Willie Nelson

by Graeme Thomson

  Willie Nelson: I was writing my life, what I saw around me. You’ve got to live the life, I don’t think you can write those sort of songs otherwise. Or even sing them. Ain’t nobody that good an actor.10 And I was writing it from a dark, shady side, I guess. I was going into one relationship out of another, all kinds of domestic bullshit. Over the years it produced a lot of music, that’s for sure, but it was a hard way to do it.11

  Pamper sent ‘Hello Walls’, alongside another Nelson original, ‘Congratulations’, to Faron Young, one of the hottest stars in Nashville. Legend has it that Young had already been given a sneak preview of the song in Tootsie’s almost as soon as it was written. Within days of hearing it, he cut the song on 7 January 1961, for the A-side of a Capitol single. By May, ‘Hello Walls’ had reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country charts. It stayed there for nine weeks, and even passed over into the pop charts. A few weeks earlier, on 21 April, Billy Walker had recorded ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’, a beautiful, regretful essay about how what goes around eventually comes back around. It made No. 21 on the country charts in October. Around the same time, Patsy Cline was – reluctantly – gearing up to record her version of ‘Crazy’, finally persuaded of its worth by her husband, Charlie Dick, whom Nelson had befriended.

  Willie Nelson: Charlie Dick and I and Hank Cochran were drinking beer at Tootsie’s, and after Tootsie’s closed they decided it was time to wake up Patsy and play it for her. I was hesitant to get out of the car. I stayed in the car and in a little while she came out and made me come in the house. This was like two or three in the morning. She recorded it the next day.12

  He had arrived. Those who looked deep enough into those dark eyes might have seen an unusual expression lurking within them. It took a moment to recognise it as relief.

  WHO GIVES A DAMN?

  WILLIE NELSON IS talking about making records.

  He has made so many records over the years he has lost count, but it’s somewhere around two hundred and fifty, he thinks. And he has never quite got it right.

  ‘The records kind of happen on their own,’ he says. ‘Over the years, they just happen. I’ve never been able to really make the records I wanted to make and do everything exactly the way I wanted to do it.’

  What he means is that he believes that the true essence of what he does can only really be captured when he steps upon the stage with his band. Each record is simply a miniature, a tiny little piece of the whole picture.

  At least now he can record whatever he wants. In his early years he was at the mercy of what his record companies thought might sell and that was a hard pill to swallow.

  ‘If you believe in your music, then you should do it the way you want to do it,’ he says. ‘At least it means you have the freedom to do it the way you want to do it. Doesn’t mean it has to sell. Regarding whether it’s commercially good or not, well, who gives a damn?’

  And it sounds so obvious and simple that he laughs.

  4. 1961–1965

  IT IS ENTIRELY typical of Willie Nelson that he agreed to become the bass player in Ray Price’s backing band, the Cherokee Cowboys, despite the fact that he had never even played the instrument before, indeed never even held one in his hands. As usual, he had simply shrugged and said ‘OK’ when asked, happy to cross the rickety bridge when it came into view. He was – not uniquely in Nashville – living a double life: successful writer, journeyman musician, and he was shrewd enough to take his chances when they came. Opportunities as a performer were far harder to come by in Nashville than they were in Texas; there were fewer venues and the competition was fierce.

  He had already played with country guitarist Bobby Sykes’ band for a little while upon arriving in the city and now, in the few months between the recording and release of ‘Hello Walls’, he went happily out on the road with Price. The Cherokee Cowboys’ previous bassist – Donny Young, soon to relaunch himself as Johnny Paycheck – had quit, and Price had asked Nelson if he wanted to play bass. He might have agreed without deliberating too long over the consequences, but he learned quickly.

  Ray Price: When we got off the first tour Willie said, ‘I betcha didn’t know I couldn’t play bass!’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I knew on the first night!’ But he’s a good guitarist, so he could play bass all right.

  Having managed to pull off a convincing impersonation of a professional bass player, the only other tasks required of him in the Cherokee Cowboys were easy: wear a gaudy Nudie suit and sing a few songs when the spotlight swung in his direction. Bob Wills’ classic ‘San Antonio Rose’ and Harlan Howard’s ‘Busted’ – which would shortly be recorded by Johnny Cash and Ray Charles – were specialities.

  He was paid $25 a night and he needed it. The rent on his new house was $85 a month; royalties took a little while to accrue and then be paid; and Martha continued working two jobs to make ends meet. Above all, his social expenses were high and he was still scuffling around. Indeed, when he returned from his first stint on tour with Price and the Cherokee Cowboys, he offered to sell his writer’s credit on ‘Hello Walls’ to Faron Young for $500, even though the song had now become a hit and was on its way to generating thousands of dollars in royalties and BMI payments. It was an astonishingly misguided piece of short-term thinking, illustrating just how terrible he was at handling his finances and the lengths he would go to secure even the quickest of fixes. Thankfully, the idea was given short shrift by Young.

  Faron Young: I made him raise his hand and swear to God that if I loaned him some money, he wouldn’t sell [it], and then I loaned him $1,500. His first [royalty] check – seven or eight weeks later, for something like 600,000 copies sold – was $20,000.1

  In fact, it was around $14,000, which would tally with a basic two per cent writer’s royalty rate on 600,000 single sales. Other sources say that Young loaned him only $500. Nevertheless, when the bumper check arrived, he ran into Tootsie’s and gave Young a big sloppy French kiss for saving him from what may perhaps have been the biggest mistake of his life. Then he went back on tour with Ray Price and lived like the ‘King of Spain’. He bonded particularly well with Jimmy Day, Price’s steel guitar player and a veteran of Hank Williams’ old band, not to mention Tootsie’s. Day probably saw more of the royalty money than Martha, who was at home, furious, working and raising the kids while hearing stories filtering back through the Nashville grapevine about Nelson’s incessant partying and fiscal recklessness: booking into penthouse suites in high-class hotels, flying first class on commercial airlines instead of taking the bus with the band, generally just blowing the cash as quickly as he could. He also abruptly abandoned his writing. It seemed a little too much like hard work now that he had made his big breakthrough. He had what he wanted: money in his pocket and the chance to have some fun on the road.

  Martha Nelson: Willie’s attitude was that now he had a job with Ray Price, he didn’t give a damn what anybody thought of his music. He couldn’t be bothered, now that he had some hit songs.2

  It was a time of excess for almost all concerned. Nashville was crammed full with young men from mostly poor backgrounds who suddenly had access to a lot of cash and didn’t know what to do with it. Or rather, they did know what to do with it. Alcohol remained the main source of escapism. Cocaine and LSD were rare as hen’s teeth, and marijuana was still generally uncommon. Pills were prevalent. Cheap ‘speed’ like Benzedrine kept things going, sometimes nicknamed ‘LA Turnaround’ for its rare ability to get you to California and back without having to worry about anything so rudimentary as sleep. Mixed with alcohol it made for an aggressive combination. There were stories about Roger Miller staying up for days, handing out sage advice to his peers: ‘Don’t keep your pills in your pockets with your loose change. I just swallowed a nickel.’ Nelson enjoyed himself but he was no more excessive than most.

  Ray Price: He wasn’t all that wild. He wasn’t into drugs or anything. He drank beer or drank whisky a little bit. He was a rounder, somebody who drinks and parties and just has a
good time, but all of us were pretty wild when we worked the nightclub circuit. [And women]. That happens too, when you’re young!

  Nelson’s reputation as a songwriter, specifically the man who wrote ‘Hello Walls’, soon made him a well-known face around the Nashville spots. But being a recording artist and a performer in his own right was an entirely different challenge.

  Willie Nelson: When I got to Nashville I had to start over again. I had to go back to the songwriting and then come over from there up to the recordings.3

  The demo recordings he had made for Pamper were impressive calling cards, but the material wasn’t particularly commercial. More significant was the fact that he had started to develop his own unique vocal phrasing, singing off the beat and almost talking in places. There is a misconception that Nelson’s jazzy vocal inflections and sometimes unusual time signatures were derided in Nashville, that people in high places thought he couldn’t sing. This was not the case: people knew he could sing, indeed many of them loved the way he sang. Don Light was the bass player in the house band at the Grand Ole Opry, and he recalls the steady buzz that surrounded Nelson in the bars and clubs.

  Don Light: I was aware of him. Faron’s record of ‘Hello Walls’ was a big, big record. I remember I met Harlan Howard and we were talking about songs and writers and Harlan said: ‘Have you ever heard Willie sing? His demo [of ‘Hello Walls’] is as good as Faron’s record. You need to hear him.’ There was already interest in him at that time.

  It is true, however, that there was a caucus of opinion which remained firmly unconvinced that he possessed a voice which could be translated into bumper record sales. In a time of smooth surfaces he had too many sharp angles. It was an age when the broadest of talents were squeezed into the tightest of boxes, and it wasn’t at all certain that Nelson would fit. ‘Crazy’, for instance, had been an unusual smash in that it featured considerably more than the standard three or four chords often used in country music, as well as a slightly unorthodox structure. However, he continued writing hits without compromising his style. Faron Young had cut five of Nelson’s songs on his new album, The Young Approach, including ‘Three Days’, which went on to be a Top 10 single. ‘Three Days’ was a tight, swinging minor key blues-based number, which once again contained a simple but instantly arresting lyric: ‘Three days/ Filled with tears and sorrow/ Yesterday, today and tomorrow.’

  The obvious creative strengths and commercial returns from Nelson’s songs ensured that someone was bound to be seduced into taking a chance on him as an artist in his own right. Hank Cochran had taken his songs to his friend, Joe Allison, another fellow Texan and a producer at Liberty Records. Liberty were based in Los Angeles but had recently branched into country, signing Bob Wills with some success in 1960. The label was on the up, if not quite a major force. Allison twisted the arm of Liberty’s money men and Nelson signed. He began his first session late on the night of 22 August, stretching into the early hours of the following morning, recording ‘The Part Where I Cry’ and ‘Touch Me’ for later single release. Allison kept things simple but somehow the music never clicked.

  The next session was at Liberty’s Hollywood studio, conducted while Nelson was on tour in California with Ray Price. He spent the 11 and 12 September working with a band of session musicians under the watchful gaze of Allison, cutting fourteen songs, including ‘Crazy’, ‘Darkness On The Face Of The Earth’, ‘Three Days’, ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’, ‘Mr Record Man’ and his own version of ‘Hello Walls’. All would be included on his first album, entitled . . . And Then I Wrote and issued in September 1962.

  They were difficult days in the studio. The experienced musicians and backing singers were utterly baffled by Nelson’s off-beat singing, and they kept falling out of time as they attempted to follow him. Eventually, they gave up any attempt to match what he was doing and simply played the song as though he wasn’t there. They wouldn’t even look at him, in case he put them off. One listen to the gaping pause Nelson leaves between the title phrase in ‘How Long Is Forever’ (a song recorded at these sessions but not included on the final album) and the following ‘this time’ illustrates the essential eccentricity of his style. It is dramatic, funny, subtly changing the emphasis in tone and meaning each time. If anyone had needed further indication that they weren’t dealing with a standard Nashville act, the sessions in Hollywood were conclusive proof. Only Floyd Tillman had ever sung with such idiosyncratic élan. Nelson was looking towards the likes of Frank Sinatra, singers who expressed the way they were feeling not just by what they sung, but in how – and when, and why – they sung it. Everything was up for grabs.

  It was an auspicious trip in other ways as well. While in California, Nelson met his second wife. His marriage to Martha had reached its endgame. She had inflicted a deep cut and permanent scar on Hank Cochran’s jaw after throwing a selection of heavy glass ashtrays at her husband from behind the bar of the Wagon Wheel – and missed – and things had continued deteriorating to such an extent that Nelson had effectively moved out of the homestead by the time he was on the road with Ray Price. They were undertaking mammoth tours – sometimes as many as ninety days of one-nighters – and he was coming back only to see the kids, lavishing them with presents, crying as he left again.

  One of the new songs he wrote was called ‘Home Motel’. Martha’s parents came up from Waco to stay and babysit while she went out on the town and began to indulge herself in the kind of escapades her husband had been enjoying for years. She could hardly be blamed, although Nelson reacted to her infidelities with a hypocritical macho rage, despite the fact that he was embarking on his most significant foray to date.

  Shirley Collie was tall, dark-haired, glamorous in a brittle kind of way, and a little dangerous-looking in her high heels and fitted dresses. A fellow singer, songwriter, not to mention a yodeller and a far better bass player than Nelson could ever pretend to be, she was also signed to Liberty.

  Johnny Bush: She was exceptionally talented. She could sing second [harmony] part to anything Willie could throw at her – you know how he phrases. She was a great songwriter and a terrific bass player. Knew a lot of chords on the guitar. And she was sexy, you know.

  Shirley was living in Long Beach with her husband of five years Biff, a well-known local country disc jockey. She was not exactly famous but she had a reasonable profile. Both Hank Cochran and Joe Allison knew her and invited her along to one of Nelson’s September recording sessions in Hollywood. Later on the same trip, she watched him perform with Ray Price and the Cherokee Cowboys at a Long Beach dance hall. They talked a little and she was immediately smitten, although nothing happened. Shirley took her marriage vows seriously, even if by this point Nelson did not.

  Several weeks later, in November, Shirley was recording in Nashville when Joe Allison invited her to join Nelson on some duets they were working on in the studio. They recorded four in total, including ‘Willingly’, which became his first chart hit early the following year. That did it. By the time Shirley returned to California a few days later they had fallen in love with each other. It remained an unarticulated and unacknowledged passion until one day he called her at home and simply said: ‘I don’t have any idea what we’re going to do, but I love you.’

  The fallout wasn’t pretty. Shirley left her husband and hid out on the bus with Nelson and the rest of the Cherokee Cowboys as they slogged around Canada for thirty days. Upon their return, he went home, packed up, and finally left Martha and the kids. It had been coming for a long time, but it was still a desperate wrench. Despite all their madness and unhappiness, he still loved her. He wrote the unbearably poignant ‘The Healing Hands Of Time’ for her, a song eloquent in the inescapable pain that comes with a break-up and the hope of some peace somewhere down the line. When she eventually re-married soon after he couldn’t bring himself to speak to her for a long time, and would use Shirley as an intermediary to deal with the children. For all his years of cheating and the fact that he had prec
ipitated their downfall by finding a new wife, he hadn’t expected Martha to get over him that quickly.

  It was a nasty, difficult divorce. Nelson and Shirley moved into the Downtowner Motel in central Nashville, and Martha sought confrontation there, phoning up and even checking in on one occasion. When she finally took the kids away from Nashville – dropping them off in Waco with her parents before she headed to Las Vegas alone to begin over again – she initially didn’t tell him where they were, despite the fact that he was sending $600 a month in child support via a county court. The figure was calculated from figures based on his recent high royalty earnings, but in all likelihood Shirley was paying some of it. Most of his big money had already been well and truly squandered.

  Shirley’s husband Biff, meanwhile, tried unsuccessfully to get her sectioned into a psychiatric hospital, presumably on the grounds that anyone would be crazy to leave him. Later, it emerged that she was indeed emotionally fragile and prone to depression, but this time she knew what she was doing. They both worried about how it all looked to the outside world and the country music community in general. Their producer at Liberty, Joe Allison, was a friend of Biff’s, and Nelson fretted that the affair might affect his future with the label. Shirley was simply handed the role of the scarlet woman. Guilt, loss and doubt were no strangers, but it finally worked out. Both divorces came through in early 1962, and the couple married almost exactly a year later, in January 1963. Nelson and the band were playing the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas when they decided to tie the knot on the spur of the moment.

  Johnny Bush: We went to a wedding chapel and Jimmy Day was the best man, Paul Buskirk was the matron of honour, and I was the flower girl! And that was the wedding.