Willie Nelson

by Graeme Thomson

  He had, in all truth, ceased moving forwards. ‘Formulaic and uninspired,’ ran a review in the LA Times; while Newsday’s John Anderson was scathing but perceptive in his review of an 80s New York show at Pier 84. ‘[He is] a walking contradiction. The self-described redneck hippie was once acclaimed as a songwriter but ignored as a performer; now his biggest hits are pop standards and his own songs go unrecorded. He plays for free for farmers and Native Americans but also does the casino circuit. He’s written and performed some passionate songs, but Nelson has lost any passion for singing them. He wears braids and plays golf. He’s Frank Sinatra in a Stetson. “How’m I doing?” Nelson asked in a lyric. Don’t ask.’

  Another reviewer called his band the Past Their Prime Players. In that same way that listeners were becoming grateful if a new record simply contained one or two good – or even original – songs on it, so his concerts were now defined by those rare moments when he diverted his eyes from the script. Things really only came alive when he added a new song like the lithe and energetic ‘Still Is Still Moving To Me’ – written in 1988 – to the set, or dug up a rarely performed gem like ‘I Never Cared For You’, but the distance Nelson travelled between such moments during his set stretched out and over the horizon. He seemed, in part, to be playing the songs that he thought people wanted to hear, rather than pushing himself creatively. It was a fatal course of action for any artist.

  Bee Spears: We’re pretty much locked into what we do, because we’ve changed it around before and people would always come up and say, ‘Well, I’m very disappointed you didn’t play “Good Hearted Woman” or “To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before”,’ so we just kind of have to cover all the highlights. There was a while when we were playing everything, but that’s pretty gruelling. Well, I mean the audience loved it.

  Perhaps it’s true to say that only when an artist has slowed down creatively is it possible to see them clearly enough to describe them as an icon: Nelson was definitely an icon. He was at that stage in his career where people start handing out awards for simply lasting the distance, rather than for making a current impact: the Grammy Living Legend Award in 1989; the Special Merit Award at the American Music Awards the same year; Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the National Academy of Popular Music in 1983; the Pioneer Award from the Academy of Country Music in 1991.

  But he could still attract controversy. In October 1987, alongside Kris Kristofferson, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and comedian Robin Williams, he scheduled a concert at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, California, under the banner ‘Cowboys For Indians and Justice for Leonard Peltier’. Peltier was a founder of the American Indian Movement and had been convicted in 1977 of murdering two FBI agents at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1975, although his supporters claimed the initial trial was highly irregular. An appeal to the Supreme Court for a new trial had been refused.

  Special Agent Richard T. Bretzing, head of the Los Angeles FBI office, announced in a letter that he was ‘utterly revolted’ by the concert in support of a man who had killed two of his colleagues. The concert went ahead nonetheless, and most of the people who came were initially unaware of the political connotations and simply came for the music. One of the audience said she particularly liked Nelson’s duets with Julio Iglesias. A picket line on the outside of the venue holding placards and a leaflet outlining Peltier’s plight handed to the audience on the inside made them aware of both sides of the argument. Nelson, whose politics stemmed from his humanism rather than his polemic, played Hank Williams’s ‘Hey, Good Lookin’ ’, which not even the most fervent activist could interpret as a subversive act. Even so, two country music stations dropped his records from their playlists, and the following year police called for a boycott of his concerts in Rhode Island, Boston and West Virginia. ‘We don’t take kindly to anyone who supports cop killers,’ said FBI agent Wayne Sacco, who organised a 400-strong picket line at the shows.

  Nelson was forced into action. The concert had placed one of nature’s unifiers and emollients in an awkward situation, caught between two of his natural constituencies: the Native Americans and the police. Or, in broader terms, the liberal activist lobby and the conservative caucus that contained many of his old-time country fans. His solution was to propose a joint benefit concert for the American Indian Relief Fund and the National Police Memorial Fund. He met with the American Federation of Police Officers and issued an apology, something of a rarity: ‘I deeply regret that so many police officers and organisations were offended by the Indian concert,’ he said. ‘In the future I will certainly consider all aspects of any benefit concerts so as not to offend anyone. I have nothing but respect for all lawmen and under no circumstances do I support cop killers.’ The old guard won this time.

  He also became embroiled in a rather odd, macho row over playing a concert in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the first three weeks of April 1988 Nelson and the band were on a ten-city tour of Europe, during which he was scheduled to play Belfast until the date was cancelled, he claimed, without his knowledge. There were whispers that he was worried about the latest violence in the long-term sectarian struggle between Catholic and Protestant terrorist groups in the province. Nelson’s response was pure cowboy indignation, no doubt fuelled by a recollection of the nights of guns and chicken wire back in the skull orchards of Fort Worth. Bombs? Bring ’em on.

  Willie Nelson: I’m not afraid to play anywhere. We’re ready for Belfast. It’s just another beer joint. It’ll be a piece of cake. You can call me a lot of things but a wimp isn’t one of them.6

  He pinned his colours to the mast in 1998, offering his support to Sinn Fein, the then-political wing of the IRA, and as recently as 2005 he entertained Sinn Fein’s president Gerry Adams on his bus in Dublin. The extent of the Nelson entourage’s knowledge of the complexities of Irish politics can be judged by the fact that one of the band was heard to ask: ‘So, is Gerry Adams a terrorist?’ He returned from Belfast unscathed and clicked back into the old routine, rolling around his homeland for the rest of 1988. He took a little time off towards the end of the year to prepare for the arrival of his and Annie D’Angelo’s first baby. Lukas Autry Nelson was born on Christmas Day in Austin, Nelson’s sixth child and his second son. His first, Billy, was now 31.

  The new father took it easy over the festive period: hanging out in Austin, watching the basketball at the University of Texas, playing golf. He went to Hawaii for a spell and played a benefit show on Maui, and in March 1989 he began recording the new Highwaymen record, again with Chips Moman producing. It was more of the same, perhaps even a little less successful than the first record. The album was rushed and although their pleasant version of Lee Clayton’s excellent ‘Silver Stallion’ was a minor hit single, there was nothing quite as powerful as ‘The Highwayman’ this time to really pull it all together. The tired, old-timer cowboy theme was established from the outset: ‘I’m going to chase the sky forever with a woman and a stallion and the wind/ And the sun is going to burn into a cinder before we ride this way again’, to which the listener might have added slightly irritably, ‘Yes, yes, we know.’ That four of America’s all-time great songwriters were struggling to find decent material was virtually beyond belief. There was a little too much emphasis on message songs and grizzled, heavy-handed philosophising, while Moman was much too liberal with the synthesizer.

  Waylon Jennings: It could have used a little more time spent on it. We ran in and out too quick, and we didn’t have that one great song. It’s hard to find material that goes over with four people, each with strong, let-it-all-hang out opinions.7

  Highwaymen 2 was released in March 1990 and reached No. 79 on the Billboard chart. In many ways its most significant reason for existing was simply providing a compelling excuse for the four titans to play some concerts together. They had played at Nelson’s picnic in 1985, but that was a one-off. They had all been busy around the time of the first album and there had
been logistical problems in the sense that each musician was devoted to their own touring band – Kristofferson was especially reluctant to abandon his Borderlords – but they finally came to an agreement, with Nelson managing to negotiate the inclusion of Mickey Raphael in the excellent nine-piece group. They kicked off with eleven one-nighters across the country in March and then added more dates in the autumn. It was a mixture of their own greatest hits, played ensemble, during the first half and then some – but not too much – Highwaymen material at the end. Nelson couldn’t resist a crack at the expense of Kristofferson’s rather limited vocal capabilities.

  Fred Foster: Kris said to Willie, when they were about to go on stage on the Highwayman tour: ‘I don’t think I’m in very good voice tonight,’ and Willie said, ‘How could you tell?’

  It was illuminating to hear Nelson’s songs played by a new band, although he was still persisting with what one reviewer described as ‘dumping his lyrics at the beginning of each melodic line as if they were giving him a bad taste in his mouth’. There was a heavy feeling of nostalgia in the air, a sense of hard-won survival and tough romanticism. Both Jennings and Cash had undergone bypass surgery in 1988: Jennings had finally quit cocaine, while Cash eulogised the virtues of a fruit protein drink he imbibed religiously each morning. Kristofferson ran and worked out with weights, while Nelson was still sticking to his own healthy regime, now with fifteen-month-old Lukas and Annie D’Angelo in tow on the bus. But they still hung on tight to their mythology.

  ‘Willie’s the outlaw coyote,’ said Kristofferson. ‘Waylon’s the riverboat gambler, I’m the revolutionary communist radical and John’s the father of our country.’8 Each had their own bus, and they would travel in convoy down the dark highways after each show, in a silent and separate show of solidarity. All in all, the tour was more successful than the record, although it was a measure of how times had changed that they struggled to sell out the arenas they were playing. There were new country stars: Randy Travis, Clint Black, Dwight Yoakam, Lyle Lovett, k.d. lang, who had moved the genre on, and outlaw had passed into history, embodying a poignant, gruff, defiant nostalgia.

  He continued touring with the Family Band after the Highwaymen went their separate ways, meeting tragedy head-on in late March when a car ran into the bus in Nova Scotia, killing the car’s driver. Off the road, he was still thinking up new methods of entertainment for his people at Pedernales, planning other business ventures. He had recently paid $1m to Act III Entertainment for the rights to more than 4,000 vintage country music TV shows, featuring Dolly Parton, Portner Wagoner, Marty Robbins et al, old Western films and shows like Bonanza and Wagon Train. He planned to broadcast the material on a new cable channel he was setting up called Cowboy Television Network. As usual he managed to give it a personal spin.

  Willie Nelson: Travelling around the country or around the world, it’s very difficult to find what I want to see, which is a good Western movie or some good music. That’s exactly the reason I got into this.9

  In fact, he had been approached with the idea by promoter and fellow Texan Mack Long, one of the numerous local characters who had been in business with Nelson over the years, and he had instantly handed over the cash. Long was installed to run the operation from Spicewood. Technological guru, archaeologist, inventor, computer expert and pirate entrepreneur Bob Wishoff was brought in from his home in Jacksonville, Florida to design a twenty-first century television studio for the CTN, but the reality was considerably less slick. News of Nelson’s Cowboy Television Network was reported in the press with due fanfare, but the view from the ground was very different. This was another attempt at building a home-cooked cottage industry, planting its roots in the eccentric soil beneath the sprawling network of condos at Pedernales. The practical results of CTN were heroically farcical and came as close to defining the madcap spirit of Nelson and his set-up at Pedernales as anything really could. The venture was beset by legal problems and business wrangles with persons of various shades of unpleasantness, and when it did hit the screens briefly – as the Outlaw Music Channel – it shared its satellite space with a horse-racing channel.

  Bob Wishoff: Whenever there wasn’t a horse race, we would slip in our midnight to 6 a.m. broadcast. It was guerilla broadcasting at its finest. We had one truck and two VCRs and in between shows we would switch tapes and it would basically go to static! In condo number three one night we decided to go on the air live. We had a satellite truck in the parking lot, one camera, three cheap mikes, no show planned. Willie just broke in and said, ‘Hi, I’m Willie Nelson and we’re going to do a live broadcast for you.’ Suddenly Willie decides to take calls. We had one telephone and you couldn’t hear the other end, you could just hear Willie talking. He sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to at least fifty people. At 2 a.m. in come a load of people like Kimmie Rhodes and David Zettner, just back from a gig at the Broken Spoke. We said, ‘Come on in, we’re on air!’ The living room was packed with people and cameras. We had a hand-painted sign on the fireplace with the logo on it. People would walk past with doobies, bottles of whisky, shouting ‘Roll another one!’ Willie kept asking for people to call him from France, and you had me on air explaining to him how cable TV works, that they couldn’t see it in France. We did that two nights in a row. It was gonzo as all hell. About a week later we got a bill from ASCAP for $5,000 for singing ‘Happy Birthday’. It was mad. We had a $1m satellite truck, all this stuff, and we were putting out crap!

  Unsurprisingly, CTN didn’t last long, and it wasn’t until 1998 that Nelson attempted to relaunch the Outlaw Music Channel, this time walking into a dispute with the Kickapoo nation tribe in Kansas, who ran a large casino in the state and invested money in the venture. In its clumsy way it was all part of Nelson’s desire to communicate directly with people over a long distance, to bring them directly into his ranch and his country club.

  He has since become much more savvy in his use of new technology, but back in 1990 his understanding of it and the nature of the technology on offer was much more limited. It was the time of the Gulf War. He had heard a Kris Kristofferson song coming over shortwave radio from Saudi Arabia and had loved the idea of that universal reach in a time of conflict. He asked Wishoff to set up his own radio show, which he duly did on a Costa Rican shortwave channel. It was called Outlaw For Peace.

  Nelson played a few concerts on air and offered free time to anybody in the world who wanted to make a radio show. For two years they made all kinds of programmes, giving air space to everyone from Aborigines to local characters in trailers who would scratch the records on air. They also broadcast Farm Aid 1992, where Wishoff originally ran into problems with licensing until Nelson asked him: ‘Uh, well who is Farm Aid, Bob?’ ‘Well, I guess it’s you Willie!’ Even so, it transpired that Farm Aid had sold the radio rights to Clear Channel, and in the end Outlaw For Peace only managed to broadcast the concert by blagging passes from the band, hanging a broomstick out of the radio booth at the Texas Stadium and then attaching a microphone to it. Wishoff still thinks it was a typically mischievous test from Nelson.

  Bob Wishoff: That started a three or four year adventure of Willie playing with my head! Saying, ‘Go ahead and broadcast, this year we’ll get it right.’ Next year in Iowa, I still don’t get the broadcast rights. They kept unplugging me and taking passes away from me. Willie will play tricks on you: ‘You want to be an outlaw so I’m going to let you be an outlaw. We’re not going to help you.’ Willie is an underground kind of guy. That’s the heart and soul of him.

  It was just the normal fun and games, if a little tamer than the old days: provide the context and the opportunity for chaos and then sit back and watch. See how far your entourage will travel for you, see how they cope under their own steam. Wishoff became another generic member of the gang: performing tasks, messing with pirate radio and computers, and doing Nelson’s sometimes eccentric bidding.

  The conflict in the Gulf began in August 1990 and later that year Nelson sent a copy of hi
s anti-war song ‘Jimmy’s Road’ to Wishoff, asking him to ‘do something’ with it. Wishoff devised a plan where the public could send him a blank cassette and he would tape them the song, along with a reading of Mark Twain’s ‘The War Prayer’, and send it back to them. He was deluged, to the extent that half the Pedernales community spent their days home-taping in the name of peace. In some ways it was simply business as usual. In other ways, 1990 was a strange and significant time to be part of Nelson’s circle. It was manic. Hyper. Super-charged. There was trouble on the wind.

  Bob Wishoff: It was weird. It was very insular, and everybody had these stress levels like something was about ready to happen. They were very nervous. And of course it did happen. The tax man came.

  BAD

  WILLIE NELSON ISN’T talking.

  ‘I won’t admit there is anything evil,’ he says. ‘Or bad.’ And he relights his joint.

  12. 1990–1992

  FOR A MAN who believes passionately in karma and reincarnation, Nelson must have wondered many times what he had done in a previous life to have warranted the desperate chain of events which afflicted him in the early 90s; or perhaps he attributed it to the fact that it was simply payback for some of the sins committed during his current time around.

  Probably he blamed the incontestable vagaries of fate and tried not to think too much about it. What he couldn’t deny, however, is that the events which battered his life had been signalling their arrival for some time, building their force and energy from actions he had taken – or often had failed to take – many years ago. When the consequences finally cornered him they tested his belief in positive thinking to its very core and attacked the heart of everything he truly believed in: music, family, freedom, the ability to keep moving.