Willie (29 page)

Sitting on the roof of the White House in Washington, D.C., late at night with a beer in one hand and a fat Austin Torpedo in the other, I drifted into a reflective mood.

My companion on the roof—it couldn't do him any good to use his name, except I should say President Carter knew nothing about this and would not have condoned it—was pointing out to me the sights and the layout of how the streets run in Washington.

“That string of lights is Pennsylvania Avenue,” my companion would say between drags on the joint and swallows of beer. “The tower all lit up over there is the Washington Monument. You can see Constitution Avenue, and there's the Capitol and the Potomac River, and down a few blocks is the Watergate building . . .”

It was a good way to soak up a geography lesson, laid back on the roof of the White House. Nobody from the Secret Service was watching us—or if they were, it was with the intention of keeping us out of trouble instead of getting us into it.

Downstairs, Connie and our daughters Paula and Amy were excited about spending the night at the White House as guests of President Carter and Rosalynn. Connie and I were given a bed in the Lincoln Room. Paula and Amy were in the Martha Washington
Room. I had played and sung that afternoon in the Rose Garden. The Carters treated us so well, it was like being at our own house.

Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn are like people I grew up with in Abbott. They're so down-to-earth and so nice that they were too good to be politicians. You have to lie a lot to be a politician, and I don't think the Carters are capable of lying anywhere near as much as their high station seemed to require.

So I let the weed cover me with a pleasing cloud and reflected on what a long, strange trip it had been from smoking cedar bark and grapevine at the age of four or five, to getting puke-on-your-shoes drunk with my dad Ira at the age of nine, to sitting on the roof of the White House sharing a number in the warm humid night.

I guess the roof of the White House is the safest place I can think of to smoke dope.

Hell, it had only been a couple of days ago that I was busted and locked in jail in the Bahamas for a handful of weed that I never even had a chance to set on fire.

On account of that miserable little pinch of weed that I never smoked, I was now laying on the roof of the White House with my left foot in a cast.

Me and Hank Cochran had been in the middle of a tour the week before. We got a couple days off, so we decided to go down to Hank's place in the Bahamas and do some fishing, soak up the sun, ride around in Hank's boat.

My luggage didn't make the same flight that I did. We went on to his boat without it. The next day they phoned me from the airport and said my bag had arrived.

Driving to the airport, I happened to remember there might be a little pack of something I had forgot about in the pocket of my jeans in the suitcase.

The thought crossed my mind: I wonder what I'll do if they found it?

When I arrived at the airport and saw the little gleam in the eye of the customs agent, I knew they'd found it, but I still didn't know exactly what to expect.

I went to the room where my suitcase was sitting on a bench. I was wondering—should I try to sneak my blue jeans out while the customs guy ain't looking? Should I just edge over like Sam Spade and grab that little bag of weed? Or were they trying to trap me into doing something really foolish?

“Is this your suitcase, Mr. Nelson?” the customs agent asked.

I noticed my jeans had been moved to the top of the bag.

I said, “Yeah. I sure do appreciate you taking care of it for me. I'll just be on my way, if it's all right with you.”

“You won't be going anywhere today, Mr. Nelson.”

They searched every item in the suitcase but could ony find that one little bag of weed. We took a ride to jail.

I was stuck into a bare cell with a concrete floor. It was better than a Texas jail, but it was no luxury suite. I was alone for a few hours. By now, Hank had found out I was busted. He came to the jail and smuggled me in a six-pack of beer. Then Hank went out and hustled up somebody with $700 cash to make my bond.

When they opened the door and let me out of jail, I was about half ripped from drinking the six-pack, and I was so happy to be free that I cut loose a big Indian war whoop and leaped off the front porch of the jail.

I broke my left foot.

I hobbled before the judge on crutches. The judge said, “We're going to release you on the condition that you never come back to the Bahamas again.”

So there I was, on crutches, on bond, deported from the Bahamas, and flying straight to the White House to see President Carter. A few hours later I was on the White House roof smoking dope.

Marijuana is like sex. If I don't do it every day, I get a headache.

I think marijuana should be recognized for what it is, as a medicine, an herb that grows in the ground. If you need it, use it. People who smoke it and get real paranoid don't need it. People who smoke it and become brain dead, it's the wrong medicine for them. For me smoking marijuana is like eating a couple of Valiums for somebody else. I have a tremendous amount of natural energy, and I need to take the edge off. Friends have told me I don't smoke weed to get high, I smoke it to get on a more level keel and not be like a turkey that's going out there sticking his head in everything. A few beers will calm me down, but beer also puts me to sleep. Whiskey is a totally different story. But the important thing to remember about using any of this stuff is there is always a trade-off. Whiskey will make you not give a shit about your problems, but it will also kill you. Valium is addicting and, like whiskey, can turn into a much bigger problem than whatever you're trying to forget by using it. With marijuana, the trade-off is you can ruin your lungs.

There's been a lot of talk about marijuana being harmless, but I think it's a lot more dangerous to the lungs than dope smokers realize.
Especially the strong marijuana that's around these days. Each year it seems to get a little stronger. The wise course is not to abuse it.

Your lungs are not really supposed to breathe anything but oxygen—pure, fresh air. There are always arguments about which is worse for you—marijuana smoke or cigarette smoke? Gasoline fumes or smog or poison gas? There's tons of shit we breathe every day that ain't good for us. But if weed is used moderately, for a purpose, to calm yourself—because there's plenty of us who are very nervous and need more of it than others, and we know who we are—then marijuana is just one more natural blessing that grows from the earth.

I know alcohol is not the answer for me. I enjoy drinking a little bit these days just because I get kind of silly, but my disposition won't handle alcohol on a regular basis. Whether it's my Indian blood, or my Irish blood, or just my blood, I don't know, but alcohol makes me do things that I'm not always proud of.

Whiskey can make me cranky, even downright belligerent. I get into bourbon or gin, I'll start looking to stir up some shit. I'll see things I don't like that I may have not noticed until the booze pointed them out. I'll look for trouble. I grow rabbit ears. I'll get very sensitive about what's said in the room. Tequila has more of a psychedelic effect on me, more like a hallucinogenic. I usually stay pretty pleasant on tequila, but I usually get real drunk on it and don't know what I'm doing after a point. Maybe they'll tell me the next day that I was having a good time and not hurting anybody, so that's okay now and then. With bourbon whiskey, though, I not only can get annoyed real fast, I always get diarrhea of the mouth. I start talking way too much, saying everything that flows off the top of my head. The next morning I suffer what the Coach, Darrell Royal, calls the re-re's: the regrets and remorses. I'll sit on the side of the bed and think, oh my God, did I really say that? Oh God, I didn't really tell them all that shit, did I? Did I really get into a fighting disposition? Did I really start feeling very amorous at the same time I got too drunk to fuck? Oh God. These are the re-re's.

Whiskey runs my mouth the way speed loosens the lips of most people. Speed works the opposite on me—it makes me shut up. My brain is whirling so fast that my mouth couldn't possibly keep up, so I am struck dumb.

While I'm admitting to the contents of my medicine chest of drugs and alcohol, I'll tell you two things you'll never find me doing—smoking cigarettes or using cocaine.

Heroin is so far beyond anything I would use or even tolerate around me that I won't bother to talk about it.

I have one firm rule with the band and the crew regarding cocaine: if you're wired, you're fired.

Anybody in the band or crew who hasn't quit cocaine has at least pulled up hard from the way it used to be. Cocaine is a stupid drug to use. It gets out of hand before you realize what is happening to you. Everybody starts off thinking they can snort a few lines from time to time, get a pleasurable buzz of energy and confidence and a feeling of power. But sooner or later, cocaine will overcome you. Some of the guys in the band and crew were spending too much money on coke, damaging their health and definitely affecting their music. When you're wired, you stay up and party, maybe never sleeping between one show and the next, thinking you're doing fine. But really you think you're making it when you're only faking it. Coke don't even make you funny the way whiskey can do, it just makes you think you're funny. For a singer, Cocaine is a disaster on your breathing and throat. Coke has fucked up many a singing voice. I appreciate that the coca leaf grows in the ground, like a medicine. A cup of hot tea brewed with coca leaves is a good tonic for the blues. Indians in the mountains in South America chew coca leaves to pick up their spirits and keep them going in a hard life. But by the time cocaine gets to the user in this country, it is nothing like the coca leaf you would pull off a bush in Bolivia. The dealers cut the powder with some very poisonous shit. A coke snorter who is moderately deeply into it—like a gram a day—knows damn well he is sticking strychnine, borax, crank, baking soda, all kinds of words that end in-drine, up his nose, but he doesn't care. Coke makes smart guys stupid. He keeps on throwing good money and precious time after bad dope. Eventually he blows his act.

The old joke is that a couple of snorts of cocaine will make you feel like a new man. But the first thing the new man wants is a couple more snorts of cocaine.

One interesting thing that has happened to our band in the last few years is we have picked up our tempo without realizing it.

Sometimes I'll hear our old version of “Whiskey River” played on the air, or maybe “Devil in a Sleeping Bag” or “Shotgun Willie,” and I'm surprised at how laid back we used to sound. We tape our road show every night, and there is a tremendous difference to me in our drive and energy now compared with the middle to late seventies.

Probably this has a lot to do with certain drugs we don't take
anymore. Our old style was fine for earlier times because everybody was laid back, and we were as laid back as anybody. Austin was a real mellow scene.

There's another big reason that our band has gotten stronger: the musicians themselves. They've been with me so long they've become part of my family. I hired Bee Spears to play bass when he was a seventeen-year-old kid in Helotes playing bass with George Chambers. Jody Payne joined us shortly later. Jody was married at the time to Sammie Smith and playing in her band. We did some dates with Sammie. I would go onstage and join her for a few numbers, which put me on the bandstand with Jody. I really liked the way he played backup, and I liked the way he sang harmony, so I talked Jody into staying with us.

Grady Martin has been my hero forever. There's nobody better to have in the studio than Grady Martin, because not only does he play guitar, he knows what everybody else is supposed to be doing, too.

Billy English came along to help as a roadie first. He had been playing drums with a preacher. Billy's a great musician. He's a guitar player, bass player, drummer, songwriter, you name it. But Paul plays drums with me. Paul won't let Billy play too much because Billy plays too good. Paul will be the first to tell you fuck no, man, I'm playing the drums. But every now and then he'll let Billy jump out in front and play, like on “Milkcow Blues,” and he's fantastic, and that's how he kind of got started doing the percussions back there. Billy plays percussions on things like sticks and pipes and bones.

I met Mickey Raphael at a recording studio in Dallas when he was a teenager. He was sitting outside the studio waiting for me and told me he was our new harmonica player. I just said, “Follow us, kid.” In a few years Mickey was a star, dating Ali MacGraw and living on the beach in Malibu.

This is our basic stage lineup—Bobbie, Paul, Bee, Jody, Mickey, Grady, Billy, and me. All of them have worked for me in hard times for no money. Zero. Stayed and lived with me when a lot of musicians would have just left. We all supported each other, and that's why we're still together.

When our crowds got bigger our energy level rose up. All of a sudden the people were yelling louder than they had the year before. It fired us up and probably caused us to do more up-tempo shows.

I know our no-coke rule has made us sound better. At least when we're straight we're all playing on the same page. It is hard to communicate with people who are doing coke or pills. It's impossible to play music with them. You have a good tempo going, and then
somebody takes the lead and the next thing we're playing a polka. It takes away from the feeling in the music. You lose the ability to let the music rise and fall. If you're on uppers, the music is all up. If you're on downers, the music is all down. I can tell if a musician is fucked up the minute he hits the bandstand.

Coke was never an issue when I started playing my way through the honky-tonks in my youth. But alcohol was always there, right from the beginning. My grandparents were as far from being alcoholics as Billy Graham, but there was always a bottle of whiskey hidden in the barn to use as a tonic for a chest cold or sore throat. The Czechs and Bohemians in the towns around Abbott drank beer like water, old and young alike. When I played music in their clubs, whole families drank and danced and had a big time. The first time I got totally shit-faced, I was drinking beer in a Bohemian social club with my daddy at the age of nine. Dad drove me back to my grandmother's house and made me sleep it off in the car before I could go inside. Mama Nelson would have kicked the shit out of both of us.