Willie (20 page)

Waylon to this day says when somebody calls him “pal” it makes him paranoid.

Waylon got screwed as bad as anybody ever did, because Waylon
is truly a good old honest country boy who wants to trust people. Once Waylon put out a new album, went on the road for about 180 days, came back to Nashville and opened his new statement—and discovered he owed the company something like $31,000.

He went in to get some money to pay his band, and they wound up signing him to a new five-year deal starting at the oldest, lowest rate. The way they got him signed was by sending the contract option pickup in care of Waylon Jennings at their own record company address. Then they signed the receipt for the option pickup themselves, and it was the same as if Waylon had signed it. After a short waiting period—which Waylon didn't know about—the contract automatically went into effect. The shock of this gave Waylon the idea of hiring a sharp New York lawyer to look after him. He signed with Neil Reshen. Neil put the record company through an audit and found 200,000 albums not accounted for. The company said, “Well, you're right, but we'll settle for fifty thousand dollars. You don't settle, we'll suspend Waylon, which we can do because he's got a new contract with us.” They would keep reserves going back fifteen years on some artists.

Songwriters might write cynical worldwise lyrics and constantly talk about money, but most of us are downright naive when it comes to business. A songwriter back in Nashville would stroll up to me and say, “I just made a deal with X Music Company and they gave me half the publishing royalties.”

I would say, “Great. What does that mean?”

He'd say, “I don't know, but it sounds good, don't it? I just ordered me a new Cadillac.”

What it really means is the writer gets half the publishing royalty and half the writing royalty—which is his right according to copyright law, but they make him feel like he's getting a generous deal.

If you should write a song that sells a million records as a single, you enter the arena where mechanical royalties become very important. Mechanical royalties mean the A side and the B side of the record earn the same amount. Let's say the A side is a hit. After the record sells 100,000 copies or so the company can drag out another old song of theirs and stick it on the B side with your hit on the A side. Your hit then has to split royalties with both B sides.

It should be split 50–50, but it never used to be split that way when we let the company lawyers negotiate our own contracts. The publisher would wind up with seventy percent of your A side hit after “expenses,” and maybe own all of the B side.

The writing and publishing royalties can turn into a bonanza if you are shrewd enough or powerful enough. Take the
Tonight Show
theme. It was written by Paul Anka and published by Shanka Music, which is owned by Paul Anka and Johnny Carson. Every time the
Tonight Show
theme is played, Johnny Carson gets half the writer's royalties and half the publisher's royalties. We're talking about more than $300,000 a year in royalties for the
Tonight Show
theme. And how many years has it been on the air now? Twenty some-odd? I am not implying there is anything illegal or immoral about this. It's a case of smart show business.

What I am saying to all you songwriters is to get yourself a good Jewish lawyer before you sign anything, no matter how much the company says they love you.

A songwriter never knows where a hit is liable to come from or how long it might take.

Merle Haggard and I were doing a session in 1982 at my studio in Austin with Chips Moman as the producer. Chips brought in a guitar player named Johnny Christopher. Along with Wayne Thompson and Mark James, Johnny had written a song years before called “Always on My Mind.” They told me Elvis had cut it, but I had never heard it.

Johnny sang the song for me. I wanted Merle to hear it to see if maybe he and I would do it together. Merle didn't particularly like the song. He didn't hear it well enough, I think. As soon as Merle and I finished our album—
Pancho and Lefty
—I stayed in the studio with my band to do a few more tunes. I wanted to see how “Always on My Mind” would sound with just me singing it.

My album with “Always on My Mind” as the title song sold triple platinum, more than three million units. We'll never know what would have happened if Merle had really heard the song right.

“Always on My Mind” bowled me over the moment I first heard it, which is one way I pick songs to record. It could be any kind of song that touches me. There are beautifully sad songs that bowl me over, like “Loving You Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)” by Kris Kristofferson and “Turns Me Inside Out” by Lee Greenwood to name just two. Haunting melodies you can't get out of your mind, with lines that really stick. Waylon and I cut the Simon & Garfunkel song “Homeward Bound” and the Eagles' song “Take It to the Limit” because they bowled us over. We didn't know if they were old songs or new songs. Waylon and I cut a song called “A Whiter Shade of Pale” because we loved the melody soon as we heard it. I didn't know
what the lyrics meant. The melody was infectious and the lyrics were weird and far out enough that I thought they were bound to be good. I couldn't wait for somebody to ask me what the lyrics meant. Each time somebody did, I would make up a different story. I had no idea when we recorded the song that it was already a rock classic by Procol Harum.

Then there was the time I thought I discovered Julio Iglesias. Connie heard this guy singing on the radio and said, “Hey, Will, listen to this.” I listened and thought, wow, I've found somebody here! The next day Connie went out and bought a Julio album. I listened to the whole thing. I phoned Mark Rothbaum and said, “Try to find out who Julio Iglesias is and see if he wants to cut a record with me.” Mark found Julio in Los Angeles. Julio said, sure, he'd like to do a song with me.

I didn't know Julio was selling more records at that time than anybody in the world.

Julio flew to Austin and came to my studio out at the golf course.

He had found a song he liked, called “To All the Girls I've Loved Before.” We cut a track of it in my studio in about two hours, mainly to put my voice on it. Julio took the tape back to L.A. and redid his part a few times to get the English down better.

Julio and I performed it together on national TV at the Country Music Association Awards show. A few weeks later the single came out. It was a monster hit.

With Julio, it was his singing that attracted me. But as a rule it is my feeling for the song itself that urges me to cut it.

A song came to me once that I knew would be huge. It was a story song that grabbed you right away with a sharp hook and a powerful message and a chorus that everybody could remember and sing along with.

I turned it down. I was already doing a long story-song sequence, “Red Headed Stranger,” in my shows. I knew if I recorded this new song it would be such a hit the audience would insist on hearing it every show. There simply wasn't enough time in the show for me to do two story songs.

So I sent “The Gambler” over to Kenny Rogers.

One of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard is “Moonlight in Vermont.” The words don't rhyme at all anywhere in there, but it's still poetic.

I always wanted to record “Moonlight in Vermont,” but I didn't really feel I was musically qualified to do the arrangements. Then I
happened to be living in the same condo complex in Malibu as Booker T. Jones. We became friends. I asked him if he would work up some arrangements for me on “Moonlight in Vermont” and “Stardust.” Booker T. came up with sounds that I loved and I could perform. I asked him if he would produce an album for me.

“What kind of album?” he said.

I decided I would select my ten favorite songs of all time. We started with “Stardust.”

“Stardust” was one of those songs I heard all the time on the radio when I was young. We had the sheet music for it as kids, and Bobbie played it on the piano. I tried to figure out the chords to play it on the guitar, but it was real hard and took a long time to learn. I needed a producer with Booker T.'s skill as a musician to show me how to do it. There's a saying I believe in: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

Next after “Stardust” I chose “Georgia on My Mind,” “Blue Skies,” “All of Me,” “Unchained Melody,” “September Song,” “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” “Moonlight in Vermont,” “Don't Get Around Much Anymore,” “Someone to Watch Over Me.”

The
Stardust
album sold triple platinum in 1978. It was really my “crossover” album. I remember the first night I sang “Stardust” with my band at the Austin Opera House. There was a kind of stunned silence in the crowd for a moment, and then they exploded with cheering and whistling and applauding. The kids in the crowd thought “Stardust” was a new song I had written. The older folks remembered the song well and loved it as much as I did.

“Stardust” is my favorite song, but I'm just as glad Hoagy Carmichael and Mitchell Parish wrote it instead of me. Because maybe then they would have written “Night Life” instead of me.

I guess my three favorite songs that I have written so far are “On the Road Again,” “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,” and “Healing Hands of Time.” The first one is a good happy song. The second is a good love song, and the third is a good philosophical song like “One Day at a Time” and “It Should Be Easier Now.” These are songs of a very personal nature, but everybody can apply them to their own situation. I wrote “Angel” during a time when Connie and I were having personal problems, but people related it to their own love affairs or even to someone who had died. It was the same with “I Still Can't Believe You're Gone.” I wrote it about Carlene, Paul English's wife, when she died, but it has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people who have no idea why I wrote it.

What this should say to songwriters is there is no formula for writing songs. If a song is true for you, it will be true for others.

If I were just starting out today and I had a song I thought was good, I would go to Nashville. That's still where the store is.

I would go around to all the publishing companies in Nashville and talk to all of them and take them a tape of my song. The publishing companies will open their doors to a guy who walks in and looks and acts like he's got something they want. If they're really in the publishing company business and really looking for writers, they'd be dumb and unprofessional not to give a writer a chance. It's not that hard for them to say, “Sure, we'll take your tape, leave us your phone number and we'll call you.” They have people to listen to new material, because it's their business.

If you have a good song, the odds of you finding somebody who will like it and record it are good. If your song is mediocre, the odds ain't so good. If you've got a real great personality and a piss poor song, you might get signed up for life by the publishing company because they like you. I know a lot of guys who ain't that great as songwriters but have good jobs with publishing companies because they're good talkers and good at pitching songs.

I will never say anything to discourage a songwriter who is out there knocking on doors, trying to get heard. But if you are a real songwriter, nothing I could say would discourage you, anyhow. If my opinion could change your mind about being a songwriter, then you really weren't a songwriter to begin with and I would have done you a favor by making you look for a different career.

If a real songwriter happened to hear from somebody else that I didn't like his work, he would say, “What the hell does Willie Nelson know? Fuck Willie Nelson.”

You can't tell a real songwriter he ain't any good, because he knows better. And he'll keep hacking his way through show-biz hell until he proves it.

The roughest part of my life with Martha was our time in Nashville.

I picked up Martha and our three kids at the bus station about two weeks after I'd arrived in Nashville and drove them to our new home—a little green trailer house at Dunn's Trailer Court on the east side of town. There was a used-car lot on one side of Dunn's and a veteran's cemetery on the other. About thirty trailers sat on concrete blocks behind a headquarters house with tall stone pillars. There was a pay phone on a post in the middle of the yard. The rent was $25 a week, which was about $10 more than it was worth.

Martha went right out and got a job mixing drinks at the Hitching Post. It was on Broadway, across the street from Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, where I hung out with the other broke pickers who were trying to sell songs. Being the hard worker that she is, Martha quickly became manager of the Hitching Post and began working a second job at the Wagon Wheel.

Martha had two jobs and I had none. For eight years she had been going around the country with me and it seemed like every time we took a step forward we fell backwards six feet. After all her years of hard work, we had landed in maybe the shabbiest place we ever lived. Martha's Cherokee temper was getting the best of her, and she was
drinking a lot more. My Indian blood was being mixed up with too much whiskey at Tootsie's, and my old manhood hang-up kept telling me only a worthless asshole would lay around drunk playing the guitar while his wife worked two jobs to support the family.

I could see Martha and me pulling apart from each other. I saw us growing in different directions and wasn't wise enough to keep it from happening. In the back of my mind I'm not sure I really wanted to keep it from happening. I think we may have had so much water run under the bridge by the time we reached Nashville that when things started going bad it was too late for us.

Martha found out I had been running around on her while I was in Nashville by myself. Then I found out she had been running around on me, too. To my way of thinking it was okay for me to cheat on her, but it sure as hell wasn't okay for her to cheat on me. That's how I thought a man should look at it.