Get
ready!” advises Waylon Jenning’s longtime
lead guitarist/right-hand man Jerry Bridges, indicating that an all-too-brief
10-minute interview is over. Jennings, 59 years old this day, is about to face
a large private audience of Harley enthusiasts in town for a convention.
“Okay,” Jennings quips, “get more money!” The Littlefield, Texas native casts
his perpetually sly gaze about the small audience assembled aboard his tour
bus. “Wait ’til the last minute.” He shoots another roguish glance and adds,
“That’s what we’ll do with Lollapalooza. If I get out there and don’t like the
looks of things, I’m gonna ask for more money. Then quit.”
Ol’ Waylon nails his interrogator with another sardonic smirk. “See, there
ain’t no flies on me, Hoss!”
No, there ain’t no flies on Waylon Jennings, but this doesn’t mean time and
nature haven’t been drumming a finger or two upon this one-time notorious
hellraiser. He’s quite open about his recent spell of bad health. (“You spend
too much on doctors, and they’ll kill ya.”) And if he doesn’t reflect upon it,
there are visible signs: the hand therapy ball being flexed in his right hand
through the interview’s duration; a couple of points during the set where he
ceases his relentless Telecaster assault to shake the kinks out of that right
hand. There are whispers of a bout with diabetes that’s forced a curbing of
certain old habits: See a thanks on his new Justice CD Right for the
Time aimed at “everybody at Woodland and all of the restaurants that made
veggie burgers.”
But if no flies are landing on Waylon Jennings, neither is even a spot of
pathos. The man is bearing these difficulties with the grace, dignity, and wry
humor that have always lurked beneath his hard-bitten exterior. There may have
been a slight diminishment of his onstage drama and power this Saturday night
at the Travis County Exposition Center, but the heat in that barn would have
doused the ardor of Johnny Storm (the Human Torch, in case you’re not up on
your Marvel Comics lore). But what the shit? He couldn’t be feeling too unhealthy. After all, Ol’ Waylon faced a few thousand pierced ‘n’ tattooed
youths on the Des Moines and Indiana stops of Lollapalooza last month, and just
this week he’ll face several thousand more on the New Orleans layover of
dreadfest.
Whaaaaaat??!!
No, your chain is not being yanked. Thanks to having both an open mind
and a 17-year-old mouth-to-feed, Shooter Jennings, Waylon’s much hipper to the
modern beat than your father. The Twisted Willie record found him
assisting L7 with their version of old pal Willie Nelson’s “Three Days”; he
told Rolling Stone he thought they were teamed because they were all
equally mean. Shooter, a musician himself who plays on Right for the
Time and will accompany Pop onstage at Lollapalooza, has meantime turned
Jennings on to the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Metallica. The latter fondness
has gotten personal: Jennings became friends with that band’s James Hetfield
and his recently deceased father. It was at Hetfield’s insistence that Jennings
got the Lollapalooza booking, one which Waylon claims to have first heard about
through the radio.
“I dunno if this is gonna work or not,” Jennings muses in his rumbling West
Texas drawl, clearing his throat. He then laughs, “I can get as nasty as they
can.
“I listen to all kinds of music. I get a lotta ideas from that. Used to I’d
get ideas from J.J. Cale. Remember him? Yeah, he’s great, crazier than a
goddamned gooneybear. Shooter got me into the Nine Inch Nails scene and
Metallica, just several of ’em. Pride and Joy, you never heard of them? I love
what they do. I didn’t get into the lyric thing. I always called them `musical
geniuses and lyrical idiots,'” he laughs. “They had a lot of shit in there that
didn’t really belong.”
Too much anger for ya, Waylon?
“Aw, yeah! What the hell? There’s enough of that shit out there, anyway. Why
ruin our music — a happy thing? That’s all it is, is a goddamned opinion,
anyway.”
Yeah, but hasn’t anger always been a part of rock & roll, though?
“No, I don’t think so, at all. The real first rock & roll that ever
happened — the true rock `n’ roll! — Fats Domino and all those people,
it was good rockin’ music, y’know? Buddy Holly, no anger in that. They took it
where they wanted it to. It’s fine if they want to do that. I just don’t agree
with it.
“I don’t really see a place for the anger. But what’s a 16-year-old boy know
about anger? What’s he know about goddamned livin’, if you know the
truth about it? Because actually, he gets pissed off if he has to come in
early,” he laughs. “Is that anger? I don’t know whether I’m right or wrong.
It’s just that music is great when it moves you. Why would you want to make it
a downer?
“Look at Courtney Love,” says Jennings, that wry look lighting his eyes
again. “That oughta turn ya back around! That’s a little ugly, ain’t it?
“I saw this group down there in Atlanta. I did a thing where we had a panel,
and I was part of the panel called `Demystifying the C-word.’ Country, y’know?
This group’s called the Old 97s. They are great! They are country, but I think
country is headin’ that way, right there. And Old 97s is from a song called
`The Wreck of the Old 97.’ I watched ’em. Man, that thing hits ya right there,”
Waylon remarks, thumping his chest for emphasis. “They were strong!”
Yeah, Dallas’ wonderboys are kinda like what Gram Parsons & the Flying
Burrito Brothers were in their time: rock & rollers who are approaching and
adapting traditional country music. “Ex-actly!” says Jennings, eyes
blazing. “I love ’em!” he gushes, before adding with another laugh, “Didn’t
understand one word they were singing, but they are uncommonly good.”
As is Jennings’ new record, Right for the Time, which has to feature
some of the strongest, most involved work the man has done in awhile. Like any
great Waylon record, there’s an appropriate mix of hard raunch (especially
noteworthy in that department is “Hittin’ the Bottle Again,” featuring the
dueling Fenders of Jesse Dayton and slide-man Shawn Jones), and the sensitive,
introspective material you never really think of in conjunction with Waylon
Jennings. The truth of the matter is, however, the ballads-to-raunch ration in
the man’s ouevre has been generally more skewed to the former.
And Mr. “I Listen to All Kinds of Music” Jennings once again pops up with some
utterly bizarre choices in material with this record’s swipe at Paul Simon’s
“The Boxer,” which is thankfully absent of Jennings singing the “lay-da-di”
part. (We’re also talking about an artist of such testicular fortitude, he will
trot “MacArthur Park” before that arena’s worth of bikers. The response? One
guy began waving his bandana around his head in a joyful circle. “Hey, evenI got scared when Waylon called that one out!” Jerry Bridges remarked.)
You may balk, and so may I, at such Quixotic choices of song, but the evidence
is completely audible: The conviction this man brings to these tunes is so
absolute, you walk away believing whether you want to or not.
This is the mark of a true artist. As Jennings told Peter Guralnick in a
Massachusetts hotel room over two decades ago, “You know, I’ve got to be able
to get into a song, I’ve got to be able to relate to it before I can get up and
sing it on a stage.” He would also tell Guralnick, “It’s the singer, not the
instrumentation. Hell, if it was the instruments, Dean Martin would be the
biggest thing in country music today.”
That was in Boston, 1974. This is Austin, 1996, and if it were the
instruments, Vanilla Ice would be the biggest thing in country music today.
Don’t think Waylon Jennings doesn’t know it: After resigning with longtime
former label RCA a couple years back and seeing a perfectly fine, Don
Was-produced album lost down the cracks, Jennings has moved over to burgeoning
“Texas soul music” label Justice, mostly because Justice proxy Randall Jamail
made a philosophical statement-of-intent Jennings appreciated.
“He said, `I’m not in the record business. I’m in the music business.’
People who ain’t, ain’t got enough sense to come up with that,” Jennings
laughs. “I thought, `All right! He’s either real smart, or he means it!’ I like
both [ideas].”
Right for the Time ends with Jennings and an acoustic guitar making
some very pointed remarks about modern country music’s health and calling it
“Living Legends, Pt. II.”
“Well, that was easy,” Jennings smirks. “I’ve never run into that much
bullshit in my life! It’s back to where the record companies and the producers
are in control of it, and it’s like cookie-cutting. You ought to talk to those
guys that have to do these sessions. They’re about to go crazy. They have ’em
do the same thing. If they do something that works, then every goddamned record
that comes out has it on there. But I was just teasing ’em to see if they had a
sense of humor. Of course, they didn’t,” he chuckles.
Well, if Jennings isn’t happy with his chosen form’s current state, neither is
he as angry about it as Merle Haggard.
“I’m not angry about it,” he affirms. “I’ve got no reason to be angry about
it. That’s why I don’t like that [attitude]. I’m not angry about it. How
can I bitch? I’ve had a great deal and still got a good thing goin’. So, that’s
not anger. [“Living Legends, Pt. II.”] was just cutting up. Actually, I wrote
that thing about myself. Like I said, much as anything — runnin’ around with a
goddamned briefcase that ain’t got not one song in it! What’s that about,
y’know? I’m worse than they are! At least they ain’t got no goddamned
briefcase!” He pauses chuckling again, shaking his head. “Big bidness.”
“I’ll tell ya who are great,” he shoots, eyebrows in full arch. “The girls!
They laugh their ass off at those guys havin’ to get up there and move their
ass around. I can imagine them saying to me, `You’ve gotta learn how to dance!”
he laughs. “You’re out of your fuckin’ head! Can you imagine me and
Willie Nelson trying to dance?”
Nope, that’s why you learn to play guitar. With that, the interview’s over,
more brief than it has any right to be, yet crammed with more content than most
three-hour talks, as well. Jennings now has to find his hat and celebrate his
59th birthday before a bunch of Harley riders in a damned convection-oven tin
shed, forcing “MacArthur Park” on ’em whether they want it or not. And y’know
what? Waylon Jennings is right: There are no flies on him, hoss.
n
This article appears in July 26 • 1996 and July 26 • 1996 (Cover).
