Bee Spears, Paul English, Jimmy Day, and Doug Sahm flew to New York with me and Bobbie on a cold day in February 1973. At the Atlantic studios, Wexler was true to his word. He let me run the sessions. I had Wexler’s help, and the help of Arif Mardin, a fine producer and arranger. They inspired me, and the songs came pouring out.
The gospel album came to be known as The Troublemaker, named for a song that portrayed Jesus as the ultimate hippie: a longhair peacenik rebel scorned in his own time for an agenda of radical love. Most of the other numbers came straight out of the hymnal of the Abbott United Methodist Church—“Uncloudy Day,” “In the Garden,” “Sweet Bye and Bye,” “Precious Memories,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”
Bobbie anchored me—in memories and faith—in a way that no one else could. With Sister on the sessions and Wexler cheering me on from the booth, in two days’ time we cut a dozen songs. For the first time in God knows how long, I was recording outside Nashville. Unlike the producers there, Jerry and Arif weren’t interested in sweeteners—no angelic choirs, no overwrought strings. They wanted it raw, right, and real.
“Why don’t you stay around and cut some more tunes?” suggested Jerry. “Now that you’ve praised the Lord, isn’t it time to give the devil his due?”
“What do you mean, Jerry?”
“Put together a record of your worldly stuff.”
“You want something new?”
“Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. I’ll give you as much studio time as you want. Do whatever strikes your fancy.”
Went back to the hotel and gave it some thought. Wexler kept saying that I didn’t need a producer to tell me what to do. He said that I had a vision.
“Just give that vision an expression,” he urged. “The studio is your domain. You shape your sound any way you please. That’s what all the great artists do.”
I liked the words, but I also felt the pressure. I needed at least two or three new songs to justify Wexler’s faith in me. I needed to come up with something quick.
That night at the hotel I was in the bathroom, worrying about whether I could produce some great new song, when I noticed a dispenser for sanitary napkin bags next to the toilet. I took one out, got a pencil out of my pocket, and started scribbling whatever nonsense came to mind. The words came tumbling out.
Shotgun Willie sits around in his underwear
Shotgun Willie sits around in his underwear
Bitin’ on a bullet and pullin’ out all of his hair
Shotgun Willie’s got all of his family there
Well, you can’t make a record if you ain’t got nothing to say
You can’t make a record if you ain’t got nothing to say
You can’t play music if you don’t know nothing to play
John T. Floore was working with the Ku Klux Klan
The six-foot-five John T. was a helluva man
Made a lot of money selling sheets on the family plan
Wasn’t much more than a variation on a twelve-bar blues. I figured the words wouldn’t make much sense to anyone except me. Started out with me remembering that crazy day at the farm when I grabbed my shotgun and took aim at my daughter Lana’s husband. The second verse was just me stalling for time till I could figure out something for the third verse. And the third verse was me remembering John T. Floore, owner of a honky-tonk dance hall outside San Antone, who, in his misspent youth, had supplied the Klan with sheets.
When I sang the song for Wexler, I was certain he’d think I was nuts.
“I think you’re brilliant!” Jerry enthused. “Let’s cut it. Lay down another bunch of songs and we’ll call the record Shotgun Willie.”
Wexler’s attitude really pumped me up. I cranked out songs, one after another. The atmosphere was right. Whereas Nashville had always been uptight about musicians smoking dope in the studio, Atlantic didn’t give a shit. Wexler got high with us. Wexler never bugged me to put on sweeteners to stimulate sales. I felt free to tap into my imagination, no holds barred. I felt free to go against the grain in tunes like “Sad Songs and Waltzes,” a story about why this particular song would never sell.
I’m writing a song all about you
A true song as real as my tears
But you’ve no need to fear it
’Cause no one will hear it
Sad songs and waltzes aren’t selling this year
I’ll tell about how you cheated
I’d like to get even with you ’cause you’re leaving
But sad songs and waltzes aren’t selling this year
It’s a good thing that I’m not a star
You don’t know how lucky you are
Though my record may say it
No one will play it
Sad songs and waltzes aren’t selling this year
I added a few songs close to my heart—“Local Memory,” “Slow Down Old World,” “Devil in a Sleepin’ Bag”—and asked Wexler what he thought of my including a couple of Bob Wills covers.
“Do it, man!” said Jerry. “It’s your roots! It’s your heart!”
So we cut Wills’s “Stay All Night” and “Bubbles in My Beer.”
I decided to cover two songs that were on the opposite ends of the emotional Richter scale: Johnny Bush’s rowdy “Whiskey River” and Leon Russell’s rhapsodic “A Song for You.”
In Nashville, I’d caught hell for my idiosyncratic singing. For years I heard producers tell me that my phrasing was off.
“Your phrasing reminds me of Ray Charles and Sinatra,” said Wexler. “Like you, they’re great proponents of rubato—elongating one note, cutting off another, swinging with an elastic sense of time only the jazz artists understand.”
What others called a deficit, Wexler was calling an asset.
When I was through cutting Shotgun Willie, we had an album that would have never been allowed to be made in Nashville. But a New York–based label like Atlantic and a New York R & B producer like Wexler couldn’t have been happier. They put out Shotgun Willie before The Troublemaker and—wouldn’t you know it—the thing sold like hotcakes. FM radio, all the rage back then, ate it up.
Much as I liked recording in New York, I was glad to be back in Texas, where Coach Darrell Royal had been telling me about Mickey Raphael, a harmonica man he’d heard play behind B. W. Stevenson and Jerry Jeff Walker. Coach loved to host jam sessions in his hotel rooms. I was at one of those sessions after a football game at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas when he introduced me to Mickey, who played the living hell out of the harp. He had a full cry, a blues cry, a big sound, and beautiful sensitivity.
The following week, I invited Mickey to come along and sit in with my band at an East Texas benefit I was playing. Along with Bee, Bobbie, and Paul, he fit in just fine. For the next few months, anytime we played Texas, Mickey joined us onstage.
At one point I asked Paul, “How much we paying him?”
“Nothing.”
“Great. Double his salary,” I joked.
But I knew that Mickey was no joke. And I began to see how, rather than as an occasional sit-in, he could become a permanent part of my family—a loose term that I started using to describe my band. As a depiction of people coming together to make music, I like the term “family” more than “band.” It’s a warmer word that suggests genuine care and love.
Mickey’s welcome arrival in the family coincided with the departure of Jimmy Day, my man on steel guitar. The vocals–steel guitar conversation I had been used to with Jimmy became a vocals-harmonica conversation with Mickey.
Waylon had set the pattern by using Donny Brooks as his harmonica alter ego. Donny was a master. In fact, he was Mickey’s mentor. Donny shadowed Waylon’s voice in a way that raised the emotional stakes. The Waylon/Donny combination made me realize the potential of a Willie/Mickey hookup. Just as Jimmy Day’s steel guitar had once wept behind me, I could now hear Mickey shaping those same kinds of crying notes.
As I turned forty, it was full s
team ahead.
Had me a new manager who promised more prosperity ahead.
Had me a new label executive who helped me see how I could form my own musical future.
Had me a new harp player who deepened my sound.
Had Sister back on piano.
And I also had an idea born a year earlier at the Dripping Springs Reunion.
Why not promote a big ol’ outdoor event of my own?
I’d invite all my friends from all walks of music. But I wouldn’t call it an “event” or a “reunion.” I’d call it a picnic.
20
HAPPY FOURTH, 1973
THE NIGHT BEFORE, LEON RUSSELL and I hadn’t gone to sleep. We’d been joking and smoking and wondering how this great enterprise—the first ever Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic—was going to come off.
Leon was a major influence. I’d gone to Tulsa and seen how he had built his homegrown kingdom. He had a recording studio, his own label, and his own elaborate road show. If Jerry Wexler had given me the confidence to be in control of my recordings, Leon showed me how to be in control of everything else—my musical universe. Leon understood the high drama of rock and roll. He put all those theatrics in all his performances. And though he was one of the musical leaders of the Woodstock Nation, his roots in country and blues were always apparent. When I first talked to him about a Woodstock-styled picnic on the Fourth of July in Texas, he said, “You bring the rednecks, Willie, and I’ll bring the hippies.”
Both Leon and I were convinced that those two worlds weren’t that far apart. If anything could bring ’em together, it was music. At least that was our theory.
This picnic was testing that theory. And maybe the reason we’d been up all night at that seven-thousand-acre ranch at Dripping Springs was because we were nervous that the theory might prove a bust. We’d advertised the hell out of the event. We had big-name acts on both sides of the generational divide. For the traditionalists, there was Loretta Lynn, Ernest Tubb, Charlie Rich, and Larry Gatlin. For the nontraditionalists, there was Waylon, Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge, Asleep at the Wheel, and Doug Sahm. There was something for everyone.
But when the light broke on that Wednesday morning of the Fourth of July, we were feeling jittery. To calm down, Leon and I went onstage, turned on the sound, and started playing gospel hymns as the sun rose over the great expanse of empty land set out before us. Felt good to praise the Lord in song, but what if we wound up singing to ourselves? What if, for all our efforts, we were courting a disaster? What if no one showed?
We had stopped playing, and it must have been around 9 or 10 a.m. when we saw a few stragglers wandering into the pasture. They looked like lost pilgrims. For an hour or so, there couldn’t have been more than a dozen people. But then, slowly but surely, the number increased. And by noon there was a steady flow of fans—individuals, couples, families, and finally what looked like whole tribes of music lovers. They kept coming and coming. What had begun as a smattering of curious souls wound up being a throng of enthusiasts, all ages, all appearances, all ready for the time of their lives.
We might have been more than a little unorganized, but we pulled it off. The music was great. The crowd was happy. Buzzed on beer or high on weed or tripping on acid, the different cultures got along great. No name-calling, no pushing and shoving, no cracked skulls. I have to say that, given the potential for disaster, I felt relieved. In my name, a peaceful Fourth of July picnic had unfolded under sunny skies.
Financially, it was a wash. The two main promoters were my manager, Neil Reshen, and Geno McCoslin, that wild and crazy hustler from Dallas who’d been booking me for years. Neither one of these gents would ever be accused of being overly honest. They were both selling tickets on the roads leading into the picnic and pocketing the proceeds. I didn’t mind. I figured most managers and agents steal. I had an attitude that said it was okay, as long as they didn’t steal too much.
The picnic was exciting, but nowhere near as exciting as the gift that arrived immediately afterward. On July 6, Connie gave birth to our second daughter (and my fourth): sweet Amy Lee. Another precious blessing.
Around the same time Shotgun Willie hit the airwaves, Waylon came out with Honky Tonk Heroes, featuring a gang of kick-ass numbers written by Billy Joe Shaver, a friend and fellow Texan who had performed at the picnic. The songs had a strong rock-and-roll feeling. Along with Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard, Waylon and I were being put in another category outside the box of straight-ahead country. The labels were many, from “progressive country” to “outlaw country” to “renegade rock.” Critics struggled to find the right words, and for my money, they never did. I would have preferred no label at all.
Because I was playing bigger venues and enjoying better record sales, I was able to buy a forty-acre ranch outside Austin. Connie wanted more privacy for the family and the place wasn’t giving me enough space. I wanted to get back to the land.
I wasn’t there long before Wexler called with an idea.
I had told him about another concept album I was considering. It was all about a couple’s divorce. Side one would be told from the woman’s point of view, side two from the man’s. It was all about the pain, uncertainty, and fear that accompany a failed relationship. There’d be no happy ending.
“You have any of the songs?” asked Jerry.
“All of them.”
When I sang them, Wexler was in tears.
“Let’s cut it,” he said, “but let’s do it in Muscle Shoals.”
“Why Muscle Shoals?” I asked.
“You’ve written a blues story, Willie, and Muscle Shoals has the funkiest rhythm section in all creation.”
Muscle Shoals was where a slew of rhythm and blues smashes had been recorded, hits by Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett. When music execs told Wexler that Muscle Shoals was too R & B for Willie, Wexler shot back, “Willie is too R & B for Nashville.”
The song cycle that comprised the concept album Phases and Stages was all new except for one song. “Bloody Mary Morning” was a spillover from the sixties, but the sentiment fit the story. Playing with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, I was able to sharpen the edges. Wexler was right. That studio brought out the blues in me, big-time.
This second time around, the single “Bloody Mary Morning” caught on. For all its strangeness, the album itself was an even bigger seller than Shotgun Willie.
I’d poured my heart into songs like “It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way.”
When you go out to play this evening
Play with fireflies till they’re gone
And then you rush to meet your lover
And play with real fire till the dawn
It’s not supposed to be that way
You’re supposed to know that I love you
But it don’t matter anyway
If I can’t be there to console you
The subject was grief, grief, and more grief. In “I Still Can’t Believe You’re Gone” I wrote,
This is the first day since you left me
And I’ve tried to put my thoughts in a song
But all I can hear myself singing is…
I still can’t believe you’re gone
Some people presumed I was writing about myself. I wasn’t. The song was about the untimely death of Carlene English, the wonderful woman who was my pal Paul’s beloved wife.
The overall theme was not a reflection of my own life. At that point Connie and I were cool. I was simply making up a story. Sure, I’d gone through breakups and heartaches of my own. What human soul hasn’t? But Phases and Stages was a fictional account of the sorrow that comes with the ruins of romance.
This was a period when the musicianship in my band also got deeper. In fact, my band—Bobbie on piano, Mickey on harp, Paul on drums, Bee Spears on bass, and the great Grady Martin on guitar—cut another version of Phases and Stages. Wexler liked the Muscle Shoals sessions better—and that’s the one that came out. Some were calling it my
“breakthrough record.” I had to laugh. In my mind, I thought I had broken through way back in the fifties when I was a radio star in Vancouver, Washington.
Austin turned out to be the perfect place for me. For a while I thought of opening a club of my own called Nightlife, but when some promoters offered me an interest in the just-opened Texas Opry House on South Congress, that felt like a natural fit. It was a whole complex—a huge dance hall that held a couple of thousand, another room that held five hundred, plus a pool, a cabana, and some adjacent apartment houses that were soon called “The Willie Hilton.” The Opry House became my go-to performance platform and my hangout headquarters.
“If you’re so comfortable there,” said Wexler on a visit to Austin, “why not cut a live album?”
In the summer of 1974, that’s just what we did. And suddenly radio was playing my live versions of “Whiskey River,” “Me and Paul,” and “Bloody Mary Morning” more than the studio ones. Also recorded “The Party’s Over,” a song I’d written during my dark nights and days driving around the Houston ship channel and cut for RCA. But this live rendition was the one that really revived the song. Don Meredith, one of the commentators for Monday Night Football, would sing it every time the score got lopsided. Dandy Don kindly reminded the national audience that the song was written by his good pal Willie Nelson. It was a great plug.
We started packing them in at the Opry House from the start. There might be a little trouble now and then between a longhair and a cowboy, but that was rare. I’m not sure I would have called our music “progressive country”—the term used often by FM radio—but here in the seventies I did feel like we were making progress in bridging the generation gap that had opened up in the sixties.
If things were more peaceful—and they were—that didn’t stop Paul English from his longtime habit of packing heat. Like me, Paul was the product of the old-school sawdust-on-the-floor Texas roadhouse circuit and was always ready to defend me and his bandmates.
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