Waylon (28 page)

“Walking out like that. That sewed it up.” He was positively gleeful. “Where’d you go?”

“I had to take a piss.”

“That’s a twenty-five-thousand-dollar piss,” said Neil. “They asked me where you went and I told them I didn’t know. ‘Waylon’s
mad, I’m sure. He’s crazy. He’s liable to do anything.’ ‘Will he be back?’ they wanted to know, and I shrugged. ‘I guess he’s
gone, so we may as well call this to a close.’ And that’s when they gave us the money.”

It took Neil almost a year to get the contract sorted. RCA hadn’t officially picked up my option for 1972, addressing it in
care of Chet instead of me, though I’d accepted an advance and been in their studios recording, which might have signified
approval on my part. Still, without a formal agreement, it was a gray area whether I was officially still on the label. It
probably served them right for sending me mail with “Dear Artist” inscribed as the salutation.

Neil chose to ignore the questionable option and immediately opened talks with other labels. It was probably the best time
to apply pressure to RCA. There was something coming to the surface in my career. They saw that I was fixing to happen, with
or without their help. Willie had been given a career boost with his shift to Atlantic, and that was one of the labels bidding
for my services. RCA didn’t know when, or how, but they knew they would regret losing me.

It didn’t help that we caught them with their pants down. They were stealing me blind. One day I got the idea to find out
what they were paying the songwriter, as far as mechanical royalties are concerned. If I’d been the only one to record that
song, and I found out what the publisher received, I could compare it with my own sales statement.

Red Lane was the sole writer on “Walk on Out of My Mind,” and I was the only artist to record the song. From experience, I
knew Tree Music, his publisher, wouldn’t stand for getting shortchanged, so I called him to find out how much money in mechanicals
he’d made on that. I discovered they’d only paid me half of what they owed me, holding the rest “in reserve” for returns.
The reserve amounted to one hundred fifty thousand dollars once we got through inspecting their books.

I had to sue to get the money, and finally we settled for half of that, seventy-five thousand, because I couldn’t afford to
keep fighting them. I needed cash for taxes and a bus. Even though it was mine, RCA wouldn’t give me the entire amount. But
when Neil went up to their offices on Avenue of the Americas in New York, the computer kicked out two checks by mistake, each
for seventy-five grand.

He called me up as soon as he got back to his office. “You won’t believe this,” he said, “and I know you’re going to make
me take them back.” I was always honest as the day is long, and wanted everything to be upfront. Neil used to poke fun at
me because I always paid my bills on time. “Send ’em a damn dollar a month,” was his advice, “but you hillbilly boys always
want that credit rating, don’t you?” He laughed. “You could not pay for something today and buy it from the same people tomorrow.”

I surprised him this time, though. “Don’t you dare return those checks. You’re going to cash them both.”

He said, “You know they’re going to find out about it and they’re going to raise hell, and they’re going to want their money.”

“And when they do,” I said, “we’ll settle.”

* * *

WGJ Productions. It had a nice ring to it. Waylon Goddamn Jennings Productions.

Free at last.

When the smoke had cleared, I had gotten a recording contract I could live with. My percentage was up close to eight. Chet
was amazed; it was a better deal than he had. “I didn’t know they gave out big contracts like that.” He told Neil they had
him “till 1999 at five percent!”

I also received seventy thousand dollars up front. When they handed me over the check, they asked what I was planning to do
with the money. “I’m going to start a record label,” I answered. They couldn’t tell if I was serious or not.

“I told you he was crazy,” said Frank Manceine.

The best part was getting my own production company, which meant I could make records on my own and hand the completed masters
to RCA. I finally had control over my music, how it was to be advertised and promoted, “sweetened” (in my case “soured”) and
mixed. Chet always worried that I was out to destroy something; he thought I was determined to ruin country music, that there
would no longer be a reason for people like himself or Owen Bradley to produce records. That was never my intention. There
are always people who need ideas, but I’m not someone who can be told what to do musically. If you stop and think about it,
it’s not because I’m such a genius. It might be that I’m not smart enough to follow instructions. I have to do what I feel.

What I was fighting for was the right to try it my way. Just let me have mine.

Win or lose, I was now able to use my band. Choose my own songs. Turn the bass drum up.

In theory, that is. Though I agreed to record in their studios, with their engineers, I found soon enough it wasn’t going
to work. They were on the phone half the time calling Jerry Bradley upstairs at RCA and telling him what I was doing. I was
still screwed.

“This Time” was a song I had written four years previously. RCA had said it wasn’t any good, but with my newfound freedom,
it became the centerpiece of one of my first albums under the WGJ logo. Recorded in October of 1973, Willie played guitar
on it and helped me put it together along with a couple of his songs: “Heaven or Hell” and one of my personal favorites, “It’s
Not Supposed to Be That Way.” As we worked, it became apparent that I was destined to go through the same runarounds every
time I stepped outside Nashville’s musical city limits.

Finally, I’d had enough. I moved the sessions to Tompall Glaser’s studios at 916 Nineteenth Avenue South, nicknamed Hillbilly
Central. RCA protested mightily, but I told them this was the way it was going to be from now on.

“That’s all you got,” was about the way I put it. Lash Lame would’ve been proud of me.

RCA had no choice. “We can’t release this,” they told me. They had a contract with the engineer’s union that all their recording
was to be done in-house, that RCA records could not release any record that wasn’t cut with an RCA engineer, and that RCA
artists had to use RCA studios whenever they were within a two-hundred-mile radius of Nashville. Jerry Bradley even went to
Washington to get a waiver for one album, but the union wouldn’t go for it. In the face of my stubborn refusal, RCA bit the
bullet. They shipped the record and violated their contract with the union. That broke the whole system’s back.

“This Time” went number one in June of 1974. It was my first chart-topping smash.

True to their fears, RCA lost the deal with the engineers in Nashville when they released
This Time.
More, I set a precedent for other artists on the label. Since all had been contractually obligated to work at RCA, and recording
expenses were charged against their royalties, when they found out that I could work in an independent studio, everybody split.
Porter Wagoner said, hell, I’ve got a studio of my own and I’m going to record there. Pretty soon, RCA was only getting transit
business; without a monopoly, they eventually had to sell their studios. I tried to buy one of them. I was up on the executive
floors at RCA, and had my eye on Studio B, but they wanted to turn it into a museum, so I put in a bid for Studio A.

Chet was standing there, lighting a cigar. “Why don’t you let me buy that?” I asked him.

“You’ve got the nerve of Hitler,” he said. “You’re the reason we’re having to sell it.” He started laughing, but they still
wouldn’t let me have the studio.

Tompall Glaser and I were best friends. We’d met about the time that he broke up with his brothers, and I kind of took their
place in his life. He had been in town a lot longer than I had, and I think I was a little in awe of him.

I loved his singing so much, but when he started airing his opinions, and he had an opinion on everything, you couldn’t shut
him up. One of my favorite Glaser Brothers songs was called “Words Come Easy.” In Tompall’s case, it couldn’t have been more
accurate. He’d rather argue than care whether he was right or wrong. Tompall will dispute with God when he gets there; or
the Devil, whichever one grabs him first. We had a good time tearing up Nashville, and there’ll always be a place in my heart
for him.

The Glasers stood outside the Music City hierarchy, fiercely independent. They had that Nebraska farm sensibility about money—you
put some away and don’t touch it—and were good businessmen. They had started out as Marty Robbins’s backup vocal group, opening
their own publishing company; their biggest songs to date were John Hartford’s “Gentle on My Mind” and Tompall’s own “Streets
of Baltimore.” They used the proceeds to build their studio and offices over on Nineteenth.

Both his brothers, Chuck and Jim, were a lot more reserved than Tompall, and I never got to know them that well. Among his
brothers, he was the black sheep. I was the black sheep of Nashville. Together, we had the makings of a flock. We each needed
somebody to tell us that if we weren’t exactly right, we weren’t all wrong. That was the foundation our friendship was built
on.

I hooked up with Tompall over a pinball machine. Probably we’d been introduced when the Glasers tried to pitch me songs, but
mesmerized by the flashing lights and endless dramas of silver balls falling as they may, hanging at the Burger Boy, or JJ.’s
Market on Broadway, me on pills and Tompall on whiskey, we would talk for hours about what we thought. Mental masturbation.
We’d go play pinballs and get it all figured out.

We could spend a thousand dollars a night, a quarter at a time. Tompall could stay up as long as I could. Bobby Bare had three
machines in his office, and when they were filled, or he closed for the day, we’d go all over town looking for pinballs, out
Route 65 to a truck stop south of Nashville, down Dixon Road, then a grocery store a couple blocks from Tompall’s offices.
When we found one we liked, we practically moved in. One night at the Burger Boy, Tompall was playing a certain machine he
liked up front, but he wanted to be by me in the back room, so he dragged his pinballs up the steps and planted it next to
mine. The owner just watched open-mouthed, though he didn’t say anything because we were probably paying his rent and more.
Even after JJ.’s officially shut for the night, the clerk would sleep on the counter, waking up every now and then to change
a hundred-dollar bill for quarters.

They weren’t the kind of machines where you try to keep the ball going and rack up scores. You’ve got six squares and five
balls, and you try to get your numbers to line up. It’s a little like bingo: three in a row and you get four free games; four
in a row another twenty games; five and you win anywhere from twenty-five to seventy-five dollars.

It took more luck than skill, because if you shook the machine too hard, it would tilt on you. There must have been some technique
involved, however, because one afternoon these two hoods came into the Burger Boy and hit the machine just so, taking home
a hundred dollars in about three hours. For us, once we put in a couple of rolls of quarters, there was no way we were going
to win our money back. Pinballs required just enough attention to take your mind off whatever else was going on. A lot of
time Tompall and I would talk business as we played. We shot the breeze and made decisions, one ball at a time, winning and
losing hundreds of games as the hours passed.

It was like a marathon. You could stand there, pumping quarters in, and get lost in your own thoughts, idling in neutral.
You’d unwind so much that it was hard to stop and do something else. Sometimes we’d be at the machines for two or three days,
waiting for the six card to fall into place. Tompall once kept track of our spending, thinking he could take it off his income
tax. At the end of the year, he’d spent thirty-five thousand dollars on pinballs.

One Sunday evening I had a date down in Columbus, Georgia. We were in the south part of town at a little grocery store. Captain
Midnight, our sidekick, was with us. We couldn’t leave the machines. Every time we’d get close to finishing, we’d win a bunch
of free games and have to run them off, which would start the cycle all over again. Finally, about three in the afternoon,
we pulled ourselves away, got in the car, and started driving toward Georgia. A record came on the radio. It sounded familiar.
“Is that me?” I asked the Captain.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Did you record it?” I honestly couldn’t remember. It was actually an early Charlie Daniels song.
It shows what state we were in.

We drove to the show and got there late. They’d had to shuffle the order, waiting for me. The band was all set up. I went
and did the show while the Captain slept in the car, and then we turned around and drove another four hours back to Nashville
and the pinball machines.

You could hypnotize yourself, the lights bursting, bells ringing, pulling the pin, flicking the silver ball, overhead fluorescent
beams on the glass dazzling,
get the three, get the five,
bounce, rebound, ricochet romance. Those damned lights. I can look off to the side and they’re still blinking. I might really
hit it, whacking the machine, getting it over to where it pays the highest odds. Pinball fever.
Man, I’m really hot.
Let me have another roll of quarters.

The Captain could sleep anywhere. He didn’t have a home. Shuttling between my house and Tompall’s office, he kept us in balance,
which was no mean feat considering that Tompall and I could go from talking to arguing, then back to friendship, all in the
span of an evening. We were like kids about twelve years old. We’d each get mad and know why the other was mad, butting heads
like two strong-minded and redneck ol’ boys. Captain could soften that.

He was on the radio when I first got to town, a rock-and-roll disc jockey named Roger Schutt over WKDA, a two-hundred-and-fifty-watt
station that was the tops in town despite its small size. 1240 on the dial, and every midnight, the Captain would come on.
Roger gained some notoriety once when a guy who shot somebody called him, and he talked him into surrendering. Most of the
people in town knew him as Midnight. Very few of his listeners could tell you his real name.