http://www.americansongwriter.com
by David Freeland
The ultimate country outlaw, Willie Nelson doesn’t just break rules; he invents them. Other artists can criticize the Bush administration and watch their careers head south-not Willie. With nearly 50 years in the business, he can do or say pretty much whatever he pleases, and the music industry-both within Nashville and without-accepts it smilingly.
In part this is because Nelson’s taste is so impeccable. Few musicians have been as prolific or have released work of such consistently high quality. 2006 alone saw the release of three Nelson albums, including You Don’t Know Me, a warm tribute to veteran songwriter Cindy Walker, and the newest, Songbird, an excellent collection of original material and covers produced by alt-country provocateur Ryan Adams-one of the few younger artists who can rival Nelson in productivity.
But despite this tried-and-true artistry, Nelson remains a paradox; he’s a household name more for his rebellious image (bandanas, smoking weed at the White House, et al) and a few ‘80s pop hits (”Always on My Mind” and the inextinguishable “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”) than for the bulk of his music-which ranks as some of the most adventurous work in American music history. He’s a musician’s musician, and every fan has a favorite Nelson album: Stardust (1978), with its supple elegance; Phases and Stages (1974), perhaps the greatest country concept album of all time; or the recording that may be his finest achievement (and Nelson’s own favorite), 1996’s haunting, enigmatic Spirit.
Julio Iglesias duet aside, none of this is easy-listening music. Nelson’s tremulous voice, distinctive phrasing and jazz-oriented guitar playing (he’s always cited Django Reinhardt as an influence) demand multiple listens.
Those who take the time will be rewarded. In Nelson’s hands, even something as wispy as “Rainbow Connection” (yes, Kermit the Frog’s) resonates with a childlike sense of wonder. Hearing it is like recapturing innocence we didn’t believe we still had.
General wisdom is that mainstream Nashville didn’t treat Nelson too well. It’s true that Music City did not always seem to know what to do with him, as evidenced by albums with titles like Make Way for Willie Nelson (1967) and Both Sides Now (1970). In fact, it was not until 1971 that he truly got to record an album his way, with the groundbreaking song cycle Yesterday’s Wine.
On the other hand, his success as a writer was practically immediate. He hit town in 1960 and within a year scored a mega-hit with Patsy Cline’s recording of “Crazy.” Those were heady times for talented writers, and in his 1988 autobiography Nelson describes the informal “guitar pullings,” where country’s finest-Roger Miller, Kris Kristofferson, Hank Cochran and others-met to play their latest compositions and swap notes.
Even then, Nelson’s songwriting was different, set apart through its dark humor and introspection. Pick any great Nelson composition and there are usually moments of self-realization, where we catch his characters in the act of truly seeing themselves for the first time. Phases and Stages‘ “I Still Can’t Believe You’re Gone,” written after the death of band member Paul English’s wife, is built upon this moving concept: “…but you’re gone/and I’m alone/but I’m still living/I don’t like it/
but I’ll take it ‘til I’m strong.”
Other titles continue the theme: “I’m Not Trying to Forget You Anymore,” “I’ve Just Destroyed the World (I’m Living In)” (Songbird’s new classic) and “Back to Earth.” Each is informed by Nelson’s characteristic gentleness and restraint, qualities that also come through in conversation.
In many ways he remains the Texas gentleman who once taught Sunday school and sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door, listening to each question with genial composure. As an artist and man, he’s refreshingly devoid of pretense.
How did you come to work with Ryan Adams for Songbird?
It was Luke Lewis from Lost Highway Records that suggested we get together and do something, and I respect Luke a lot. I wasn’t that familiar with Ryan, to be honest with you. I saw him a time or two, but I figured that he was coming from one [musical] place, I was coming from another, and we could kind of meet in the middle and work it out-and it really seemed like we did. His sound was, as everybody knows, a little different from what mine is, but we managed to come together well.
What was Adams like to work with? He has a reputation for being kind of out there.
Well, we’re both kind of out there [laughs], so we kind of met on a different altitude somewhere. I love him to death. I think he’s a great artist. Naturally, he’s a little weird; we all gotta be a little weird to be in this kind of business anyway, but his weirdness is associated with a lot of ingenious things that he’s doing.
The CD has a great cross-section of songs, old and new, from different periods of your career. The opener, “Rainy Day Blues,” goes back to your early days doesn’t it?
All the way back to the ‘50s, when I was living in Houston…and the first time I recorded “Night Life.” I’ve always liked the song. I sing it occasionally, and the audience likes it. It’s a good blues song, and we like to include a couple of blues songs at least on our show. I do “Milk Cow Blues;” that’s another old standard that I just love to do, and “Rainy Day Blues” kind of falls in there.
“Songbird,” the disc’s first single, is one of its most beautiful moments.
Thank you. I really love the arrangement on it. Fleetwood Mac had a great record on that. I didn’t know how my version of it would sound, but Ryan’s band, The Cardinals, are really good. These guys could play anything. We were doing [Harlan Howard’s] “Yours Love,” and I don’t think the steel player had heard it before, so I said, “Well, just play, ‘Waltz Across Texas’…it’ll work fine [laughs].” So when you hear that song, if you hear “Waltz Across Texas,” that’s how I got there.
Was Harlan one of the writers who used to participate in the “guitar pullings” down in Nashville, during the early ‘60s?
Yeah. Well, we all wrote for Pamper Music. I lived in Hendersonville. It’s eight or ten miles away, and everybody else lived around Nashville somewhere. In the mornings we would meet there at the office in Goodlettsville-Hank Cochran, me, Harlan Howard…a lot of the writers. This would just be us sitting around, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and having a big time in the morning. We’d just sing whatever we’d written the night before, kind of pass the guitar around…a guitar pull, we called it. I looked forward to that every morning, not only to play what I had written, but to hear what those guys had written, cause they were some of the best songwriters in the world.
On the new CD, “Sad Songs and Waltzes (Aren’t Selling This Year)” is another number that you first recorded many years ago.
Yeah. It was one of those songs that I wrote sitting around at night in Nashville, played for the guys the next day, and we’d all have a nice laugh about how true it was. You know, sad songs and waltzes were <i>not</i> selling. So I was stating an obvious fact to those guys. And I was going through a divorce at the same time, so it was one of those serious/funny things.
When you were living and working in Nashville in the ‘60s, did you feel that you never really fit in?
It wasn’t just Nashville. I had that feeling just about everywhere I went-that I was a little different [chuckles]. I didn’t really blame the folks in Nashville. It just so happened that they were in the spot where I really needed to get listened to, and in all the other places it was okay whether they understood what I was doing or not. But in Nashville it really meant a lot that I get through to those people. Eventually, the bottom line is always…if it sells, they will like it…and if it don’t, they won’t. That’s the deal. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg, you know? You’ve gotta have some promotion in order for it to sell, and they have to have a good song to sell. It’s like rolling dice; you’ve gotta really have a lot of luck involved.
What kinds of struggles did you experience in Nashville at that time?
I felt like I was real lucky. I hit town and the first thing I did was run into a guy that I knew, a singer named Billy Walker. He took me to his house, and me and my family stayed there and he took me out and got me the job writing songs for Pamper Music. So, as soon as I got to town, I sort of hit it lucky. I met Hank Cochran because of Billy Walker. Hank was going to get a raise at Pamper Music, a $50 raise, so he talked [owner] Hal Smith over there into giving me that $50 a week-instead of him getting that raise. So I had a lot of help, got real lucky there.
Did you ever have to plug your songs to the various record companies?
Well, we would do our demo sessions, and then those songs would be taken by the publishers and played for all those [record company] guys. The greatest songplugger in the world is Hank Cochran. He got me more recordings than anybody because he would take my songs and demos and play ‘em for all the artists…and then later, after he’d pitch my songs, he’d sit down and play ‘em some of his own songs, which he would also sell. He’d go home with you! He’d make sure you didn’t get away without at least listening to all the songs. Hank could really get your song heard.
Pamper Music was where you cut demos of “Crazy,” “Opportunity to Cry,” “Permanently Lonely” and many others.
Right. Those were the results of a lot of those morning sessions. I would play those songs, and when I would get a thumbs-up from the other writers, well, I’d put it down on the demo session. And they would do the same thing. Whenever we all liked the same thing, we’d get 20 or 30 songs together and then we could go to Pamper Music and say, “Hey, we’re ready for a demo session.”
“Crazy” was one of the songs that really built your reputation in Nashville. How did you feel when Patsy Cline cut it?
I knew it was great, ‘cause I loved her singing, but I had no idea that it would be as big a hit as it was…and still is. So, yeah, I was impressed with it way back then. A lot of other people have said, “Once Patsy Cline does it, nobody else can touch it,” and that’s pretty much how everybody felt about “Crazy.”
It’s interesting to hear the original Pamper demo that Patsy heard of you singing “Crazy.” In many ways, she didn’t deviate so much from your own phrasing.
Yeah, and you know, she tried that one whole session for four hours and really didn’t like it, and I think [producer] Owen Bradley said to her, finally, “Patsy, you should sing it like you, and quit trying to sing it like Willie.” So they called another session and she nailed it the first take…but I think she was really trying to do it so much like me, that there wasn’t enough Patsy in there.
People who don’t know your early work may be surprised to hear how great an interpreter you were, even then. Were you conscious of working to really interpret the lyrics?
I was always a huge Sinatra fan, and a [Texas Playboys’ leader] Tommy Duncan fan, and I was always interested in the phrasing. I watched how those folks went ahead and sang the song the way they wanted to sing it, as opposed to the way it had been recorded-or maybe the way they first heard it. I used to work in clubs four hours a night-six, seven nights a week there in Texas-and I sang the same song a lot. So I would do “San Antonio Rose” any way different that I could. I started singing it differently and phrasing it differently, along with other songs, because it was a lot of fun to play around with the phrasing. And I realized that it wasn’t that hard to do…then the people seemed to enjoy it. So, my phrasing, along with the lyrics and the melodies to the songs, were not entirely country; they had a little blues and jazz in there. In Nashville, it just wasn’t the right time to start mixing all that stuff up.
We’re talking about an era in which the “Nashville Sound” and countrypolitan era were taking hold.
Yeah. I love ‘em to death-the Anita Kerr Singers. They were so good that [Nashville producers] put ‘em on everything they recorded for about 12 years…and Grady Martin, a great guitar player. All those guys made a huge fortune just playing sessions there, and they were fantastic musicians, but the sound sort of sounded the same for a while.
In 1971, your Yesterday’s Wine album seemed like an attempt to break out of that mold, to go against the grain of what was happening in Nashville.
Well, it did give me a chance to go in there and do something different. Concept albums weren’t selling that great, back in those days. It was kind of hard to explain to a lot of people what a concept album was. But Yesterday’s Wine was accepted very well by [producer] Felton Jarvis and RCA Records, and I felt they did a great job recording it.
At the time, so many country albums were based around a single hit. As soon as an artist had another hit, he or she would put out a new album, right?
Right. This was different. When you have a concept you’re trying to sell, that means they’re gonna have to listen to the whole album. And that was a lot of work for some of those executives back in those days [laughs]!
Speaking of concept albums, one of your classics is Phases and Stages, recorded for Atlantic. Were you aware of how striking it was at the time, to have an album that detailed both sides of a relationship-from a man’s perspective and a woman’s perspective?
Yeah, I knew it was real different, especially for those times. I knew who was going to like it. I knew Kris and Harlan and Hank Cochran and all those guys were gonna love it. Unfortunately, they didn’t buy that many records!
I guess Atlantic Records got out of the country music business after that.
Yeah, and that didn’t help it either. Right after that, they decided that they’d close down their country department, and it was right when [producer] Jerry Wexler and I-I felt-were just right on the verge of doing something good.
We really get inside of your characters’ heads on that album, like in “Washing the Dishes”: “Learnin’ to hate all the things/that she once loved to do/Like washing his shirts/and never complaining/Except of red stains on the collar.” Are you conscious of putting yourself in your characters’ shoes when you write?
Yeah, I can definitely relate to all those things in that album. I’ve had that happen to me where, you know…I played enough places late at night, and I’d go home with lipstick on my collar. I’d have a lot of explaining to do the next day. So it wasn’t hard for me to put myself into that situation.
Do you think your early life in Texas influenced what we hear in your songs?
I’m sure it all had a lot to do with it, ‘cause I grew up listening to all kinds of music. I didn’t know I was a songwriter. I started out writing poems, and then I learned to play some chords on the guitar, and I started putting melodies to the poems. Who knows why? I didn’t know. How could a five-year-old boy know what the hell he’s talking about? I thought I did [laughs].
Your songs have been recorded by a vast array of artists, everyone from Doris Day to Al Green. What do you think makes them so adaptable?
I think I write and sing and play probably as much blues as I do country. I try to do some Django stuff in there, occasionally. So between Bob Wills and Hank Williams and Django and all that, there’s a lot of different kinds of music. The Stardust album had a lot of those pop standards, which I still sing every night. It’s just something about some music that hits everybody.
It’s remarkable to see how prolific you are. Is that something that’s easy for you-to record as much as you do?
I got a lot of energy, and it’s better that I get in the studio and get off the street [laughs]. It’s just safer in there. I’ve got a lot of studios, and the way you can record these days, you really don’t need a lot of great equipment. But I have this big studio in Austin, and across the street…another digital studio over there. And then there’s all the [producers], Fred Foster and James Stroud and all the guys that I’m working with in Nashville.
I know you recently recorded an album with James Stroud, It Always Will Be. Was that done in Nashville as well?
Yeah. The tracks were cut in Nashville and I did my vocals down in Austin at my studio. And there are pros and cons about [that process]. One obvious thing is that you’re not there with the guys, you don’t have the camaraderie and you don’t have that one instant where everything clicks. But on the other side of it, the musicians have a lot more time to learn the songs, come up with arrangements that they all agree on, then cut the track. And before [recording], I’d get with James Stroud and we’d decide on which songs we were gonna do, what key I’m gonna do ‘em in…and I’d play a little bit of ‘em so he could get the feel. In fact, we just did 32 sides two months ago. We’re doing the history of country music-the No. 1 songs. But James and I, we had this formula that kind of worked. I would sing the song three times in a row, never listening to any playbacks, and then go to the next song. The theory is that the track is good and I know the song, so there’s no need hanging around. We did 20 songs the first day and then played nine holes of golf!
Is it difficult to come up with so many great ideas?
No, not really. It seems like there are more ideas than there are places to go with them. I’m always putting out more albums than the record companies can sell. It’s a nice problem to have, in a way, but on the other hand, things don’t happen as quickly today as they used to-you know what I mean? I remember the days when we could write a song today, we could play it for an artist tonight-or else go in the studio and record it tonight-and then there was a record company that within a couple or three weeks could have it out to the disc jockeys. It really made it gratifying to be able to write a new song and see it come out and hit an audience, when you know…you believe…it’s a big hit.
Are there any versions of your songs that stick in your mind as favorites?
I loved Ray Price’s “Night Life.” I liked Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Paper” Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.” Those stand out. Faron Young’s “Hello Walls.”
On Songbird, there’s a haunting composition that Ryan Adams wrote for you, “Blue Hotel.”
It’s a great song, and the more you hear it, the more you like it. It really grows on you. He’s a good writer.
It also has a great line about “going from door to door…”
“…with nothing to sell.” I’ve been there!
Do you feel that when you’re working on a project, you’re in charge? Because that’s the way it sounds.
Yeah, and I think all the way back, as far as I can remember, I’ve always liked to hear a voice and a guitar out front. I love Eddy Arnold and his guitar. Ernest Tubb. I try to record sort of in that manner.
No matter the setting, it always feels like the focus is on Willie.
I’m a writer, so if they don’t understand or hear what I’m saying, I’m lost, and my voice will not carry it. I’ve got to have the words too.