I felt like I was exploiting my natural ability to communicate with people. There had to be a higher purpose.
I considered that higher purpose during my Sunday school classes at the Metropolitan Baptist Church. Those discussions provided an opportunity for me to look inward. Because of my openness in exploring spiritual issues, I became a popular teacher. That same openness, though, did not please the preacher who led the church.
“In those lessons you’ve been giving,” he said, “you’ve talked about the spiritual feeling you get while playing your music at nightclubs.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“And you’re still playing those nightclubs?”
“Every chance I get.”
“Then I don’t see how you can keep teaching Sunday school.”
“Not sure I understand, preacher,” I said.
“Those two worlds are incompatible. You can’t be singing for drunkards on Saturday night and then speaking to God’s people on Sunday morning.”
“Aren’t those drunkards God’s people as well?”
“That’s not the point. The point is that this church cannot harbor hypocrites.”
The truth is that I didn’t feel hypocritical in the least. I also didn’t feel compelled to defend myself. If anything, I saw the church—supposedly open to all sinners—as hypocritical. At the same time, why argue with the preacher? The best thing was simply to get up and leave.
I missed the services and the fellowship, but I took my dismissal from the Metropolitan Baptist as an opportunity to delve deeper into the mystery of the Holy Spirit. More than ever, I sought to learn about the Lord.
I haunted the Fort Worth Public Library, where I checked out a pile of books on religion. I read about Judaism and Buddhism, but my focus was on the faith in which I’d been raised—the moral lessons of Jesus. I soon learned that there were hundreds of respected scholars who did not take the King James version of the Bible as literal truth. One book, The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, impacted me as greatly as did The Power of Positive Thinking. It took a positive approach to the question of Jesus’s whereabouts between, say, the ages of twelve and thirty. The Aquarian postulates that the Lord went to India, Tibet, Egypt, and other centers of mystical learning outside Palestine. It was there that he fell in love with a woman but overcame carnal desire in order to demonstrate divine love to all mankind. It was where he discovered—and embraced—the notion of reincarnation.
From the first moment I considered the concept, reincarnation made sense. The old paradigm was just too cruel, just too unchristian, to be believed: If you die in your sin, you spend eternity in hell. How could the compassionate God of mercy ever set up such a system? On the other hand, I was drawn to the idea that you keep coming back till you get it right. Reincarnation seemed merciful and completely Christlike. Jesus got it right the first time around because he was, after all, God incarnate, perfect man. But the rest of us would need several lifetimes to shed our sins and learn the lessons necessary to heal our troubled souls.
Enlightenment was a long process. The goal was beautiful: to achieve a chilled-out state of endless calm and undisturbed grace. I sought that goal.
As my life struggles continued, I found increasing comfort in my relationship to spirit and pure love.
Further proof of miraculous love came with the birth of our third child and first son, Willie Hugh Nelson Jr., born May 21, 1958. We called him Billy. He warmed my heart and had me redouble my commitment to my family.
That commitment had me back out on the Jacksboro Highway, playing whatever beer joints would give me a few bucks. I had the music club territory mapped out—from Waco to Dallas to Fort Worth. And at the better venues, I saw the big-name stars and couldn’t help but believe that the songs I was writing were more than suitable for their styles. But how do I get to them?
I listened to all the great sidemen—fiddler Johnny Gimble with Bob Wills, and pedal steel players Jimmy Day with Ray Price and Buddy Emmons with Ernest Tubb. I found some work as a sideman myself. I sat in with whoever would have me. But compared to Gimble, Day, and Emmons, my chops were limited. Leaders weren’t begging me to join their bands.
I’d say it was back to the grind, but the grind had never stopped.
If selling encyclopedias and vacuum cleaners led to a dead end, why, I’d find work at a grain warehouse on the north side of the city. When I fell asleep on the job—I’d been up the night before playing music till 3 a.m.—I didn’t let my dismissal get me down and got myself hired by a carpet removal service. But that didn’t last long either. In between rolling up nasty old shag carpets, I took out too much time writing down the song lyrics floating through my mind. The boss saw that I was distracted and let me go.
I tried to hang on. I found a spot in the band at the Cowtown Hoedown. This was a Saturday night country music show put on at the Majestic Theater, an old downtown movie palace gone to seed. I played guitar in the support band. One week Webb Pierce was the headliner, the next week Bob Luman or Johnny Horton. I was in the background, which was fine with me. The background was a great place for learning, for seeing how the stars—whether Roy Orbison or Faron Young—commanded the stage. The show was broadcast on the radio. And though our salary, ten bucks a show, wasn’t much, I was close to the spotlight.
Through the Hoedown, I also got close to the show’s producer, Uncle Hank Craig, who worked with two radio stations: KCLE in Cleburne and XEG in Mexico. Like Doc Parker, Uncle Hank was an older man who took an interest in me. He was all heart while, at the same time, all business.
“You got musical talent,” he said, “but you also got hustling talent. I say let’s put that hustle talent to work.”
Uncle Hank’s hustle was simple: he had me record a long commercial for XEG, the station operating out of Mexico, that urged aspiring songwriters to send me their half-finished songs and, for the low, low price of just ten dollars, I’d finish the song for them, record it, and send them a disc.
They could have the beginnings of a melody without words, or a few words without melody. Didn’t matter. All it took was ten bucks and I’d do the rest. I’d cut the record with professional musicians in just a matter of days.
The response was good. I completed and cut several dozen songs. It was a fun idea, but truthfully, in the culture of XEG, a station that recruited promoters like Uncle Hank, this songwriting ploy was mild. They had ministers hawking baskets of baby chicks, bottles of holy water—hell, they’d sell autographed pictures of Jesus if they could.
It was Uncle Hank who mentioned Pappy Daily, the man down in Houston whose Starday label had previously rejected my songs and charged me to press up copies of my “No Place for Me.”
“I don’t think Pappy has a high regard for me,” I told Uncle Hank.
“Pappy has a high regard for anything that sells. Once I get him to thinking that your songs are going to be big sellers, Pappy will be kissing your ass.”
Uncle Hank hooked me up with Pappy, who did, in fact, pay me this time for the recordings of two songs in a Fort Worth studio. I cut my “Man with the Blues” and “The Storm Has Just Begun.” The titles tell you all you need to know about my mood.
The 45 single didn’t create any excitement, but Uncle Hank was arguing that I had to create that excitement on my own. The songs weren’t going to go out and do it by themselves.
“You’re an exciting personality, Willie,” he insisted, “but you gotta get your ass out there on the big stage. You gotta get unstuck.”
Uncle Hank’s words hit home. Stuck in the backwaters of Fort Worth, I was ready for any kind of change.
“If you really, truly want to change your circumstances, Willie,” said Uncle Hank, “get the hell outta Fort Worth. Fort Worth is for shitkickers. If you want big money, get to a big city. And Houston’s the biggest fuckin’ city in Texas.”
10
DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
SEEMED RIGHT. Seemed reasonable. Seemed like the sane th
ing to do.
I’d done all I could back home in Hill County. I’d played every hole-in-the-wall in and out of Waco. I’d done San Antone, I’d done Dallas, I’d done Fort Worth two goddamn times.
When it came to big places in Texas, Houston was all that was left.
Houston was one vast urban sprawl that went on forever. Houston was all about sticky stinking humidity, chemical plants, and oil refineries, a ring of faceless suburbs.
Houston gave me another bad case of the blues.
I found a little apartment for us in Pasadena, one of those lonely-looking industrial suburbs in the shadow of the ship channel, lined with factories spewing out petrochemical toxins into the stale night air.
From there I went out on my own, going from club to club, wandering up and down the Gulf Freeway, looking for a break. But nothing broke. Nothing was happening. Drinking gave me little consolation. A little consolation was better than none at all.
By then I had already accumulated a large inventory of songs written in the margins of my days and the loneliness of my nights. But in Houston those nights got lonelier. With a wife and three kids at home, I needed money—and I needed it now. Yet this new locale was not yielding immediate results. I was still up against some slow-moving shit. It was during these long dark nights of the soul—driving here, driving there, stopping anywhere and everywhere a wandering minstrel might find work—that I reached even deeper down and found solace in words and melodies that expressed the anguish gnawing at my insides.
When songs fall from the sky—even the polluted midnight sky of Houston—all I can do is catch them before they land. They are mysterious gifts. I know they are born out of experience and genuine grief. I know they are born of uncertainty and fear. I implicitly trust their sentiments. I trust their sincerity. The deepest songs expose vulnerability. They strip me bare and leave me amazed.
Where the hell did they come from?
Did I really write these songs, or am I just a channel chosen by the Holy Spirit to express these feelings?
I really didn’t know. I don’t remember creating the words. The words just came. I can’t remember creating the melodies. The melodies were already there. The songs arrived prepackaged. There was a distinct beginning, middle, and end. In my head, I heard a groove that would drive the rhythm. In my head, I heard the accompanying instruments.
Without trying, I heard everything.
And I heard myself ruminating about the nightlife.
It ain’t no good life, but it’s my life. I see life as just another scene in this ol’ world of broken dreams. Oh, the nightlife, it ain’t no good life, but, Lord, it’s my life.
Listen to the blues that they’re playing. And listen to what the blues are saying. They’re saying that nightlife ain’t no good life, but it’s my life.
While I made those endless loops around the Houston highways, that song grew out of the soil of my soul. It happened because I was living it.
The Night Life.
A few hours or a few days later—I can’t remember which—here comes more thoughts, more feelings.
Well, hello there.
I imagine a man, someone like me, who runs into an old girlfriend.
My, it’s been a long, long time. How you doing? Me? Well, I guess I’m doing fine. Been so long now, but seems that it was only yesterday.
Gee, ain’t it funny how time slips away.
The words of the song seep out of the darkness. They fall from my imagination like tears from my eyes.
How’s your new love? Hope he’s doin’ fine. Heard you told him you’d love him till the end of time. That’s the same thing you told me, seems like just the other day.
Ain’t it funny, baby, how time slips away.
On another night—or the same night—I imagine that the rest of the world is asleep. The rest of the world is comprised of normal people with normal jobs. This gal works as a secretary. This guy is an accountant. They go about their nine-to-five lives. They earn their money, they buy their groceries, they raise their children.
They’re not crazy.
But what about me?
Why am I crazy?
Crazy, for feeling so lonely, crazy, for feeling so blue.
Why am I imagining a man like me facing the loss of his deepest love?
I know you’d love me as long as you wanted, then someday leave me for somebody new.
Why do I let myself worry, wondering what in the world did I do?
I can’t get this man off my mind. His blues are my blues. He’s crazy, and so am I.
Crazy, for thinking that my love could hold you.
Crazy for crying, crazy for trying, I’m crazy for loving you.
Is it crazy to think that this song, fallen from the sky, has a haunted beauty that could last forever?
Or is that just my ego speaking?
I hum the melody again. I see how each note is perfectly married to a lyric. Is that marriage of my making? It feels like it is. It feels like it isn’t. Putting it together was too easy. I can hardly take credit. Yet who else is around? Nobody but me, driving along the highways of Houston, songs filling up all the space in my head, songs crowding my heart.
A song that says, Mr. Record Man, I’m looking for a song I heard today. There was someone blue singing ’bout someone who went away. Just like me his heart was yearning for a love that used to be. It’s a lonely song about a lonely man like me.
Am I inventing this character or am I merely writing about myself? How is it possible to step out of myself while, at the same time, delving deeper?
I was driving down the highway with the radio turned on—and a man that I heard singing sounded so blue and all alone.
Who is doing the singing? Who is doing the listening?
As I listen to this lonely song I wonder, could it be—could there be another lonely man like me?
And how could this man lose his loneliness? What’s a lonely man to do?
Well, I gotta get drunk and I sure do dread it, ’cause I know just what I’m gonna do—I’ll start to spend my money calling everybody honey, and wind up singing the blues.
And I do just that. I live the life I’m singing about in my song.
I gotta get drunk, I can’t stay sober. There’s a lot of good people in town that’d like to see me holler, see me spend my dollar, and I wouldn’t think of letting them down.
I know I’m running into a dead end. Know I’m acting the fool, but that don’t stop me.
There’s a lot of doctors tell me that I’d better start slowing it down. But there’s more old drunks than there are old doctors. So I guess we better have another round.
I’ll spend my whole paycheck on some old wreck and, brother, I can name you a few. Well, I gotta get drunk and I sure do dread it ’cause I know just what I’m gonna do.
After the drinking is over, I realize what has to happen next. I realize the next song is one that says, Turn off the lights, the party’s over. They say that, ‘All good things must end.’ Let’s call it a night, the party’s over, and tomorrow starts the same thing.
But the party has hardly been fun. Look at me, I’m almost crying. That don’t keep her love from dying. Misery… ’cause for me the party’s over.
Within an astoundingly short period of time—a week or two—I’d written a suite of songs that reflected my real-life situation. I knew these songs were damn good, but at the same time, I didn’t know what to do with them.
In spite of cutting those two tunes back in Fort Worth, I hadn’t been able to get through to Pappy Daily here in Houston. All I could do was keep hustling on my own.
There was hardly any method to my hustle. Every time I spotted a decent-size barroom, I’d pull over, walk in with my guitar, and ask for the owner in the hopes of getting hired. Invariably my hopes were dashed.
My hopes were high when I stopped at the Esquire Ballroom and heard a country band in the middle of rehearsal. Sounded good.
“I’m Willie Nelson,” I told
the leader.
“Larry Butler. What can I do you for, Willie?”
“Looking for work.”
“You a singer?”
“And a picker.”
“Afraid we don’t need either one.”
Feeling a little desperate, I said, “Well, I also write. Fact is, just wrote me a buncha new songs.”
“If you’re willing to sing ’em, I’m willing to listen.”
I sang ’em all—“Night Life,” “Funny How Time Slips Away,” “Crazy,” “Mr. Record Man,” “I Gotta Get Drunk,” “The Party’s Over.”
Larry Butler looked stunned.
“What do you think?”
“I think they’re great. Very goddamn great.”
“Good. ’Cause I’ll sell ’em to you. I’ll take ten bucks a song.”
“You mean I give you ten dollars and I have the right to put my name as the composer of those songs and do whatever the hell I want with them.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s insane. You can’t do that. Those are hit songs you’ve written. They could be worth thousands of dollars. You just can’t give ’em away.”
“I’m not. I’m selling ’em to you.”
“Well, I’m not buying. I couldn’t do that to you.”
“Why? You’d be doing me a favor.”
“You’d be cheating yourself, Willie.”
“Hell, I can always write more songs. That’s not a problem.”
“Let’s do this. Let me just loan you fifty bucks. You can pay me back by playing in my band. Meanwhile, hold on to those songs.”
Whoa. Suddenly I had a musical home in Houston—the Esquire Ballroom—and enough money to keep the family in food and diapers. That single meeting turned things around.
I also had new confidence to go back to Pappy Daily, but Pappy still didn’t see me as much of a writer or an artist. When I played him my stuff, he was lukewarm. Because Pappy had launched the career of George Jones by releasing George’s big hit “Why Baby Why,” I had to respect him. But when it came to scrutinizing my talent, I sure as hell didn’t have to believe him.
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