Me and Paul Read online

  OTHER WORKS BY WILLIE NELSON

  Sister, Brother, Family:

  An American Childhood in Music

  Willie Nelson’s Letters to America

  Me and Sister Bobbie:

  True Tales of the Family Band

  Pretty Paper:

  A Christmas Tale

  It’s a Long Story:

  My Life

  Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die:

  Musings from the Road

  A Tale Out of Luck

  On the Clean Road Again:

  Biodiesel and the Future of the Family Farm

  The Tao of Willie:

  A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart

  The Facts of Life:

  And Other Dirty Jokes

  Willie:

  An Autobiography

  ME AND PAUL

  © 2022 Willie Nelson

  “Me and Paul” © 1971 Full Nelson Music. All rights administered by Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC, 424 Church Street, Nashville, Tennessee. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Harper Horizon, an imprint of HarperCollins Focus LLC.

  Book design by Aubrey Khan, Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.

  Any internet addresses, phone numbers, or company or product information printed in this book are offered as a resource and are not intended in any way to be or to imply an endorsement by Harper Horizon, nor does Harper Horizon vouch for the existence, content, or services of these sites, phone numbers, companies, or products beyond the life of this book.

  ISBN 978-0-7852-4573-5 (Ebook)

  ISBN 978-0-7852-4560-5 (HC)

  Epub Edition AUGUST 2022 9780785245735

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021953427

  Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

  Please note that the endnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication

  In loving memory of the one and only

  PAUL ENGLISH

  Me and Paul shaking hands like we did at the end, every single time we sang our song.

  PHOTO BY JANIS TILLERSON

  It’s been rough and rocky travelin’

  But I’m finally standin’ upright on the ground

  After takin’ several readings

  I’m surprised to find my mind’s still fairly sound

  “ME AND PAUL,”

  written by Willie in 1971

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Works by Willie Nelson

  Title Page

  Copyright

  A Note from a Ghost

  Texas: Present Day

  Memphis: 1977

  Fort Worth: 1955

  Dallas: Shortly Thereafter

  Houston: Coming Up on 1960

  Nashville: Early ’60s

  Dallas: 1963

  The Kentucky/Tennessee Border: 1967

  Back in Nashville: Late ’60s

  Back to Texas: 1970

  Arriving in Austin: Early ’70s

  Somewhere in Texas

  New York: Winter 1973

  Texas World Speedway: Summer 1973

  Austin: Winter 1973

  Turtle Creek: 1976

  My Studio: Early ’80s

  Imaginary Mount Rushmore: Beyond Time

  Somewhere: Sometime

  Hollywood: 1979 to 1986

  On the Road: Forever

  Our Life as a Movie: A Strange and Cinematic Time

  A Place to Forget: A Time to Forget

  Portrait of Paul as an Artist: Night and Day

  Harsh Reality: 2010

  The Quiet Years: The Recent Past

  “Me and Paul”

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  About the Authors

  A NOTE FROM A GHOST

  I’m coming up on my fiftieth year as a ghostwriter. It’s a beautiful gig. I’ve loved collaborating with everyone from Marvin Gaye to Val Kilmer to Cornel West to Janet Jackson to Ray Charles. Each time I’ve relished the role of being the invisible author.

  On this occasion, I’ve chosen to step forward before turning the story over to Willie. I’m doing so to explain that, unlike It’s a Long Story: My Life, a previous book I wrote with Willie, Me and Paul is not a straight autobiography.

  This is something different, a collection of tales—some short, some tall—told by Willie Nelson and his best friend, Paul English. Being in Willie’s world for decades, I’ve spent long hours with both men. In eliciting the essence of their characters, I’ve taken the poetic license to adorn their stories. As extravagant storytellers themselves, by the way, Paul and Willie freely took that same license.

  Novelist Philip Roth argued that one of literature’s great lies is that autobiography is built on fact. To paraphrase a quote often attributed to him: memories lie, while fiction should tell the truth. That mixture—of memory and imagination, of fiction and fact—is the key to enduring stories. Leslie Fiedler, a critic of American literature and a personal mentor, once told me, “Fabulous narratives are all built on the mythic expansion of reality.”

  I view Willie and Paul as larger-than-life characters who generously and enthusiastically provided me with the stories that constitute this memoir.

  Have I embellished those stories?

  Yes.

  Have I, for the sake of drama, expanded the reality on which those stories were based?

  Yes.

  Have I tried to give this book a mythic reality of its own? Yes.

  Am I humbled to have been entrusted to work whatever magic great storytelling requires?

  Yes.

  Have I tried to tap into the extravagant imaginations of Willie Nelson and Paul English?

  Yes.

  Do I hope that you, our beloved reader, will go along for the ride?

  Yes.

  Yes.

  Yes.

  Your ghost,

  DAVID RITZ

  TEXAS

  Present Day

  SITTING ON A BEAT-UP LEATHER couch in the study of my ranch outside Austin, listening to my rescue horses whining and feeling the relief of an evening breeze, I find myself lost in thought. In 2020, my closest friend left me. Into the infinite abyss. The mission of this book is to bring him back.

  Don’t get me wrong. I don’t confuse myself with God. I can’t resurrect the dead any more than I can turn water to wine. I’m in pretty good shape for someone pushing ninety. I’m at the age when I’ve long stopped fussing around and started focusing on stuff that matters. Remembering Paul matters. If anyone, Paul must be immortalized. An unlikely drummer. An unlikely angel. If anyone is qualified to tell his story, it’s me.

  Storytelling is beautiful because it brings people joy. Re-creates life. Turns old reality to new reality. Storytelling reimagines a world from way back when and carries that world into the present day. The people in stories, long dead, get to breathe and speak and laugh and cry all over again. I get to be with those people. I get to hear all that laughing and crying. I get to relive and share those adventures with you.

  Why were Paul and I so devoted to each other? Good question. That’s another reason I wrote this book—to show the mystical connection between me and Paul. How many people have I met in my life? Hundreds of thousands. Maybe even a mil
lion. Preachers, presidents, the rich, the poor, and everyone in between. Yet of those countless folks, this one guy understood me like no one else. He understood me on the deepest level imaginable. Likewise, I understood him. How is it we could communicate without even talking? One look was all we needed. In my case, my only sibling is my sister, Bobbie. Paul became the brother I never had. In Paul’s case, he had siblings—wonderfully talented people—and yet our bond felt deeper than blood. It was unbreakable. It defied understanding. It was like I knew him before we ever met. And now that he’s gone, he’s still here. He still knows me. He still lives in my heart and in the hearts of everyone whose lives he touched.

  Another thing about Paul: I owe him big time. The man saved my life more times than I can remember. He did so out of brotherhood. He became my drummer and made a decent living, but hell, if he had stuck to the life he’d been living before he bumped into me, he’d have been a billionaire. Some of the characters Paul knew in his youth, criminal masterminds like Benny Binion, are legendary. Matter of fact, Paul arranged for us to play at Binion’s eighty-third birthday party. Binion, who wasn’t nearly as crafty as Paul, wound up owning half of Las Vegas and earned status as an iconic gangster.

  The purpose of this book is to ensure Paul’s iconic status. I’m out to honor him—not because he was perfect but because he was loved. It’s been said that a good friend knows all your best stories, but a best friend has lived them with you. Well, that was us.

  Picture a towering, larger-than-life human being, a fearless man who, for decades, single-handedly protected me and my band of wandering minstrels from a world that wasn’t quite ready for us. In every unsteady situation, Paul stayed steady. Paul stayed strong. In the Willie Nelson Family, he stood in the center. He was the papa bear, the big brother, the wise uncle, the moneyman, the bag man, the dealmaker, the sharpest shooter, and the kindest heart.

  Let me start off with a story.

  MEMPHIS

  1977

  THE SIXTEENTH OF AUGUST. Elvis had just dropped dead, and the news swept across the country like wildfire. We were playing Memphis’s Mid-South Coliseum, one of the city’s biggest venues. Because of Elvis’s sudden passing, I was in shock. I’d been an Elvis fan ever since I was a deejay in the 1950s spinning his first hits on KVAN up in Portland/Vancouver. Elvis was a musical giant who showed all us aspiring musicians how to mix and mess with the categories—from country to gospel to rock and roll—and come up with something fresh.

  So, there in the city of Graceland, it was an emotional evening. My buddy Delbert McClinton, a singer-songwriter rooted in rhythm and blues, opened the show and, in tribute, sang some of the King’s hits. When it was time for me and my band to come on, I took a different approach. I reached back into the Great American Songbook and decided to sing “Over the Rainbow.” In thinking of Elvis’s untimely passing, that seemed the right sentiment. It also felt right to ask Jerry Lee Lewis up onstage to sing the song with me.

  I’d seen Jerry Lee backstage before the show. I had great respect for the man. Along with Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins, he was part of the Million Dollar Quartet recorded by Sun Records—right there in Memphis—that became a musical milestone. Like Elvis, Jerry Lee was a pioneer. Also like Elvis, Jerry Lee started out in gospel. He began with his cousins Jimmy Swaggart, later a famous televangelist, and Mickey Gilley, a friend of mine whose career took off when the movie Urban Cowboy was filmed in his club in Pasadena, Texas. For years, Jerry Lee had been a legend. Part of that legend, though, was his nickname, the Killer.

  Nine months earlier, Jerry Lee had been arrested outside Graceland. Word came down that he was looking to kill Elvis. Naturally, Jerry Lee denied it. He claimed he was wasted when he crashed into the Graceland gates. Elvis watched it all happening on his closed-circuit TV. His people called the cops, who found a loaded pistol in Jerry Lee’s brand-new Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow and hauled him off to jail. Elvis had no problem ordering the officers to lock him up. A few months later, Jerry Lee put out a song called “Middle Age Crazy.”

  I relay this backstory to let you know what was on my mind when Jerry Lee came to the mic and, instead of harmonizing with me, yelled out to the crowd, “I will be your new king!”

  Seeing—and smelling—that Jerry Lee was drunk, I figured I’d better leave well enough alone. I didn’t say a word. By then he’d gone to the piano bench, where my sister, Bobbie, was seated, put his arm around her, and started banging away. Bobbie got up and left. Next thing I knew, Jerry Lee was lifting the piano off its legs and slamming it on the floor, all while shouting obscenities at me for reasons I couldn’t quite get.

  That’s when Paul took over.

  Paul had my back. Paul always had my back. I mean that in every way possible. He had my back because his drums were behind me, and, like a baseball catcher facing the field in front of him, he saw all the action. But he also had my back no matter where we were—on the bus, at a card game, or prying our pay from some two-timing promoter. He did all this wearing an ensemble that would come to be his signature look: a jet-black suit topped off with a long cape lined in red silk that gave him the demeanor of the devil.

  So, on this night of the day that Elvis died, the Killer had to deal with Lucifer’s angel himself. Typical of Paul, his action was understated. He did the least to impact the most. In this instance, he reached into his gig bag, pulled out his .45, placed it atop his snare drum, turned to J.W., Jerry Lee’s manager, who was standing in the wings, and said, “First, I’m gonna blow your brains out, then I’m gonna shoot Jerry Lee straight through the heart.”

  Seconds later, J.W. dragged Jerry Lee offstage while I went back to crooning “Over the Rainbow,” dedicated to the eternal spirit of Elvis Presley.

  No, Paul did not mess around. That’s where his power resided. If he said he was gonna do something, he did it. Either you got out of his way or he’d mow you down. You didn’t wanna bullshit Paul—not if you valued your life.

  But there was a whole lot more to Paul than his wayward proclivities. Underneath the tough guy, he was all heart. He was loyal to the young people who flocked around him like disciples around a guru. Where others were tormented by indecision, Paul was blessed with clarity. He had his own brand of bulletproof morality that won the respect of those he encountered. That is something to admire. It was something I noticed from the very first time we met.

  FORT WORTH

  1955

  MARK TWAIN ONCE SAID, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”1 He’s also often credited with having said, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

  So, I’ll heed Twain’s words and get started by telling as much of the truth as I can remember. I mention Twain because, as you’ll soon see, there’s something about my friendship with Paul that reminds me of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Tom was more civilized, and Huck was wilder. Although I was plenty wild at age twenty-two, I’d have to say Paul was wilder. Like Tom and Huck, though, we became a team. Nothing could or would ever separate us. If someone tries to tell my story without putting Paul by my side, don’t bother reading it.

  ***

  Let me paint the picture. I was living smack-dab in one of the most boring decades in American history. Except I wasn’t bored. I had a job at radio station KCNC. I even had a tagline: I was “your old cotton-pickin’, snuff-dippin’, tobacco-chewin’, stump-jumpin’, gravy-soppin’, coffeepotdodgin’, dumplin’-eatin’, frog-giggin’ hillbilly from Hill County, Texas.”

  I beat back boredom by hustling. And whenever I could, I aligned my hustle with music. If I couldn’t hustle up a job playing and singing somewhere, the next best thing was to hustle up a deejaying job. That tagline, by the way, was true.

  I did come from the tiny town of Abbott, the heart of Hill County, and I had picked cotton and all the rest. If you called me a hillbilly, you wouldn’t be wrong, and I wouldn’t be mad. I couldn’t ever stay mad at anyone for long—and still can’t, by the way—beca
use music takes up so much space inside my head, and music makes me happy. Even in the super-conformist 1950s, music—great music—was everywhere. Elvis went on TV for the first time on the program Louisiana Hayride, and shortly after “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Hound Dog” were racing up the charts. This was also the year when you could buy a loaf of bread for a quarter and a gallon of gas for twenty-nine cents. I know because I also pumped gas. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram cost a nickel, but who wanted to buy the paper when all the news was about Joe McCarthy, a paranoid asshole who saw commies hiding under every bed in the house? Better to stick with music.

  Better to hang out with great musicians, namely my big sister, Bobbie, who’d moved to Fort Worth where she was among the first in the city to play the spanking-new version of the Hammond B3 organ. I’d also befriended Paul Buskirk, who, like Bobbie, was a genius-level player. He knew the work of my guitar hero, Django Reinhardt, note for note. Buskirk’s main instrument was banjo, but he could play anything. He was on a TV show on Channel 5 in Dallas with Freddy Powers, a singer who, like me, had studied the records and shows of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys—the kings of western swing. Bobbie, Buskirk, and Freddy were huge influences because they knew, played, and combined so many styles of music—everything from country to jazz to crooners like Bing Crosby. Together we’d listen to Ernest Tubb or Duke Ellington or Chet Atkins or Bill Haley & His Comets, rockin’ around the clock. They didn’t discriminate. They didn’t care about categories. Music was either good or bad, exciting or dull, fun or flat.

  KCNC wasn’t much more than a couple of windowless rooms with primitive equipment. The space was tight. The show was called The Western Express, where, in addition to playing records, I played live. Sometimes Buskirk and Freddy accompanied me. While they were on the air, I was content to help promote the songs Buskirk was putting out on a little label called Lin. I was more than content when Buskirk had Freddy record a song I’d just written called “Heartaches of a Fool.” We never found anyone to release it, but I was still thrilled to hear it sung by a singer as good as him. As a writer, my confidence was on the upswing.