Willie (17 page)

I kept listening to his songs until finally I said, “I've gotta run for the airport. But I want to tell you two things. One, if I could write half as well as you I'd be the happiest woman on earth. Two, you quit this job and go to Texas or Tennessee and write. I know you couldn't be making much money. So here's my unlisted phone number. I can always raise a couple of hundred dollars. Call me.”

Later when he started turning out hits he began sending me flowers. The first ones I got from him I still have, pressed between the pages of my memory book.

Many years down the road from Vancouver, I went to see Willie perform in London. You talk about a great communicator. Willie knocked them out. At the break I went backstage and hugged him and said, “Willie, you've won them.” This big grin spread across his face. There was a flash of delight in his very peaceful, penetrating, wise eyes—he knew he'd gotten through to people who were not from his country, but they understood his message and they cared.

Those eyes. They really show everything he's feeling. In Austin I was in a hotel room with Willie and his lawyers and some guys from a record company in Germany. These Germans were embroidering things, laying the con on Willie, telling him he had to do it their way and it would be so great.

Willie sat very quietly, but I was watching his eyes. The Germans were trying to take him for all he was worth. They thought they had him totally outsmarted. But I saw dark clouds forming in his eyes, a fire starting inside his heart, close to anger. I could see him thinking: Do they really believe I'm this dumb?

When the con men finished their pitch, Willie turned his eyes on them for a full minute. Then he said, “Okay, if that's how you say it has to be, then we won't do business together.” He walked out and left them with sauerkraut on their faces. They thought they were dealing with some stupid hick from Texas, and suddenly they realized he'd let them talk their way out to the street.

I booked Willie on a big package show with Patsy Cline at a hotel in Stafford, Arizona. The entertainers all stayed in free rooms at the hotel. After the show, Willie said he was getting ready to go to his room and wondered if I had anything he could read. I said, “Willie, the only thing I have is a book of poetry I'm working on, just a manuscript stapled together.”

“Would you mind?” he asked.

Willie writes poetry. Willie himself is poetry to me. His loyalty, friendship, caring, his love of people, all those things make great poetry come out of him. The next morning he gave me back the manuscript. On it he had written, “While reading this book and the thoughts contained I find myself saying, these are thoughts that I have but never quite seem to transfer them from my mind to paper. My hat is continued off to Mae B. Axton. Sincerely, Willie Nelson.”

That page is kind of yellowed, but I have it framed on the wall of my den.

Not long ago we held a press conference for Willie. The room was crowded. Willie came in while I was talking. He wore his shorts, a tank top, a baseball cap, and tennis shoes. And he reached out his hand to me and said, “Mae, I just want you to know that I need that two hundred bucks now.”

I was doing a radio show in Sherman Oaks when a good friend of mine, Joe Allison, asked me to write the liner notes for the first album of a new singer-songwriter named Willie Nelson.

I went into the studio that day in 1962 expecting to find the usual nervous rookie at the microphone. Instead, there was Willie, cleanshaven with his hair slicked back, perched on a high stool with a cigarette in one hand and his chin in the other, calmly recording his own songs as though he'd been doing it all his life.

He sang, “Stop here, across the way on your right. That's where my house lives. Sometimes I stayed there at night.”

A very far-out opening line for a song. The way Willie sang it, though, it seemed the most logical and poignant thing for a heartbroken man to say. There's an excitement that runs through the engineers, the musicians, and the spectators when a recording session is really working. I felt the thrill of being there as a new star was being discovered. Willie sang “Touch Me,” “Wake Me When It's Over,” “Hello Walls,” “Crazy,” “Funny How Time Slips Away,” “The Part Where I Cry,” “Mr. Record Man,” “Darkness on the Face of the Earth,” one after another, and by the time he finished Willie was the only calm person in the studio.

Willie and I liked each other and started hanging out together. When he'd come to L.A., he'd call me and we'd go holler whoopie after his show. We went to a lot of guitar pullings together over the years.

One guitar pulling I remember most vividly was a night in Willie's suite at the Spence Manor in Nashville—Willie was a headliner by now—and about ten of us met up to show off our new stuff.

Johnny Darrell was there, blind running drunk. If you've never seen Johnny Darrell drunk, you have missed one of the . . . well, no, never mind. You haven't missed a thing, now I stop and think about it.

Anyhow, Johnny was real drunk. He snatched up Willie's old Martin guitar—the famous one he picked so much he wore a hole in it, the one with all the names signed on it—and was reeling around with the guitar saying he was going to sing a song.

Very nicely, Willie said, “Johnny, if you don't mind, would you please use another guitar?”

Johnny ignored him and went right on tuning and flogging the guitar and stumbling around.

Willie said, “Johnny, please. There's plenty of guitars in this room, but that one is very special to me. I'm afraid you're gonna break it.”

Darrell whirled on him and said, “What's the matter? You become too God damn big a star to let me use your guitar?”

Willie was off that couch like a shot and across the room and grabbed Darrell and pinned him against the wall in the corner and said very quietly but forcefully, “Put that guitar down and do it now.”

Johnny immediately put down the guitar. Willie went back and sat on the couch, gave one of his serene smiles, and said, “Now, then, I'd sure like to hear your songs, Johnny.”

I wonder if Willie is afraid of anything. It seems to me he's so together, so full of complete and total confidence, that nothing can shake him ever. I'd like to believe that's true, but it can't be. There's got to be times when he says, “Whoa, this really is hard to figure.” The man is human, after all. He's got to be scared of something. But I can't imagine what the hell it might be. If I have seen it, I didn't recognize it.

I was born in Vernon, Texas, in 1932. After I finished high school in Fort Worth, I hit the street.

I joined the North Fort Worth Boys Club when I was about nine years old. My mother and dad was Holy Rollers. They started the Northside Assembly of God. I played in the band. I played down on the Exchange on North Main on the corner on Sundays, and I couldn't go to a movie or anything like that, but I could go to the Boys Club so I started boxing at the Boys Club. I turned into a rough little character in order to survive. I never saw a movie till I was fifteen. I went to the Star Theater on 10th Street and saw a movie at the Star Theater. When I got out these boys accosted me. They were the Peroxide Gang. I whipped three of them and they said, “My God, you're great. You know, we'll make you our leader.” So I was introduced to a brand-new thing—girls. I said, “How about this? A whole new life has opened up for me.” I had all the girls I wanted and was the head of the Peroxide Gang.

I wasn't a big known character. I was just a kid. But I knew some big characters. I started making the papers in 1956 when the
Fort Worth Press
started running a “10 Most Unwanted” list. I made it for five years in a row. They said, “if Paul wasn't there he just left,” meaning, whenever there was a murder, if I hadn't been there I'd just left. I was involved in three murder trials, but they never led to anything. I was the kind of guy they were always trying to stick charges on. One of the murders the police tried to blame on me, there were six guys shooting at each other. One guy ran out of bullets and got killed. But that ain't murder—not in Texas, anyhow.

My friends and I started beating pinball machines and slot machines. Back then even a little old drugstore would have four or five pinball machines. We'd just get a drill and some piano wire and drill them and put a Crayola on the side of them and run up big scores and get paid cash.

In '55 I started running girls. This went on for a long time. I ran it like a business. I had it fixed so customers could charge it to their hotel as entertainment expense. I worked call service. When the Western Hills Hotel opened as the world's first drive-in hotel, I started working out of it. The base was $50 and up. Even the Westbrook Hotel uptown on 5th Street worked girls on calls. It was a good business but you had to work hard.

I ended up in jail in Waxahachie in 1952. I was headed straight for the penitentiary then. I had become really adept at picking locks. Matter of fact we had a contest on how many daytime burglaries we could pull and I think I pulled twelve. I was always scared but that was part of the fun. I don't think I was ever legitimate until I started playing drums for Willie in 1966.

In 1968, we needed uniforms. At that time all the bands wore uniforms and Willie said, “In our band everybody wears something different.” We went Hollywood, right? I had this beard similar to what I've got now, and everybody would say, “Anybody ever tell you you look like the Devil?” They'd say, “I don't want to hurt your feelings, but anyone ever tell you that?” And I'd say, “Well, you're not going to hurt my feelings because the Devil was the prettiest angel in heaven.” I considered it a compliment. We saw this cape in the window and Willie said, “Aw, you got to have this.” I did think I looked like the Devil and so I bought the cape. You know, a $29 cape in Hollywood? Then we played Panther Hall and I'm from Fort Worth, right? I've been with Willie for two years already and when I got off stage that night, there were about fifteen girls waiting for my autograph, and so the cape stayed—for a long, long time. I finally went to where I had about seven capes and then I went to full length
with velvet and silk lining. I had started always wearing black, like I do now.

Willie feels safe with me behind him. I carry two guns, for one thing. When the TV show
20/20
interviewed me they didn't believe I actually carried a gun and so the interviewer asked to see it. I said, “Which one?” The TV person like to have fainted.

At one time I had five rent houses and lost them all helping out while the band was in financial trouble. As late as 1973, I was making $175 a week and I had $5,250 coming in back salary. Now I'm in the
Guinness Book of World Records
for being the highest-paid sideman drummer.

I always loved Willie, you know. When I was in Houston working girls I'd always go see him. Willie asked me how he could get hold of a certain drummer, and I said, “Well, I can play better than him.” He said “Yeah, but you wouldn't work for thirty dollars a night.” And I said, “For you I would.” And I did. He was the only one I would have ever worked for. Had it not been for Willie, I would be dead or in the penitentiary.

Willie Nelson is my best friend by far. I'm probably closer to him than I am to anyone. When we were driving the station wagon around the country together, we stayed in the same room together. I have one good eye and one glass eye, and he'd forget which was which. I'd be driving and he'd say, “Now, tell me which eye is out. I want to make sure you're awake.” Willie and I make a good pair because he's the eternal optimist and I'm the kind of guy who figures out all the angles.

When times were rough, Willie would say, “One of these days, Paul, I'll make all this up to you.” And he has. I own twenty percent of Willie Nelson Music, his publishing company, and I make about $56,000 a year just off of that. It's enough to retire on. I'm just bragging on him being true to his word.

Willie walked out of the Esquire Club behind us one night in the late fifties. We got in our car and looked over and Willie had two flats, not one, but two. Larry and I pulled over to help him. We opened up the trunk to get his spare out. The spare was flat, too. We
just closed the trunk and told Willie, well, we'll just take you home—thirty miles to Pasadena. It was late when we got to Willie's house. He said, “Y'all come in with me. If you don't come in, Martha's gonna kill me. Y'all are gonna have to explain to her what happened, cause she's never gonna believe me.” Larry and I got out and we went in and it was late and we woke Martha up. I said, oh, Lord, and we went in and talked to her for a minute and she was hot at Willie. So Willie come out the door and got back in our car. He said, “I'm going home with y'all.”

That night Willie got one of those little ten-cent spiral notebooks. He started writing songs and wrote way on up into the morning. Next night, Willie come back home with us again, still hadn't got his tires fixed. He started writing again. There was about five songs that Willie wrote in this little book that's never been recorded. I put the book up for him and for the last twenty-five years, every time I've seen Willie, I've said, “Willie, you've got some songs. I kept them for you.” There was people calling me after Willie got to be such a big star trying to get the songs from me and I wouldn't let them have them. They told me that they own this and that of Willie's songs, and I said, well, you're not gonna get them, these songs go to Willie Nelson, nobody wrote them but Willie and if they're yours, well, when Willie comes after them, he can give them to you. But I'm not gonna let anyone have these songs but Willie Nelson. They're his. I took these songs up to Willie in 1985. He looked at them and he said, “Well, I'll be damned. Where'd you get these?” I handed him the book. We walked out of the studio and Willie turned to me and he said, “Would you do me a favor? Hold on to them for me.” If Willie ever needs songs, he knows where they're at.