Willie Nelson's Letters to America Read online

  In the early ’80s, when my pal Kris Kristofferson and I were making the movie Songwriter, I felt like it was time to write another letter to all the record executives who only see music as a bottom-line endeavor, with their bottom line being the main endeavor.

  So Mr. Music Executive, not only did I write you a letter and put it in a movie for you, just to be sure you heard me, I recorded it and sent you a copy, COD, in care of every radio station in America. In case you didn’t get your copy, the lyrics are below.

  You know who you are. Get your shit together.

  Willie Nelson

  P.S. Having pointed out the asshats, I should mention there are also a lot of great record men and women out there. After a string of Nashville execs and producers who thought they could improve my sound, I went to Atlantic, where Jerry Wexler was one of the first who treated me square and allowed me to make the records I wanted to make. Those records topped the charts and gave me more freedom. But if you’re a record exec today who’s treating lesser-known musicians the way I used to feel, please read these lyrics twice. Just like this big old world, we’re all in this music together.

  WRITE YOUR OWN SONGS

  by Willie Nelson

  You’re callin’ us heathens with zero respect for the law

  But we’re only songwriters just writing

  our songs and that’s all

  We write what we live

  and we live what we write—is that wrong?

  If you think it is, Mr. Music Executive,

  Why don’t you write your own songs?

  An’ don’t listen to mine, they might run you crazy

  They might make you dwell on your

  feelings a moment too long

  We’re making you rich and you’re already lazy

  So just lay on your ass and get richer or write your own songs

  Mr. Purified Country don’t you know

  what the whole thing’s about?

  Is your head up your ass so far that you can’t pull it out?

  The world’s getting smaller and everyone in it belongs

  And if you can’t see that Mr. Purified Country

  Why don’t you just write your own songs?

  And don’t listen to mine, they might run you crazy

  They might make you dwell on your

  feelings a moment too long

  We’re making you rich and you’re already lazy

  So just lay on your ass and get richer or write your own songs

  THE HUNGRY YEARS

  To give you an idea what my “hungry years” were like, I sold my songs “Family Bible” and “Night Life”—lock, stock, and writing credits—for $50 and $150, respectively. That may not seem right, but we needed the money, and I never regretted it. The enthusiasm for those songs gave me confidence that I really could make it as a songwriter, so I soon climbed into my beat-up Buick and drove to Nashville. I think the car died right before the Nashville city limits.

  I rented a rundown trailer in a rundown trailer park, and my family soon joined me. There was real pressure to earn some money, and Hank Cochran ended up being my life-saver. Hank heard a few of my songs and took me to Pamper Music publishing company, where he had a songwriting contract. They didn’t have the money to hire me, so Hank gave up his fifty-dollar-a-week raise that was due to him, and Pamper gave that salary to me. I practically jumped for joy. I was a professional songwriter, and my family wasn’t broke.

  Hank and I started writing together every day, turning out good songs, but still looking for a hit. Our office was in a garage apartment, and we didn’t have a phone back there. One day they told Hank he had a call, and he went to the front house to answer it. After he left, I was there alone, looking around, and said, “Hello, walls.” Then I said, “Hello, ceiling.”

  By the time Hank came back from his phone call, I’d already finished the song. I said I wasn’t sure about it, but I sang “Hello Walls” for him, and he said I had a hit.

  Faron Young was a singing cowboy—he’d started out making movies, then transitioned to being a Nashville star. Faron loved “Hello Walls,” and I offered to sell it to him for $500. He said I was crazy and instead loaned me $500. Then he recorded the song, which went to number one on the charts. My first royalty check was $25,000! I went and found him and gave him a big, wet kiss and tried to pay him back the five hundred.

  Faron wouldn’t take the money. “You fatten up a calf for me,” he told me, “and I’ll take that instead.” A lot of years later, there was a rodeo in Austin, and they had a champion bull up for auction. My son Billy bought the top bull for $20,000. (I suspect he was drinking at the time.) I had to pay for it, of course, so I sent the bull to Faron and said, “Here’s that calf. He got pretty big.”

  It was a great joke, but Faron used the bull to breed a whole herd of cows, so I guess we all came out okay. And I got a story out of the deal.

  Me and the family got out of that crummy trailer pretty fast, but we still weren’t on Easy Street. After Patsy Cline rocked the country music world with my song “Crazy,” and after “Hello Walls,” royalty checks started coming in, but my outflow was still not far behind my inflow.

  I went on tour, playing bass with Ray Price’s band, The Cherokee Cowboys, and I’d rent the biggest suite at every hotel we stayed in and throw a party for the boys. And I do mean a party. Cheating songs were always popular in Nashville, and I soon learned why. Martha’s and my marriage was taking on water from both sides, and it pretty much sunk when I met a singer named Shirley Collie.

  Shirley was a great singer, with a yodel that brought crowds to their feet. We ended up settling down on a farm I bought in Ridgetop, Tennessee. I was giving up life on the road for life as a pig farmer. My family all joined me there—Sister Bobbie and her kids too. It was a beautiful time. And I didn’t have to worry about going on the road and coming home owing the record company more than I started with.

  These were interesting times. My daughter Lana lived nearby. Her husband was a mess, and one day he got physical with her, and I had to go to their house and slap him around and warn him to never lay hands on her again. I was barely back to Ridgetop when he drove by and starting shooting at the house with a .22 rifle. I managed to get one shot off and scare him away, but I had a feeling he wasn’t done yet. The next time he came by, I was waiting and shot out his tire. The cops came, and I told them he must have run over a bullet. They wrote that down and were probably glad to get away from our hillbilly feud.

  I’d been writing songs in Nashville most of a decade but never really fit into Nashville’s idea of a country singer. My songs had too many chords, and I phrased differently than other singers. I knew that, but I only wanted to sing a song the way it sounded best to me. A Nashville producer adding a bunch of strings and background singers still didn’t make me into what they wanted.

  Just before Christmas in 1969, me and Hank Cochran were writing songs at my house at Ridgetop. We wrote seven songs in one night. The last one was called “What Can You Do to Me Now?”

  The next day, my house burned down.

  I was at a party in town when Bobbie’s son Freddy called me and said, “Uncle Willie, come home fast. Your house is on fire.”

  I asked him if the garage had caught fire yet, and he said no. So I told him to pull my old car in there. I figured I might as well get the insurance on it.

  I raced home, and the fire department was already there. The house was ablaze. The firemen said it was a total loss, and no one should try to go inside. I had another idea and dashed into the burning house. There was a pound of good pot in there. Plus, a year earlier, I’d bought a new guitar that felt like it was made for me. And I didn’t want insurance money for it. I wanted that guitar.

  DEAR TRIGGER,

  I knew you were a classical guitar (a Martin N-20 built in Nazareth, Pennsylvania), and I knew that, with you not having a pick guard, I’d wear your beautiful wood finish down till we both got old and began to look like each o
ther. We’re a little beat up, but I think you and me are destined to last the same amount of time. We both know our purpose in this world—to play and be played, though I’m not sure which of us is doing which. Sometimes it feels like you’re playing for the both of us.

  Your Sitka wood face came from the great Northwest. Your rosewood sides came from Brazil, your mahogany neck from the Amazon rainforest, and your ebony fret board and bridge came all the way from Africa. You were an exotic creature, and I was a hillbilly from Abbott. When you first spoke to me in Shot Jackson’s guitar shop in Nashville, I was about shot myself and had given up touring for farming. But when Shot put my old Baldwin pickup in you, what I heard from you, Trigger, was a human sound, the perfect complement to my own voice. And I knew the moment our voices harmonized that we were a match made in heaven (or in Nazareth, I suppose).

  I’d loved Roy Rogers, the King of the Cowboys, since I was a boy. And I loved Roy’s partnership with his golden palomino, Trigger. Somehow that name seemed perfect for you. You were my horse called Music, and I knew we could ride far.

  How much did I love you? When I ran into that burning house to rescue you, people said it was the dumbest thing I ever did, but I knew it was the smartest.

  When I look at you, I think of Django Reinhardt, who lived through a fire that crippled his hands but learned once again to become a true maestro of the guitar. I look at you and hear the two of us playing his masterpiece solo, “Nuages.”

  Fifty years and fifteen thousand shows since we first laid eyes on each other, you are now one of my oldest friends. Tell me truly, “Ain’t It Funny How Time Slips Away?” I wrote that one before we met, but the song found its destiny from a dissonant first chord through your every note flowing in unison with my voice, and through our solo that I can hear even in my dreams. Just like “Funny,” I’ve had to live without companions I once loved, but I don’t think my music would be the same without you.

  So whaddaya say, pal? Want to go for a ride? People are waiting. Let’s play.

  Willie

  FUNNY HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY

  by Willie Nelson

  Well, hello there

  My, it’s been a long, long time

  How am I doing?

  Oh, I guess that I’m doing fine

  It’s been so long now

  But it seems now, that it was only yesterday

  Gee, ain’t it funny how time slips away?

  How’s your new love?

  I hope that he’s doing fine

  I heard you told him

  That you’d love him till the end of time

  Now, that’s the same thing that you told me

  Seems like just the other day

  Gee, ain’t it funny how time slips away?

  I gotta go now

  I guess I’ll see you around

  Don’t know when though

  Never know when I’ll be back in town

  But remember, what I tell you

  In time you’re gonna pay

  And it’s surprising how time slips away . . .

  DEAR POCKET,

  What the hell is wrong with you? We’ve been together a long time, you and me, and it seems like the hole most pockets have at the top is not enough for you and me. You’ve always had a second hole at the bottom, and sometimes it seems bigger than the one at the top. We should at least let the money stay in you long enough to warm up a bit before it moves on.

  But I’ve got to hand it to you, Pocket, for you and me have our own special arrangement. When I was ten years old and was offered a job playing in a band in a beer joint, Mama Nelson didn’t think the nightlife was the right life for a young man steeped in the Lord’s music. But when I got home and pulled eight dollars out of you, young Pocket, her attitude changed, for she knew we needed whatever we could bring home.

  Me and you sung the empty pocket blues plenty of times. It was a long time before I had a pocket full of real money, but we made up for it with pockets full of dreams. While the dreams were panning out, my pal Zeke was teaching me to play poker in the Zeke style, which meant sometimes having the guts to bet money that we both knew wasn’t in my pocket.

  The years went by, and eventually I pulled a pencil out of you, Mr. Pocket, and wrote a song called “Crazy.” I played my recording of it for Patsy Cline’s husband, Charlie, and he took us straight to their house to wake up Patsy at one in the morning to hear it. Patsy recorded “Crazy,” and the rest is history. When that money filled you up, we bought a house for my family. But I also went on tour, where I lived the high life that made that second hole in the bottom of you even bigger. Apparently, Mr. Pocket, you and I never heard of a rainy day.

  I like Hank Williams’s song “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It.” In my case, you could substitute the word pocket for bucket and be closer to the truth. Wynton Marsalis and I recorded “Bucket” for our album Two Men with the Blues. The way I see it, if you come from Abbott, Texas, and you’re recording Hank Williams songs with jazz masters like Wynton Marsalis, you’ve got no real beef with where the money goes.

  My longtime stage manager, Poodie, used to say, “Willie’s got no respect for money. That’s why his bills are wadded up.” But I figure that if you wad up your money, it doesn’t fall out of you nearly so fast. It also takes longer to flatten it out to give it away.

  I turned into a pretty good poker player. Lord knows I’ve had enough experience. But these days, rather than betting money that’s not in my pocket, I might win a big hand from a friend who now has to leave the game. I’ve got his cash, but what good is it gonna do in you, Pocket? It’s better to loan or give it back to my friend and keep the game going. After all, I wouldn’t want anybody to hock their guitar on my account.

  So I guess you and me, Pocket, are doing just fine after all.

  Yours truly,

  The Man with the Big Hand

  NIGHT LIFE

  by Willie Nelson

  When the evenin’ sun goes down

  You will find me hangin’ ’round

  Oh, the night life, it ain’t no good life

  But it’s my life

  Many people just like me

  Dreamin’ of old used-to-be’s

  Oh, the night life, it ain’t no good life

  Ah, but it’s my life

  Listen to the blues that they’re playin’

  Listen to what the blues are sayin’

  Life is just another scene

  In this old world of broken dreams

  Oh, the night life, it ain’t no good life

  But it’s my life

  Oh, the night life ain’t no good life

  Oh, but it’s my life

  Yeah, it’s my life

  THE RED HEADED STRANGER

  We rebuilt the burned house at Ridgetop, but I still didn’t fit into Nashville’s idea of country music. I didn’t give up on country music because I believed in what I was doing. I loved Nashville and had a ton of friends there. But to make a living doing shows, I had to be where audiences would pay to see me. And the place where I could always get booked and draw a crowd was Texas.

  After years in Nashville, I finally was offered a dream spot to start as a regular on the Grand Ole Opry. The problem was, it didn’t pay enough to support my family. It was like when I had to choose between teaching Sunday school and playing honky-tonks. This time I chose Texas. End of story.

  People ask me why I love Texas, and it’s not just one thing. It’s beautiful from the Gulf Coast to the Panhandle, from the East Texas forests to the desert mountains of Big Bend. The people are friendly, the food is good. But lots of pretty places have good food and nice people. In the long run, the magic of Texas is something you have to feel. Basically, you have to be from here to feel the way we do about this state.

  “You can always tell a Texan,” they say, “but you can’t tell him much.”

  In the meantime, the Nelson family had grown. There’d also been a change to my marriage status. Life on the road is har
d on marriages, and things were already rocky with me and Shirley. I met Connie Koepke at a show in Houston, and we fell for each other. This went on for a while, and I was too slow breaking the news to Shirley back in Nashville. She found out about me and Connie when she opened a bill from a hospital in Houston. I have no idea why I used my home address for a maternity bill. Maybe I was afraid to break the news on my own.

  So one marriage ended, and another began with the birth of a beautiful girl we named Paula, in honor of her godfather, Paul English.

  Me and Paul had been through a lot together. His brother Oliver was a great guitar player, and years earlier, the two of us had played a Saturday radio show back in Hillsboro. One day, Paul came in to listen. I had him take a cardboard box and play any way he liked. I loved what he did right away, but it took me a while to get him in the band.

  Paul eventually gave up a successful life of living outside the law to be my drummer, my road manager, and my money collector. Mostly, he was my great friend. He and his wife, Carlene, moved to Texas with us. As did the rest of my band, for we were a band of brothers—and one sister.

  With most of the Ridgetop residents in tow, we moved to Bandera, Texas, occupying a former dude ranch that also had the nine-hole Happy Valley Golf Course. We loved it there, but Sister Bobbie, my pal Ray Benson from the band Asleep at the Wheel, and my golf and music buddy, Coach Darrell Royal, all said I should give Austin a try.

  Austin is an incredible place. It’s constantly growing and changing, but whenever someone moved here is when they say was the heyday. I think if you ask some of the New Yorkers and Californians who are moving here now, you’d find a couple who’d say, “Austin is great, but not as great as it was a month ago.”

  In 1971, Austin was a small city with a mix of hippies, rednecks, legislators, lobbyists, and college students. I took a look and soon realized they all had two things in common: they loved good music and having fun.