Well, sir, the world had an answer to that question.
Happened on December 23, 1970, the day after I wrote that prophetic song. I was at the King of the Road club in Nashville, having a ball at Lucky Moeller’s annual Christmas party.
“Phone call for you, Willie,” said the bartender.
I went behind the bar to take the call. The party noise was so loud I could hardly hear. It sounded like Randy, one of sister Bobbie’s sons. He sounded all worked up.
“That you, Randy? Speak up, son, ’cause I can barely hear you.”
He was practically yelling, but his words were slurred together and I couldn’t quite make out the meaning.
“What is it, Randy? What are you trying to say?”
“Uncle Willie, you gotta get up here. You gotta come right now.”
“Why? What’s the big hurry?”
“Your house is on fire. Everything’s burning down.”
Just like that, a million thoughts crossed my mind. I tried to focus on the most important things.
“Is everyone out safely—the kids, Connie, everyone?”
“No one’s in there. Everyone ran out in time.”
“Good. Is the garage on fire?”
“Not yet, but the flames are close.”
“Take my old car and park it in the garage.”
“Are you kidding, Uncle Willie?”
“I’m dead serious, son. Insurance is gonna pay for all this. Might as well pay for a new car.”
Didn’t take me more than twenty-five minutes to race up to the house. When I arrived, the fire was in full force, the fire department doing their best to contain it. The family was huddled together, amazed and frightened at what was happening. Before I had time to comfort anyone, I ran into the house. The firemen protested, but I couldn’t be stopped.
Somehow I managed to make it back to my bedroom, where, dancing between the flames, I grabbed two guitar cases. One contained Trigger and the other two pounds of primo Colombian pot.
Back outside, I put down the cases and put my arm around Connie, who was holding Paula.
“It’s going to be all right, baby,” I said.
“It’s all gone, Willie,” said Connie. “It’s all gone up in smoke.”
“All that’s gone is material stuff,” I said. “Our spirit ain’t gone. Our spirit’s stronger than ever.”
PART THREE
TEARDROPS AND FLOWERS
Back to the Future
At the start of the nineties, with my back to the wall, with the world saying that my finances and career were in the toilet, I had to do what I’ve always done during hard times: rely on my faith.
My faith was in the fact that I could look for light rather than darkness. I could look for mercy and compassion rather than bitterness or rage.
“Faith is a beautiful thing,” said my manager, Mark Rothbaum, a man who dealt with hard practicalities and saved my ass more than once. “You wouldn’t be who you are without it, but we’re going to need more than faith to get you solvent, Willie. We’re going to need a plan.”
“Don’t wanna hear another word about bankruptcy,” I told Mark. “I’m not about to burn my creditors. That’s not how I was raised.”
“I know that, Willie, and I respect that. My plan isn’t bankruptcy. My plan is a lot more radical than that.”
“What is it?”
“Take on the IRS.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“Aggressively and creatively. Creativity is your strong suit. Now you just have to apply it to fighting the feds.”
Some of my other advisers nixed the idea.
“Too risky,” said one.
“You’ll be digging yourself into a deeper hole,” said another. “The IRS will eat you alive.”
I took an afternoon to reflect. It was one of those beautiful Texas days in early spring. I walked around my little Western town called Luck, which had been created for the movie I had made, Red Headed Stranger. When the movie was over, the town—that included an old saloon where I now play poker and dominoes—remained. I called the saloon World Headquarters. Beyond the town, some thirty miles outside Austin, I owned seven hundred acres of land, prime Texas hill country, where the Pedernales River empties into Lake Travis. On this land were two other prized possessions: the Pedernales nine-hole golf course and the Pedernales state-of-the-art recording studio.
This afternoon I just wanted to walk the land. Just wanted to breathe in the fresh air, look at the ducks and geese, the rabbits and the deer that roamed free.
I was in my late fifties and had worked a lifetime—had put in a million miles on the road, had written and recorded hundreds of songs—to get to this point.
“You’re going to lose it all,” one naysayer insisted. “And now if you’re foolish enough to go after the IRS, you’ll really fuck yourself. Not only will they grab every last piece of your property, but you’ll be turning every last concert ticket and record sale over to them.”
I walked up the big hill to where I’d built a log cabin on bare land into a livable home. On the outside, it was still a log cabin, but on the inside I had all the modern conveniences.
Standing in front of the house, I had a spectacular view of some of the most beautiful land on God’s green planet.
I took in that view.
I loved everything: the hills, the trees, the wildflowers, the birds, the bees, the bugs, the clouds, the sky.
I sat down on a chair on the porch and took a deep breath.
I could feel myself growing tense. I had a decision to make.
I lit a joint and held in the smoke a good long while before exhaling. It never failed. The good weed melted my tension.
I reflected on the last thing the naysayer had said: “This could be the most important decision you’ll ever make, Willie. Throw caution to the wind and you’ll wind up on your broken ass.”
I went inside, picked up the phone, and called my manager, Mark, whom I trusted implicitly.
“Been thinking about your crazy idea of going after the IRS,” I said.
“And have you made up your mind?”
“Yup.”
“So what do you say?”
“I say let’s do it.”
17
TIME
WHEN A FIRE BURNS UP all your worldly possessions, you can’t help but be philosophical.
The fire happened in 1970, when I was thirty-seven years old. I had a beautiful woman, four beautiful children, two beautiful former wives, and a semisuccessful career. Monetary success had come initially through songwriting, but after that, only modest success as a performer and recording artist. I still had to play dives to scrape by. And although I was signed to RCA, a big-time label, my royalties didn’t amount to much. The insurance money was enough for me to rebuild Ridgetop—but that would take time.
In the meantime, I figured the most comforting place to go would be home. That meant Texas. Crash Stewart, who’d been helping me hustle up gigs, found a dude ranch some fifty miles outside San Antonio that was shut down for winter. He talked to the owners, who were willing to let me and my crew hunker down. The little town was Bandera, and the countryside, with its rolling hills and flowing creeks and rivulets, suited me just fine. This was where I got my first taste of golf, a sport that, like smoking pot, was a habit that I enjoyed cultivating.
The house where the ranch foreman had once lived was perfect for Connie, Paula, and me. Everyone else in my traveling tribe—my other kids, assorted relatives and bandmates with their families—was comfortable in guest cabins scattered over the property.
It was in that valley during the winter of 1971 that I allowed myself some deep reflection. I dipped back into scriptures, the foundation of my faith, but supplemented that reading with the work of Khalil Gibran. His spiritual meditations called The Prophet touched my heart.
When he wrote, “Let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another
but make not a bond of love,” his words made sense. He understood that we can make music as a family, but that each of us must stand alone—“even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.”
I was with all the wonderful people in my life, but I also stood apart from them. As both a musician and a man, I had to follow my own individual path. Edgar Cayce was another writer/mystic/healer who helped me find that path. Before he passed on in 1945, he left a series of books. With the Power of Your Mind he showed how thoughts are linked to the infinite. He explained how he achieved cosmic consciousness through relaxed contemplation. In fact, they called him “the sleeping prophet” because, at will, he could lie down, close his eyes, place his hands on his stomach, fall into a deep sleep, and still answer the most probing question with brilliant insight.
I was also influenced by a highly nonconformist Episcopal priest in Dallas, Father A. A. Taliaferro, who liked to say, “Everything is great and wonderful. It always was great and wonderful. It will always be great and wonderful. So if we say something is not great and wonderful it’s because that’s the way we think.” Like Norman Vincent Peale and Edgar Cayce, Father Taliaferro convinced me that, even in most dire circumstances, I could keep negative thoughts from clouding my vision.
Power over my own thoughts—that’s a helluva concept. It means that you don’t ever have to fall into the trap so many people can’t seem to avoid: victimhood. That’s the worst feeling in the world ’cause it means that there ain’t shit you can do about your current situation.
I’d had my share of low moments, but I was learning that there’s always something you can do. You can train your mind to look up, not down and not back.
When spring came to Bandera, I found myself looking up at the blue Texas sky and the bluebonnets and bluebells running riot over all the land. I didn’t look back at the Nashville fire as a disaster and I didn’t look down at my stalled record sales at RCA as a failure.
I looked up and simply began asking questions. Rather than keep those questions to myself, I put them into songs. The songs became my own particular prayers, my own personal reflections. I strung those prayers and reflections together in a loose-fitting suite. Music critics were throwing around the term “concept album”—like the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. I suppose you could say that this new notion of mine came together as a concept album. Rather than try to write a bunch of hit singles, I simply followed the natural path taken by my mind.
My mind was overwhelmed by one question, which is where the record begins:
“You do know why you’re here?”
“Yes,” I answered. “There’s great confusion on earth. Perfect man has visited earth already, and his voice was heard. The voice of imperfect man must now be manifest. And I have been selected as the most likely candidate.”
“Yes,” said the voice on high, “the time is April and therefore you, a Taurus, must go. To be born under the same sign twice adds strength, and this strength, combined with wisdom and love, is the key.”
When they heard this album—that I eventually called Yesterday’s Wine—some people said I thought I was Jesus. Now that’s a fucked-up interpretation. Jesus was “perfect man.” I was the “imperfect man.” I was everyman trying to figure out my place in the universe. I was the man singing…
Explain to me, Lord, why I’m here… I don’t know
The setting for the stage is still not clear
Where’s the show? Where’s the show?
… Before I begin this elaborate journey
Portraying earth’s typical man
Last minute instructions would surely be welcome
Please, Lord, let me hold your hand
I needed to remind myself that, although I’ve strayed from the straight and narrow, I never strayed from my core beliefs. In “In God’s Eyes,” the next song in the sequence, I made that very point.
In God’s eyes we’re like sheep in a meadow
Now and then a lamb goes astray
But open arms should await its returning
In God’s eyes he sees it this way
Before I moved forward as “typical man,” I decided to go back to my beginnings: the home of Mama and Daddy Nelson in Abbott. That was the setting of a song I had written years earlier and decided to record again, “Family Bible,” where the Good Book is the focus of my childhood faith. There could be no Yesterday’s Wine without “Family Bible.”
The questions raised by the Bible—questions that had been entertained by deep thinkers like Khalil Gibran and Edgar Cayce—had no easy answers. I imagined a blind boy in a school yard, listening to the other children play. Again, the questioning began…
Dear Lord above, why must this be
When these words came down to me
After all, you’re just a man
And it’s for you to understand
“It’s Not for Me to Understand” became one of the key songs and led to even more pleadings on my part.
These are difficult times
Lord, please give me a sign…
The sign came in the form of lyrics. I didn’t feel that I wrote them. More accurately, I have to say that I felt like I channeled them.
Remember the good times
They’re smaller in number and easier to recall
Don’t spend too much time on the bad times
Their staggering number will be heavy as lead on your mind
Don’t waste a moment unhappy
Invaluable moments gone with the leakage of time
As we leave on our separate journey
Moving west with the sun to a place very deep in our minds
I couldn’t write a suite of songs, no matter how spiritual, without reference to romance. I looked on “Summer of Roses” and “December Day” as love poems. In the first song, love was fleeting, tragically brief; in the second, love was remembered “as my memories race back to love’s eager beginning… reluctant to play with the thoughts of the ending… the ending that won’t go away… and this looks like a December day.”
The theme song itself—“Yesterday’s Wine”—was set in a bar, a hangout of mine, where I encountered a nameless stranger who gave “the appearance of one widely traveled.” Rather than tell a story, it was time to listen to your story. It was enough for me to simply say, “I’m yesterday’s wine, aging with time.”
If I were to tell a story, there was none better than the adventures of “Me and Paul,” a song that described the road that my drummer and best friend, Paul English, and I had been riding together.
It’s been rough and rocky traveling
But I’m finally standing upright on the ground
After taking several readings
I’m surprised to find my mind’s still fairly sound
I guess Nashville was the roughest
But I know I’ve said the same about them all
We received our education
In the cities of our nation
Me and Paul…
Almost busted in Laredo
But for reasons that I’d rather not disclose
But if you’re stayin’ in a motel there and leave
Just don’t leave nothin’ in your clothes
And at the airport in Milwaukee
They refused to let us board the plane at all
They said we looked suspicious
But I believe they like to pick on me and Paul
On a package show in Buffalo
With us and Kitty Wells and Charley Pride
The show was long and we’re just sitting there
And we’d come to play and not just for the ride
Well, we drank a lot of whiskey
So I don’t know if we went on that night at all
But I don’t think they even missed us
I guess Buffalo ain’t geared for me and Paul
Once I recovered from the road, I was back asking the question
s, back in this dialogue with the spirit, wondering why I was here. My mind couldn’t help but race ahead to the end of the story. That’s why I wrote a song that envisioned my own demise, a song called “Goin’ Home” that pictured my own funeral.
The closer I get to my home, Lord
The more I wanna be there
There’ll be a gathering of loved ones and friends…
A mixture of teardrops and flowers
Crying and talking for hours
’Bout how wild that I was
And if I’d listened to them, I wouldn’t be there
… Lord, thanks for the ride
I got a feeling inside that I know you
And if you see your way, you’re welcome to stay
’Cause I’m gonna need you
I was pleased to end that suite with my need for faith. That need would never change. I was pleased to have mixed all my questions and doubts with my faith. The songs, in fact, were open expressions of how I tried to cling to faith in the face of the challenges of life on the road. They all connected, with each other and with me. I thought Yesterday’s Wine was my most honest album to date.
“It’s your fuckin’ worst album to date,” said one high-placed Nashville record exec at the label. Had to love the honesty.
“You don’t like the songs?”
“I don’t know what the hell the songs are about, Willie—and neither will your fans.”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t feel like my songs needed explanations or defenses. They were what they were.
“This is some far-out shit that maybe the hippies high on dope can understand, but the average music lover is gonna think you’ve lost your cotton-pickin’ mind. What the hell were you thinking, Willie?”
At this point I was tempted to say something, to show how the songs fit together in one cohesive story, but I stuck to my guns and stayed silent.
“Well, if you can’t explain your goddamn music to me, how the hell do you expect me to explain it to my sales force?”
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