Waylon (37 page)

But instead of music coming over the phones, I heard a crowd of people. There was this voice saying “We followed a package
that came in here. We’re with the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency. What happened to the package the girls just delivered?”

I’ve harmonized many times with ol’ Bocephus, and I’ve never heard him sing a song with lyrics like that. I knew something
was up, and that it was likely my number. Gambler’s instinct.

Richie was running the session. I looked into the control room and could see him staring off to the side, out of view of the
double-glass window. He had his hand down on the talkback button, letting me hear everything that was going on. American Sound
had a Harrison mixing board, and that was lucky, because a lot of studio communication buttons only go one way at a time.
With the Harrison, you could leave it down and talk and hear everything in return.

They had the girls. One, Lorrie, my secretary, was crying. They were both probably scared to death. “There’s a package here
with contraband inside it,” I listened to them saying, and then I realized they didn’t know that I was hearing them. I grabbed
the package from the music stand and threw it away behind me. I couldn’t make that shot again in a million years. It slid
under a baseboard by the wall, just as pretty as you please. I knew that probably wouldn’t be good enough to fool them forever,
but it would work for now.

They told Richie they wanted to see Waylon Jennings. “We’re recording,” Richie told them. “This is a closed session. Do you
have a warrant?”

“Yes,” answered one. “We have a warrant for Waylon Jennings’s arrest.” That’s the way they phrased it.

I followed what was going down, but I wasn’t about to let them know that. “Turn the music on,” I hollered, and Richie turned
to me and started running the take, just as cool and professional as he could be under the circumstances. I acted like there
was nothing unusual. They were standing there. They didn’t know what to do.

Richie hit play and record, the tape started turning, and I did the harmony. It was a good take, and that’s the harmony we
used on the record. Still, by the end of it I was a little pissed off at the way they had come barging in there. You would’ve
thought I was Al Capone or something.

I finished the singing and came into the control room. I didn’t pay them any mind. I just looked straight at Richie and said,
“Play it back, and turn it up.” They were still rooted there, looking uncertain; no matter what crime you commit, it must
be an unwritten law that you never mess with a recording session.

The music was going ninety miles an hour, and Richie had it cranked. He turned to me like he’s talking about some flat note
in the second verse.

“Do you know what’s going on?” he asked.

“Hell, yes, I know what’s happening,” I answered. They couldn’t hear him or me. We’re pointing at the speaker like we’re gonna
have to drop in the last chorus because I rushed the phrasing.

Richie said, “Well, I’m taking this one.”

“You ain’t taking shit,” I told him. Sometimes I thought Richie would’ve leapt in front of a freight train for me. “Just be
calm. Don’t let those sumnabitches scare you.” And really, if there was anyone nervous, it was the DEA agents.

The music stopped. One of them stepped up and said, “Could we speak to you just a minute?”

I nodded. He took out two warrants, one for possession of cocaine and the other for conspiracy with further intent to distribute.

I took some time looking them over. It’s not everyday you get to see how a real outlaw feels. After a while I handed them
back.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “You said it’s possession, and I don’t see any around here. Do you?”

“We know it’s here,” he said. We’d both seen this movie somewhere on television before.

“If it is here,” I said slowly, turning over my palms, playing my part to the fullest, “finding it might be a problem.”

That wasn’t their only problem, as it turned out. They had been so sure of the package’s final stop that they’d only gotten
a search warrant for my office. They didn’t have any legal right to tear apart the studio. “Unless you allow us to search
here, we can’t,” they admitted, a little shamefacedly. “We’ll have to go get another warrant; but we’re not here to arrest
you and we’re not going to bring the press with us or anything.”

That was a nice touch, but I wasn’t falling for it. There were about eight of them, all dressed in business suits. I’m sure
they had guns somewhere, but they weren’t showing them. There were DEA agents, and local narcs. For most of them, I could
tell they really didn’t want to be here. Even as we stood there jawing, more and more cops came in the door. The news had
gone over the police radio, and some of my friends in the sheriff’s department had come down to see that nothing funny went
on.

I told them that we had to ensure that everything was legal and they’d have to get a proper search warrant. In the meantime,
if they didn’t mind, we were going to go ahead with what we were doing. “I know you guys have got to do your job, so do your
job. But so do we. We’re all for that, as long as you stay in this control room. If you go out to the studio, those microphones
and equipment cost millions of dollars. You have no business being out there. So until you have a search warrant, don’t leave
this room.” Since they had no choice, they stayed put.

I was filthy with drugs. I thought if they decided to strip-search me, I’m dead anyway. I went out to where my guitar amp
was and emptied my pockets. I had a bottle of pills in one, a couple of little vials of cocaine in another. I was a walking
pharmacy.

I did another vocal, and Richie came out to the studio, on the excuse that he had to adjust my microphone. He made sure to
turn it off before he joined me.

“Where is that shit?” he hissed.

I said, “First of all, you don’t need to know.”

“Where is it at?” he asked again.

“It’s all right,” I told him. “It just went flat in there,” and I motioned with my eyes toward the baseboard, behind the vocal
booth.

He moved a few baffles around and grabbed the outer package. He invented some pretext and took it away down in the basement.
He got rid of it in a crawl space under the stairs, right in front of their eyes.

Then Richie came back for the package containing the coke. They would’ve followed us to the bathroom; they were starting to
get suspicious about all the movement. We needed a diversion. George Lappe, who had introduced us to Neil, came in the studio
about this time, ranting and raving. He worked for us, and I started chewing his ass out, telling him “George, goddamnit,
settle down.” Everybody was watching me give him the business, shouting back and forth across the room. As I held their attention,
Richie snuck into the toilet and gave it a good flush.

When he heard that water going down, the DEA guy flinched. “Waylon, where is that shit?”

I said, “If it was ever here, it’s gone now.” And he knew it.

Richie came out grinning, drying his hands off.

They never did find anything, but sometimes people just see what they’re programmed to see. When I returned to the studio
the next morning, there, plain as the sun, was one of those cocaine vials lying right next to my stool.

It was touch-and-go for about three or four days. They had found a couple of plastic bags in a trash can to the left of the
toilet, which had a cocaine “presence.” I was clean. Still, the next morning they took me downtown to be fingerprinted at
the federal marshal’s office. “Damn, I hate this,” said the marshal as he was rolling my fingers through the ink.

I said, “Shit, well don’t do it.”

They arrested me for possession and conspiracy. Any time they’d ask me about the drugs I’d say, “Where I come from, possession
means ‘got it,’ and you ain’t got it.”

I didn’t have it, either. I was so mad, because I knew what had happened. The whole thing could have been avoided. It all
started because Neil had been out of the country getting a quickie divorce. In fact, I’ve always believed that it was his
soon-to-be ex-wife who tipped the DEA that there were drugs being shipped.

Before he left, Neil was supposed to take care of a personal matter for me. I had met this girl who had brain cancer, and
I had bought her a trip to Jamaica with a friend of hers. She had never been anywhere. Neil was supposed to set it up, but
in his rush to get out of the country he hadn’t gotten to it, and he’d entrusted it to his assistant. It was almost time for
the girls to get on the plane, and nothing had been done. I called his assistant and let him have it, both barrels.

To make me happy, this assistant sent me a “package.” It was a peacemaking thing, because I usually got my drugs from California.
I didn’t take off-the-street stuff. The path led from Colombia to L.A. to me, usually delivered personally. But in this case,
he had sent it via air courier.

When it didn’t come the next day, he called me wondering if I’d gotten a package from him. He still didn’t let on what it
was. He wanted it to be a surprise. Neither one of us knew it had lain in the delivery office overnight unopened, and suspicious,
they’d called in the DEA to see it. The Feds took some of the cocaine out and shipped it on, then called to say it would arrive
at so-and-so time. But they slipped up when the girls brought it over to the studio instead of my office; they didn’t have
a search warrant for the studio.

Still, it didn’t matter. They had showed their hand, and they couldn’t back down now. Nor could I. When you see yourself spread
across the front pages—”Waylon Jennings Arrested for Possession of Cocaine, Facing Up to Fifteen Years”—it gets to you a little
bit. I was feeling hunted, like an animal. I wouldn’t go home. I checked into a hotel, and they parked agents in the rooms
on either side of me.

It was a media feeding frenzy, like sharks smelling blood in the water. I couldn’t go anywhere without a swarm of reporters
clustered around me. Richie whacked one camera man with a Coke can when I was going to see my lawyer, and got himself charged
with assault and battery. He was a hotheaded little fart. We always accused him of picking on people he had to leap up to
hit. He wasn’t afraid of anything.

There was still no evidence. As wild-in-the-streets as I’d been, they couldn’t dig up any additional dirt on me. Hal Hardin
was the federal district attorney who was given the job of prosecuting me, and he called all my friends in, trying to scare
them. Finally he had to admit he couldn’t get anybody to say anything bad about me. I was glad to hear that. No one knew much
of anything.

Neil thought we should get any possible witnesses ready for the lawyers. “Leave those people alone,” I told him. They had
already given immunity to one of the girls who picked up the package, even though she had no idea what she was carrying. “They
don’t know one damn thing.”

I told everyone who might be summoned, “If they get you in that room, asking a bunch of questions, tell them the truth if
you know the answer. Don’t try to save me. I’m going to be all right. But if they catch you in a lie, I won’t be fine, because
they’re going to say to me that they’ve got you for perjury. If I don’t come clean, they’re going to put you in jail. And
that’s when I’m going to have to tell anything I know.

“Just don’t lie. Don’t speculate. If they ask you a question, and you do know what the answer is, tell them, because they
probably know you know. If you don’t know, you’re in no trouble at all.”

I found out right there that if you’re ever in a situation where they try to scare you, you’re dead if you show fear. But
if you don’t fade under their pressure, you scare them. It helps to be a good card player. I saw that. They got nervous, and
I was never nervous. There’s only two things they can do, I thought: put me in jail or leave me alone.

The longer it took for them to find the evidence, the more popular I became. In the black bars over on Jefferson Street they’d
be watching the news on television, and when the announcer would say “Waylon Jennings arrested … and they still have not found
any cocaine,” they’d all whoop and holler and go crazy. I was becoming a folk hero. Everywhere I went, to my lawyer’s office,
to have a cup of coffee across the street, television cameras and reporters would be chasing me. Chet Atkins once told me
that I was getting so much free publicity that he thought about committing a crime himself.

After four or five days of this, they still hadn’t found any cocaine. Finally, at one station, the newscaster turned the whole
question around. “You know,” he said, “we haven’t ever thought about one thing. What if Waylon’s innocent?” And I was, until
proven guilty. The case and subsequent brouhaha would continue for months, and wind up costing me about a hundred thousand
dollars in legal fees, but from then on I knew the charges wouldn’t stick.

Jay Goldberg orchestrated my defense. He’s one of the greatest lawyers in the world, and when he got into his legal mode,
he was an artist. He worked with Robert Kennedy when the Justice Department went after the Teamsters, and has represented
everyone from Donald Trump to names that had best be left unsaid. He came down on his own when he heard I was arrested, and
showed up for the preliminary hearing. He practically stunned the courtroom when he walked in; the prosecutors knew they didn’t
have a chance against him.

I even wrote a song about the bust. “Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out of Hand” talked about a “New York posse”
that came down “protecting you from me…. Was it singing through my nose that got me busted by the man?” Jay almost jumped
out of a building when he first heard the song. “You can’t put that out,” he said. “All that is is a confession.” It was the
first hit confession, that’s for sure.

The thing about it was that people knew I wouldn’t sell drugs. I might have been hooked on them, but the only way I could
“distribute” them was by offering a spoon to some of my good-time buddies, of which I had more than a few. Hal Hardin had
to finally admit that “He does drugs, but he’s not a criminal.”