Nashville’s music and culture came off considerably better in the national press, which had needled the city so unmercifully in the 1960s. Big newspapers and magazines, impressed by the rock-influenced outlaw hits, found that country music had finally grown up. “The outlaws and the redneck rockers, dealing with new mores and formerly taboo subjects, have won powerful cults who fill up the halls to hear them perform—and who buy their records even if they receive fewer deejay spins than the old country traditionalists,” wrote Larry L. King in 1976. “There is a grand mixture now of styles and content, and while it may lead to disputes among modernists and traditionalists over matters of purity, there’s an overall higher degree of tolerance for musical diversity.”
Chet Flippo of Rolling Stone, Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Carr, who contributed to the New York Times and was an editor at Country Music, and a host of other national journalists reported on the big names and developments in Nashville, stirring the city’s Third Coast aura. Closer to home, the Nashville press finally splashed the music industry with deserving ink after years of treating it with aristocratic disdain. Writers such as the Tennessean’s Laura Eipper and Jerry Bailey as well as the Banner’s Bill Hance revealed that the country music beat demanded more than stories about, say, Willie Nelson’s pig farming; it was now necessary to cover the industry’s links to the economy, crime, fashion, and politics.
However, the beacon of such writing was Country Music magazine, which combined celebrity glitter with more-than-capable reporting and satire. Debuting in the fall of 1972, the magazine was based in New York, but you’d never know it by the editorial content’s strong Nashville flavor and relentless coverage of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson. And so well documented was the interplay between Nashville and Austin that the publication might as well have been the outlaw movement’s very own house organ. Writers Dave Hickey (who dated Marshall Chapman), Bob Allen, Michael Bane, Martha Hume (who was married to Chet Flippo), and others burrowed so deeply into country music’s inner sanctums that one could almost smell the dirty fryer at the Burger Boy or the smoldering weed at Dripping Springs. Hazel Smith, while working at the Glaser Brothers Studio, dished gossip in her “Hillbilly Central” column, and the inimitable Nick Tosches banged out lively record reviews. In the space of one issue, Country Music could communicate the clamminess of the Ryman Auditurium’s backstage or the flash of the Exit/In. At its best, it lampooned the conservatism of Nashville or the hype of the outlaw movement without giving its readers reason to be ashamed of the music they loved.
The monthly periodical zealously covered radio stations that switched formats to country music, giving special prominence to the “progressive country” format pioneered by KOKE in Austin, which featured heavy doses of Willie, Waylon, and Kris. The rise of such stations, like the popularity of Country Music magazine, measured Nashville’s growing stature as well as the outlaws’ surging appeal; KAFM in Dallas, KLAC in Los Angeles, KWAM in Memphis, WCRP in Philadelphia, KFDI in Wichita, Kansas, and a few others blended country and rock, although their numbers never equaled that of traditional country formats that stuck to Charley Pride, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette. KWAM changed its format in 1975 to let in Emmylou Harris, Jerry Jeff Walker, Linda Ronstadt, and “lots of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson,” noted Michael Bane in Country Music. “The most requests,” he continued, “are for early Willie Nelson (‘Yesterday’s Wine’ and ‘Phases and Stages’) with western rocker Gram Parsons following close behind.”
Like anywhere in 1970s America, Nashville and country music were populated by plenty of frosted hairdos and clownish plaid suits, but in the wake of Kris, Willie, and Waylon, a Texas-style chic invaded the fashion world, particularly Nashville’s. “The town has gone funky!” exclaimed Dave Hickey. “It’s really wonderful. One year ago Kristofferson scandalized the town by showing up at a black tie banquet in blue jeans—the next year everyone looks like extras in a rodeo movie.” Indeed, the Nudie-styled rhinestone suits and heavily embroidered costumes that had long defined style in Music City made room for the cowboy boots and leather vests that harked back to the country music idols of the late 1940s and early 1950s, albeit with a disheveled 1970s twist. “In Nashville these days, you just caint git outlaw enough,” cracked Hickey. “All the bars look like the Last Chance Saloon and there are two pairs of Lucchese Boots and three Stetsons per capita here on Muzak Row.” The obsession bled out of Nashville into the wardrobes of hipsters everywhere, who snatched up the outlaw belt buckles, gambler’s hats, and Willie Nelson bandanas advertised in country music publications and sold in western stores everywhere.
Indeed, it was as cool to be from Nashville as it was to be from Austin. A young player with a country band who might have stammered explaining his job to rock people he met on the road in the late 1960s now had nothing to hide; after all, the icons of his genre toured with Lynyrd Skynyrd and received glowing affirmation in Taxi Driver. “Anymore you don’t have to be ashamed to like country music,” explained Willie Nelson in 1975. “I remember when some people didn’t want their friends to know they dug it. Now, it’s okay and I think a lot of it has to do with our changing styles, not just in music but dress. The world, at last, has accepted longer hair. The long-haired person can do anything he wants now whereas in the past, much of his actions were limited. I feel the novelty of the cowboy, the way he dresses, the way he thinks and where he lives also has had something to do with the surge in my kind of music which, basically, is country and western.”
Some linked the popularity of country music and its outlaw movement to the revival of the South, which saw big manufacturers abandoning the Snowbelt for the Sunbelt, the rise of Jimmy Carter, and the decline of civil rights unrest. “The old South had died, and few Americans—southerners included—would have wanted it back if they could only remember it as it truly was,” posited scholar Bruce J. Schulman. “Yet ‘redneck culture,’ in a commercialized form, thrived and spread in the 1970s. . . . Country music culture, cowboy boots, pickup trucks, and even the Confederate flag became familiar badges of an influential American subculture. Millions of middle-class and upper-class Americans became ‘half a redneck.’ Along with boots and trucks, these demi-rednecks also brandished a set of shared political attitudes: they resented government interference, although they excluded military procurement from their hit list of despised government programs. They disliked bureaucrats, pointy-headed intellectuals, and ‘welfare Cadillacs.’” In other words, soldiers in Richard Nixon’s silent majority had outlived Nixon and looked to the South for redemption.
Of course, many of them found Jimmy Carter, who seemed to be the antithesis of Nixon. Carter, like Nixon, surmised that the path to political acceptance snaked through Nashville and its country music. The former Georgia governor’s courtship of the Athens of the South and its music, even its outlaw music, would prove to be yet more evidence of the city’s new cultural influence.
Born in Plains, Georgia, Carter grew up listening to country music on the radio, so he was no stranger to the genre when he began reaching out to major figures such as Johnny Cash, Charlie Daniels, and Willie Nelson. He insisted that Johnny’s wife, June Carter, was kin, and grinned widely whenever artists like Billy Joe Shaver performed for his campaign. “If Carter makes it to the White House maybe then people will stop making fun of the way I talk,” cracked Loretta Lynn, another supporter.
Turning to rock and roll, Carter recruited Allman Brothers band alumnus Dickey Betts and the Marshall Tucker Band, who cranked up the buzz around his presidential campaign. “I think that was one of the reasons I won,” Carter told author Chris Willman, “because I did align myself with characters like these, who were admired by millions of people around the world. It was a very popular thing to do. I knew Bob Dylan quite well. . . . Dylan had visited me at the governor’s mansion and spent the night there with us. And of course the Allman Brothers were special friends, as well. Tom T. Hall was a very
strong supporter and still is a good friend.”
In his book Rednecks and Bluenecks, about national politics and country music, Willman called out the unusual pairing of long-haired singers and a presidential candidate. Indeed, Carter was unusual in more ways than one. He confessed to Playboy magazine that he lusted after women; he let his blow-dried hair drop below the top of his ears; and he planned to abolish federal laws against possession of small amounts of marijuana. “Now, Jimmy Carter—some of those who say they’re voting for him are doing it because they believe what he believes,” said Johnny Cash in the midst of the 1976 campaign, “and some of them are voting for him because he believes in something. Whether they do or not, they’re voting for him because he believes in something.”
Jimmy Carter hits the ground in Nashville. From left to right: U.S. Senate candidate Jim Sasser, local attorney John Jay Hooker, Carter, Nashville mayor Richard Fulton, and U.S. House candidate Al Gore Jr.
Photograph by Don Foster, courtesy of Nashville Public Library, The Nashville Room
In the homestretch of Carter’s campaign to unseat President Ford, he swooped into Nashville on his chartered jet, Peanut One, to spirit the faithful in an airport hangar rally. Country music acts Eddy Raven and Larry Gatlin performed, and Georgia native Brenda Lee sang “Happy Birthday” to the fifty-two-year-old candidate. Young Al Gore, who was running for the U.S. House of Representatives, showed up to hear Carter pledge that his next birthday would be in the White House. Fifteen hundred people cheered, and when his plane pulled out onto the runway for Pittsburgh, it was clear Nashville had found its alternative to Richard Nixon. Weeks later, the Carter juggernaut edged out Ford in national polling, but in the Nashville area the vote was decisive: Carter trounced Ford by more than 50 percent.
Throughout Carter’s rocky term he continued to groom his relationship with the music world, staging country concerts at the White House and slipping away from his burdens to catch Willie Nelson shows. When Nelson paid a visit to Carter in Washington, legend tells that the outlaw lit up on the roof of the White House.
Later, Willie visited again when both he and Waylon trundled through town, but he left Waylon in the hotel. “We had done one of the arenas there the night before,” recalls Gordon Payne. “And [Waylon] and Willie stayed up pretty late, and Willie had told one of our guys that Waylon had been up for three days and he was bouncing off the wall. And so that morning, we get a call from the president’s office, and they want Waylon and Willie to come to the White House. I really think it was Jimmy Carter calling Willie. So, anyway, Jessi and Willie and Connie, and myself ended up going, but Willie was the only one who knew where Waylon was. The only one. He wasn’t about to take Waylon to the White House, the way he looked and was acting. Been up for three or four days. And Willie says, ‘I’ll take his rap. He can even hit me, but I ain’t calling him.’ So we went to the White House without him! Waylon was pissed! But we talked about it years later. He said, ‘You know, it probably saved me more grief than I could ever imagine at the time.’”
Willie and the president.
Courtesy of Maryland Room, University of Maryland
BOTH WAYLON AND Willie got plenty of grief over drugs during the mid-1970s, mostly because of the creeping influence of cocaine, although Willie claims he stuck with pot. “The speed and the weed didn’t mix, especially when you’re up there trying to get a feeling going, get the dynamics going,” he told biographer Joe Nick Patoski. “Nobody’s thinking that way. They’re just playing. I could handle the weed, but I couldn’t handle the speed. I didn’t want to be around people who were doing it, even my band.” But he couldn’t get away from it, whether dealing with Waylon’s antics or the addiction of friends and family members. In 1976, authorities subpoenaed Willie twice in the case of a car dealer accused of leading an international narcotics ring, and one year later, three of Nelson’s entourage were handcuffed after police sniffed out 1.12 grams of “unusually high grade cocaine” in a traffic stop.
Nashville authorities watched uneasily as the number of cocaine arrests increased. Moreover, they estimated that about three pounds of the drug—with a street value approaching one hundred thousand dollars—was snorted each week in the city, although Waylon and his people might have alone accounted for that amount. “It was everywhere,” says Gordon Payne. “It was the cool thing. People on Music Row, on the record labels had it. Promoters had it. Everybody had it.”
If Nashville boasted Third Coast status, it had to have its cocaine. “The early seventies were pretty gentle—grass and alcohol,” says Rodney Crowell, who continued to come in and out of Nashville. “And then somewhere in there cocaine came in. And that was—whew—insidious stuff. But it was around. It was everywhere. [There was a] phone number on the bulletin board of the studio. You just call and they’d deliver. ‘We deliver!’ Like pizza delivery! I never did like cocaine. I tried to shovel as much of it as I could at times, but never liked it.
“I would generally become crippled with self-loathing if I got too far into that stuff,” continues Crowell. “Which I did a few times. And I got to say most of the people that I observed . . . I just saw this really exclusive, greedy, hipper-than-thou behavior that came with who was holding [the parties]. Parties back then were with whoever had the most blow. Everybody hung around, like they were the cash cow. I didn’t like it.”
Waylon loved it. He had encountered cocaine for the first time after complaining to Richie Albright that his amphetamine suppliers were drying up. Albright—always familiar with the latest forms of recreation in the music business—pointed the way. And it was like unleashing a wild dog. Waylon claimed to spend twenty thousand dollars each time he scored, which was an awful lot of Wanted! albums, and stories abounded about bowls of the stuff cranking up the parties at his home. “I wasn’t just doing a little drugs,” confessed Waylon, years later. “I was doing them constantly. . . . I’d do them until I collapsed, then I’d get up and start right doing them again. I was killing the people around me, because they had to watch me destroy myself. I’d definitely hit bottom with it. I would never sleep. I’d stay up six or seven days or nights at a time, and I wouldn’t go home. My health was bad, I had dizzy spells where I couldn’t hardly drive, I had cars strewed all over this town, because I’d get somewhere, and I’d have to leave ’em and have somebody else take me home.”
If Waylon had a reasonably good handle on what he was spending on coke—and he probably didn’t—nobody could estimate what it was costing him in missed opportunities and lost work. Although, according to people around him, he had the constitution of a bull and rarely missed shows like Johnny Cash had in the 1960s; he was sometimes too messed up to do anything beyond his shows, like big interviews or potentially profitable TV appearances.
Jack Clement nudged him toward regular network television work in 1976, but the results were infuriating. He’d shot test video of Waylon and Jessi at the new Opry House and used it to pitch a weekly show to television producer Pierre Cossette, father of the Grammy Awards broadcast. According to Clement, Cossette had sponsorship money from Ford Motor Company that he was ready to spend on Waylon. They dubbed the show Brand New Opry. “Or something like that,” murmurs Clement. “It was going to be a country show. Good music. Lots of fun stuff. And he was going to let me produce it. And then Waylon was playing in Amarillo, Texas; Pierre came out to see the show before the TV thing. And he kind of disappeared. Pierre’s sitting there, waiting for him in this big restaurant or something, you know. Waylon shows up kind of high and takes off. Then Pierre came to Nashville to meet him, went to the house, and it was a go-deal. And then what really blew it was he was doing the Grammy show that year [in Los Angeles], and he had Waylon and Jessi on it as presenters.”
Waylon, says Clement, was stoned on the broadcast. The next day they were all to meet to discuss the proposed show, despite whatever Cossette’s reaction had been to the night before. “Pierre’s tired,” explains Clement. “He’s been up all night, an
d then waiting on Waylon to get up at three or four in the afternoon. And he’s enduring this shit. We drop by Andy Williams’s house, hung out there for a while, then we rode around Hollywood Hills, then went back to the hotel. Waylon came down, stayed about five minutes and then took off!” Naturally, the show died right there.
THE CAUTIONARY TALE for all of the country music users should have been Elvis Presley, who consumed prescription medication as if it were peanuts and popcorn. Of course, he assumed godhead stature in the mind of every hillbilly singer who dreamed of stardom and embodied rock and roll’s embrace of country music, a union that thrived in Waylon’s artistry during the 1970s. Waylon’s friend Bobby Bare never saw much distance between the King’s music and the styling that he and Waylon and the boys unleashed on Nashville. “To me it was country, and I loved it,” said Bare. “‘That’s All Right Mama’ and ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky,’ to me, that was country. Anything that had an open chord guitar was country. High energy.” Said Waylon, “Most of us marked time Before Elvis and After Elvis.”
Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville Page 20