Willie (16 page)

You know when you hear a song and it hits you immediately—hey, that's the
truth?
You know it instinctively? The same thing happened when I read the
Aquarian Gospel
. There's a part in the
Aquarian Gospel
about the life of Jesus that tells where He went during the long period between his childhood and his last ride to Jerusalem when He disappeared. The King James version of the Bible was later rewritten to cover up the fact that Jesus had discovered reincarnation. He learned about it in his travels to Egypt and India. One of His lessons was the lesson of divine love, where He met this beautiful lady in the chambers and she was playing on a harp and she was the most beautiful creature He'd ever seen in His life, and He fell in love with this girl. It's the most beautiful story in the world about how Jesus overcame carnal love and retained his divine love because that was His reason for being here, to show divine love to all mankind. Here He was being tempted by this most beautiful creature on earth, but He remained strong. He stayed Jesus, and stayed divine love personified. I realized it would take many more reincarnations
for me to triumph over my lustful urges, but at least I knew I was on the right path.

On the back page of the
Aquarian Gospel
, I wrote a list of commandments to myself. I realize now they were much like the statements my mother wrote me in her letter all those years ago about the kind of person she wanted to be. I was writing them down to make them come true. Visualization. Rosicrucians and other mystical societies teach you to do this. If you want something to occur, write it down and read it over and over, and according to the law, it will happen. The
Aquarian Gospel
had a great impact on me. It all came together with that book. Explained everything to my satisfaction.

I became interested in these secret societies, these secret orders that people belong to. My daddy Ira was a Mason, but he wouldn't talk about it and I didn't know that a Mason is much the same as a Rosicrucian, although the Masons demand secrecy while the Rosicrucians want to share their knowledge with people who are ready to receive it.

I wanted to know what these big secrets could be. There are so many things that I don't know. Like I don't know, really, how many vibrations per second is this pen in my hand, or how many vibrations per second is this particular air I am breathing. The only difference between the pen and the air is the number of times they vibrate. And the only difference between anything is where it's at on the vibrating level. We know little about that.

Martha gave birth to our son, Billy, on May 21, 1958, in a Fort Worth hospital.

Once again our lives had become one of those deals where I owed more than I was making. We loaded the family in the car and took off for Houston.

We didn't have any money, but I did have some new songs I thought I could sell to somebody.

Driving on the highway into Houston, we passed the Esquire Club. It was afternoon, and we stopped in there to listen to Larry Butler rehearsing with his band.

When they took a break I got Larry off to the side and told him I wanted to sell him some songs. I told him I'd take $10 apiece for them. I sang him “Mr. Record Man” and some other good songs. Larry listened real close, and when I finished I said, “How many do you want to buy?”

Larry said, “You mean you would sell ‘Mr. Record Man' to me for ten dollars for me to put my name on it and claim I wrote it?”

I said, “Sure.”

The way I looked at it, songs for a songwriter were like paintings for a painter. You finish one and you sell it for whatever you can get and then you do another.

Larry said, “I ain't going to buy your songs.”

“You don't like 'em?”

“Hell, I love 'em,” he said. “These songs are too good for you to sell like this. Hang on to 'em and one of these days they'll be hits.”

“But I'm broke.”

“Here's a fifty-dollar loan,” Larry said. “Go get some food for your kids and rent a house to put 'em in, and come back here to the Esquire Club. I want you to play in my band.”

We found an apartment in Pasadena, east of Houston. I had a gig six nights a week at the Esquire Club. On Sunday mornings I worked as the sign-on DJ for a Pasadena radio station.

Things were looking up again. I ran into Pappy Dailey, who had started a record company in Houston called Starday. Pappy had put out two hits so far—“Y'all Come” by Arleigh Duff and “Why Baby Why” by George Jones. About the time I met him, Pappy was forming a new label he named D Records.

I cut two 45-rpm records for Pappy Dailey. One had “The Storm Has Just Begun” on the A side and “Man with the Blues” on the flip. The credits on the record said “Willie Nelson and the Reil Sisters.” The other record I did for Pappy was “What a Way to Live” backed with “Misery Mansion.”

It was a thirty-mile drive from our Pasadena apartment to the Esquire Club. I had plenty of time to think making the round-trip six nights a week. One night driving to work a lyric popped into my mind:

When the evening sun goes down

You will find me hanging 'round
 . . .

Driving home again, another line came to me:

The night life ain't no good life

But it's my life
.

I finished writing the song and put it in my stack of unpublished work.

They fired me at the radio station for being late to work, hired me again, and then fired me again. I wasn't making much money at the radio station, but I needed even more than they'd been paying me. What I took home from the Esquire Club wouldn't tote the load.

I ran into Paul Buskirk, a fine musician I had known for a while. Paul hired me to teach at the Paul Buskirk School of Guitar. He hired me on a Thursday, then spent the weekend teaching me what I needed to teach the students on Monday.

I had about fifteen students and managed to stay a lesson or two ahead of them. Every now and then I would hit a lick of “Wildwood Flower” or “Under the Double Eagle” to dazzle them with my footwork, but I think they knew I was sort of faking the lessons as I went along.

Paul Buskirk was my mentor. He taught me a lot about life and about music. He's one of the top musicians I've ever seen in my life. He knows his instruments and knows what he's doing and is able to tell you what he's doing and then play it again exactly the same way, if he wants to. That comes from knowledge and training. I, like most guys who play, have no idea where I'm going or what I'm gonna do and sometimes it comes out right, but I wouldn't know how to do it a second time. My playing is a lot of leaping off into space and seeing if I can hit the ground running.

I called Paul aside one morning and offered to sell him “Family Bible.” He paid me $50 for it. Then I sold him “Night Life” for $150.

“Family Bible” was recorded with Claude Gray singing it. It rose to number one on the country charts. The credits on the song went to Buskirk and his pardners Walt Brelin and Gray. My name wasn't even on it. But I was really glad to know I could write a number-one song. Up until then I didn't know if I could write a song that was commercial or even acceptable. After “Family Bible” hit the top, I knew then that all my other songs were good. And, believe it or not, I never harbored any resentment toward Paul. I needed that money in a big way when I sold those songs, and I was real glad to get it. I appreciate that Paul and his pardners knew a bargain when they saw it.

“Night Life” had been turned down by D Records and the Pappy Dailey people as not being a country song, even though I owed D Records some songs. I knew “Night Life” was good. I sold it to Buskirk for enough money to go into a studio and record it. Pappy Dailey heard what I was doing and threatened to sue me, but I didn't care. I just changed my name.

The record we put out was “Night Life” by Paul Buskirk, performed by Hugh Nelson and Paul Buskirk and the Little Men.

“Night Life” is now one of the most-recorded songs in history. It's been performed by more than seventy artists from country and blues and jazz and pop all the way to opera singers. “Night Life” has sold
more than thirty million records. All I got out of it was $150. But so what? At the time I needed the money. Suppose I'd been stubborn and waited and maybe never sold it at all? The fact that both songs became hits encouraged me to think I could write a lot more songs that were just as good.

Finally the time had come for me to go to Nashville.

Martha packed Lana, Susie, and Billy into our 1950 Buick that I was five payments late on. I drove them to Waco and left them with Martha's parents.

With an Oklahoma credit card—a syphon for stealing gas—I drove that Buick to Nashville wondering, all the way, at exactly what moment the car would fall apart.

The Buick took me as far as downtown Nashville and then belched smoke and kind of sighed like an old horse and laid down and died.

But I was in Nashville at last, ready to shoot it out with the big boys. I was going on toward my twenty-seventh birthday.

The first time I laid eyes on Willie Nelson was at a honky-tonk outside of Fort Worth about thirty-odd years ago. It was a rough joint full of real rough characters. I mean your tough guys of the old school: gamblers and whores and pimps and cowboys out for a wild time. There was enough guns in this place to invade Korea. Willie was singing his songs for this crowd. I knew right off Willie would be a star because everybody was listening to him and feeling his magic. I damn sure felt it—kind of like the pull of a magnet.

There's two people I know of who have magic that strong—Willie Nelson and Billy Graham. Willie might make a great preacher, I don't know. Billy Graham would sure as hell make a great entertainer.

I don't believe in preachers. I'm a Catholic and to me religion is too strong a mystery to doubt. No smart person would doubt it no way. No preacher, priest, rabbi, or nothing knows any more about
God than I do. I'm eighty-two years old. I've died three times and done went to heaven once.

I was in the hospital with heart failure the time I went to heaven. I spoke to each member of my family in different parts of the country after my soul left my body, consoled them, told them I was fine and everything was all right. And God damn, first thing you know I'm up on stage with Jesus. Some other people that have died and come back say they went through a tunnel. But I just popped up on the stage in an odd bright light, and there stood Jesus. I asked him, “Are you Jesus?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Well, I've always believed in You and God, but I really ain't ready just yet. I sure would like to go back.” So He let me come back. It's like this guy that went into a saloon and said everybody who wants to go to heaven line up over here. They all lined up except one fellow on a bar stool. Guy says, “Sir don't you want to go to heaven?” Fellow says, “Yeah, but not if you're loading up to go right now.”

I'd just as soon Willie don't become no preacher, just keep on with what he's doing, making people so God damn happy they jump up and holler. Colonel Tom Parker, that used to manage Elvis Presley, is a smart son of a bitch, and he thinks Willie is overexposing himself with all this TV and Picnics and Farm Aids and what all. That's the Colonel's opinion, not mine, and maybe the Colonel don't know what the shit he's talking about. The Colonel would never let Elvis do a God damn thing he didn't get paid for. He said an entertainer has got to be paid, because they'll play out eventually. They got to get all the money they can while they're on top. But I think you've got to do a whole lot more than sing to draw packed houses night after night. It's personality. The people must love you and believe in you.

When Willie was getting ready to shoot his movie
Red Headed Stranger
, I heard he wanted a buffalo coat. I had one made for him at Green Furrier in Anchorage, Alaska. Shipped it to Willie and he wore it in the movie. Some people thought I skinned one of my own buffaloes off the ranch, but that's not the case. I have 1,400 buffaloes, and they're the worst thing to handle, mean and ornery. You can't turn a buffalo like you can a cow.

Willie has got some buffalo in him. You know why that big fur is on a buffalo's neck? Because when it storms, a buffalo faces the storm and goes straight into it instead of running from it. In other words, if the storm keeps coming and coming, the buffalo turns straight into it so he goes through it quicker. Otherwise, if the buffalo ran from the storm, he'd have nothing to show but a furry ass.

I can tell you, Willie understands buffaloes.

In 1957 I was doing PR for Colonel Tom Parker, who was managing Hank Snow but had taken over Elvis Presley. So the Colonel and Hank were coming to a parting of the ways, and I was asked to finish promoting a tour for Hank in the Pacific Northwest.

I stopped at a radio station in Vancouver, Washington. This young kid who interviewed me was very shy and clean-shaven. His jeans were worn and patched. He had a butch haircut. I thought he was a local boy. He told me he played every record of mine on the air, and I thought, this kid is all right.

Then he said he read every story he could find that I wrote in magazines. That blew my mind. He said he'd written some little songs that I'd never heard of. He didn't know if he had a chance to be a top songwriter, but did I have time to listen to one of his songs? He looked poor from hunger and so sweet. He was shy but when he looked at me he looked directly at me with those eyes that show straight into his soul.

I said, “Son, I've got a plane to catch. But I'll take time to hear your music.”

In the lobby of the radio station, this young Willie Nelson turned on a little tape player. The first song he played was “Family Bible.” It took about four bars before my chin hit the proverbial floor.