Waylon

by Waylon Jennings

  I believe in a higher power

  One that loves us one and all

  Not someone to solve my problems

  Or to catch me when I fall

  He gave us all a mind to think with

  And to know what’s right or wrong

  He is that inner spirit

  That keeps us strong.

  When I finished the song, and before the Highwaymen recorded it, I showed it to Will.

  “That’ll preach,” he said.

  Yeah. Uh-huh.

  At this point, I’ve given up everything but oxygen. I’m still on drugs, taking handfuls of pills, only this time they’re for my heart and my blood sugar and my well-being.

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss my wild days. “Sometimes when I hear the wind, I wish I was crazy again.” I sent that song of Bob McDill’s to John Cash once when he had gone straight and I was still messed up. We wound up recording it as a duet, which seems fitting. It can get rough, keeping to the straight and narrow, especially when I’m trying everything I can do to live. My hands hurt, and even though they’ve operated on them, they can still get so numb I can’t even feel the guitar. I get dizzy spells; lightheadedness. Maybe it’s riding the bus. Some of these things might have been affecting me when I was on drugs, and I just didn’t know it. I liked to get above the pain. Go out in a blaze of glory.

  I do know that my new direction is for the better. I have a stable, easy life; everybody around me tries to take care of me. I may have to watch what I eat, but Maureen cooks meals that are as healthy as they taste good, Jessi pumps vitamins down me and makes sure I take my medicine, and Shooter tells me what White Zombie is up to on the Internet.

  I haven’t slowed down. I’m not sure I even know what the words would mean. I keep thinking about leaving the road, but I never do. It’s a cycle. Even after the bypass, when I was ready to quit, I went out once and got that instant feedback and appreciation, with people shouting, girls dancing, and folks putting babies on their shoulders, and was back for good.

  I’ve always got a song I’m working on in my hip pocket, or an idea that might need coming to fruition. You’re never really done with your work in a lifetime, though sometimes other people are able to carry it on for you. The other day I went over to Emerald Studios in Nashville and cut a track of Buddy Holly’s “Learning the Game,” with Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. It’s one of the simplest songs Buddy ever wrote, and I saw him record it on a tape recorder in his living room, right before we left on the final tour. I don’t think it was finished. It’s only one verse and a chorus, but the way Mark stretched it out, it seemed complete and realized.

  Music passes along. Buddy taught me things about what he was doing, and I picked out certain elements and made them my own. The same with Ernest Tubb or Carl Smith or Hank Williams. You never hear a piece of music the way the artist intended. You’re hearing it through your ears, and your own imagination. Somewhere, a kid in a bedroom is listening to one of my records, and maybe he’s picking up on a chord progression, or a vocal inflection that catches his fancy, and he tries to learn it. He gets it almost right. In that “almost” is where you can find his personality, his creativity, his style. Hers, for that matter. Ours.

  All we need is the willpower and determination to see our vision through. Clayton Turner is a friend of mine who is a graphic artist. He’s also a quadriplegic, and he draws by gripping a pencil in his mouth and painstakingly stroking each line just so. His pictures are large, and when he gets up as far as he can reach, he has to turn the picture over and work on it upside down.

  If art is the answer, what’s the question?

  One of the strangest gigs I ever played was on a tour with the World Wrestling Federation. The idea was that I would open up the night’s mayhem, though they left it up to me whether I wanted to go two falls out of three with Hulk Hogan. At one arena, the stage was set up behind the chairs, which were bolted to the floor facing the ring. For the entire show, the audience had to watch us twisted in their seats, craning their necks and contorting their bodies.

  Needless to say, we cancelled the rest of those venues. I thought about that what-are-we-doing-here again last year, when I scheduled a series of acoustic shows: “unplugged,” as they like to call them these days, and thought it might be an interesting change of pace.

  It’s a good idea, on paper. I enjoy singing my songs accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. It’s how I initially write them, and the intimacy of the setting allows you to hear each nuance, syllable against syllable, emphasizing interpretation. I’ve always had fun taking a song and changing it to fit my mood, shaping it as the spirit moves me.

  In a honky-tonk, though, you ain’t got a chance. Cowboys are whooping and hollering, half drunk and the other half drunker, shouting out for their favorite songs and having a good ol’ time on a Saturday night.

  I’m playing with just an acoustic, with Jigger on another acoustic and Fred Newall on dobro, and you can’t hear anything. It’s packed to the rafters. There’s a constant hubbub in the room, and I’m trying to sing louder. They’re shouting out for “Honky Tonk Heroes” and “Hank” and I’m getting mad.

  Mad at these fine people who are excited as hell, happy to see me, giving me some of the hard-earned money they’ve worked for, and wanting me to be the guy that most of them have followed for decades.

  I’m sitting up there on a stool trying to be everything but what I was when I started. The thing that brought me to town, and made me what I am today, and I’m trying to pretend that it doesn’t exist. They want me to be ornery, like the song says.

  That honky-tonk would have been set alight with a band. I didn’t have anything with which to fight back the noise. I didn’t even have my hat.

  Black, creased Texas-style, with a silver belt around the crown. The hat.

  It’s not so much a piece of wearing apparel as it is an attitude. If I realized how much the hat made me appear differently when Shooter asked me to take it off when we went to the toy stores, I also underestimated what it did for me when I walked on a stage. More important, what it meant to those folks out there, who put on their own hats when they leave the house to go honky-tonkin’, and who shout out “1962 at [so-and-so]” and “Remember Silver City!” They’re letting me know they’ve been with me the whole time.

  I never want my fans to use the words “used to be” when they come around to see my show. I don’t owe them a change; I owe them myself, being me, whoever they think I am. They’re the only judge and jury I feel responsible to, and I have enough respect for their good sense to know that they won’t steer me wrong. They won’t change my music, because that’s the basis for my trust in them. They like that I went up against and beat the system, and was an Outlaw before the movement ever got a name. They want me to be a hardass sonofabitch if you get me mad; and they want to know that I’ll never be mad at them.

  Every so often, I find myself caught up in being the New Waylon. Change is important, even essential, and it’s one way an artist can stay ahead of the new-is-better obsession that we get on CNN every day. But you have to think about what you’re changing, and who you’re confusing, and whether booking shows in symphony halls, leaving my black hat at home to gather dust alongside Andrew Jackson’s hickory walking stick, is going to prove good or bad in the long run. I always liked turning the St. James Theatre on Broadway into a honky-tonk; I wouldn’t want to turn a honky-tonk into the St. James Theatre.

  Sitting alone with an acoustic guitar on that stage, thinking I was starting to become something other than me, I had to laugh at myself. Another grand awakening. Even after all these years, you still have to watch where you find your motivations, and you have to keep on remembering to be who you are.

  People may tell me that I look better without my hat. Looks aren’t everything, unless you’re looking at you through me, and paid to get in, in which case, you better like what you see. A hat isn’t just something you wear on your head. It’s your
halo.

  I get up early in the morning. Jessi calls me a “springer.” My eyes open and I’m awake, ideas that have been circulating around my subconscious coming to life, and I have to do something about them.

  While the house is still asleep, I walk downstairs and out the back door. Tinkerbell, our large long-haired cat with the pushed-in face, accompanies me outside.

  It’s the end of March. Spring comes early to Nashville, and the trees are already budding. Out in back of the house is a small room that has a couple of guitars and a karaoke cassette machine that I use for recording my songs as I think of them. Mostly, though, all I have is a piece of paper and a pencil.

  I think I get the most satisfaction out of writing a good song. I’m in no hurry. Sometimes I’ll carry an idea around with me for a year, not knowing what I’m trying to say, chewing on a line here and there, sure that the song itself will tell me what it means as it grows in my mind. Songs don’t lie.

  You can ride on that high for days, the idea emerging from the music you hear deep within. You may have to strain to listen for it, pulling it toward your consciousness like a distant radio station through the static, trying not to get impatient and make it something more predictable when you can’t tune it in as well as you want. I close my eyes and let it fill my heart.

  Playing the music inside you. That’s what a musician is.

  What I am.

  EPILOGUE

  There’s a lot of going back, coming back.

  Labor Day in Littlefield, and everybody is out for the annual Denim festival, held under a miles-long Texas blue sky with the heat shimmering waves in the distance.

  The bus pulls up alongside the Lion’s Club Youth Center for a Shipley family reunion. Momma ushers me through the whirl of family, second cousins and nieces and nephews and even Uncle Elvis, who I used to buy those cigarettes for. In the hall where I first played on stage with my brother Tommy, singing Hank Snow songs and scared to death, I stand in the room and watch the new crop of kids play out their games on that same stage, chasing each other around in circles, starting their growing up.

  My own growing has taken me a stone’s throw over to the Ag Community Center field along Hall Avenue, where, later tonight, surrounded by a sea of lawn chairs and fire-breathing bar-b-q cook-off tanks, myself and Jessi, Tommy, and John and June Cash will take the stage. Like I said: Family.

  Momma moves on and off the bus, introducing me to people I haven’t seen in years and years. She’s Momma, and she has a right to be proud today. We’ve come a long way from the outskirts of Littlefield. There’s a constant parade of blood and not-so-bloody relatives, friends I can barely remember, and faces that seem oddly familiar, carved by time’s experience and the wisdom that comes with life’s living. Kind of like my own reflection, when I look in the mirror.

  I’ve been doing that a lot the past couple of years, working on this book. Sometimes it’s like trying to walk in my own footsteps. When I played a show recently at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, the first time I’d been back since that fateful night in 1959, making my peace with the spot where I last saw Buddy sitting, hot dog in hand, laughing, the me then mingled with the me now until I couldn’t tell where one started and the other left off. Probably there’s no clear line, which is how your story becomes told.

  The truth is, I’ve had it luckier than most. I’m comfortable with who I am, and I know my own limits, even though some of them I had to learn the hard way. I ain’t got a thing to be bitter about.

  Maybe I purposely set it up that way, so I wouldn’t get disappointed. I didn’t have any goals. I think that’s a dangerous thing, if you take aim and achieve it. Once you get to your destination, it’s over. Done did everything that needs done. I didn’t want to be king of the world. Things just kept popping up. What did I have the right to expect? Anything past the cotton patch was free, gratis.

  I never thought it would last. Not for so many years. You know where I’m good? Coming down the other side. I’ve been real good at that, because I always knew it was there.

  Every once in a while I get a longing look toward town, at the me I used to be. I’d like to get crazy but I know I can’t do that again. I gave my word to Jessi and Shooter, and myself. No more.

  Will Campbell says if you love somebody just because they’re good, well, that’s not love. I don’t know if I’m right or wrong, but I do what’s right for me. I didn’t have much of a choice. There’s always going to be a yahoo like me over here, that can’t get it. That’s got to do it his own way.

  Live and learn. Die and forget it all.

  “I’m looking for my youth,” I tell the press conference over at the Crescent Motel, “but she’s gone.”

  Actually, though it’s a good line and gets a laugh, it’s not exactly true. She’s here. Momma sits on the stage, right on the drum riser, clapping her hands and watching her family. Tommy comes on; it’s his first time playing Littlefield, oddly enough, and he’s excited. “I’m going to stand here and beller, and I hope you like what you hear,” he tells the crowd, and when he sings a song about “Those Three Brothers of Mine,” he calls me and Momma and Bo and James D. up on the stage for a family portrait. Somewhere above, I know my dad is watching, feeling Texas-proud.

  It’s an Event, for sure. John strides out to sing with me, and I think of the curve at Bula, where his big voice is probably carrying right now, and how his song has carried in my life for over forty years. Jessi moves behind the white piano for her set, and when she gets to our duet on “Deep in the West,” I hold her hand and harmonize with her, looking out over the town, caught in the setting sun with the infinite Lone Star night waiting in the wings, and remember when Heaven seemed so far away.

  In the morning, I’ll take a walk through Lubbock and pay my respects at the statue they built for Buddy. Then I’ll say my good-byes and get back on the bus, heading toward tomorrow.

  WAYLON JENNINGS AND JESSI COLTER:

  A SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

  The following is a chronological overview of the recorded works of Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter. For a complete listing, John L. Smith has spent many years compiling a thorough book-length discography—published by Greenwood Press of Westport, Connecticut, and London—that includes session dates, recording studios and musicians, all available alternate versions and releases, chart positions, and the ephemeral minutiae of a lifetime lived in song. Our appreciations to John for his attention to detail and investigative zeal, and his invaluable dedication to the matrix number of preserved sound.

  Song titles are listed in italics, while albums—both records and compact discs—are in boldface. Approximate release dates are given; as most of Waylon’s singles were concurrently released on albums, we have not included separate singles, except for the early, pre-album years. Repackagings are not covered, except where a “Greatest Hits” might prove an introduction to Waylon’s body—and mind and soul—of work, and an essential soundtrack to this autobiography.

  BRUNSWICK BR 9-551 Jole Blon / When Sin Stops (3-59)

  Waylon’s first release, recorded Sept. 10, 1958, at Norman Petty’s studios in Clovis, New Mexico, produced by Buddy Holly.

  TREND 102 Another Blue Day / Never Again (1961)

  TREND 106 My Baby Walks All Over Me / The Stage (4-63)

  A&M 722 Love Denied / Rave On (4-64)

  A&M 739 Four Strong Winds / Just to Satisfy You (8-64)

  A&M 753 Sing the Girls a Song Bill / The Race Is On (10-64)

  SOUND LTD 1001 Waylon Jennings at JD’s (12-64)

  Side 1 Side 2

  Crying Dream Baby

  Sally Was a Good Old Girl It’s So Easy

  Burning Memories Lorena (Paul Foster)

  Big Mamou Love’s Gonna Live Here

  Money (Jerry Gropp) Abilene (Paul Foster)

  Don’t Think Twice White Lightning

  A&M 762 I Don’t Believe You / The Real House of the Rising Sun (1965)

  The A&M masters were eventually coll
ected onto an album released in March 1970, entitled Don’t Think Twice. (See separate listing.)

  RCA LPM/S-3523 Folk-Country (3-66)

  Side 1 Side 2

  Another Bridge to Burn Just for You

  Stop the World Now Everybody Knows

  Cindy of New Orleans That’s the Chance I’ll Have to Take

  Look into My Teardrops What Makes a Man Wander

  Down Came the World I’m a Man of Constant Sorrow

  I Don’t Mind What’s Left of Me

  RCA LPM/S-3620 Leavin’ Town (10-66)

  Side 1 Side 2

  Leavin’ Town You’re Gonna Wonder About Me

  Time to Bum Again (That’s What You Get) for Lovin’ Me

  If You Really Want Me to I’ll Go Anita, You’re Dreaming

  Baby, Don’t Be Looking in My Mind Doesn’t Anybody Know My Name

  But That’s Alright Falling for You

  Time Will Tell the Story I Wonder Just Where I Went Wrong

  RCA LPM/S-3736 Nashville Rebel (12-66)

  Side 1 Side 2

  Silver Ribbons Norwegian Wood

  Nashville Bum Hoodlum (instr.)

  Green River Spanish Penthouse (instr.)

  Nashville Rebel Lang’s Theme (instr.)

  I’m a Long Way from Home Rush Street Blues (instr.)

  Tennessee Lang’s Mansion (instr.)

  The soundtrack album from the American International film starring Waylon. Norwegian Wood was not used in the film.

  RCA LPM/S-3660 Waylon Sings Ol’ Harlan (3-67)

  Side 1 Side 2