself for thinking it. I’ll say, “Man, it would be great to get high just once.” I move across the room. “Damn, I wish I had some cocaine.” Jessi’s heard me say it any number of times. She knows what I’m doing. It’s on my mind, and I’m spitting it out instead of holding it deep inside, where the craving might have a chance to take root. It lasts thirty seconds. Then I go on with my life.

  I was sitting with Shooter in a restaurant booth. He was on the inside, and he got his coloring book out. He was all of five years old.

  He put his left arm through my right, and we sat there for about an hour while he colored. Shooter hadn’t ever done that before. I’d never been able to sit so still for so long with him.

  I wasn’t about to move my arm.

  CHAPTER 11

  WILL THE WOLF SURVIVE?

  It wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

  It took me eight years to find my way back from drugs, to rediscover the creative tension in my music, the sweet spot balanced between rhythm and melody where the song generates its own momentum and all you can do is express it.

  Eight years, to be able to write a song. Eight years, to be on stage and not feel like I was boring people sick. Eight years, to figure out who I was again. To get over it.

  Eight long years. That’s not to say the work I did during that time didn’t have any value. I made some good, decent records and always sang from the heart. I hit better notes now that I wasn’t plagued by “laryngitis.” I played on the beat, instead of ahead of it. Probably only I noticed that instead of pushing myself, I was being pulled along by my own legend and the skills I’d learned in a lifetime of performing.

  Jimmy Bowen did as much for me as anybody, because he knew what I was going through. I had spent two decades on RCA and gone from being the new kid on the block to a grizzled war vet with a raft of ribbons and medals. My discography needed a book to keep straight, and I’d outlasted most executive regimes, an array of studios, and a whole generation of pressing plants.

  Sometimes history works against you. Carrying the burden of my past into each new release, it seemed like I wasn’t hearing anything new. Neither was RCA, and they’d been accustomed to larger-than-life success. When my records started selling more steadily, and less explosively, taking their time in the marketplace, they weren’t willing to look at me the same as they might a newer artist. We had peaked.

  The song “America” was my farewell anthem for RCA. I had found the original version on a Sammy Johns album in 1975 when he hit with “Chevy Van.” You couldn’t find the melody in it, though I loved what the words said. It was the time of the U.S. Olympics in 1984. I’ve always thought that Ronald Reagan didn’t do everything right, but he did give some pride back to the country; we were apologizing for being great. I got inspired by that Olympics and wanted to write a patriotic song.

  Everything I had was too corny and didn’t sound right. Then I remembered that song from nine years before. It wasn’t just flag waving. It was talking about the ideals we had fought for and the blu
nders committed in their name, and the honor that lay behind our national character. In the decade since it had been written, we had “let them come home” from Vietnam, where it had once been “You should let ’em come home.” I always thought those who went to Canada got a really bad rap. I’d have sent my boy there, too, instead of that uncalled-for place.

  “They’re all black and white and yellow too / and the Red man is right, to expect a little from you / A promise and then follow through.” I found the song again and listened to it with a decade’s distance. I changed the melody, and Jigger produced it. I even made a video to go with it, a forerunner of the way music would be watched as well as listened to from then on.

  When my contract came up for renewal in July of 1985, I didn’t resign with RCA. It was no longer a delivery of masters in their eyes. The contract had words like “mutual consent,” which translated into more partnership, less money. We were just too familiar with each other. I passed on it.

  Promises work both ways. If I’d thought RCA would have revved their engines in return for having some say-so in my records, I might never have headed off to non-Nipper pastures. But I knew it was time to try something fresh. I didn’t have the strength to do it on my own, and if I was going to work with someone, I wanted to have faith in where we were heading and know it would be a clean start.

  And sober. It was a new me, and I was learning to live with him. Bowen, at MCA, offered me the chance to take another run at it. I signed with him in September. Jimmy never gave anyone creative control or artistic freedom. When the lawyers started talking, they said he wouldn’t do it, and I wasn’t going to sign without it. Everyone broke the negotiations off.

  Bowen finally asked one day how the contracts with Waylon were going, and they said, well, it’s not going to happen. He said, “Are you kidding? Give him what he wants. He’ll just take it anyway.”