Lone Star Records put out six albums—three by Willie and three by some of the good Texas acts we had signed. We had a terrific roster of artists for Lone Star Records, but we just didn’t know shit about marketing records. Finally Willie said, “Let’s just shut down the company for a while and see what happens next.”
Next, we went looking for a new home. This was in 1979. Willie and I had been to the Pedernales Country Club twenty miles outside Austin a couple of times before we drove by and saw a “For Sale” sign outside. In many ways it resembled the place in Bandera—nine-hole golf course, Olympic-size pool, big clubhouse, tennis courts, a bunch of apartments near the clubhouse. It had a wonderful view to the west across the hills and north to the Pedernales River and Lake Travis, and it was full of deer and rabbits and wild turkeys. Willie told me to make an inventory of the place. The homeowners had tried to take care of the golf course, God bless them, but it was a mess. The facilities were great, but there weren’t enough people to support the club or the bar and restaurant.
Willie bought it. He remodeled the clubhouse into a state-of-the-art recording studio with a big office for himself overlooking the pool and the hills, and offices for his assistant, Jody Fischer, and Bobby Arnold and Larry Greenhill, the sound engineers. We fixed up the pro shop. Willie spent a fortune on the golf course putting it into first-class condition.
Now I’m in complete heaven. When Willie is home, we get to play golf every day like we did in the old times. Knowing Willie is happy when he looks at his golf course and is pleased with what we’ve done with it, that’s a big kick for me. When he looks at you with those brown eyes and says, “Boy, this golf course is beautiful,” there ain’t no higher feeling that that.
I mean we have got it covered.
I could easily have screwed it up the night I broke Willie’s neck. We were at a club down in Corpus Christi and I had a little matchbox of pot I wanted to go outside and put away. There was a pole right where you came into the club near the ticket box. They had this long hallway and a ramp at the far end.
We had been drinking. I told Willie I was going outside. He said no, you’re not. I said I need to go outside. He said, you stay where you’re at. So I waited till he turned around to watch the band, and I eased on out and started walking up the hallway. In a minute I heard running footsteps. Willie was chasing after me. At the top of the ramp I hooked an arm on that pole and swung around—and Willie shot past me and just took off flying from the ramp like a skier. I heard a horrible crash, tables and chairs breaking when he landed on them. We hauled Willie out of the wreckage and stayed there and partied until he got back on his plane and went to Nashville, saying he thought he had a headache.
The next day he phoned and asked what I was doing. I said I was getting ready to play golf.
He said, “I wish I could be playing with you, but it looks like I’ll have to miss a few rounds.”
I asked him what was wrong.
“I’m laid up in bed with a broken neck,” he said. “What the hell happened in Corpus, anyhow?”
How he keeps coming out of all these wrecks is a wonder to behold. Like down at Bracketville one year, Willie was flying in to the landing strip near Happy Shahan’s Western town that they used for the Alamo movie set. Happy is watching the plane coming in, knowing Willie is on it. The plane hits a big chughole in the strip and flips over on its side and crashes.
Happy likes news and publicity, you know, so first thing he does is pick up the phone and call the radio stations, the TV, the newspapers. Happy says, “Willie Nelson’s plane just crashed. Y’all better hurry.”
He jumped in a Jeep and drove out to the crash to pick up the remains.
And here comes Willie and his pilot, limping up the road.
The media people was arriving by then. They started firing questions at Willie. How did he survive? Was he dying? Was he even hurt?
Willie smiles and says, “Why, this was a perfect landing. I walked away from it, didn’t I?”
He’s accident prone. This is why you have to be careful around him at all times. I love the man, but you don’t never know when something might fall on him.
Bif Collie is a record executive, disc jockey, and ex-husband of Willie’s second wife.
Billy Cooper has done a little bit of nearly everything for Willie, including being his bodyguard.
Chet Atkins is a producer, a former president of RCA Records, and a great guitar player.
Rick Blackburn is president of CBS Records Nashville.
Darrell Royal is a legend in sports, a Hall of Fame football coach who won three national championships at the University of Texas.
Tom Gresham is a Texas music promoter who has done many Willie shows over the last twenty-five years.
Sammy Allred is a friend of Willie’s, one of the first DJs to play “outlaw” music—and is half of the musical performing act called the Geezinslaw Brothers.
Larry Trader is Willie’s close friend and golf pro, as well as a show promoter.
PART FIVE
I Gotta Get
Drunk and
I Sure Do
Dread It
I Gotta Get Drunk
I gotta get drunk and I sure do dread it,
’Cause I know just what’s I’m gonna do;
I’ll start to spend my money,
Call everybody honey
And wind up singin’ the blues.
I’ll spend my whole paycheck on some old wreck,
And, brother I can name you a few
But, I gotta get drunk and I sure do dread it,
’Cause I know just what I’m gonna do.
I gotta get drunk, I can’t stay sober
There’s a lot of good people in town
Who’d like to hear me holler,
See me spend my dollars
And I wouldn’t think of lettin’ ’em down.
There’s a lot of doctors that tell me
I’d better start slowin’ it down!
But there’s more old drunks than there are old doctors
So I guess we’d better have another round.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sitting on the roof of the White House in Washington, D.C., late at night with a beer in one hand and a fat Austin Torpedo in the other, I drifted into a reflective mood.
My companion on the roof—it couldn’t do him any good to use his name, except I should say President Carter knew nothing about this and would not have condoned it—was pointing out to me the sights and the layout of how the streets run in Washington.
“That string of lights is Pennsylvania Avenue,” my companion would say between drags on the joint and swallows of beer. “The tower all lit up over there is the Washington Monument. You can see Constitution Avenue, and there’s the Capitol and the Potomac River, and down a few blocks is the Watergate building . . .”
It was a good way to soak up a geography lesson, laid back on the roof of the White House. Nobody from the Secret Service was watching us—or if they were, it was with the intention of keeping us out of trouble instead of getting us into it.
Downstairs, Connie and our daughters Paula and Amy were excited about spending the night at the White House as guests of President Carter and Rosalynn. Connie and I were given a bed in the Lincoln Room. Paula and Amy were in the Martha Washington Room. I had played and sung that afternoon in the Rose Garden. The Carters treated us so well, it was like being at our own house.
Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn are like people I grew up with in Abbott. They’re so down-to-earth and so nice that they were too good to be politicians. You have to lie a lot to be a politician, and I don’t think the Carters are capable of lying anywhere near as much as their high station seemed to require.
So I let the weed cover me with a pleasing cloud and reflected on what a long, strange trip it had been from smoking cedar bark and grapevine at the age of four or five, to getting puke-on-your-shoes drunk with my dad Ira at the age of nine, to sitting on the roof of the Whit
e House sharing a number in the warm humid night.
I guess the roof of the White House is the safest place I can think of to smoke dope.
Hell, it had only been a couple of days ago that I was busted and locked in jail in the Bahamas for a handful of weed that I never even had a chance to set on fire.
On account of that miserable little pinch of weed that I never smoked, I was now laying on the roof of the White House with my left foot in a cast.
Me and Hank Cochran had been in the middle of a tour the week before. We got a couple days off, so we decided to go down to Hank’s place in the Bahamas and do some fishing, soak up the sun, ride around in Hank’s boat.
My luggage didn’t make the same flight that I did. We went on to his boat without it. The next day they phoned me from the airport and said my bag had arrived.
Driving to the airport, I happened to remember there might be a little pack of something I had forgot about in the pocket of my jeans in the suitcase.
The thought crossed my mind: I wonder what I’ll do if they found it?
When I arrived at the airport and saw the little gleam in the eye of the customs agent, I knew they’d found it, but I still didn’t know exactly what to expect.
I went to the room where my suitcase was sitting on a bench. I was wondering—should I try to sneak my blue jeans out while the customs guy ain’t looking? Should I just edge over like Sam Spade and grab that little bag of weed? Or were they trying to trap me into doing something really foolish?
“Is this your suitcase, Mr. Nelson?” the customs agent asked.
I noticed my jeans had been moved to the top of the bag.
I said, “Yeah. I sure do appreciate you taking care of it for me. I’ll just be on my way, if it’s all right with you.”
“You won’t be going anywhere today, Mr. Nelson.”
They searched every item in the suitcase but could ony find that one little bag of weed. We took a ride to jail.
I was stuck into a bare cell with a concrete floor. It was better than a Texas jail, but it was no luxury suite. I was alone for a few hours. By now, Hank had found out I was busted. He came to the jail and smuggled me in a six-pack of beer. Then Hank went out and hustled up somebody with $700 cash to make my bond.
When they opened the door and let me out of jail, I was about half ripped from drinking the six-pack, and I was so happy to be free that I cut loose a big Indian war whoop and leaped off the front porch of the jail.
I broke my left foot.
I hobbled before the judge on crutches. The judge said, “We’re going to release you on the condition that you never come back to the Bahamas again.”
So there I was, on crutches, on bond, deported from the Bahamas, and flying straight to the White House to see President Carter. A few hours later I was on the White House roof smoking dope.
Marijuana is like sex. If I don’t do it every day, I get a headache.
I think marijuana should be recognized for what it is, as a medicine, an herb that grows in the ground. If you need it, use it. People who smoke it and get real paranoid don’t need it. People who smoke it and become brain dead, it’s the wrong medicine for them. For me smoking marijuana is like eating a couple of Valiums for somebody else. I have a tremendous amount of natural energy, and I need to take the edge off. Friends have told me I don’t smoke weed to get high, I smoke it to get on a more level keel and not be like a turkey that’s going out there sticking his head in everything. A few beers will calm me down, but beer also puts me to sleep. Whiskey is a totally different story. But the important thing to remember about using any of this stuff is there is always a trade-off. Whiskey will make you not give a shit about your problems, but it will also kill you. Valium is addicting and, like whiskey, can turn into a much bigger problem than whatever you’re trying to forget by using it. With marijuana, the trade-off is you can ruin your lungs.
There’s been a lot of talk about marijuana being harmless, but I think it’s a lot more dangerous to the lungs than dope smokers realize. Especially the strong marijuana that’s around these days. Each year it seems to get a little stronger. The wise course is not to abuse it.
Your lungs are not really supposed to breathe anything but oxygen—pure, fresh air. There are always arguments about which is worse for you—marijuana smoke or cigarette smoke? Gasoline fumes or smog or poison gas? There’s tons of shit we breathe every day that ain’t good for us. But if weed is used moderately, for a purpose, to calm yourself—because there’s plenty of us who are very nervous and need more of it than others, and we know who we are—then marijuana is just one more natural blessing that grows from the earth.
I know alcohol is not the answer for me. I enjoy drinking a little bit these days just because I get kind of silly, but my disposition won’t handle alcohol on a regular basis. Whether it’s my Indian blood, or my Irish blood, or just my blood, I don’t know, but alcohol makes me do things that I’m not always proud of.
Whiskey can make me cranky, even downright belligerent. I get into bourbon or gin, I’ll start looking to stir up some shit. I’ll see things I don’t like that I may have not noticed until the booze pointed them out. I’ll look for trouble. I grow rabbit ears. I’ll get very sensitive about what’s said in the room. Tequila has more of a psychedelic effect on me, more like a hallucinogenic. I usually stay pretty pleasant on tequila, but I usually get real drunk on it and don’t know what I’m doing after a point. Maybe they’ll tell me the next day that I was having a good time and not hurting anybody, so that’s okay now and then. With bourbon whiskey, though, I not only can get annoyed real fast, I always get diarrhea of the mouth. I start talking way too much, saying everything that flows off the top of my head. The next morning I suffer what the Coach, Darrell Royal, calls the re-re’s: the regrets and remorses. I’ll sit on the side of the bed and think, oh my God, did I really say that? Oh God, I didn’t really tell them all that shit, did I? Did I really get into a fighting disposition? Did I really start feeling very amorous at the same time I got too drunk to fuck? Oh God. These are the re-re’s.
Whiskey runs my mouth the way speed loosens the lips of most people. Speed works the opposite on me—it makes me shut up. My brain is whirling so fast that my mouth couldn’t possibly keep up, so I am struck dumb.
While I’m admitting to the contents of my medicine chest of drugs and alcohol, I’ll tell you two things you’ll never find me doing—smoking cigarettes or using cocaine.
Heroin is so far beyond anything I would use or even tolerate around me that I won’t bother to talk about it.
I have one firm rule with the band and the crew regarding cocaine: if you’re wired, you’re fired.
Anybody in the band or crew who hasn’t quit cocaine has at least pulled up hard from the way it used to be. Cocaine is a stupid drug to use. It gets out of hand before you realize what is happening to you. Everybody starts off thinking they can snort a few lines from time to time, get a pleasurable buzz of energy and confidence and a feeling of power. But sooner or later, cocaine will overcome you. Some of the guys in the band and crew were spending too much money on coke, damaging their health and definitely affecting their music. When you’re wired, you stay up and party, maybe never sleeping between one show and the next, thinking you’re doing fine. But really you think you’re making it when you’re only faking it. Coke don’t even make you funny the way whiskey can do, it just makes you think you’re funny. For a singer, Cocaine is a disaster on your breathing and throat. Coke has fucked up many a singing voice. I appreciate that the coca leaf grows in the ground, like a medicine. A cup of hot tea brewed with coca leaves is a good tonic for the blues. Indians in the mountains in South America chew coca leaves to pick up their spirits and keep them going in a hard life. But by the time cocaine gets to the user in this country, it is nothing like the coca leaf you would pull off a bush in Bolivia. The dealers cut the powder with some very poisonous shit. A coke snorter who is moderately deeply into it—like a gram a day�
��knows damn well he is sticking strychnine, borax, crank, baking soda, all kinds of words that end in-drine, up his nose, but he doesn’t care. Coke makes smart guys stupid. He keeps on throwing good money and precious time after bad dope. Eventually he blows his act.
The old joke is that a couple of snorts of cocaine will make you feel like a new man. But the first thing the new man wants is a couple more snorts of cocaine.
One interesting thing that has happened to our band in the last few years is we have picked up our tempo without realizing it.
Sometimes I’ll hear our old version of “Whiskey River” played on the air, or maybe “Devil in a Sleeping Bag” or “Shotgun Willie,” and I’m surprised at how laid back we used to sound. We tape our road show every night, and there is a tremendous difference to me in our drive and energy now compared with the middle to late seventies.
Probably this has a lot to do with certain drugs we don’t take anymore. Our old style was fine for earlier times because everybody was laid back, and we were as laid back as anybody. Austin was a real mellow scene.
There’s another big reason that our band has gotten stronger: the musicians themselves. They’ve been with me so long they’ve become part of my family. I hired Bee Spears to play bass when he was a seventeen-year-old kid in Helotes playing bass with George Chambers. Jody Payne joined us shortly later. Jody was married at the time to Sammie Smith and playing in her band. We did some dates with Sammie. I would go onstage and join her for a few numbers, which put me on the bandstand with Jody. I really liked the way he played backup, and I liked the way he sang harmony, so I talked Jody into staying with us.
Grady Martin has been my hero forever. There’s nobody better to have in the studio than Grady Martin, because not only does he play guitar, he knows what everybody else is supposed to be doing, too.
Billy English came along to help as a roadie first. He had been playing drums with a preacher. Billy’s a great musician. He’s a guitar player, bass player, drummer, songwriter, you name it. But Paul plays drums with me. Paul won’t let Billy play too much because Billy plays too good. Paul will be the first to tell you fuck no, man, I’m playing the drums. But every now and then he’ll let Billy jump out in front and play, like on “Milkcow Blues,” and he’s fantastic, and that’s how he kind of got started doing the percussions back there. Billy plays percussions on things like sticks and pipes and bones.
Willie Page 20