Willie (28 page)

Somehow or other, the poster for the Homecoming Concert had Leon Russell's picture on it. The picture aroused expectation in the crowd that Leon Russell would be performing. Country people are like that—they see an artist's picture on a poster advertising a show, and they don't know no better than to believe that artist will actually be in the show.

About sundown the sound went dead. We had to scrape up $740 to pay somebody to turn the sound back on. When the sound started again, the crowd thought it meant Leon Russell was about to perform. They started chanting. “We want Leon, we want Leon, where is Leon?”

At these outdoor events, right about sundown there is a time when it can go either way—become a real nice concert or else a bloody riot.

People were chanting, “We want Leon!” I kept trying to ignore
them. They didn't want to hear that the poster was just a mixup at the printer. “We want Leon! We want Leon!” Louder and louder. Hell, the one I wanted to see right then was Willie. He'd been gone for eleven hours.

People were crowding toward the stage screaming for Leon. They started climbing the fence, like you see at prison riots, or in third world countries where the rich people are having a banquet and the poor people are trying to break down the gates.

Suddenly Michael Murphy—now known professionally as Michael Martin Murphy—came onstage with a red, white, and blue guitar and a four-year-old kid. He plumped that kid in his lap and started playing and singing beautifully—God bless Michael Martin Murphy, I say every chance I get—and the angry crowd began to quiet down.

And wouldn't you know it? Willie comes back. Willie follows Murphy onstage and finishes up the evening to screams and cheers of joy and it all turns out great. His timing is fantastic.

That was the concert where Willie presented a bouquet of roses to Mama Nelson, his grandmother who raised him, and she said, “Willie, you need a haircut.”

It wasn't all that easy to book Willie in the late sixties and early seventies, particularly after he grew his hair long and wore an earring. People were scared to death of him. Club owners would say, “We love Willie, but we can't hire a guy with long hair and tennis shoes.”

I would say, “What do you think about the man they put up on the cross? Willie is just trying to make a living, there ain't no need for you to kill him.”

Willie had a song out then, “Half a Man,” which in my estimation was a great piece of work because it described the peaks and the valleys, the highs and the lows that I was going through myself.

It was always something to contend with. I got Willie into a poker game in Louisiana and had to borrow money for us to make it to the next gig. We'd have to push his bus to start it. You'd want to make sure there was plenty of air in the tanks for the brakes, because when you got to the top of the hill and began rolling down you could be in for a hell of an adventure if the brakes didn't catch.

We always left together and counted the money together and came back together. I got so closely associated with Willie—like I had been with Ray Price—that I'd get up and have breakfast when he did, go to sleep when he did, go through every problem with him. I became sort of like a male wife, except there wasn't no romance of course. I didn't have to kiss nobody's butt if something went wrong. I'd just speak my piece, get it out of my craw, and keep moving.

In Bandera, all of us living like a family, I think I became hypnotized by the way Willie could tune a guitar and play it and make pretty music with pretty words. It seemed like magic. At the same time, Willie was amazed by my ability to hit a golf ball. That looked sort of like magic to him. I could hook it or fade it, hit it high or hit it low, come up with any shot I needed. Knock it stiff. Hole the putt. Next case. Willie is my golf pardner, and we challenge anybody. Golf and music are closely related. A large number of musicians are golf nuts, and I believe the reason boils down to one word—tempo.

Whatever you can think of in golf, you can relate to music. You rush your swing, you get it out of meter. You get a half beat too fast with your swing, it's like the drummer is off the beat. If your tempo ain't right you will go home busted.

I became president of Willie's Lone Star Records label as a result of the Ridgetop fire. Willie used to have a little studio down in the storm cellar with a little two-track tape machine. After the fire, Willie's dad, Ira, poked through the ruins and found all these reels of tapes. I took four reels to a studio in Dallas. They sounded great. I told Willie I'd like to clean up the tapes and see if we could use them.

These were tapes made when guys would be sitting in the cellar rehearsing or passing time if somebody didn't show up for a session. There were suitcases and trunks and boxes of these tapes in the cellar when the house burned. They were charred and warped and some came apart in my hands, but they survived.

I figured I had enough stuff saved from the fire to do three albums. I picked out twenty-two of the best songs with the best quality and played them for Willie.

The qualilty was so good Willie thought he'd just finished cutting them. He listened real close, then said, “Why don't we go into the record company business? You're the president.”

We opened the Lone Star Records office at the Austin Opera House. I knew as much about how to run a record company as a baby knows about running the circus. Willie was on the road, I was trying to sell records. It got very confusing.

Lone Star Records put out six albums—three by Willie and three by some of the good Texas acts we had signed. We had a terrific roster of artists for Lone Star Records, but we just didn't know shit about marketing records. Finally Willie said, “Let's just shut down the company for a while and see what happens next.”

Next, we went looking for a new home. This was in 1979. Willie and I had been to the Pedernales Country Club twenty miles outside Austin a couple of times before we drove by and saw a “For Sale” sign outside. In many ways it resembled the place in Bandera—nine-hole golf course, Olympic-size pool, big clubhouse, tennis courts, a bunch of apartments near the clubhouse. It had a wonderful view to the west across the hills and north to the Pedernales River and Lake Travis, and it was full of deer and rabbits and wild turkeys. Willie told me to make an inventory of the place. The homeowners had tried to take care of the golf course, God bless them, but it was a mess. The facilities were great, but there weren't enough people to support the club or the bar and restaurant.

Willie bought it. He remodeled the clubhouse into a state-of-the-art recording studio with a big office for himself overlooking the pool and the hills, and offices for his assistant, Jody Fischer, and Bobby Arnold and Larry Greenhill, the sound engineers. We fixed up the pro shop. Willie spent a fortune on the golf course putting it into first-class condition.

Now I'm in complete heaven. When Willie is home, we get to play golf every day like we did in the old times. Knowing Willie is happy when he looks at his golf course and is pleased with what we've done with it, that's a big kick for me. When he looks at you with those brown eyes and says, “Boy, this golf course is beautiful,” there ain't no higher feeling that that.

I mean we have got it covered.

I could easily have screwed it up the night I broke Willie's neck. We were at a club down in Corpus Christi and I had a little matchbox of pot I wanted to go outside and put away. There was a pole right where you came into the club near the ticket box. They had this long hallway and a ramp at the far end.

We had been drinking. I told Willie I was going outside. He said no, you're not. I said I need to go outside. He said, you stay where you're at. So I waited till he turned around to watch the band, and I eased on out and started walking up the hallway. In a minute I heard running footsteps. Willie was chasing after me. At the top of the ramp I hooked an arm on that pole and swung around—and Willie shot past me and just took off flying from the ramp like a skier. I heard a horrible crash, tables and chairs breaking when he landed on them.
We hauled Willie out of the wreckage and stayed there and partied until he got back on his plane and went to Nashville, saying he thought he had a headache.

The next day he phoned and asked what I was doing. I said I was getting ready to play golf.

He said, “I wish I could be playing with you, but it looks like I'll have to miss a few rounds.”

I asked him what was wrong.

“I'm laid up in bed with a broken neck,” he said. “What the hell happened in Corpus, anyhow?”

How he keeps coming out of all these wrecks is a wonder to behold. Like down at Bracketville one year, Willie was flying in to the landing strip near Happy Shahan's Western town that they used for the Alamo movie set. Happy is watching the plane coming in, knowing Willie is on it. The plane hits a big chughole in the strip and flips over on its side and crashes.

Happy likes news and publicity, you know, so first thing he does is pick up the phone and call the radio stations, the TV, the newspapers. Happy says, “Willie Nelson's plane just crashed. Y'all better hurry.”

He jumped in a Jeep and drove out to the crash to pick up the remains.

And here comes Willie and his pilot, limping up the road.

The media people was arriving by then. They started firing questions at Willie. How did he survive? Was he dying? Was he even hurt?

Willie smiles and says, “Why, this was a perfect landing. I walked away from it, didn't I?”

He's accident prone. This is why you have to be careful around him at all times. I love the man, but you don't never know when something might fall on him.

Bif Collie is a record executive, disc jockey, and ex-husband of Willie's second wife
.

Billy Cooper has done a little bit of nearly everything for Willie, including being his bodyguard
.

Chet Atkins is a producer, a former president of RCA Records, and a great guitar player
.

Rick Blackburn is president of CBS Records Nashville
.

Darrell Royal is a legend in sports, a Hall of Fame football coach who won three national championships at the University of Texas
.

Tom Gresham is a Texas music promoter who has done many Willie shows over the last twenty-five years
.

Sammy Allred is a friend of Willie's, one of the first DJs to play “outlaw” music—and is half of the musical performing act called the Geezinslaw Brothers
.

Larry Trader is Willie's close friend and golf pro, as well as a show promoter
.

PART FIVE

I gotta get drunk and I sure do dread it,

'Cause I know just what's I'm gonna do;

I'll start to spend my money,

Call everybody honey

And wind up singin' the blues.

I'll spend my whole paycheck on some old wreck,

And, brother I can name you a few

But, I gotta get drunk and I sure do dread it,

'Cause I know just what I'm gonna do.

I gotta get drunk, I can't stay sober

There's a lot of good people in town

Who'd like to hear me holler,

See me spend my dollars

And I wouldn't think of lettin' 'em down.

There's a lot of doctors that tell me

I'd better start slowin' it down!

But there's more old drunks than there are old doctors

So I guess we'd better have another round.