Willie Nelson
Willie Nelson
Willie Hugh Nelsonis an American musician, singer, songwriter, author, poet, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie, combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Strangerand Stardust, made Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music. He was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed in the late 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. Nelson has acted in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCountry Singer
Date of Birth29 April 1933
CityAbbot, TX
CountryUnited States of America
My sister played the piano. She's two years older than me, and I always wanted to play something. So my grandmother got the guitar for me, and showed me a couple of chords to start off. And then I got me a book. Next thing you know, I was playing along with sister.
Writing books is fun because after I do a show for a couple hours, I'm in a bus for 22 hours. It's not hard for me to look out the window and tell a joke here and there.
When I would sell encyclopedias, I would drive down the road looking for a house with a swing set in the back, and I'd say, "Oh, those folks got kids. They need some books." I'd knock on their door and sell them a set of encyclopedias, and those books were from $300 to $600. I'd look around the house, and if there wasn't that much furniture in the house, I felt a little bad about selling a $600 set of books to people who couldn't afford a couch. So I didn't last at that job very long.
Gatewood Galbraith was a good friend, and a tireless advocate for the repeal of the ridiculous ban on hemp & marijuana. His book ‘The Last Free Man Standing’ says it all.
Eating organic, family-grown food is important to a lot of us, so that's why it's important to take care of the family farmers. They're the backbone of the country.
It's important because we are going around the world starting wars because over oil, and we don't have to do that. We can grow our own fuel here at home, help our farmers, help our environment, help the truckers ... help the local communities.
We've already been reincarnated about a million times, maybe. It doesn't make sense any other way.
I text and email my friends and family a lot, but that's about the extent of my high-tech-etude.
You want to be a good parent and you want to be a friend, and it's hard to be both. You have to balance it as well as you can.
I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans - the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today.
Don't try to change anybody. And they should let you be yourself, 'You loved me when you met me, so let's keep going!'
Cruelty is all out of ignorance. If you knew what was in store for you, you wouldn't hurt anybody, because whatever you do comes back much more forceful than you send it out.
Since I was a kid, music was what I wanted to do. I thought I could make it by my own talents. That's what I wanted to prove.
I grew up across the street from, you know, the Villarias, which was a great Mexican family there. In fact, there was three houses right across the street from me. So, day and night, I listened to Mexican music, and I'm sure, you know, my guitar playing, singing, writing, whatever, has a lot of Mexican flavor there, but it comes natural.