I was ready for the second Fourth of July picnic, this one held in 1974 at the Texas Motor Speedway. Leon Russell came back, along with Jerry Jeff Walker, Doug Sahm, the Lost Gonzo Band, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Greezy Wheels. Some folks got a little loaded and decided to have an RV race on the speedway. There were a few wrecks, a few cars caught fire, but overall the crowd, estimated at a whopping 75,000, had a ball, proving to the world that this picnic was all about peace, love, and good music of all stripes.
Begun as an experiment, the picnic proved popular enough to be an annual event. I didn’t see it as a moneymaker. If anything, it was a love maker. After paying production costs and musician fees, there was little if anything left over.
Because Neil Reshen was managing Waylon as well as me, he’d sometimes hint that Waylon was having a hard time with all my success in Austin. It wasn’t like Waylon and I had a falling out. We were good friends and would remain so till the day he died. But sometimes close buddies can get a little competitive. Waylon saw how my picnics were drawing people from all over and getting national publicity. He saw how my Texas Opry House was one of the hottest venues in the country. I’d never called myself King of Austin, but Waylon heard others use that phrase. I had the feeling that he thought I was getting too much sugar for my own good.
So when he was booked into the Texas Opry House to record a live album of his own, he had a devilish look in his eye. The song he wanted to sing, right there in my own house, was something he called “Bob Wills Is Still the King.”
The lyrics told the story of how he had grown up in the honky-tonks of Texas and was raised on western swing. But then, looking at me, he sang, “It don’t matter who’s in Austin, Bob Wills is still the king.”
He described the Grand Ole Opry and how Nashville was the home of country music. He sang, “But when you cross that ol’ Red River, hoss, it don’t mean a thing. Because once you arrive in Texas, Bob Wills is still the king.”
To make sure I didn’t miss his point, his final verse talked about how Texas was the “home of Willie Nelson, the home of western swing. But Willie will be the first to tell you, Bob Wills is still the king.”
The crowd went wild.
When he came offstage, he came right up to me. He was looking to see if I might be wounded.
“What do you think of that song, Willie?”
“I think it’s a hit, Waylon.”
“You mean it?”
“It’s one of your best.”
“And what about the lyrics?”
“Right on the money.”
Waylon looked a little disappointed. He was gearing up for an argument, and I wouldn’t give him one. Truth be told, I really did like the song. And besides, he’d sung the gospel truth: far as I was concerned, Bob Wills was still the king.
Besides, if I had illusions about being royalty, I didn’t need Waylon to knock me off my throne. Life was there to do just that. As much as Austin helped reinvigorate my performing career and Jerry Wexler helped reshape my recording career, there were some unexpected bumps along the way. One came from Wexler.
He called me from New York and put it plainly.
“Atlantic is closing their Nashville office,” he said.
“Why in hell would they do that?” I asked.
“The people above me don’t see us making significant money in the country field.”
“Even with good sales from my first two Atlantic records?”
“They won’t let me develop a roster of country artists. They want to close down the whole operation.”
“Where does that leave me, Jerry?” I had to ask.
“It’ll be next to impossible to promote your records right without a presence in Nashville. You’re better off somewhere else. I could hold you to your contract that obligates you for two more albums, but I won’t. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt the progress you’ve made. I’m gonna release you, Willie. I’m urging you and Neil Reshen to find another label with a strong Nashville operation. I’m suggesting that you look to one of the majors, like Columbia.”
When it came to record producers and execs, Jerry Wexler broke the mold of the greedy exploiter. He put music first. He put friendship first. And even though our business relationship had ended, the trust he’d earned sure hadn’t, and our friendship would continue forever.
So there I was—without a label or a producer.
“You nervous?” asked Paul.
“Hell, no. Why should I be?”
“No goddamn good reason ever to be nervous. I was just wondering how you felt, Willie.”
“Feel fine, Paul. Feel like I’m on the verge of writing a bunch of new songs.”
“What are they about?”
“Have no idea.”
Paul laughed and said, “That’s good, Willie. ’Cause the less you know about your songs, the better they turn out.”
What I didn’t know was that these songs, put together in the form of a short story, would be another one of those unexpected but beautiful breakthroughs.
21
PURE SUNSHINE AND PURPLE JESUS
I TRIPPED.
Along with millions of other experimenters, I wanted to see where these hallucinogens would lead. I was curious. I was happy to be alive in the coming Age of Aquarius, and I sure as hell didn’t want to miss out on any of the spiritual fun.
Could I expand my mind?
Could I lose my ego?
Could I see beyond the veil and escape mundane reality?
Could I realize some cosmic vision?
It was a hippie friend who gave me my first tab of acid.
“What exactly is it?” I wanted to know.
“Pure sunshine. Straight from a chemist in San Francisco.”
I liked the name. I quickly swallowed it whole.
“Big mistake, Willie,” said my pal. “You were supposed to cut it up and only take a third. A third is five hundred micrograms. Fifteen hundred micrograms will put you on the moon.”
“Oh well. Like the space traveler said: ‘That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.’ ”
I wasn’t concerned until I remembered I had to do a concert in two hours. The first hour was all euphoria. I felt washed over with a golden glow. Couldn’t stop smiling. Hour two was when the bliss took a strange turn. When I walked onstage, I didn’t feel like my feet were my own. As I started singing, my voice sounded like it was coming from inside a cave. Didn’t sound like my voice at all. My hands no longer felt like hands. They felt like claws. I had trouble gripping the guitar. The roar of the audience sounded like the roar of a thousand angry lions. The flickering lights out in the crowd took the form of fiery figures. Was I freaking? Were there demons out there?
Paul sensed that I was tripping. His steady sense of time got even steadier. Mickey, Bee, and Bobbie brought me back by slowing down the tempo. They surrounded me with their loving sound. They surrounded me with their loving hearts. They kept me from going off the deep end.
Once offstage, though, I was increasingly uncomfortable. Forms were changing before my very eyes. The stars had turned into burning torches. Fireflies were laughing like hyenas.
“Just go with the flow, Willie,” someone said. “Don’t try to control nothing.”
I took the advice. I sat back and watched the light show unfold. Just when I thought the show might be over, there came another explosion of crazy colors and inhuman sounds. Growing impatient, I had enough sense not to panic. I wanted out of the acid universe, but realized I couldn’t simply exit this psychedelic theater. The more I wanted to come down, the worse it’d get. Struggling to get back to my normal mind would only make things worse. So I sat still and chilled. Eventually the merry-go-round stopped turning and I got off. When I did, my first thought was, This was interesting, but never again.
I didn’t fault the other trippers who used acid to blow their minds in their search for a deeper truth—or just ’cause they wanted to try a new high. For my part, though, experim
enting with LSD convinced me that I had already found the high that worked for me. My love affair with pot became a long-term marriage. It was, by far, the smoothest of all my marriages. Pot and I got along beautifully. Pot never brought me down, never busted my balls. Pot got me up and took me where I needed to go. Pot chased my blues away. When it came to calming my energy and exciting my imagination, pot did the trick damn near every time I toked.
After Atlantic shut down its Nashville office and let me out of my contract, it didn’t take long for other labels to come a-courting. Articles about this change in country music were appearing all across the nation. Magazines were putting me on the cover and my audience was growing by leaps and bounds. I went with Columbia, the biggest record company in the world. This signing, though, was different. In the past, I had no stipulations. It was just, Give me the money. But my experience with Jerry Wexler had shown me that I could—and should—control whatever happened in the studio. I needed to have the creative freedom to mold my music and shape my sound in whatever form felt right to me.
When the suits at Columbia heard my demand, they hesitated. They had their own Nashville machine with a strong track record of turning out hits. They asked my manager, “Who is Willie Nelson to challenge our ways?”
“Tell them I’m not challenging anything,” I said. “Tell them it’s simply my way or the highway.”
I got my way.
My way came just in time ’cause I was on the brink of a writing spree. But little did I feel it at the time: being on the brink of writing and actually doing the writing are two separate things. After signing with Columbia, I entered a period when I felt blocked. Maybe that’s because I knew I’d have to turn out some material right quick.
To take a break, Connie and I went on a skiing trip to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. This was the winter of 1975. Because I didn’t want to rush the vacation, I decided to drive. The skiing was invigorating and the cold mountain air did me good. On the long haul back I started thinking it was time to get serious about pulling some new songs outta my feeble brain. Connie happened to mention an old song—“Red Headed Stranger”—that I had played as a deejay back in Fort Worth and sung to all my children when they were small. I saw the song as an old cowboy movie. I felt the story deeply. I could picture this old preacher who murdered his wife and spent the rest of his life wandering the land, looking for consolation that never comes.
I could see how the movie might start. I could hear the words inside my head.
It was the time of the preacher when the story began
With the choice of a lady and the love of a man
How he loved her so dearly he went out of his mind
When she left him for someone she’d left behind
He cried like a baby, he cried like a panther in the middle of the night
And saddled his pony and went for a ride
It was the time of the preacher in the year ’01
And now the preaching is over and the lesson’s begun
I took my time, all the while staying focused on the preacher’s feelings. I thought that when he discovered that his wife was gone, he’d relate to an old Eddy Arnold song, “I Couldn’t Believe It Was True.”
As I drove over a ridge and looked at the landscape below, I suddenly imagined how the preacher and his wife might have met.
The bright lights of Denver are shining like diamonds
Like ten thousand jewels in the sky
And it’s nobody’s business where you’re going
Or where you’re coming from
And you’re judged by the look in your eye
She saw him that evening in a tavern in town
In a quiet little out-of-the-way place
And they smiled at each other as he walked through the door
And they danced with their smiles on their faces
The song “Denver” became part of the story, together with other songs that fit the sad mood of the piece. Hank Cochran’s “Can I Sleep in Your Arms” was the kind of tune the preacher would use to sing himself to sleep. I could also hear the preacher doing a beautiful old ballad by Fred Rose, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” that had been sung by everyone from Hank Williams to Gene Autry to Conway Twitty. It was another song about lost love whose mantra—“Love is like a dying ember and only memories remain”—expressed the overall theme and tied all the loose ends together.
The story stayed loose, the songs were a little scattered, and just for good measure I slipped in other elements, like “Just as I Am,” a hymn that Bobbie and I played in our childhood church. To show the preacher’s desperation, it seemed like my story needed a prayer. “I looked to the stars, tried all the bars,” said “Hands on the Wheel,” the last song in the set, “and I’ve nearly gone up in smoke.” Finally, though, the preacher could get his hands on the wheel of something real. And he was coming home. Home might be a dream. Home might be death. Or home might just mean the end of the record.
When it came time to record, I think Columbia expected me to fly into Nashville, New York, or L.A. and cut the songs in a state-of-the-art studio with triple-scale sidemen. Instead, I asked Mickey Raphael to find us some low-key place off the beaten track. He told me about Autumn Sound in Garland, a sleepy suburb east of Dallas. I used my own band. Bucky Meadows dropped by and played both piano and guitar. We did it down and dirty. The arrangements were lean. The accompaniment behind my voice was sparse. We cut every song in just a few takes. I was modeling the style on old albums made by Eddy Arnold and Ernest Tubb where all you heard was a singer and a guitar. The feeling couldn’t have been more relaxed. When we were through, I was satisfied that the preacher’s story had been told right.
When I signed with Columbia they advanced some $60,000 toward making a record that they were sure would cost me $40,000 to cut. I don’t think the Autumn Sound sessions cost more than $2,000. I got to use the balance—$58,000—toward buying better equipment for our road show. So far, so good.
But when the chief Columbia bigwig heard the tracks, he said, “Why are you turning in a demo?”
“Ain’t no demo,” I explained. “This is the finished product.”
“Can’t be. It’s too rough. It’s too raw. It does not sound like a finished record.”
“What’s a finished record supposed to sound like?”
“Anything but this. The songs feel disconnected. The mood is too down. And the sound is far too flat. You need to go back in and polish it.”
“That ain’t gonna happen,” I said.
“You’re shooting yourself in the foot, Willie.”
“Maybe so, but the contract couldn’t be plainer. I turn in the music I wanna turn in. Your job is to sell it.”
“You’re making our job impossible.”
“Well, let’s see what the public has to say.”
The public said yes, we like this Red Headed Stranger. We like this sparse sound. We like this sad story. And we like the way Willie sings that old song “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” so much that we’ll send it all the way to the top of the charts. That single went number one and the album soon went gold. One week the execs were calling the record my ruination; a week later they were calling it my breakthrough.
I found myself playing a slew of new venues. I sang with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra before a huge crowd of wine-and-cheese yuppies. I did an arena tour with the rock band Poco. I headlined the ultrahip Troubadour before an L.A. audience of industry insiders. Columbia was so stoked at our record sales that they gave me my very own custom label that I named Lone Star.
Rather than stay to record my follow-up in Hollywood, I went right back to Autumn Sound in Garland, where I recut some of my old compositions like “Healing Hands of Time,” “Crazy,” and “Night Life.” I also revived one of my favorite Lefty Frizzell numbers, “If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time.” The music magazines were saying I was breaking through new barriers when, in fact, I was simply singing some old songs.
; Didn’t matter what the magazines said. I was grateful for the attention. Grateful for new opportunities. Grateful for a lucrative multiyear contract to play Caesars Palace in Vegas.
And just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, a good friend got elected president of the United States.
22
FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE
I WAS ON A GRUELING TOUR with Hank Cochran. It was 1977, and we played ten straight nights—sometimes two shows a night—before we got a two-day break. That’s when Hank and I decided to make a beeline for the Bahamas, where we could go out on Hank’s boat for a little deep-sea fishing.
We were so late in getting to the airport, though, that our luggage didn’t get on our flight. No big deal.
Arriving in the Bahamas and clearing customs, we rented a car. It was then that I realized that getting our luggage might well turn into a big deal. I’d slipped a small bag of weed in the pocket of a pair of jeans. That got me to worrying. But since worrying never has solved anything, I let the worry go.
Next morning we got a call saying that our luggage had arrived. All we had to do was come by the airport and claim it. When Hank and I got to customs, I saw that the agent had a look in his eye, as if to say, We caught you red-handed, motherfucker. But maybe I was just being paranoid. Why would customs care about such a minuscule amount? They were looking for dealers coming in with tons of the shit, not someone bringing barely enough to roll a few joints. All I had to do was relax and be cool.
“Is this your suitcase?” asked the agent.
“Believe it is.”
“You believe, or you know it is?”
“It’s mine. And it was awfully nice of you to take care of it for me. I wanna thank you. I’ll be on my way.”
Ignoring my bullshit, the agent got sterner. That’s when I knew I was fucked. “You won’t be going anywhere, Mr. Nelson,” he said.
“What’s the problem?”
He opened the suitcase. The jeans were on top. He reached into the pocket and pulled out the pot.
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