My Interview with Waylon Jennings

Waylon Jennings was/is my favorite artist of all time and I finally had the chance to interview him in late 1993, when I was the editor of Country Fever magazine and he had re-signed with his longtime label RCA and was about to go into the studio to record the album that would be Waymore’s Blues (Part II). Unfortunately, country radio in 1994 couldn’t be bothered with anything but Garth and Shania so the album was Waylon’s last for a major label. He did record for independent labels before his death in 2002. Looking back at this interview, I can see at the time we both had hopes for the future of country music. Unfortunately, we were wrong. 15 years later things are just as bad if not worse.

LC: How do you feel about re-signing with RCA?
WJ: I’m really happy about that. My name on labels without Nipper didn’t never look right! It was on so many of them. It was a great thing, all those years with RCA and all those songs and everything. What really made me notice it was when they started to put out this boxed set, a forty-song boxed set that’s just been released this month. I told Marylou [his assistant], if they need any help with it, tell them to call me. That was before there was any talk about me re-signing. I got to working with them with that, and my lawyer told me, “They’re really interested in you coming back.” I had decided not to record any more, because most stations have a policy not to play anybody past 1986. They have a thing. That, and anybody over 40. That’s the way the labels are, a couple of them. My name had been used--if you could sign Waylon Jennings or somebody under forty, who do you take? You take the guy under forty. So that came back to me, but that’s all right. Being a priority, you know—I’ve been one! (laughs) And I don’t expect to be one forever, and I never did expect to, but I still have some things to do, and I’m gonna try to cut an album. I’m gonna work with [producer] Don Was. We’re gonna get in the studio right after the first of the year and try to do something so good they can’t ignore it.

LC: Are you getting tapes from songwriters?
WJ: You know what? I have written more songs when I finally told ‘em forget it, I don’t think I’ll record anymore, I started writing songs! (laughs) I guess I just kind of felt loose, and just started writing stuff. I’ve written some really great songs, even if I have to say so. I know a good song when I hear it. And I’ve got a couple of things by Jimmy Webb that are really good that I’m going to take in. I’m going to do something really different. I really like Don Was. He’s such a good man, and such a genius about music. I think we’re going to have a real good time.

LC: How do you feel about the RCA boxed set?
WJ: You know what? I couldn’t be happier about anything than I am that boxed set. I listened to that myself. Garth Fundis put that together, and a lot of people worked on it, and they tried hard and did a wonderful job. You know what? If I’d had complete control, I’m sure that I wouldn’t have done as good a job.

LC: I would have put in “Ain’t No God in Mexico” and “Slow Rollin’ Low,” left out “Green River.”
WJ: You know what? I might have done the same thing! (laughs) I’d forgotten about “Ain’t No God in Mexico.”

LC: I wish they would put out the Honky Tonk Heroes album as a CD. [They did a year later.]
WJ: That was the change of the music. That’s what made the change. That’s where it turned the corner. That’s when we got a hold of—got a foot in the door. From there on—that was the simplest album I ever cut in my life. Some of those songs don’t have but three instruments on them, and that was on purpose. I’ll talk to them. Maybe we can get them to do it! That album needs to be alltogether, not take two or three songs out of it. I don’t think people would understand it as well. Nowadays, it would really be a novelty, the way the music is now.

LC: A few years ago, most new guys sounded like Merle and Lefty. Now I’m hearing an awful lot of you in Clint Black’s “We Tell Ourselves.” That sounds like a Waylon song.
WJ: I tell you, that’s a real compliment. I think there’s some great artists out there. I think there’s a lot of bad rock ‘n’ roll being done. That’s the way it always happens. When rock ‘n’ roll does that, when it goes off and self-destructs, country music becomes big, as far as I can see. Then when it comes back with something big, it’ll kill country music again for a while. That’s kinda the way it always is. Travis Tritt, I think, is the best thing out there. He’s so talented, and he’s got that edge. He’s a rocker. I love what he does.

LC: He has a bad attitude, and I like that in a guy.
WJ: He’s a mess! (laughs) He’s got that attitude. You don’t want to mess with him, cause he’ll climb your tree—and trim it. (laughs)

LC: I think Marty Stuart’s wonderful.
WJ: Marty’s just fine. I like Marty. I’ve known him a long time, and he’s a real good kid.

LC: Marty made an interesting comment about how for the first time, country is making disposable stars.
WJ: That’s sad. I think there’s going to be a couple of reasons why. Some of these people are doing all these videos, and there’s always been a thing called overexposure, and television is good at that. If you wanted to be overexposed, you just got on television too much, and people would—you can’t sell tickets that way. There has to be an air, a little bit of mystery about someone to make somebody want to come out and spend thirty dollars to see him. Some of these guys are not selling any tickets. They’re a lot of fun to do, those videos, and I’ll probably do one or two more. But I don’t think you should take a song and get a bigger hammer and make a video fit it. If it don’t just cry out for one, why do it? Usually you can see it in your mind immediately, or you should be able to. Make it be the reason why you’re doing a video instead of doing a video and just forcing it on it.

LC: “Wrong” was a great video.
WJ: I thought that was a good video, and I had fun doing that. Those boys are really good. The girl at the end killed me. They were gonna take her off, and I said no,no,no, you’re not gonna take her off! (laughs) Every word she said, you leave it in there! So we did.

LC: I hear you’re going to be in a remake of Maverick?
WJ: They’re doing a movie of Maverick. Jim (Garner) and I have been friends for years, and he wanted me to come out and do a little cameo, so I’m going to do it. I don’t do too much of that. Unless I think it’s going to be some fun, I won’t do it at all, because I’m not an actor.

LC: Is it true you’re going to be on Married With Children? [He was, in 94.]
WJ: I don’t know for sure. I haven’t seen the script yet. They had one written at one time where I did (play himself) but I don’t know what this is for sure. I’ll have to wait until I get the script. But I’m looking forward to that, because they look like they’re a bunch of fun people. {They came to his record release party in the fall, and they were.]

LC: How has the big money changed Nashville?
WJ: Well, it’s big business. It’s really big business. I think the record companies tend to grab more control. I was watching something that Jackie Gleason had said about television, and I think it’s the same thing with the record companies. When they get you in there and they give you all this money, then they start taking more and more control away from you, because you get to liking that lifestyle, and you’re afraid you’ll lose it, which is a pretty good old trick. You get addicted to the lifestyle, and you don’t want to do anything to lose it. I think that’s what’s happened to a lot of these people. They let the companies just control things.
I was with a label and they brought in this young guy telling me he was my biggest fan, and that he loved my music—then all of a sudden he wanted to tell me how to do it. Here he had about four years in marketing, graduated out of college and they put him in charge of the music. That’s stupid. I don’t even know what I’m doing. How in the hell’s he gonna know what I’m doing?

LC: If he was smart, he’d send you into the studio, give you some money and tell you to bring the tape in when you finished.
WJ: They can’t do that. Part of it is an insecure thing.

LC: I do notice that now we have a couple of real music guys and not marketing guys heading up labels, i.e. Thom Schuyler [RCA] and Tony Brown [MCA].
WJ: Thom Schuyler is one of the reasons that I didn’t even hesitate about going back to RCA. Jimmy Bowen is an artist. Thom Schuyler and Jimmy Bowen, if they tell you something, you can take it to the bank. They put a face on a company. Most of the times, all through the years, I could never get an answer out of one department. I had to go all the way to New York. But when I was with Bowen over at MCA, it was a wonderful time. He’s wonderful to record with and he’s one of my favorite people in the whole world. A lot of people think he’s rough, but I’ll tell you what, all it is is he’s honest. He’ll tell you, that ain’t no good. You’ll say why, and he’ll have the reason.

LC: Lawyers should not be telling people how to make music.
WJ: CBS has just signed some lawyers to head up their companies and they’re gonna be sorry. [Waylon had just left CBS.] You gotta have music people to play music. You go in Thom Schuyler’s office and there’s a feeling in there that there’s somebody in there that cares about the music. It isn’t a guy who cares about selling records, although he wants to sell just as many as anybody else, but first of all, he wants you to know that he respects you and what you do. Maybe he don’t understand it, but I know he does respect me. He’s a great writer, and I enjoy listening to the things he’s written, and I was so happy—in fact I called him right after he got that job, either that or I sent him a card that said “it’s great to see somebody from the music end of the business heading up a company.”

LC: They don’t seem to want to sign artists whose looks aren’t “videogenic.”
WJ: Videogenic—that’s wonderful. I’ll steal that but you’ll get no credit! (laughs) I’ve heard that. I sat right next to a table of some heads of a company, and they were talking. They said “If he’s not good-looking and young, don’t even send him around.” They don’t even want to talk to them.

LC: I think we’ll see a backlash.
WJ: Yeah, and I tell you what. The dust is settling now. It’s fixing to really settle. Country music right now reminds me of rock ‘n’ roll music in the late sixties and early seventies, when it really became big business. It was a fun time when rock ‘n’ roll first hit, Elvis, Fats, Little Richard, all of them. Then about in the seventies it became universal, and big business and big money, and that’s what happens here. They took a lot of the fun out of it.

LC: A lot of fans are getting pissed of at the way stars who aren’t 100 yrs old are getting passed over.
WJ: I guess that just goes with the territory, but I never thought it would happen in country music. It used to be kinds like blues, you had to have paid some dues and been around a little while before you got into it and really got to knowing what you were doing. But it’s not that way anymore. I hear feedback a lot about it, but that’s OK. I can go on. I’m still what you call a hard ticket seller. Probably as long as I want to I can go on and play, because I do good shows, and that’s it. I haven’t had a hit record in about ten years, but the crowds have been growing lately.
The only thing I’ve been able to tell artists is there’s always one more way to do things and that’s your way, and you should have a right to try it once at least. I had a real battle when I first came here. They just didn’t want you to do that.

LC: Some people don’t know that you were as big as Garth Brooks in the late seventies. The tabloids were going through your garbage.
WJ: I was talking to Joe Galante not too long ago. We’ve remained friends all through the years, and he was telling me, nobody sold records like that. He said all of a sudden I was selling something like 500,000 a month. I have one album that’s sold almost five million, and I have a lot of platinum albums. I had the first platinum, the first quadruple platinum, and in those days, that was a lot of albums. Before we had the Outlaws album, that was the very first one. That was something I really produced myself. I just went in there late at night at RCA and put it all together. It just kept selling, and most of those tracks were ten years old when I put it together.

LC: A lot of people don’t know how the “Good Hearted Woman” duet came about.
WJ: I did it live, then Willie came in and I took my voice off and put his on. We were just messing around one day, and I said let’s go cut a record. We were just in there having fun and when we got through, I put the crowd noises wherever I wanted them. It was from a live album I did in Texas, and Willie wasn’t even anywhere around. So we put his voice in there, and I turned to Neil Reshen, who was managing both of us, and I said, “Now get it out.” That was the first time they had put out a song of two artists on different labels.

LC: You don’t see that kind of spontaneity now.
WJ: Yeah, they’re pretty well-controlled. In any kind of music at all, when the record companies and producers get in control of it, it usually dies. That’s what bothers me. But I tell you, we’re here to stay. Country music is here to stay. It really is. The dust is gonna settle, and the ones that got it and the ones that paid their dues will be there. The ones that haven’t, won’t. The worst thing that’s happening right now is bad songs and rewrites. The rewrite the old ones. I don’t know where they’re going to find anymore cliches. They’ve gone through them all. I like to use those too, I have fun with them, but write a good song with it. That’s the only thing I can gripe about. But you know what? A lot of that is the record label and the producers’ fault. Here comes a guy in there—there’s a thing people don’t know about—if you’re an artist and singing, you’re a writer and you write the song, you write it and you do it on the label, they don’t pay you full royalty on it, if you write the song and sing it too. They penalize you for writing, and that’s where a lot of these things are coming from.

LC: I notice you’ve worked with Billy Joe Shaver recently.
I love that thing we did, “Oklahoma Wind.” [From Shaver’s 1993 Tramp on Your Street album.] He’s been around griping. He’s a big griper. He’s something else.

LC: Is there anything else you still want to do?
WJ: Me? I don’t even worry about that. I figure if I’m supposed to do things I’ll do ‘em. I’ve always wanted to record with B.B. King. I don’t know if I’ll get that done. I’d love to do that. I think he’s one of the great artists of all time. But we need the right song. Maybe someday I will.

LC: Sometime soon, maybe somebody like you who’s 28 years old and has a really bad attitude will come along to shake things up.
WJ: You know what—I hope they do, because they deserve people like me! (laughs) [This exchange would come back to haunt me. I’ll tell why in a future post.]