Neil Reshen: He’d be talking business with me and one of the band would come and sit down. I would just wait there and say nothing, and eventually they would get up and wander off. But Willie would never say, ‘Oh excuse me, can we have a minute?’
His good nature and manners were really part of the problem. People gravitated towards him. They revered him and expected him to have answers in a way which was bizarre and slightly unnerving. ‘There’s a certain peacefulness in his eyes,’ said actor and friend Jean Michael Vincent at the time. ‘He’s the guru.’1 Undoubtedly, one of the reasons he – and Reshen – surrounded himself with some genuinely lowlife characters who seemed to take advantage of his financial largesse and his laid-back lifestyle and in return offered only a crude and perfunctory form of fealty and frontier justice was to keep these kinds of gushing disciples at bay. To literally scare them off. It was protection.
His loyalty and non-judgmental attitude to others was also a factor. He could see beyond the exterior and was always capable of recognising the good in people. Everyone deserved a second chance. He would insist on measuring someone’s worth solely on how they treated him and behaved around him, and of course there was something about him that seemed to bring out the best in others. Most of these men had never really had someone or something to believe in, and Nelson gave them a cause. He liked the fact they were dependent on him, not because it gave him power but because it made him feel he was doing something good. They repaid him with almost embarrassing amounts of gratitude and unthinking loyalty, and he gave them due loyalty back in return. He was admirably dismissive of outsiders grousing about his gang.
Willie Nelson: I have friend’s everywhere. I’m not ashamed of the people that I’m around. Even though some of them are probably what some people would call, uh, disreputable characters.2
But he was not unaware of how it all looked from the outside. At Gonzales some of his crew were kept off the payroll so nobody could trace their behaviour directly back to Nelson, but he was implicitly involved in – and therefore tacitly condoned – their activities nonetheless. On the tours with Waylon Jennings the crews would be at each other’s throats over who would get top billing in each town. Nelson didn’t care, he’d rather go on first and be halfway down the highway by the time Jennings came off stage, but he left them to it. He maintained a policy of see-no-evil which gave him huge amounts of protection while allowing him to continue being perceived as sweet-natured and laid-back. And he was. His good nature, his dislike of confrontation or saying ‘no’ to people was genuine, but it also became a canny tactic that could be used in all areas of his career. There is nothing in the script to say you can’t be both a nice man and a wily operator.
Neil Reshen: We’d go to shows and somebody would come over to me and say, ‘Hey, Willie just said that he’s gonna play a benefit for this place.’ I’d go over to the trailer and say to Willie, ‘What are you doing?’ And he’d say, ‘Oh, I just figured you’d blow him off. You’d get me out of it.’ So everybody loves Willie, and he lets somebody else deal with saying ‘no’. He’d say: ‘I wouldn’t play for him. I don’t even know him.’ There are two sides to him, and the good side is exceptionally good, but we spent many years of our lives saying ‘no’ for Willie. He doesn’t want to say ‘no’ to your face. He wants everybody to love him.
He enjoyed the element of surprise that his life on the road afforded him. ‘I have no idea who may walk down the hall next,’ Nelson said in 1978. ‘It could be a politician, it could be a Hell’s Angel.’3 He wasn’t exaggerating. They were fast, high times. He would hang out with Burt Reynolds, Jane Fonda and Candice Bergen. When he and Waylon Jennings played the Lone Star Cafe in Manhattan in April 1978, he was surrounded by the likes of Bill Murray, John Belushi, James Caan, James Taylor and, most improbably, Andy Warhol. A couple of days later he was in the White House. He had really become politically aware through his connections in Austin in the early-70s and leaned to the left, although his political views were pretty rudimentary.
Willie Nelson: We all know Democrats are better than the Republicans. The Republicans are for the rich guy. Everybody knows that.4
He had become friendly with the US president Jimmy Carter through fundraising for the Democratic party. In September 1977 he and Emmylou Harris popped in to see Carter at the Oval Office to pay their regards. A spokesman described it as the first time anyone had ‘gone into the Oval Office in a tank top and on crutches’, Nelson having recently broken his foot in a celebratory leap after he was released following a night in jail in the Bahamas for possessing marijuana. It was during the 1977 visit that he famously smoked a joint on the roof of the White House with a still-anonymous employee; Rodney Crowell recalls Nelson and the band coming back from that trip ‘all huddled up laughing their asses off about smoking a joint – getting away with it’.
Carter and Nelson shared southern roots. The president was a spiritual Georgian who loved his music and in some ways he was the Willie Nelson of politics – easy-going, unpretentious, friendly – but his endorsement was also an indication of just how big Nelson had become. Presidents didn’t hang out with B-listers, much less invite them to attend official functions and even book them to play in the grounds of the White House. For his part, Carter would occasionally turn up to shows, mouthing the words: his favourite album was The Troublemaker. As well as the president, Nelson had long ago befriended the Governor of Texas Anne Richards, a vivacious Democrat, socialite and recovering alcoholic who had been part of Darrell Royal’s party set. And yet in the bus he was rubbing shoulders with drug dealers, crooks, borderline psychopaths and worse, and no one seemed to care much about the contradictions. Least of all him. It was this bizarre merging of social strata, the clash of conventions and the unease that it could create that he loved.
Rodney Crowell: I remember Lyle Lovett and me and Willie doing a TV show together. Before the show we’re sitting out on Willie’s bus and the governor of Texas, Anne Richards, walks in. We’re sitting having this conversation and Willie just pulls out his baggie and rolls a joint and smokes it. After a while I couldn’t take any more, and I said, ‘Does this strike anybody as funny, smoking a joint across the table from the Governor of Texas?’ Willie just kinda laughed it off. I don’t think he even noticed. Willie exists outside of the normal conventions of society, in this rarefied and privileged place, just on the merit of who he is. I couldn’t have done that. I don’t have that much permission! He’s unflinching in his determination to live his life.
It was his turf and his rules. No matter who he was with, he did what he wanted with the same quiet, non-confrontational ease he had always possessed, and he seemed to walk away unscathed and unjudged. The same impulse which was unimpressed when the Rolling Stones came knocking ensured he was not going to kowtow to a politician – he would simply accept everyone as they came and hope they reciprocated. It was a remarkable juggling act and a testament to the sheer force of his charisma and determination. It has been noted that Nelson can spend an hour talking to his fans and each one will come away convinced that they have shared a meaningful conversation in which he has agreed with everything they’ve said, yet he has probably uttered less than five words to each one. It was an illusion. He maintained that there was no reason ever to be rude to a fan unless they were rude to him, and he made time for all his followers after the show, looking each one of them in the eye and listening to what they said, but he protected himself. By being still, being himself and being quiet, he could let everyone project their own illusions upon him. He is fond of quoting the Bible: ‘Be still and know who I am.’
On the bus, he was continually present but remained detached, available to all but committed to no one. It was a trick learned in childhood. He liked being the calm eye of the hurricane as all this lunacy boiled around him – and for him – and like a benevolent old king surrounded by a court of madcap jesters, minstrels and mercenaries, he sought amusement. He would watch the madness, smoke some dope, ret
reat when he wanted, go for a five-mile run in the morning, eat fruit salad and drink water. He had a balance, all things in moderation. He had recently decided to become healthy, having looked in the mirror one day and decided that he was ‘disintegrating before my eyes’.5 He didn’t want to burn out, he didn’t want to live fast and die young. After years of talking positively and trying to think positively, he now wanted to live positively. Coach Royal devised a fitness programme which involved cutting down on alcohol, eating healthily and exercising – push-ups, running – and generally taking care of himself. In many ways, the fact that Nelson has always attracted wildness and excess around him means that he doesn’t have to go to the real extremes himself. He could live it vicariously, by proxy. The road, after all, could get pretty monotonous. Perhaps more than anything else he liked observing how people reacted in these extreme situations, how far they would go out on a limb for him, how much loyalty was on offer. He would play people off against each other and sit back and watch the results. It was all a bit of a game.
Mickey Raphael: Willie definitely [encouraged it]. He loved it. Willie’s a shit-stirrer, he’s always liked that undercurrent. It was entertainment for him. Peter Sheridan was so obnoxious that anytime somebody came around they had to really want to get to Willie to go through him. If it was somebody Willie would want to talk to or an old friend who Peter didn’t know, Willie would call Peter off. It was like having this rabid dog around. That much obnoxious stuff has stopped. There are still people around us who are total fuck-ups, but you don’t go to Willie and say, ‘Oh so-and-so is drunk on their ass and making a fool of themselves.’ We police it ourselves. If there’s inner problems, we definitely don’t take them to Willie. He finds out about it and he laughs: ‘Well, that keeps things interesting!’ It sort of becomes a circus.
He was a superstar, in the privileged part of the slipstream which existed beyond the currents of punk, or new wave, or whatever other cultural and musical shifts were taking place down below. He was courted by all layers of society, zipping from stadiums to A-list parties to TV shows, but his domestic life – if it could be called that – was inevitably suffering. His three eldest children had moved on. He was practically estranged from Susie, who was on her second bad marriage. Billy was difficult, drinking and running wild. Connie and her two young kids were spending more time in the mountains in Colorado, where she was skiing and making her own friends. When Nelson really needed some time away from everything that was where he would go. Texas was for business, socialising, playing, fun; Colorado was for rare sanctuary. But the incessant touring meant he was away from his family most of the time.
Connie would come out on the road with him occasionally. Either her parents would look after Paula and Amy and she would go alone in her Mercedes, staying on the peripheries of the vortex, or in the summer holidays she would come with the kids and they would all spend the vacation with him. In true country fashion, he would pull the children up on stage to join him in singing ‘Amazing Grace’, but it was not really a suitable environment for a child. Mostly he left his wife to bring up the children on her own.
Connie Nelson: It was like he belonged to the world and I was just a part of it. It’s that gypsy lifestyle. You just have to accept that. I loved him and I always looked at it like I was moving into his life, he wasn’t moving into mine, so it just would never have entered my mind [to ask him to stop]. I never wanted him to quit the road, that was his life, that was what he enjoyed doing. And he was great with the kids. When he came home he made up for when he was gone. He always did. He’s always been a good dad and a great friend, but that’s not to say that it didn’t get hard, or things didn’t come up when I wished that he was there instead of out somewhere, but that’s just the way it was. He just wasn’t a great husband.
There were perks, of course. They were financially privileged and Connie and the kids loved the sense of adventure of going on tour, of waking up in a new town every morning, a different view from the window. Nelson had first started touring overseas when he had joined Atlantic, and his wife would usually come with him on those jaunts abroad. At first, it was just the United Kingdom; later when Red Headed Stranger hit they went to continental Europe, but even then it was not always a happy affair. ‘He was,’ Connie says, ‘always real glad to get back.’ He didn’t really like being away from his routine for too long, and with his lifestyle he had a fear of crossing borders. Back in those days people in Europe would come to the shows wearing ‘little Western string hats’, according to Bee Spears. The band felt the audience didn’t really get the music, that they were regarded as something of a novelty.
Neil Reshen: He hated the idea of going overseas. I sort [of twisted his arm]. We spent a lot of time working on it and he cancelled the first couple, and then by the time he was at CBS he was amenable to go, but when he got there he was just horrible. He couldn’t get any grass, and he just hated being away from where people knew him and loved him. He stopped smoking dope and he sort of relied on that at that time to keep mellow and everything. We were in France and we made arrangements to take him to some really good French restaurants, and he said ‘yes’, then he decided ‘no’. He just didn’t want to go out. So finally Connie and my wife went to dinner and I took him out, we went to have a drink and we wound up at the Crazy Horse [Saloon, a cabaret show in Paris]. He had these long talks with me. He was very morose because he was straight. He had a lot of interesting things to say. But he got over that. When we got back to playing in England, he was fine.
Later his overseas trips became easier. His popularity ensured a smoother passage and also meant he didn’t have to work so hard to corral an audience. In time he travelled like a rock star, and singing to people who primarily didn’t speak English only reinforced his beliefs that music was a universal force of unity, but despite his almost continual touring he was not always happy on the road. He would get tired, disorientated and dejected and would often resolve to throw in the towel, but he just couldn’t stay still for long. Even when they were together at home, the fundamental differences in his and Connie’s lives made things difficult. Connie was a mother, looking after her two children, trying to get them through school. She knew in her heart that her husband wasn’t faithful on the road, but she would blame it on the advances of predatory women and only say something if it got too blatant. When Nelson was off the road he found it difficult to settle. They had few compatible interests.
Connie Nelson: One of the arguments Willie and I had, and it was probably because he was guilty over something else, was when he said, ‘We don’t do things together any more. You don’t like doing the same things I do any more.’ It was all about smoking pot. I said, ‘Willie, I can’t do it! It’s not that I hate it or try to get you to quit, but it’s just what it does to me. I’m a mom and I can’t function.’ His metabolism and mine are so different. I could smoke a couple of hits and I could sleep for fifteen, sixteen hours, but Willie seems to get energy from it. That’s why he never liked speed or cocaine or any of that stuff, it made him jittery, made him feel bad and paranoid. But the pot just kind of levelled him out. It’s so amazing. He can smoke something that would knock an elephant out! But I had to watch out for my kids. The only time I ever said anything about pot to Willie was when my girls were in junior High school. They had friends over and he had this stuff laid out all over the table, and I told him, ‘Please don’t do that. Please take it somewhere where kids coming in can’t see it. That’s not good for kids to see you smoking.’
Nelson spent a lot of time in Malibu in the mid to late 70s. Through touring he and the band had become good friends with Emmylou Harris, who lived in southern California. He sang and played and provided songs on some of her records, and Mickey Raphael – who had moved to Los Angeles and would soon be dating the actress Ali MacGraw – would also play harmonica with Harris and hang out with Rodney Crowell and other members of her Hot Band. It was a whole different scene from Texas but the routine didn’t change t
oo much. He was still a mysterious presence, slightly otherworldly.
Rodney Crowell: I remember being in Willie’s apartment out in Malibu, with Mickey and all of us, sitting around smoking dope. Willie was lying on the floor watching television and I was just craving a conversation – just wanting to ask questions – and Willie, without being defensive or offensive, just sort of brushing it away. Chilling out and watching television. I remember thinking as a young man, Man, there’s so much I could learn from him if I could just get him to open up. Then he’d turn around and say something just drop dead funny that kept it moving. For all of Willie’s open accessibility, he is extremely adept at guarding himself.
His upstairs neighbour in the Malibu apartment complex was Booker T. Jones. It was a pleasing twist of fate. Jones was a songwriter, arranger, producer and multi-instrumentalist who had come up through the Stax label in Memphis as a house musician in the 60s; with his instrumental band the MGs he had been responsible for modern soul classics like ‘Time Is Tight’ and ‘Green Onions’. He seemed a long way from country music, except nobody was that far away from country music any more. There was also a tenuous link: at the time Jones was married to Priscilla, the sister of Rita Coolidge, who had been married to Kris Kristofferson and was, of course, great friends with Nelson.
This was merely incidental. Jones had first spotted Nelson running along the beach in Malibu one morning. Later, the two met, talked a little and got to know each other. A plot developed. Nelson and Jones found common ground in their love of the great pop standards of the 20s, 30s and 40s, the songs of Hoagy Carmichael, Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, the songs Nelson had fallen in love with as a boy in Abbott and which he still regarded as ‘some of the most beautiful I’d ever heard’.6 Later, they sat together and began to play.
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