Willie Nelson

by Graeme Thomson

  When Nelson left Martha in early 1962 he also left Ray Price’s band. There is a suspicion that he didn’t really want to – and Price certainly didn’t want him to leave – but he caved into pressure from Shirley, who felt he’d do better alone and didn’t really want him trekking around the country anyway. Nevertheless, it made a certain amount of sense for him to come out from under his mentor’s shadow. He had a profile of his own and it was the right time to pursue his own ambitions.

  The timing was obviously lousy, and he was treading water while domestic matters settled. Shirley went to California to attempt to sort things out with her husband, and he went back to Fort Worth to stay with Bobbie for a while. The fact that Martha’s mother had let him know that his children were now living in Waco may have influenced his decision to return to Texas. After a short time, Shirley joined him and they began playing shows with Jimmy Day, capitalising on the success of ‘Willingly’, which had been released as a single in March 1962 and had done surprisingly well, peaking at No. 10 on the Billboard country charts. Written by Hank Cochran, it was an eerily prescient little song – ‘If it’s fate for us to wait/ Until our love can be/ Then we’ll wait/ Willingly’ – although in all truth it was an unconvincing mix of voices, while Shirley sings Nelson right off the turntable. His follow-up single, ‘Touch Me’, came out in May and climbed to No. 7 in the country charts. Despite the success of ‘Willingly’, and the fact that Patsy Cline’s ‘Crazy’ had now hit big on both the country and pop charts and Jimmy Elledge’s version of ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’ had crossed over to the mainstream Top 30 back in January, ‘Touch Me’ was Willie Nelson’s first ever chart success as a solo artist.

  It seemed a good time to think about getting his own band together. They were called, with characteristic swagger and not a little humour, The Offenders, and consisted of Jimmy Day, Johnny Bush, Wade Ray, and a smattering of Shirley on the duets. Bush had caught up with Nelson again when Ray Price and the Cherokee Cowboys had passed through San Antonio in 1961. They talked, and when Price needed a new drummer it was Bush who filled the void and moved to Nashville, from where he later joined The Offenders. Their first major tour was out in Las Vegas in early 1963. It was an eventful trip. Shirley and Nelson finally married, and Nelson also got to spend some time with his children, who had now joined Martha in her cramped apartment in Las Vegas. She was working – with a certain inevitability – as a cocktail waitress. She was still only in her mid-20s, and felt her lucky break in life had just been snatched from under her nose. She was keen to find another one.

  The Offenders were playing a two-week residency at the Golden Nugget, one of the longest established casinos on the strip and run by one of the most powerful men in town, Buck Blaine. Although Willie had recently had a big hit with ‘Touch Me’, he was strictly small fry for Vegas. No one in that most venal of towns cared much about budding songwriters.

  Johnny Bush: Vegas was a big deal. It could make or break you as a newcomer coming up. You wanted to show good out there, you wanted to show well. After the second show Buck Blaine sent his henchman down to the motel room where we were staying, and he said, ‘Willie, this is coming from Mr Blaine. We want Shirley on the bandstand at all times [Willie was just calling her out for the duets] and we want your guitar player to stand here.’ In other words, they had some changes they wanted to make to the Willie Nelson show. Willie listened intently until the guy had finished, and then he said, ‘Are you through?’ The guy said, ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ and Willie said, ‘Well, you go back and tell Mr Blaine that I’m not changing a thing. I’m gonna survive with or without the Golden Nugget, now you tell him that.’ I nearly fainted. I thought, Oh my God! We had two weeks out there, and I’m adding up the money that I hadn’t made yet. But it worked. He called the guy’s bluff. Anyone else, myself included, would have conformed to the man’s wishes: ‘I need Vegas, it’s my first time here, I want to make a good impression.’ But not Will. Maybe that’s why he’s the big star he is today. He knew what he wanted, he knew how he wanted it done, and he stuck with it.

  There were also the first tangible signs that his debilitating divorce from Martha had made some impact upon the way he observed the world and his place in it. The basic principles that dictate his beliefs today – the omnipotent power of positive thought, allied to a benign acceptance of whatever fate chooses to throw in his face – seemed to have risen slowly, like a thin wisp of smoke, from the embers of his first marriage and the heartbreaking separation from his children. His ideas seemed already to be taking a vaguely philosophical path. He became interested in Eastern thought and began taking lessons in kung fu in Nashville, at which he quickly excelled, interested in channelling his concentration and building self-belief.

  He wrote a letter to his ten-year-old daughter Lana, explaining what was happening in their lives, and concluding: ‘Happiness does not come from having everything you want, but in understanding and accepting all, and in prayer and the belief that everything always happens for the best.’ It was a hard message for any pre-teen to accept from her father, but it is revealing. He has repeated variations of this mantra ever since. It represents either admirable control over his own will and emotional impulses, or else a convenient method by which to abdicate himself from any tiresome responsibilities.

  Mickey Raphael: He’s definitely not in the real world! We talked about this the other day: we were talking about something in the future that might happen, and I was thinking about all kinds of ways to circumvent the situation, and Willie said: ‘I don’t worry about it until it happens. We deal with it when it happens.’ I wish I could do that. My view is, if I don’t worry about it, it will be a problem. It’s a choice you make, and he has made the choice not to deal with it. It’s a great talent. Almost naïve. Or maybe just that he knows [too] much.

  Soon he would write ‘One Day At A Time’, the first song that explicitly deals with his adjusted world view: ‘Don’t ask how long I planned to stay/ It never crossed my mind/ I live one day at a time/ See that sparrow fly across the cloudy sky/ Searching for a patch of sunlight, so am I/ Wish I didn’t have to follow and perhaps I won’t in time/ I live one day at a time/ Yesterday is dead and tomorrow is blind/ I live one day at a time.’

  It’s a beautiful song, with all the easy, universal reach of an old gospel tune, expressing the kind of true, pure spiritual feeling he would revisit at length on Yesterday’s Wine. With The Offenders, too, he was anxious that his new, positive outlook would be reciprocated. Johnny Bush was new to the band and to Nashville and he was worried that his drumming wasn’t up to scratch among such seasoned pros as Jimmy Day. Bush visited Nelson and told him he felt he was the weakest link in the band and that it would be best for all concerned if he stood down and let someone else come in.

  Johnny Bush: I told him: ‘Man, this is your big break, and I know that because we’re friends I’ve got this job, but I feel like I’m not hacking it.’ He got real mad, and he said: ‘You’re a negative thinker. You’ve got to stop it. You’re no Gene Krupa but you’re a good drummer and you’re going to get better, so stop thinking negative. Imagine you’re throwing a dart at this target and whatever your goal is – shoot high. Even if you fall below that you’re still better off than where you were.’ He had a great philosophy. And I said, ‘Yes, but you’re stronger than I am.’ Boy, he went through the roof! He went ballistic. ‘No I’m not, Goddamn you!’ – he started cussing – ‘I am not stronger than you are. You’ve gotta stop thinking negative.’

  Negativity and sadness, although it would feature in his songs for some time to come, no longer were his sole means of self-expression. Behind it all was Myrle, who kept in touch through letters and who wrote to him around this time outlining her own philosophy for happiness. Her words were startlingly similar to the way Nelson had endeavoured to live his life ever since: ‘I will eliminate hatred, envy, jealousy, selfishness and cynicism by developing love for all humanity, because I know that a negative attitude towa
rd others can never bring me success. I will cause others to believe in me because I will believe in them and in myself.’ He must have learned it by heart.

  The sessions for his second record for Liberty – the pointedly titled Here’s Willie Nelson, released in June 1963 – took place in April, and the mood was significantly different from the first album. He recorded hard, swinging, upbeat versions of ‘Columbus Stockade Blues’ and an old Bob Wills favourite, ‘Roly Poly’, but the album as a whole was much lusher than its predecessor, sprinkled with strings, glockenspiels and backing vocals, barely country at all in places. Only four Nelson originals were on show, an indication – along with the title – that he wanted an escape route from the popular perception of him as primarily being a songwriter, and instead wanted to make a splash as a performer. He had also, in hindsight, used up too many of his best songs on his debut.

  Willie Nelson: Of course, the name of the first album was . . . And Then I Wrote! Quite frankly, I’m sure the people at the record company thought, If his albums don’t sell that well, at least we’ll have all these songs for other artists. But I had confidence in what I was doing.4

  For much of the rest of 1963 he was either on the road or in California. He had sold the old family home in Goodlettsville and didn’t have a house in Nashville; when in town he would stay with Hank Cochran and his wife. Shirley was still based out West, so Nelson accepted a job running the West Coast office of Pamper Music in order to be near her. He also recorded there. But the job at Pamper was unstimulating and he was pining for Nashville. Royalty money was again growing steadily, and Shirley was a positive influence in the sense that she kept him from spending too much of it.

  In late November he returned to Nashville to record what turned out to be his final two sessions for Liberty. Tellingly, these included no Nelson originals whatsoever. The next day, he and Shirley went house hunting and found what amounted to their dream home: a ranch house on Greer Road in Ridgetop, a little town in the hills just under twenty miles north of Nashville. Ridgetop, as the house became generically known, was set in 600 acres of prime farm land and Nelson’s serious intention was to become a gentleman farmer: raising hogs and cattle, riding horses, scattering feed for the ducks, geese and chickens all around, living the sweet life.

  It became the first truly happy home he had known since childhood, and his absent children – who had never known even one – soon gravitated to it. Billy was the first to come. He was only six and missed his father terribly. Martha’s marriage to Chuck Andrews in Las Vegas quickly produced two children, but it was not working out. There was a lot of drink involved, much shouting and physical arguments, and Billy would sit in his room, listening to his father’s records and crying. Martha finally allowed him to leave and in the spring of 1964 he went to live at Ridgetop permanently. Shirley, who wasn’t able to have children of her own, embraced this new family life. She gave up working on the road and settled into becoming a housewife and surrogate mother.

  Shirley Nelson: When Billy came, he was mine. We went everywhere together.5

  By the summer of 1965, all three Nelson children has escaped the chaos of Martha’s escalating drinking and screaming in Las Vegas and settled with their father, Shirley and the animals in Ridgetop. He kept sending Martha her $600 each month anyway. He probably felt she had earned it.

  His career was stumbling along. His reputation continued to grow as a writer: Ray Price had taken his version of ‘Night Life’ into the Top 20 in 1963, while Roy Orbison’s recording of the Christmas song ‘Pretty Paper’ reached No. 15 in January 1964 and also became a UK Top 10 single. As a performer, however, things were somewhat different. He was disappointed at his lack of progress. He’d had two Top 10 singles with Liberty, but they had come early on, and subsequent singles had been lacklustre or simply disappeared. Neither of his two albums had set the world on fire or sold especially well. More significantly, neither had really shown him at his best or presented clearly what he wanted to do. It was a time when all the creative decisions lay firmly in the hands of the producer.

  Willie Nelson: I thought I’d come in and take over. It didn’t take long to see that was not going to happen.6 You’d walk into the studio and they’d put six guys behind you who’d never seen your music before, and it’s impossible to get the feel of it in a three-hour session.7

  Here’s Willie Nelson had been produced by Tommy Allsup following Joe Allison’s departure from the label, and it had been overcooked, despite some wonderful performances on the soulful ‘Home Motel’ and the quintessentially tear-stained ballad ‘The Way You See Me’. When the option came for Nelson to re-sign with Liberty in 1964 he spent a few days at their expense in Hollywood, listening to their entreaties, smiling and saying ‘OK,’ and then decided he would be better off elsewhere.

  He eventually signed with Fred Foster’s Monument label, despite being courted heavily by RCA. Foster had set up the label in 1958 and had a bona fide star on his books in Roy Orbison, who recorded his classic singles ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’, ‘Only The Lonely’ and many others for the label. With its rock ’n’ roll and R&B acts, Monument was not an exclusively country label. Nelson had known Foster for a while. The Pamper office in Goodlettsville was near his base in Andersonville, and Nelson would often come over for some lunch, a chat and to play some songs. Foster was a big fan of his writing and had been the man who had rushed to get Orbison to hear ‘Pretty Paper’ and record it in time for the Christmas market. Significantly, he wasn’t in any way scared of Nelson’s idiosyncrasies. In fact his definition of a successful artist was someone who could be identified by a listener as soon as the needle hit the groove, and Nelson certainly fell into that category.

  Fred Foster: I told him that if he was ever free, I really wanted him. So he came over one day and said, ‘I’m free!’ I just wanted Willie to be Willie. I thought he was unbelievably great, and I figured: either he’s going to make it the way he is – or he won’t make it at all. He was not meant to be in a regimented [system]. I figured he was so far ahead of his time, the public would catch up with him sooner or later.

  Foster was as good as his word, even if Nelson ultimately wasn’t. He only ever recorded two sessions for Monument, and released one single, but as brief as it was, it turned out to be an important moment in his career. Entering the studio with Foster producing on 6 July 1964, the first three-song session was unsuccessful: the material – aside from the marvellous ‘(There’ll Be) Someone Waiting For You’ – was uninspired, and Foster’s attempt to liven it up with French horns, xylophones and trumpets badly backfired. But he was listening. By the time the next session arrived nearly three weeks later, Foster had learned his lesson, stripping the band right down to guitar, bass, light drums and a little saxophone. The result was ‘I Never Cared For You’, not only a superb song but also perhaps Nelson’s most distinctive and successful recording of the entire 60s.

  Beginning with an exhilarating flourish of flamenco guitar and a dramatic, stark vocal proclaiming that ‘the sun is filled with ice/ And gives no warmth at all’, ‘I Never Cared For You’ is a true wonder, driven by bongo drums, string bass and rattling acoustic guitars. Lyrically, it’s primary trick is to employ a list of almost apocalyptic images, all of which are obviously and dramatically untrue: the sun is filled with ice; the sky was never blue; the stars are searching for a place to fall; and – finally, inevitably – he never cared for you.

  As a whole it is unclassifiable, a sparse, rough-around-the-edges Tex-Mex pop song which, viewed from today’s perspective and with the comfort of hindsight, sounds unmistakably like classic Willie Nelson: something that might have fitted onto Red Headed Stranger or Spirit,or indeed a close relation to the haunting title track from The Great Divide. But crucially, in 1964 it bore no resemblance to anything he had previously recorded. Along with the excellent, similarly spare B-side ‘You Left Me A Long, Long Time Ago’, ‘I Never Cared For You’ was the sound of Nelson finally being allowed to be himself. Althou
gh it was not a major hit, it transcended country music and potentially gave him access to a whole new audience.

  Rodney Crowell: In 1964, the sounds of Dylan and the Beatles were all around the streets of east Houston where I lived. Willie had a local hit with ‘I Never Cared For You’. I didn’t listen to country radio then, it was on pop radio in between the Beatles and the Stones. Dylan wasn’t on the radio then, but me and a friend shared a copy of Bringing It All Back Home. So we were listening to ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, ‘I Never Cared For You’ and the Beatles’ second album all at the same time. So Willie, for me, was pop music.

  Unfortunately, Nelson failed to seize the momentum or see clearly what he had created. It was his last recording for Monument, and the mooted album never came into being. The problems apparently stemmed from a bizarre misunderstanding over advertising. Monument had signed Lloyd Price around the same time as they had Nelson, and Foster planned to run separate full-page adverts in the same issue of Billboard welcoming both of them to the label. He told this to Nelson, who loved the idea. Monument’s advertising department came up with a regal theme for someone they regarded as musical royalty, planning a purple trim for the advert in a manner which was meant to suggest the hem of a king’s robe. But when the advert was printed the colours bled and it looked, according to Foster, horrible.

  Fred Foster: I cancelled the ad, and we were going to come up with a better one. The Lloyd Price ad was fine and his ran. I told Willie his was coming, but I think when he picked up Billboard and saw that he didn’t have an ad and Lloyd did, he figured we didn’t believe in him. I don’t know what he actually thought. I think he’d had a few drinks, because he called me the next day and said he’d signed for RCA. He said something, the gist was, ‘Oh well, I didn’t think you wanted me.’ I said, ‘Well, you really can’t do that, you have a contract here. I could cause you a lot of problems, Willie, but I ain’t going to do it. I think you’re brilliant, I think you’re going to be great and have huge success, but I’d rather have your friendship.’ So I just gave him a release.