Willie Nelson (43 page)

By the time
Stardust
was released in April 1978, “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” his duet with Waylon, had rocketed to number 1 on the country charts and crossed over to Top 40. “Mammas” was on the new compilation that RCA’s Jerry Bradley had orchestrated to follow
Wanted: The Outlaws,
once again pairing the two Ws but this time leaving out Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser. The title
Waylon & Willie
and the album cover, done up to look like a tooled-leather picture frame with their smiling faces painted over a landscape with a silhouetted cowboy on horseback in the background, said it all: Inside the cardboard package was a polyvinyl disc twelve inches in diameter containing audio performances by the country duo of country duos, the baddest-assed of all the bad-ass Texas outlaws, Big Chief and Little Willie. Several other singles spun from the album, including Willie’s “If You Can’t Touch Her at All,” a number 5 country single, and Waylon’s “Wurlitzer Prize,” a sentimental slice of life about a lovesick guy pouring his coins into the jukebox to hear sad songs. The album stayed atop the country album chart for three months, eventually going double platinum, signifying sales of two million units. Willie’s guitar was absent from the recording, but nobody seemed to notice.

No sooner had “Mammas” started descending from the top of the charts than “Georgia on My Mind” from
Stardust
ascended to number 1 country and number 5 pop. Whatever Columbia’s initial hesitation about
Stardust
may have been, the label ended up printing more and more copies. Willie had been right. The songs sounded new to his younger fans. When he roadtested “Stardust” at the Austin Opry House, the kids responded as if Willie had written it. As for the old-timers, “the same people who danced to ‘Bubbles in My Beer’ danced to ‘Stardust,’” he observed. The buzz grew exponentially and never stopped. “I didn’t realize how many records it sold until we got a platinum record,” Booker T. Jones said.

S
TARDUST
put Willie on a whole other level of celebrity. He was flying to his gigs on a Lear jet, making runs to Vegas, to Colorado, back to Texas, often on the same day, because he could. He was a bold-faced name in newspaper gossip columns, celebrating his birthday with come-dian Richard Pryor and club-hopping with James Caan, as if he were a movie star, which he was intent on becoming.

He and Connie renewed their wedding vows at the home of Las Vegas impresario Steve Wynn on June 10, 1978. Steve was best man and his wife, Elaine, was matron of honor. Country pop superstar Kenny Rogers and his wife, Marianne, were witnesses.

Even though Willie and Waylon could both pull down $200,000 playing a stadium concert, they continued to book into the Golden Nugget with Steve Wynn for weeklong runs at $20,000 a week, ten shows a week, along with all the perks that went with it, mainly because it was Wynn and Vegas. Waylon especially appreciated the town’s proximity to Phoenix, where he would take Jessi to stay with her mother, a Pentecostal preacher, until he couldn’t take her religious fervor anymore.

Willie liked hanging with Wynn. They rode horses together on Steve’s ranch. “I was a roper in those days, a header,” Steve said. “Whenever Willie came to Vegas we’d go to the desert and ride. Willie can ride. He’s comfortable on a horse. I used to rope with Spider; he’d ride Chicaro. Spider was blazing fast. Spider had a great personality. You could call him like you call a dog. I promised Willie if I was ever done with Spider I’d let him have him. When I was done roping, I gave Spider to Willie, and he lived out his days on Willie’s ranch in Evergreen, Colorado.”

Four weeks after renewing his vows with Connie, Willie spent the Fourth of July weekend at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas as part of the Texxas World Jam with Waylon, then throwing an indoor picnic at the Austin Opry. They were trendsetters at the top of their game, topping the charts with hit after hit while making aviator sunglasses, leather vests, long hair under cowboy hats, and cowboy boots fashionable. The whole Family was in on the act. Before a Hollywood Bowl concert starring Willie and Waylon, flamboyant rock and roll entertainer Little Richard spied Paul English walking into the venue. “Nice cape, man,” Little Richard told him, paying a compliment. “I dig that!” His road gang, now led by a wiry ex-paratrooper called T Snake, could be found registered at hotels under the name Fast Eddie and the Electric Japs.

Willie had reached the pinnacle of celebrity. Two weeks after the release of
Stardust,
he had performed at the White House for President Jimmy Carter. Jimmy regarded Willie so highly that he invited him back for a private performance in September. While the president was away at Camp David, trying to broker a Middle East peace agreement, Willie played a show on the White House lawn for NASCAR, singing a duet with First Lady Rosalynn Carter. That night, before retiring to the Lincoln Bedroom, where he and Connie spent the night, he climbed on the roof of the White House and smoked a joint with one of the Carter boys.

The larger his stature grew, the more driven he became. Four albums (
Stardust, Red Headed Stranger, Wanted: The Outlaws,
and
Waylon & Willie
) had been certified platinum, signifying one million copies sold, the highest achievement in the business. For most artists, one platinum album would make a career. Four was unprecedented for anyone associated with country music. Rather than rest on those laurels, he stepped up his recording pace.
Willie Nelson and Family Live,
a two-disc set of his live show recorded at Lake Tahoe, was the first record to capture the dynamic of the Family Band in concert, with the two-bass, two-drum setup cranking out extended jams.

Even his old material, recycled and reissued, was charting. Record labels he’d never heard of—Creative Sounds, Double Barrel, Allegiance, Back-Trac, Eclipse Music Group, Hallmark, Sunset, Potomac, Delta, Tudor, Aura, Merit, Sierra, Ditto, That’s Country, Ronco, Soundsational, Quicksilver—were putting out product bearing his name. Most spelled it right, which was all Willie said he cared about. He might not have had a piece of the action, and not all the releases might have been legal. But every one was promoting Willie Nelson, something he’d been doing all his life.

Every other project was turning into a buddy concept. Booker T. Jones was added to the Family Band for
Willie Nelson Sings Kristofferson,
along with Jerry Reed, the talented Nashville guitarist who played on numerous RCA sessions with Willie in the 1960s, and Albert Lee from Emmylou Harris’s band. When Booker joined the Family Band for a
Stardust
tour, Bobbie Nelson dropped out. Booker T. also produced and played on a Christmas album,
Pretty Paper,
easily Willie’s most soulful Christmas sessions yet.

Willie finally got around to making an album with Leon Russell, whom he had once described as a “genius,” by tapping into the Great American Songbook again as well as the hymnal and the Nashville hit parade circa 1956 for the double album
Willie and Leon: One for the Road
. The dynamic-duo recording was almost an afterthought. Leon had lost a couple steps, mojo-wise. Too cheap and too petty to keep a steady band together and too reclusive to bother winning over new fans even as he was riding on the coattails of Williemania, Leon had faded ever so slightly. Like with Waylon Jennings, Johnny Bush, and Ray Price, when Leon wasn’t looking, his impish little redheaded friend snuck past on his way to superstardom. It didn’t matter. They sounded like a duo who’d been playing together all their lives in some sleazy roadhouse on their rendition of “Heartbreak Hotel,” the song Elvis made famous that was written by Mae Boren Axton, the songwriter who had advised Texas Willie Nelson in Vancouver, Washington, to go to Nashville to be a star. Willie and Leon’s version reached number 1 on the country singles chart in June 1979.

Their two bands merged into a single unit for a forty-five-date tour promoting the album and the single. Bobbie Nelson chose to stay home again while Leon played piano with Willie, even though her piano was tuned and set up for her to play every night.

S
TANDING
toe-to-toe with Leon, taking the W&W brand around the world, reviving pop songs with Booker T., playing in front of thousands of wild-ass fans night after night, smoking dope on the roof of the White House—no whim went unrealized. So he took it in stride when he found himself riding horses in Utah with a big movie star, although Connie admitted to being intimidated. The views around the Double R Ranch in Utah were dreamy; Hollywood westerns never had backdrops like this—majestic mountains with jagged peaks, verdant valleys with swift-running rivers, pristine wilderness in every direction. Doing all that alongside Robert Redford made it all the dreamier as far as Connie Nelson was concerned. But there they were, several weeks after the actor made famous for his role as the Sundance Kid extended an invitation to come visit, hang out, take in the view.

The actor and the musician had met a few weeks before at a Nashville fund-raiser at producer Billy Sherrill’s mansion. “We flew back the next day to L.A. on the same plane, sitting next to each other, talking about this and that,” Willie said. Somewhere along the way, Redford asked Willie if he’d ever thought about acting.

“Yeah,” Willie admitted. “You must like my conversation.”

While riding on a trail on his ranch, the movie star asked Connie Nelson if she thought Willie would be interested in being in a movie with him. “Yes!” Connie blurted without consulting her husband. She was starstruck, but so was Willie. Then again, Robert Redford was starstruck too, bearing witness to one of the great Hollywood truisms: The only people movie stars look up to are music stars. It’s one thing to perform in front of cameras on a set and have millions watch the filmed performance in movie theaters; musicians put it all on the line night after night in front of thousands, no reshooting or do-overs allowed.

The ranch vacation was followed by a call from producer-director Sydney Pollack. Did Willie want to be in Redford’s movie
Electric Horseman
? Willie realized Redford knew exactly what he was doing when he was talking to him on the plane and to Connie at the ranch. “He was checking me out to see if it was something I’d want to do,” he said.

Willie had had a few experiences with films beyond absorbing movies at the Saturday picture shows as a kid. He sang “Time of the Preacher” in
Renaldo and Clara,
the unreleased film documentary commissioned by Bob Dylan, and had hung out on the movie set of
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
in Mexico.

Willie didn’t bother preparing for the role. Redford had told him acting in movies was like having a conversation. “You don’t have to go to school for that,” Willie said. He played Wendell Hickson, sidekick and manager of Robert Redford’s character, Norman “Sonny” Steele, a washed-up drunk of a rodeo cowboy consigned to hawking Ranch Breakfast sugar-coated cereal on TV. Leading lady Jane Fonda was in the role of Alice “Hallie” Martin, a TV reporter and city girl who falls in love with Sonny, with actress and native Texan Valerie Perrine playing Charlotta Steele, Redford’s wife.

Redford and Fonda had drawn accolades for their roles in 1967’s
Barefoot in the Park.
Their star power and chemistry all but guaranteed success for the film. Redford did all his own horseback riding in the film rather than let a stunt double do it for him. “We did some of it in Utah and around Las Vegas,” Willie said. “We roped a horse. I had a lot of fun. It was an easy gig to do.”

In addition to reading lines, Willie contributed the song “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” to the movie soundtrack along with a new version of “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” With the movie promoting the single, “My Heroes” reached number 1 on the country charts in January 1980, less than a month after the movie premiere in New York.

While the plot of the comedic-romantic western was predictable,
Electric Horseman
was nonetheless nominated for an Oscar in the Best Sound category, more a tribute to Willie than to Redford’s and Fonda’s appeal.

Sydney Pollack was mightily impressed with Willie’s work, especially the way he delivered the memorable line “I’m gonna get myself a bottle of tequila and one of those Keno girls who can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, and kick back,” a line he cribbed from the Bud Shrake and Dan Jenkins novel
Limo.
Pollack urged him to continue movie work, but Willie needed no persuading. His childhood fantasy of being like Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Johnny Mack Brown at the picture show was being realized.

“He felt so comfortable with Redford, it wasn’t scary anymore,” Connie Nelson said of Willie’s cinematic debut. “He realized he could do it and do it well.” He hadn’t talked about making movies before Robert Redford called, she said. “But Willie’s got that little side that he keeps to himself always, and I think that was probably in that little pocket. It was just one of the things he didn’t want to say much about in case it didn’t happen. After Redford talked to him about it, it blew the doors open.”

By the time
Electric Horseman
was released,
Honeysuckle Rose,
a vehicle for Willie as Star, was already in preproduction. Again, Willie didn’t prepare other than to just be himself. “There was no acting there,” he said.

For the remake of Ingrid Bergman’s
Intermezzo,
directed by Jerry Schatzberg, about cheating with other women, Willie played a character named Buck Bonham, a country singer torn between his wife and his best friend’s daughter. He was surrounded by an all-star cast, including Dyan Cannon in the role of his long-suffering wife, Viv; Slim Pickens as Buck’s sidekick, Garland Ramsey; and Amy Irving as Lily Ramsey, Garland’s daughter and the Other Woman; along with Lane Smith, Mickey Rooney Jr., Emmylou Harris, Priscilla Pointer (Amy Irving’s mother), and Willie’s band in the role of his band. Emmylou Harris’s cameo was a consolation prize. The female folk-country singer was originally chosen to play Willie’s love interest, but pregnancy forced her to bow out and give up the part to Amy Irving.