Sony, the label that then had me under contract, kicked in some money. The record was mainly marketed via a television commercial. On the cover was a picture of myself wearing a black cowboy hat and a T-shirt that said “Shit happens.”
The record sold enough to keep the IRS at bay—at least for a while.
24
SILVER SCREEN
I MET ROBERT REDFORD AT A benefit in New York City. The next day, we found ourselves sitting next to each other on the plane back to Los Angeles. We got to talking. He told me about this movie, The Electric Horseman, that he and Jane Fonda were about to make with director Sydney Pollack.
“Ever thought about doing a movie, Willie?” he asked.
“Sure. But let me ask you this, Bob: is acting anything like having a conversation?”
“That’s exactly what it’s like.”
“Well, I believe I can do that.”
“You’re a natural, Willie. As a singer and musician, you’re naturally relaxed. As an actor, I think that same quality would come through.”
I thanked him for the kind remark. The more I thought about it, the more I was inclined to make the move. But how?
Figured the simplest way was the best. Pick up the phone, call the boss, and ask for the job. In this case the boss was Sydney Pollack.
I’d never met the man, but he sounded glad to hear from me.
“How can I help you, Willie?”
“Put me in that movie you’re making with Bob and Jane Fonda.”
He laughed, not scornfully but sweetly.
“Come to think of it,” he said, “you might be right for the part of Redford’s manager. Would you mind reading for it?”
“Be my pleasure.”
The reading was easy. The part was easy. I played myself. In fact, in every movie to follow, I played myself. Or as that great sidekick cowboy Slim Pickens would soon say, “No one plays Willie Nelson better than Willie Nelson.”
I didn’t plan and I didn’t rehearse. I learned my lines, but tended to bend them my own way—or borrow from writer friends. In The Electric Horseman, Pollack loved the line I spewed: “Gonna get myself a bottle of tequila and find me one of those Keno girls who can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch and kick back.” Still not sure how that made it past the ratings people. Wish I could claim credit, but I’d found it in a novel by my buddies Bud Shrake and Dan Jenkins, who were happy to loan it out. For the most part, though, I did what Redford had predicted I’d do: I said what came naturally.
Reviews were great. I sang what I thought was an appropriate song on the soundtrack, “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys,” as well as “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”
The film did brisk business, I got good reviews, and just like that, I was sitting in a dark theater and staring up at myself on the silver screen, another one of those crazy boyhood fantasies turned real.
The hustler in me got all worked up. Movies were not only easy to do, but the exposure gave me an even bigger audience, not to mention good money.
Just as I’d always wanted to do it my own way with music, I wanted to take the same approach with film. I’d work up my own projects. The first that came to mind was “Red Headed Stranger.” Connie had been right: ever since I sang it to my children, I’d always seen that song as a movie. If people were calling me a natural actor, I sure as hell would call that song a natural film script.
Took the idea to my friend Bud Shrake, but Bud was hesitant.
“How you gonna make a hero out of a man who shoots his woman to death for stealing a horse?”
Bud suggested I try another writer friend in Austin, Bill Wittliff, who wrote a beautiful screenplay that Universal liked. My idea was to make the movie with their money through my production company. Of course I’d play the Red Headed Stranger.
Universal didn’t see it that way. They saw Robert Redford in the role. They also wanted me to leave Columbia Records for their label, MCA. Welcome to Hollywood, where strings are always attached.
Being a practical man, I couldn’t dismiss their offer out of hand. Redford could easily play the part. I called Bob to see what he thought of the script. He liked it but said he needed time to make a decision.
Well, two years later Bob still hadn’t made up his mind. By then Universal had lost interest and I was back where I started. I had a good screenplay but no financing. And of course I was not about to break Hollywood’s golden rule: When making a movie, never use your own money.
With patience, I figured, the stars would be aligned and the Red Headed Stranger would have his day.
In the meantime, other roles came my way. In Honeysuckle Rose, I starred as Buck Bonham, a Willie Nelson–styled character torn between his love for his wife, Dyan Cannon, and his girlfriend, Amy Irving—a delicious dilemma if there ever was one. Sydney Pollack was the producer.
At one point Sydney, director Jerry Schatzberg, and I were flying to some location in a private plane.
“This movie could use a song, Willie,” said Sydney. “What do you say?”
I was always willing, ready, and able to write a song.
“What do you think it should be about?” I asked.
“Being on the road.”
Nonchalantly, I threw out a line at them: “On the road again.”
Sydney and Jerry looked at each other for a second or two. Then, at the same time, they said, “That’s it!”
“But do you have a melody?” asked Sydney.
“I will by the time we get to the studio.”
By the time the plane landed, the lyrics were written.
On the road again
Just can’t wait to get on the road again
The life I love is making music with my friends
And I can’t wait to get on the road again
On the road again
Goin’ places that I’ve never been
Seein’ things that I may never see again
And I can’t wait to get on the road again
On the road again
Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway
We’re the best of friends
Insisting that the world keep turning our way
As promised, the melody clicked in shortly thereafter.
Independent of the film, the song wound up with a life of its own. Even got nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Became a big hit on its own—so big that when it was time to air the movie on TV, they changed the title from Honeysuckle Rose to On the Road Again. That simple song, a part of my nightly repertoire ever since I wrote it back in 1979, has had a longer battery life than the film it was written for.
The studios took a liking to me. In Barbarosa, written by Bill Wittliff, I played the lead character, a badass cowboy, and costarred with Gary Busey. The press had been calling me an outlaw for so long, I figured I might as well get paid to play one.
And in Songwriter, I was Doc Jenkins, the most autobiographical Willie Nelson character of all. That’s ’cause it was written by Bud Shrake, who knew me so well. The story has Doc all mixed up with hardheaded producers, crooked promoters, and sexy women. He means well. All he wants is a simple life with his wife and children, but he just can’t resist the temptations of the road. That sounded awfully familiar. I was having fun, but my costar Kris Kristofferson proved to be a singer who, unlike me, had honest to God acting chops.
At about the same time my movie career kicked off—the tail end of the seventies—I was able to buy the old Pedernales Country Club together with a large parcel of land. Thirty miles outside Austin, this acreage was the perfect spot. There was lots of room for friends and family to camp out as long as they wanted. This was also where I’d build my recording studio.
Having my own private nine-hole golf course was the icing on the cake. The course was rocky and rough, but who cared? My golf game was rocky and rough. In the summertime, my usual golf outfit was shorts and jogging shoes, and no shirt.
Deer loved to r
oam over the course, and I didn’t mind.
One time on the golf course, I was on the fourth hole when one of the golf hustlers I invited to play intentionally whacked a line drive into the ribs of a doe.
“Great shot, huh?” he asked.
“So fuckin’ great,” I said, “that I don’t ever wanna see your ass on this course again.”
I sent him packing.
I had a rule: If you wanted to hunt deer, you had to climb a tree and jump down onto the deer. That was the only way you were allowed to bring a deer down. I’m glad to report that no one even tried.
At Pedernales, I’m big on protecting our deer, wild ducks, geese, and turtles. No one’s allowed to hunt rabbits. It’s a golf course, but it’s also a game park where the animals have just as much right to be there as us.
When it came to golf, I tried my dead level best to improve my game. Even had pros like my good buddy Lee Trevino give me tips. Tried meditation. Tried visualization. Played dead sober and played seriously stoned. And yes, I did get better. I had days when my swing was poetry itself, when my drives were long and true and my putting super-precise. On such days I convinced myself that I had finally learned the game.
But like a wily woman, golf has a mind of her own. Golf will fool you. She’ll get you to thinking that you understand her. Golf lures you into believing you’ve tamed her. Golf will even have you convinced that you’ve conquered her.
And then, just when your confidence is higher than a kite, golf will fuck you up. In one stroke, you’ll forget everything you’ve learned about a good swing. Your drives will hook out of sight and your putts will miss the mark by a mile. Once having pleased you, golf will tease you, turn on you, and frustrate you to where you’re smashing your club into trees. You’ll vow to quit, but you’ll be back the next day.
My good buddy Coach Royal and I would shake things up by something we called speed golf. We were known to play thirty-six holes in four or five hours. Wasn’t that we played well—just fast, as if speeding up the game would somehow calm our addiction. It didn’t. Just made us wanna play more.
I’m convinced that the only way to survive the sport is the same way you survive a woman: with humor. And humility. If you eventually accept the sad fact that you’re never gonna win, you’ll be fine.
I tried to inject some humor at Pedernales. Humor is always a saving grace. My good friend singer Don Cherry loves to talk about being on the links at Pedernales when he and his wife were having a hellish time getting along. Before he took a shot, he looked down at the ball and said, “If that was only her head!” Then he drove the ball a country mile, straight down the middle.
I teed up next, and when my shot actually outdistanced Don’s, I turned to him and said, “I never liked her either.”
Yes, sir, humor helps. Also helped posting a few rules and etiquette for the course. For instance: no more than twelve in your foursome; no bikinis, miniskirts, or sexually exploitative attire allowed, except on women; no gambling, except if you’re broke or if you need a legal deduction for a charitable or educational expense.
25
ALWAYS
BACK ON DECEMBER 5, 1978, my dad died. Ira Doyle Nelson was only sixty-five. The cause was lung cancer. He’d been a heavy smoker his entire life. Towards the end he’d needed oxygen, night and day. It hurt my heart to see him suffer. A strong and determined man, he fought for his breath till the very end. The ordeal was long and painful.
I don’t want to list the many friends and loved ones who have died of this disease. I don’t want to go into a tirade against tobacco. This isn’t the time or place to go into the history of an industry that for decades hid the truth about its product’s deadly properties. Better to simply remember my dad as a good man, a good fiddler, a good mechanic, and a well-meaning human being who loved his children and grandchildren.
His decision to leave me with his mom and dad had been a wise one. Even though he didn’t raise me and Bobbie, he was always there when we needed him. We were never estranged. It didn’t matter that we didn’t have a traditional father-son relationship. Didn’t matter that months could go by when we weren’t in touch. The love and concern were always there. During his final years, it comforted us both that we lived in Austin and were closer than ever.
On November 9, 1979, we lost Mama Nelson. Five years earlier, when she was no longer able to care for herself, we moved her from Abbott to a nursing home in Fort Worth. By then she was in her late eighties. It wasn’t easy to see this fiercely independent woman lose her physical strength. She never did lose her spiritual strength. Her faith was absolute. Her frailty did nothing to weaken her conviction about the goodness of God. Some people preach the Word; others live it. Mama Nelson lived it. When Daddy Nelson died and left her with two young grandchildren, she had relied on the Word to see her through. The Word galvanized her spirit and her resourcefulness. She taught music, she cooked in the school cafeteria, she gardened, she did whatever was required to keep body and soul together—and she did it all with grace.
When I ventured out into the world, playing in the local bars and juke joints of Hill County, she had her reservations. She had never stepped foot in a bar. She could have been discouraging. She could have been judgmental. But Mama Nelson was neither of those things. Her thing was love. Love trumped everything.
She knew that the musical talent God had given Bobbie and me couldn’t be contained in a small hamlet like Abbott. It couldn’t be contained in our Methodist church. Not only did she allow our musical adventures to lead us into a wider world, but she gave us her blessing. I’m forever grateful that she lived to see our success. She lived to come to many of our shows, every one of which concluded with a hymn—“Amazing Grace” or “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” or “In the Garden”—that we had learned from her.
The spirit of Nancy Elizabeth Nelson is eternal and a source of inspiration to me, now more than ever.
It was special to me to be close to both of them at the end. Everything felt as together as it had ever been. And my new perch near the Pedernales turned out to be a good location for the Fourth of July festivities in 1979 and ’80. Got to jam onstage with two of my favorite artists from two different generations: Ernest Tubb and Leon Russell. With me in the middle, we were able to close all generation gaps. Merle Haggard was there along with Charlie Daniels, Johnny Paycheck, and Asleep at the Wheel.
To be honest, not all my neighbors were pleased. But their beef wasn’t really what you might expect.
“Been meaning to ask you something about these goddamn crazy picnics of yours,” said one old-timer who lived nearby in the Austin hill country.
“Shoot,” I said.
“Are they supposed to be rock concerts or country music jamborees?”
“Damned if I know.”
“When I saw all these hippies running all over your golf course, I thought, Oh shit, I’m staying away.”
“That’s your right.”
“But then I look up and here comes Ray Price’s tour bus. Hell, Willie, I been listening to Ray Price since he took over Hank Williams’s band after Hank died.”
“I was in Ray’s band,” I said. “I was a certified Cherokee Cowboy.”
“Then you know better. What in hell do you think you’re doing with hippie-dippie assholes?”
“Same thing I did with Ray Price. Playing music.”
I wanted to do more than play music on my Pedernales property; I wanted to record there. With surroundings so serene and a vibe so relaxed, it was the perfect spot for a studio. Where else could I record in the morning and, while the engineers were mixing, step outside and shoot nine holes in the afternoon?
Turned out that there was a bankrupt restaurant on the grounds that I was able to buy out of receivership. My idea was to convert it to a studio. At the time I’d been working with Chips Moman, a crackerjack producer who had his own studio in Memphis where he’d cut records for some of the biggest names in music. Chips and his crew knew how to buil
d a studio from scratch that would put out the kind of soulful sound that I was looking for. Our original name for the facility was Cutt and Putt.
Some professional friends had reservations.
“You need some separation between your home life and recording life. Don’t shit where you work.”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?” I asked. “Well, I’m no different. I just wanna be comfortable and do what comes naturally.” Plus I was pretty used to having everything together by now.
In less than a year the Pedernales Recording Studio—the more formal name—was up and ready to roll. It was a world-class facility.
Chips produced the first album I cut there. True to my fashion, the song selection broke traditional boundaries. I sang a song that Chips had written with Dan Penn and that Jerry Wexler had produced for Aretha, “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man.” I sang it nice and slow and it felt great. Felt like I understood the story.
I did not understand the story of “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” I knew it’d been a hit by a group called Procol Harum. But that’s all I knew. Now that’s a song where the words made no sense, unless it had something to do with an acid trip.
“You know what these lyrics are about?” I asked Waylon Jennings, who, at Chips’s suggestion, sang the song with me as a duet.
“I have no fuckin’ idea, hoss.”
“You wanna sing it?”
“Why not?”
I believe Waylon and I did a good job, proving that the singers don’t always have to understand what they’re singing about. Sometimes all you need is a strong melody to pull you in.
I covered an old Everly Brothers smash from 1960, “Let It Be Me,” and recut one of my favorite end-of-the-night sad songs, “The Party’s Over,” written during another era in my life but still relevant to practically every evening in the life of a wandering troubadour.
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