stillisstillmoving.com

Musician Magazine (7/82)
Willie Nelson Interview
by David Breskin
Part 3 

If you missed them, you can read Part 1 here
http://stillisstillmoving.com/?p=1919 and
Part 2 here http://stillisstillmoving.com/?p=1932

Musician:  What happened in Texas in those years, the early to mid-70s, seems to me as much cultural and social as musical, with the music bringing the diverse elements together.  Did it surprise you — the sudden growth of audience — or was there more than a bit of calculation on your part, as in, “Well, let’s just see what happens if Willie lets his hair grow..?”

Willie Nelson:  Well, I don’t want to sound smart or anything, but I really did know there was an audience not being tapped.  The young people with the long hair, the beards, the dissenters, the draft dodgers, all the kids who didn’t want that war, had not been a welcome part of the “country” audience.  There was a division between them and their parents, who thought they were long-haired, dope-smoking hippies.  I knew better.  I knew if a guy let his hair grow it didn’t make him Charles Manson and if he smoked a joint it didn’t make him a drug addict.  Having that knowledge, we’d play a place like Big G’s in Round Rock, Texas — which was a notorious redneck hang — and I’d notice some long-hairs sprinkled thorughout the crowd, and I knew that to come there to hear country music, they had taken their lives in their own hands.  Likewise, at a place like Armadillo World Headquarters, where the long-hairs were congregating for rock ‘n’ roll, there were rednecks beginning to show up.  So I decided to join them.  I decided I had gone as far as I could with my redneck friends.  I had certain followers by then and I was curious to see if they’d follow me to the Armadillo Club, and if they did, would the long-hairs and young people come out and all join together and listen to the same thing?  Would they give it a try?

Now the year before was the First Annual Dripping Spirngs Reunion, it was a festival that lasted three days, had forty to fifty country acts and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.  I was one of the acts, and I did see scattered around a few hippies and cowboys sitting next to each other, sharing a brew or whatever.  Once I saw that, I was sure it would work.  ANd then I just bowled on through.  That was 1972, and my first get-together was ’73.  I figured I’d have it on the Fourth of July and call it a picnic, not a festival — which had become a bad word after Woodstock and Altamont.  What American could complain about a picnic?  Now, by having it on the Fourth, I could insure people would be coming for the music and not for trouble because it’d be too hot to fight.  Just lay back and listen, and that’s what happened.  My biggest thrill in music was when Leon Russell and I and several hundred friends gathered the night before.  Had a little party, drank some beer, ate some barbecue, an sat down and picked until daylight.  Leon and I went onstage right at sunrise, turned on the sound system, and started playing together, and we could see thousands of people streaming into the setting.  That was the greatest morning of my life.  I knew then something good was gong on, and it hasn’t stopped since.

MM:  Those picnics launched a very productive time for you.  Did you feel that once you had gotten your audience, it was yours, no record company got it for you — that you could do whatever you wanted to do.  If you wanted to play a blues line, you could play blues, same with standards, same with gospel, or swing, or rock.

WN:  That’s true, that’s exactly right.  And the audience hasn’t walked ot yet.  And now we see kids coming with their parents and their grandparents. Kids will bring their parents, or vice versa, as if one generation is trying to show the other, “See, we can agree on something.  We can be together.”

MM:  To play the devil’s advocate, there is the feeling — probably critical — that anything which reaches so many and such a wide range of people has to be watered down, must not be that good, must be some sort of bastardization of the Real Thing, whatever that may be.

WN:  Yeah, I know.  Well, I don’t know if i’m that good or not, but I don’t think I’m watered-down.  I’m very sincere.  I may not play as good jazz as Miles Davis, or as good a blues as B.B. King.  I may not sing as good a country as pick-a-name.

MM:  He’s good, that old Pick-a-Name…

WN:  (laughs)  Right, but I enjoy what I do.  Watered down is not the word, it’s a mixture.  Any listeners completely under the sway of one type of music are going to be disappointed in what they hear from me, ’cause I come from a lot of different places.

MM:  Are you comfortable with the label “progressive country” and do you think it defines anything?

WN:  I may have come up with that term myself.  I had at one time tried to describe what I was doing and maybe come up with a name for my band — like the Jazzbillies. Progressive country means two things to me:  first, it means country music played by excellent musicians who can play anything they want to play, but out of choice have decided to play country.  Excellent musicians make it progressive:  you can hear the influence of blues, of jazz.  And being from Texas makes it aggressive:  we throw it right at you.  There’s an aggressive cutting edge to all music native to Texas — jazz, blues, R&B, country, rock, what have you. 

Second, it means that the audience itself is progressively minded.  That’s where the young people came in, they already had their blues background, and their rock n’ roll — which is no more than the blues with a heavy beat. But they also accepted country on its own terms, whch in my mind made them a progressive audience.

MM:  What about “regressive country?”  Why do the countrypolitan people or the corporate Nashville people think layer after layer of sweet stuff — strings, voices, shlock — is going to be so appealing?

WN:  They think it will be more commercial, and their idea of commercial is what has sold in the past.  Just because strings and voices sold to a wide range of people in the past, doesn’t mean they’ll necessary work today.  But it causes producers to say, “Hey, let’s go get me some voices and strings, that’s the way to cross over, to reach the multitude.”  Also, it made the recording costs so high that a lot more money was made n the studio.  Not only by more musicians being hired, but mroe money for the studio and the producer, ’cause so much more time was involved.  Once that level of recording was reached, no one wanted to leave it, ’cause it meant more bucks in their hip pockets.  It was self-perpetuating, and it’s still there today:  there’s a bigger pie to be sliced up if you use forty musicians and three months than if you walk in with six guys and cut the album in two days.  Now the reasoning, the rationalization for all th strings and voices is:  “We have a shot at a crossover,” which means nothing.

MM:  The generals are always fighting the last war this time…

WN:  And they usethat as an excuse to go into battle the same way.  Red Headed Stranger cost at the most fourteen thousand dollars, did it in two, three days, spent a few more hours on the mix.

MM:  And it went platinum.  In addition to the standard operating bullshit about recording, you’ve also managed to shatter a few stereotypes along the way.  One is that country music is for redneck (bleep)-kickers, and that country songs sung by men are supposed to be either rough and tough on the ladies or helplessly idealized odes to Woman.  Now here comes Willie with Phases and Stages, which devotes an entire side to presenting the woman’s perspective on the relationship that album portrays.

WN:  I’m sure there were some people that this created a problem for.  But most people seek to give in, to understand the other side, be it male or female.  And once they admit to themselves that there are two sides to every story, it may be easier for them.

MM:  Even from early on in your songwriting, you displayed sadness, vulnerability, weakness, need, a sense of loss — all the things that the American male has traditionally had trouble owning up to.  You’ve been sensitive to these things and I’m wondering where that comes from?

WN:  I don’t really know.  I do know I’m not perfect by any means.  I still have a tendancy to be as macho as any man, except that I know I have feelings.  I laugh and I cry, just like a woman.  I’m not any tougher — in fact, sometimes I think the woman is much, much tougher than the man.  A man tires to hide his feelings a lot more.  They are not willing to admit that they cry, or that they care, but there do.  I have those feelings, yet I consider myself as much of a man as anybody I’ve ever met. 

I also know by working nightclubs where the toughest cowboys in the world come to cry in their beer.  They come up, and request, “Release Me, Let me Go” or “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”  They sit and they listen and their emotions are very visible.  They may not admit their feelings to their girlfriends or wives, but they will pay money and come out and hear these songs, and shove quarters in the jukebox all night long to hear the same songs the women are listening to and sympathizing with.  Women hear the same songs, have the same emotions.

MM:  As the years have gone by, your voice seems to have acquired an added presence — an intimacy with the ear of the listener, an almost touchable, sensous quality…

WN:  That is completely natural.  I think my voice may be changing a bit in that direction as I get older.  My voice is more mature now.  It is also stronger than it’s ever been, and that may have something to do with the fact that i’m taking better care of myshelf.  My lungs are stronger, even though I had one collapse.

MM:  You were swimming in Hawaii and POOF!

WN:  Yeah, I’d been running for an hour, and I was hot, and I jumped right into the ocean, and it was cold, and that sudden change, combined with what may have been a week spot on my lung, just punctured it.  My kids were out there and my wife Connie, on the beach, which looked like a long ways away. And my side just caved in.  While I was in the hospital I got three bicycle pumps sent to me.

MM:  I suppose the Chairman of the Board was warning you about something.

WN:  Right, it was Mother Nature’s way of telling me to pull up.  I’d been working very hard, doing one, two shows a night for month after month after month.  Not resting, smoking too much.  I was probably a lot more productive before I started smoking.  I think I started smoking to forget, rather than to remember.  It definitely does that to you.  Theres’ been a lot of talk about marijuana being harmless, but I think it’s a lot more harmful to the lungs than people realize.  Especially the strong marijuana that’s around these days — each year it seems to get a little stronger.  I quit smoking cigaretes about four years ago, because my lungs started hurting.  And when I quit, I doubled up on joints…

MM:  Earth to Willie, earth to Willie.

WN:  Come in, Willie.  So I figure now, maybe I’ll take a few tokes on my birthday, which is a few weeks off.   I want to give my lungs a chance from now on.

… to be continued. 

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 12:47 am and is filed under Awards and Honors, Interviews, Magazines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.