Willie Nelson's Letters to America Read online

  Reluctant to play with the thoughts of the ending:

  The ending that won’t go away.

  And as my memories race back to love’s eager beginning,

  Reluctant to play with the thoughts of the ending:

  The ending that won’t go away.

  And this looks like a December day.

  DEAR ROGER MILLER,

  Can you hear me, Wild Child? Lemme tell you, these days we could use a few more songs from you, and a little more funny too. All I have to do is think of you, and it makes me smile.

  You were like the Lone Ranger and Superman of comedy—quick on the draw with jokes that flew faster than a speeding bullet. Like when that cop pulled you over and said, “Can I see your license?” And you replied, “Can I see your gun?”

  Or when your drummer started rushing the beat one night. You turned to him and said, “Play as fast as you want, but we still gotta go till 12:30.”

  You really lived up to that Wild Child nickname. We did some crazy shit together. At least I think we did. It was the ’60s and ’70s in Music City, and it’s as foggy as it was funny.

  I’ll never forget riding down the highway with you on a beautiful day. As we gazed at the incredible clouds in the sky, you said, “Just think what God could’ve done if he had money.”

  I learned a lot from you. You could be just as fast writing a great song as you were making a joke. You’d finish playing a song during your show, then you’d say, “Here’s a song I wrote while I was singing that one.” You said you wrote “King of the Road” in ten minutes, and I know how that feels. When the song just comes to you, all at once, you just grab the magic and write it down fast. That’s what happened to me with “On the Road Again.”

  The two of us were one of a kind. We shared a positive outlook on life. If something’s wrong and you see the funny part of it, then it doesn’t seem so wrong anymore.

  You had a gift, but you also knew not to take it too seriously. I’m forever grateful for your advice to sing other people’s songs. And I’m pretty sure my record companies are grateful too.

  It all paid off for you and me when we recorded our Old Friends album at my Pedernales Studios in Austin. We were on fire and having fun. I think we cut the whole album in two or three days and nights. One morning, after an all-night session, we went outside and the sun was coming up. You just squinted and said, “Here comes God with his brights on.”

  So there you go, Wild Child. You were a one-of-a-kind God’s creation, and those angels are lucky to have you.

  Give ’em hell in heaven. They could use a laugh too.

  Willie

  I’D HAVE TO BE CRAZY

  It’s only natural for show-business careers to go up and down. It took me thirty years and fifteen studio albums to become an overnight success, and that was probably a good thing. Sometimes when a young act goes from drawing a hundred to a thousand to a hundred thousand, the temptations to go crazy can be hard to avoid.

  We’d also been through years of touring, where you had to be tough not to get hustled or robbed or thrown in jail. Some of my favorite tour and event producers were basically thieves and criminals, but they worked for me, and as long as they didn’t steal too much and left enough for me and the band, that was okay because that made them my thieves and criminals.

  Gino McCoslin was a piece of work who loved to oversell a show. I confronted him once when he sold twice as many tickets as people could fit into the Sportsman’s Coliseum in Dallas. Gino just shrugged and said, “Hell, the airlines do it all the time.”

  One of Gino’s favorite tricks was to put a sign on the exit that said “Bathroom.” People would go out of the venue by mistake, then he’d charge ’em to get back in. Much of the business was done in cash, and as the band started drawing bigger crowds, the amount of cash got bigger too. My friends Scooter and Bo Franks have been selling my T-shirts since the beginning of time, and that started as an all-cash business.

  When you carry lots of cash, you’re a target to get robbed. When the band is meeting lots of pretty girls, they prefer to not get accosted by a jealous boyfriend the next time we play the town. There was no shortage of guns on our tour. After a show at Birmingham Coliseum, I heard a gun battle going off right outside the bus. I didn’t know what was going on, but I decided to try to keep the peace. When the troublemakers saw me step off the bus wearing cutoffs and tennies, with a pair of Colt .45 revolvers, the problems seemed to melt away.

  We were called Outlaws, a term that added considerably to the wild and crazy factor, but we also were playing the long game. We learned the hard way that if our buses stayed in town after the show, the band would party all night and pay the price the next day. So we took a different approach and left the show soon after it was over. By the time the crowd was looking for us to party, we were rolling down the highway.

  It also helped that cocaine was banned from our tour. Coke will make you crazy and make you do crazy things, and my rule was, “If you’re wired, your fired.”

  That doesn’t mean we didn’t have fun. As the crowds got bigger and bigger, we partied more on golf courses than we did in bars. And we partied onstage, pulling out all the stops for tens of thousands of wild and wonderful, dancing Willie Nelson fans. Would I do it all again? Hell, that’s the point. I can hardly wait to go do it again.

  TO ALL THE GIRLS I’VE LOVED BEFORE,

  Now I’ve got your attention! Am I about to spill the beans in a personal letter that anyone can read? Or am I reminding you that Julio Iglesias and I had a number one, chart-topping, certified-by-precious-metals album and song of that name? The songwriters, Albert Hammond and Hal David, made a little scratch on that. Me and Julio did pretty well ourselves. Sales are always nice, but there was a double bonus because Julio gained a lot of US fans, and I found new fans around the world.

  But the first question remains: Is this a letter to all the girls I’ve loved before, or am I just being appreciative of a beautiful song that God sent my way? Shoot, maybe I’m writing a sequel and hoping God will smile on me again. So here goes . . .

  TO ALL THE GIRLS I’VE LOVED,

  You remember me, and I remember you. And when I think of you, I smile. We were younger then, and we had our ups and downs—in good ways and bad—but we both seemed to think the way Kris Kristofferson wrote, that the going up was worth the coming down.

  But our younger and sexier selves weren’t as smart as we thought we were. We’re older and wiser now, and as the calendar pages peel away, the hard times fade, and what remains are our smiles and our laughter, and our dancing in the rain. What a time we had, dancing and prancing in the moonlight.

  Do you remember when I sang you a love song? That was a song where nothing went wrong, and it’s important to remember that nothing really went wrong for any of us. When we let the hard times go, what remains are the good times. When I think of you, it brings me a smile, and I hope the same goes for you.

  To all the girls I’ve loved—you remember me, and I still remember you.

  Love,

  Willie

  LOVE JUST LAUGHED

  by Willie Nelson and Buddy Cannon

  She said, “Please don’t let me go”

  I said, “I gotta let you go”

  And love just laughed

  That’s all that I remember

  It was a bitter cold December

  And love just laughed

  Love is still laughing

  But you can’t go back

  What’s done is done

  Yeah, that’s a fact

  But it was fun in a strange kind of way

  We can look back and smile and say

  “Whatever happened brought us down to the day”

  That love just laughed

  And then love cried

  I said, “Where are you going?”

  We’re just getting started

  And love just laughed

  We were meant for forever

  But that’s turned
into never

  And love just laughed

  Love is still laughing

  But you can’t go back

  What’s done is done

  And that’s a fact

  But it was fun in a strange kind of way

  We can look back and smile and say

  “Whatever happened brought us down to the day”

  And love just laughed

  And then love cried

  Love is still laughing

  But you can’t go back

  What’s done is done

  That’s a fact

  But it was fun in a strange kind of way

  We can look back and smile and say

  “Whatever happened brought us down to the day”

  Love just laughed

  And then love cried

  And then love cried

  BAD BOYS AND BAD GIRLS

  Now that I’ve come this far and dove in so deep, I might as well get the rest of the nudity material out of the way. So how about a joke?

  A couple is celebrating their sixtieth anniversary, with a special breakfast. The husband says, “I still remember having breakfast naked with you the morning after we were married.” And his wife says, “We’re not so old—we can do that again.”

  So they’re sitting naked at the table having breakfast, and she says to her husband, “After all these years, you still make my nipples hot.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he tells her. “One is in your coffee, and the other is in your oatmeal.”

  Ha. And if you didn’t think that was funny, wait twenty or thirty years. You’ll get it eventually. The important thing to remember is that an onion can make people cry, but there’s never been a vegetable that can make people laugh.

  Speaking of funny, a few years back, I wanted to make a video of my song, “You Don’t Think I’m Funny Anymore.” We brought thirty fast Bad Boy lawn mowers to my western town, and we staged a Bad Boy / Bad Girl Lawn Mower Race. In another of my hustles, I bet Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson $10,000 that Jessica Simpson could beat them in the race.

  We rigged it for Jessica to win, but we also spent the weekend gambling on everything in sight. My favorite part of the video was my longtime roadie Poodie Locke dressed as a woman (with a beard) wearing an “I ‘Heart’ Owen” T-shirt.

  It’s important not to take yourself too seriously, and laughter really is the best medicine (though cannabis isn’t far behind).

  YOU DON’T THINK I’M FUNNY ANYMORE

  by Willie Nelson

  You don’t think I’m funny anymore

  You used to laugh at all my jokes

  Even though you heard them all before

  But you don’t think I’m funny anymore

  I used to fake a heart attack

  and fall down on the floor

  But even I don’t think that’s funny anymore

  I guess things change

  And the more they change

  the more they stay the same

  And there ain’t no blame

  Sometimes the picture just don’t fit the frame

  And this is where the cowboy yields the floor

  ’Cause you don’t think I’m funny anymore

  I guess things change

  The more they change

  the more they stay the same

  There ain’t no blame

  Sometimes the picture just don’t fit the frame

  And this is where the cowboy yields the floor

  ’Cause you don’t think I’m funny anymore

  Did you hear the one about the dirty whore?

  Oh, I forgot, you don’t think I’m funny anymore

  STRING OF PARS

  I got bit by the golf bug after we moved back to Texas. My promoter buddy Larry Trader was also a golf pro, and Larry soon had me and the band playing a lot of golf. We weren’t that good, and we liked it that way.

  When we made the move to Austin, I bought a rough-and-ready nine-hole course called Pedernales Country Club. It came with a clubhouse—which we turned in to a first-class recording studio—and a bunch of condos that were perfect for my band and any visiting musicians.

  We called it Cut-N-Putt. We’d play golf all day and record in the studio all night. I can’t remember if we ever slept. The rules on the official scorecard stated, “No more than twelve in your foursome,” and “Please leave the course in the condition in which you’d like to be found.”

  It was a wild game—anywhere from five to fifteen of us playing in one group, each in our own carts, racing to claim one of the balls after the last tee shot was hit. My motto was, “May the fastest car win!” The only thing we stopped for were jokes.

  A woman goes to the pro shop and says, “Do you have anything for a bee sting?”

  The pro says, “Where did you get stung, ma’am?

  She says, “Between the first and second hole.”

  And the pro says, “Well, first of all, ma’am, your stance is too wide.”

  If I told one like that, Ray or Turk or Fromholz might have a comeback joke, or they’d double the bet to a million pesos a hole. The next thing you knew, we’d played thirty-six or forty-five holes, and the sun was going down. Songwriter Steve Fromholz was a great music and golf pal and one of the funniest guys ever. “If you drink a big shot of tequila,” he told us, “then hold the empty shot glass up to your ear, you can hear a bunch of Mexicans laughing at you.”

  My buddy Turk used to juggle a driver, a golf ball, and a tee, which was great coordination, but if we got him high, we could still beat him at golf.

  Ray Benson, one of my oldest Austin buddies and a legend of Texas swing music, was part of that group. Whenever we made a par, Ray would say, “That’s one in a row!”

  And my pal Bud Shrake was our golf guru. Bud was a Texas legend. He was a reporter in Dallas the day Kennedy was shot. He’d written about America’s greatest sports heroes. And he knew more about the golf swing than all of us put together and was determined to learn the “secret move” that would make every swing perfect. But you also knew that Bud didn’t come for golf. He came for the friendship.

  Talking about good friends, there was none better than University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal. Coach and I became friends in the ’60s, around the time his team at the University of Texas won the national college football title. He came to hundreds of shows, and it seems like we played a million holes of golf together.

  I never was a great golfer, but if I just relaxed and hit the ball the way it felt right to me, I did all right and could hold my own in a match for bragging rights or for $1,000 a hole. One secret for that big bet—make sure you have the right partner.

  My partner was usually Larry Trader, who’d done a lot of hustling in his day. Johnny Bush sent Larry to me in the ’60s because I was having a hard time collecting what nightclub owners owed me after a show. Trader showed up the first time in a convertible Cadillac and walked into the nightclub office with a violin case. And I can guarantee he didn’t have a violin in that case. After that, we never had any trouble getting our money.

  Larry and I took on all comers in partners golf. He was my golf pro, but he didn’t try to change my swing. Doing things the way someone else tells me to has never worked for me. I like to do things my way. On the road, we used to say, “We’re gonna keep doing it wrong till we like it that way.”

  Focusing on impossible perfection at golf will ultimately drive you nuts. I don’t believe my enjoyment of the game or the day or the hole we’re playing should be dictated by something as haphazard as a golf swing.

  When I head to my home on Maui, the golf game continues at the nine-hole Maui Country Club. It reminds me of Pedernales but is a lot greener. I had a game there with my buddy Jim Fuller, who owned our local restaurant and concert hall, Charley’s. Fuller and me played for $100 a hole, and we kept at it for years. He started beating me bad one year, when he was hitting an iron off the tee and never losing a ball. So I gave him one of those new big-hea
ded drivers. He hit it a mile the first time and was hooked. I think I won a couple of thousand bucks from him while he tried to figure out how to hit that driver again. Eventually, he gave up and went back to his way and won his money back.

  Golf is a good family game, and playing with my boys, Lukas and Micah, has been a joy. They’re both pretty good. When we play Maui Country Club, there’s a hole with a tee close to the ocean. Every time we get to that tee, Lukas hops the fence, runs, and jumps into the ocean, then runs back to hit his drive. How can you not love that?

  I don’t play as much as I used to, but I still like to get out there when the weather is just right and soak in the sun and count my blessings for another day on God’s green earth.

  DEAR GOLF GODS,

  Thanks for not striking me down with lightning. Thanks for all the good company and the good fun. Thanks for my hole-in-one on Maui.

  Speaking of golf gods, do you remember the preacher who decides on Sunday morning that it’s too pretty to be stuck in church? He tells the assistant pastor to give the sermon, then drives fifty miles to an empty golf course, where no one will see him.

  Jesus looks down on this, then turns to his Father and says, “You gonna let him get away with that?”

  God smiles, and as the preacher swings on the first hole, God flicks his finger, and a gust of wind catches the ball and carries it four hundred yards to the green, where it goes in for a hole-in-one.

  “Why’d you reward him for bad behavior?” Jesus asks.

  God smiles and says, “Who’s he gonna tell?”

  The joke’s on us. And the lesson is, we don’t do good things for ourselves or for others to be noticed. We do them to be good.

  Your golfing son,

  Willie

  THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OF FARM AID

  When we held the first Farm Aid concert in 1985, I had no idea that thirty-five years later, we’d still be doing our best to support America’s family farmers. There were eight million family farmers in America when I was growing up. Eight million! By 1985, that number was down to two million. This wasn’t an accident. It was a conspiracy by Big Ag and government to run the little guys out of business. With the help of Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Bob Dylan, B.B. King, and many more great artists, the first Farm Aid concert raised $7 million for family farmers.