Willie on Weed
High Times Magazine
October 2005
by Richard Cusick
When it comes to grass, Willie’s fans divide into three distinct camps: stoners like myself who view Willie Nelson as a sterling example of humanity; politically conservative country folks who dislike the pot thing but cry in their beers whenever he sings “Crazy”; and finally, fans who don’t smoke and don’t care, but remain mildly amused by Shotgun Willie’s outlaw ways. So, unlike most marijuana activists, Nelson doesn’t preach merely to the converted. Arguably, on the strength of his art and his living example, he’s helped change more minds about marijuana than any other American.
“They’re watching me,” Nelson acknowledges. “I’m like the canary in the coal mine. As long as I can remember the words to my songs and do a good show, they say: “Well, it may not be affecting them so much.”
And so, despite incessant interview request, HIGH TIMES has always been treated like a red-headed stranger by the managers, press agents, record companies, road managers and assorted family members who get paid to look out for Willie Nelson’s best interests. Frankly, I don’t think the man himself gave a shit one way or the other. We were all waiting for the right moment to make it happen. The release of Willie’s long-delayed reggae CD, Countryman, turned out to be the right moment. One look at the cover art proved that. There are actually two covers: “One for Wal-Mart,” Willie noted, and one for every fan of the singer’s favorite plant — with a big pot leaf commanding the center.
It’s the hottest day of the year. The temperature on the field of Prince Geroge’s Stadium in Bowie, MD, reaches triple digits, but the Bob Dylan – Willie Nelson show has attracted a particular rugged type of music fan willing to roast for hours in the sun to secure a good seat on the general admission lawn. I’m scheduled to meet with the American music legend for an hour and a half, but a family member’s illness delays Willie by nearly an hour. How to stuff 30 years worth of interview into 30 minutes? My strategy involves breaking the ice by bringing the musician’s old friend Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and Allen St. Pierre, NORML’s executive director, along for the ride. Willie has been a member of NORML’s advisory board for 22 years, and so I assumed their reputations would precede me…
The familiar sound of his guitar floats softly from a state-of-the-art sound system shelved above our heads on board one of the world’s most widely travelled and legendary tour buses. A copy of Bob Dylan’s autobiography sits on the soft brown-leather couch in the front, while Willie holds court from a corner booth. We will talk for the next 40 minutes without interruption — save for one very unusualy exception.
HT: You’ve done reggae songs before, but Countryman is your first full-blown reggae album. How did that happen?
WN: Ten years ago, I went to see Chris Blackwell when he was the head of Island Records in Jamaica, and we talked about putting out a reggae album, Chris loved the idea, but I also played him a CD I produced called Spirit, and he said, “I love Spirit. Let’s put that out now and y’all go finish the reggae and then we’ll put it out.”
But they had a shakeup, and he left the label. So for 10 years it kinda laid there, until the good folks after at Lost Highway picked it up and ran with it.
Keith Stroup: Does the title Countryman refer to the ganja growers up in the mountians?
WN: Yeah. That’s right.
HT: I’ve always thought reggae and country gospel are very similar, not in sound so much as in spirit.
WN: The way the musicians tell me, reggae took off – Peter Tosh, Toots and those guys — was that reggae came basically from country music, from listening to the radio in the United States and hearing WSM play ’em some Grand Old Opry. When they told me that, I started thinking about how country songs just naturally lend themselves to a reggae rhythm.
HT: Does marijuana help your songwriting?
WN: I wrote most of my good songs before I ever heard of marijuana or used it, and I’m not sure that it doesn’t slow down your writing.
HT: Really?
WN: Well, if you’re hungry or on edge and you’re writing, you could always just sit down and smoke a little joint and not worry about it. But some things you need to worry about.
HT: So taking that edge off sometimes isn’t a good thing.
WN: Yeah. You need that age.
(Bob Dylan quielty enters the front of the bus — Yes, really.)
WN: Hey! Bob! (rising from booth) C’mere. (A brief hug and Willie returns to the corner booth.)Â
Bob Dylan: They gotcha trapped.
HT: We got him now.
BD: I’ll come back.
WN: All right.
(exit Bob Dylan)
HT: You know, I named my daughter after than man!
WN: You did?
HT: We figured the name works for either a boy or a girl.
WN: Yeah, that’s true. Well, he’s a good guy. Believe it or not, that’s the first time I’ve seen him this tour. We’ve been out two weeks. He was gonna play some chess. He asked me if I want to play some chess, so we can do it tomorrow or the next day.
HT: I believe we were talking about songwriting.
WN: I started writing songs a long time before I started smoking. Well, I started smoking cigarettes when I was 4. I started smoking something when I was 4. Cedar bark, Grapevines, Cotton leaves, Coffee leaves. I even tried Black Drop one time.
HT: Black Drop?
WN: It was an old laxative in powder form. Cedar bark, I smoked that. And then I used to raise hens, so I would trade a dozen eggs for a pack of cigarettes back in those days. About 18 cents, I think. About 18 or 20 cents for a pack of cigarettes. Lucky Strikes. Camels.
HT: In your autobiography, you said that marijuana got you off cigarettes and drinking.
WN: Yeah. I knew I was killing myself with cigarettes, and I knew I was really putting myself in danger with drinking so much, so somewhere along the way I decided. “Wait a minute! You know, do what you can do.” In the early years, I drank all the time. Mainly before pot. Up until then, I was into whiskey and uppers. You know, that’s the deal. Truck drivers had the bennies when they made those LA turnaounds, and all that stuff was going around. All the guitar players had it.
HT: Fred Lockwood. He was the first guy to ever turn you on to pot?
WN: Yeah. A Fort Worth musician. That’s right.
HT: Fred Lockwood was not only the first person to give you a joint, as I understand it, he’s always the guy who gave you the line. “I Gotta Get Drunk and I Sure do Regret It.”
WN: There was two. There was Fred Lockwood and there was Ace Lockwood. They were brothers. Fred was the one who gave me the line, “I Gotta Get Drunk and I sure Do Regret It” and his brother Ace went and gave me a itty bitty little snuff can full of pot one time.
HT: So that was your first ime around the block?
WN: I played a club there, and we played together. These guys were musicians, so we went over to their house, and Fred and I were playing dominoes. That was the first time I ever smoked it. I think I smoked it about six months before I ever got high. And then, all of a sudden: “Oh yeah –that’s what that is.”
HT: Willie, you’re a musician known for making political stands. Not every musician does that.
WN: I’ve let my beliefs be known and they turned out to be political. I didn’t start out taking any political stands — just taking stands.
HT: You just think a certain way and…
KS…groups like NORML start using you politically.
HT: You’ve also been out front about your use of cannabis for a long time. Have you taken a lot of flak for it over your career.
WN: Zero that I know of.
HT: It’s amazing how you get buy.
WN: Well, I got busted.
HT: 750,000 people got busted for marijuana last year.
KS: Yeah, but none of them got busted because they slept on the side of the highway and then raised the “hand-rolled cigarette defense.” Which I don’t believe has worked for anybody else — wasn’t that it?
WN: You can’t assume that a rolled-up cigarette in an ashtray, looking through the window, is a marijuana cigarette.
KS: In Texas, in particular! I think of that as the Willie Nelson Defense.
WN: I thought it was brilliant.
KS: I did, too.
HT: I hope you don’t mind my blazing, but I’m about to see Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan play.
WN: You’ve gotta get there.
HT: Well, I know you recommend moderation.
WN: Moderation is always the key, even for pot. You can over-do pot. And it’s not for the kids… After they get 18, 21 years old, they’re going to try whatever they’re gonna try…
HT: What’s the difference smoking pot 50 years ago and now?
WN: It costs more money.
HT: People say it’s better now, but I don’t remember not getting high 25 years ago.
WN: No, I don’t either. You know, it’s kind of like sex — there’s none bad, but there’s just some that’s better. I think our tolerance is pretty good, too.
HT: I ususlaly stop for a month every year or so.
KS: I usualy stop for a few days every now and then — because I run out.
WN: I intentionally let myself run out every now and then.
KS: A couple of days into that, I usually say, “Let me rethink that decision.”
WN: Either that or one of the guys’ll bring me one and say, “Here, don’t you think it’s time?
