“Roll me up and smoke me after I die,” Willie Nelson sang from the stage of the Hollywood Bowl throughout his ninetieth birthday celebration in April.
As typical, Mr. Nelson appeared very a lot comfy. He was sporting a cowboy hat over a crimson bandanna, and his hair spilled down his again. His trusty guitar, a road-worn classical acoustic mannequin named Trigger, hung from the crimson, white and blue strap round his neck. At his facet was his longtime good friend, the equally relaxed Snoop Dogg.
The duet with Snoop was considered one of many excessive factors for Mr. Nelson in 2023, when followers and colleagues expressed their appreciation for one of many nice survivors of American cultural life. In February, he gained the Grammy for finest nation album. Two months later, he was joined by Beck, Rosanne Cash, the Chicks, Gary Clark Jr., Sheryl Crow, Keith Richards and different artists for the two-night Hollywood Bowl live performance.
In November, shortly after his newest e-book, “Energy Follows Thought: The Stories Behind My Songs,” appeared in indie bookstores and Wal-Marts alike, Mr. Nelson was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. This month, CBS broadcast the Hollywood Bowl live performance; and a four-part documentary retrospective, “Willie Nelson & Family,” began streaming on Paramount+.
But there was a time when Mr. Nelson’s prospects appeared shaky at finest, when he was simply considered one of many Nashville strivers who was attempting to observe a path mapped out by music executives who supposedly knew higher.
The turnaround got here when he made a break from all that and determined to be absolutely himself, not solely in his musical strategy however in how he introduced himself to the world.
The Willie Nelson who appeared on the covers of the albums he made for RCA Records within the Sixties would appear to have virtually nothing in frequent with the “cosmic cowboy” (as he as soon as described himself) that audiences would come to know and love.
On the duvet of his 1962 debut album “ … And Then I Wrote,” he’s a short-haired fellow sporting a swimsuit and an anxious grin. For his eighth studio album, “Good Times,” launched in 1968, he hit a vogue low, posing in golf apparel on a placing inexperienced whereas draping himself round a younger girl in a miniskirt. The albums offered poorly, and Mr. Nelson grew an increasing number of annoyed by his lack of company.
In addition to foisting upon this sui generis singer-songwriter the picture of a generic nation star, RCA insisted that he use top-flight session musicians within the recording studio, fairly than the down-home band that backed him on the street. It appeared that the label was doing every part to make Mr. Nelson a star however permitting him to be himself.
His transformation started in earnest after his farmhouse outdoors Nashville burned to the bottom in 1969. As Kinky Friedman famous within the foreword to Mr. Nelson’s 2012 e-book, “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die,” the down-on-his-luck singer launched into his subsequent section by channeling the spirit of an earlier American iconoclast.
“Willie advised the Nashville institution the identical phrases Davy Crockett had advised the Tennessee political institution: ‘Y’all can go to hell — I’m going to Texas,’” Mr. Friedman wrote.
In 1972 he settled in Austin, a metropolis identified for its progressive politics, laid-back vibe and mixture of musical kinds, from conjunto to the blues. He grew out his hair, began sporting bluejeans and T-shirts to carry out at golf equipment just like the Armadillo World Headquarters and doubled down on his swap from alcohol to pot as his most well-liked temper enhancer.
To hold the sweat out of his eyes, he wore a crimson bandanna round his brow. He grew mutton chops, then a scruffy beard. The new look match the altering times, although it wasn’t a calculated enchantment to the counterculture.
“It felt good to let my hair develop,” Mr. Nelson mirrored in his 2015 autobiography, “It’s a Long Story.” “Felt good to get onstage sporting the identical denims I’d been sporting all rattling day. As I have a look at it, I used to be turning precisely into the individual I used to be.”
He additionally managed to bridge an incredible divide in American cultural life. As Turk Pipkin, a author and filmmaker who has coauthored two books with Mr. Nelson, put it: “He united the hippies and the rednecks.”
In 1973, he hosted the primary of what would grow to be an annual occasion, Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic. The live performance, on a ranch within the Texas Hill Country, attracted dyed-in-the-wool nation music followers in addition to younger progressives who have been discovering his music by means of albums like “Shotgun Willie,” launched that June on his new label, Atlantic Records.
Mr. Nelson’s willingness to observe his instincts was a key to his crossover success, stated Peter Blackstock, who regularly lined Mr. Nelson for The Austin American-Statesman.
“Cowboys like Willie as a result of he got here from a rustic background and was born and raised in Texas,” Mr. Blackstock stated. “What was uncommon is that each one these individuals who have been listening to Led Zeppelin or Frank Zappa additionally bought enthusiastic about Willie. They appreciated the person streak there.”
Though he was thought of a part of the so-called outlaw nation motion, Mr. Nelson couldn’t have chosen a extra patriotic day to assemble his flock for a picnic; and his set record in these years, as right this moment, included “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “Family Bible” and different songs that mirrored his upbringing within the Baptist Church.
By 1978, Mr. Nelson was sporting his hair in lengthy braids — a radical act for a male nation singer. Even his fellow male “outlaws” Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Tompall Glaser adhered to gender norms of their appearances.
In 1979, he confirmed up on the White House sporting denims and a satin jacket to current a Country Music Association award to President Jimmy Carter. That night time, Willie smoked what he referred to as “a fat Austin torpedo” on the White House roof.
Much has been product of Mr. Nelson’s appreciation of marijuana and advocacy on its behalf. A 1978 profile in High Times magazine started, “Willie Nelson smokes numerous dope.” In the Nineties, he joined the advisory board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.
Despite the waist-length hair and frequent pot-smoking, Mr. Nelson by no means deserted his heartland roots. The High Times article quoted a good friend who stated he drove “a pickup truck with a gun rack”; and Mr. Nelson would go on to be a founding father of Farm Aid, the annual profit live performance that has raised hundreds of thousands for American household farmers over the past 4 many years.
As the nation grew extra divided, he nonetheless had a knack for bringing collectively opposing camps. In 2015, he stood on a stage in Washington, D.C., to simply accept the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Applauding him from a couple of ft away have been Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California. In its report on the occasion, The Texas Tribune referred to as Mr. Nelson “the one one that can deliver Democrats and Republicans collectively within the nation’s capital.”
Contradictions have outlined his life and profession. Mr. Nelson is somebody who owns a house in Maui, Hawaii, with views of the Pacific Ocean, but for a number of years additionally operated Willie’s Place, a truck cease and biodiesel processing plant in Carl’s Corner, Texas. He has taught Sunday college in Fort Worth, Texas, and praised Las Vegas for its “hustler vitality.” He has had his assets seized by the I.R.S. and sung with President Obama at a 2014 benefit concert for veterans.
“The frequent pondering for nearly all of us is to see issues as opposite positions, and all of us fall into it,” Mr. Pipkin stated. “Willie doesn’t essentially see them as opposite. He doesn’t see the billionaire and the bum in several methods.”
Or, as Mr. Nelson put it in his autobiography, “I’m a person of many elements.”
Content Source: www.nytimes.com