The Music Man 
Robert Redford 
“Willie’s God! Willie’s God! We Love Willie!”
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Bee Spears He’s real common. Once, we were on tour with Dolly Parton, and there was a big mud hole where our bus got stuck. She was fixin’ to pull in, and he went runnin’ around sayin’, “Wait, wait, wait!” And she said, “I like you. I like the way you talk. You’re real common, just like me.” And he said, “There ain’t nothin’ common about you, woman.”
Annie Nelson His songs come from a real perspective. Most people feel it, but they don’t know why. These are words that they would say or that they would want to say. He says it for them. But he says it succinctly and melodically, and that means that everybody who meets him says, “I feel like I know you.”
Evelyn Shriver Willie treats everybody the same. If you were the president, if you were the mail-room guy, if you were Bono, or if you were some kid on the corner with a guitar.
Johnny Bush I have noticed that he treats everybody the same, a business acquaintance, a stranger, a golf partner, a grandchild, a wife. Nobody that I can think of has ever gotten real close to him. And I think it’s a fear of getting hurt. My take on it is, when your mother leaves you with your grandparents when you’re six months old, to me that would tend to have you think, “Well, if I get close to someone, they’ll leave and I’ll get hurt again.”
Kris Kristofferson He’s able to be with a whole bunch of people, but he keeps himself private, and if he didn’t do that, he couldn’t be an artist.
HE’S SIMPLE . . .
Billy Joe Shaver What sums him up is “Simplicity don’t need to be greased.” Simplicity, you just slide it in there. He’s simple, but simplicity’s hard to hold on to and hard to keep.
Budrock Prewitt He’s a simple man, you know? He wears T-shirts and blue jeans. He wears the same style tennis shoe.
Mickey Raphael Material things mean nothing to him. We go to Europe, and he does total carry-on: a little shaving kit, a duffel bag with an extra pair of jeans, maybe not even an extra pair of jeans, maybe a T-shirt or something.
Evelyn Shriver It sounds crazy to say he lives a fairly simple lifestyle. Willie can spend money with the best of them—he has those buses and all the people that work for him. But on a day-to-day level it’s not that expensive. Willie likes to measure his money in inches. Like when he wants some money, it’s not, like, “I want five thousand dollars”; he takes his fingers and puts some space between them and says, “I want this much money.” You never know what the denomination is, but it’s that much money.
Annie Nelson He’s very right-brained. He is not mechanical at all. He thinks that everything’s broke if he can’t do it, so he gets mad. He wants to know how to work things, but I can be in the middle of working on something in the other room and he’ll come in five times and say, “Okay, I pushed this button and now I don’t have TV or my Internets”—he calls his e-mail his “Internets.” This is an all-day-long thing. He can be standing next to the light switch saying, “I can’t find the damn thing. How do I turn this thing on?” If he was standing on his socks, he would be asking me where they were.
Turk Pipkin He’s the most competitive guy I’ve ever met. He loves to win. And he will kick your ass—if it’s dominoes, checkers, or poker, forget it. In the long run, you get to that poker game, and if it’s for matchsticks, Willie wants to win ’em. And if it’s for $50,000, Willie wants to win it. It isn’t about the money; he just wants to win.
. . . AND HE’S A ZEN MASTER
Annie Nelson He has the same charisma that the Dalai Lama has. When Willie and the Dalai Lama get together, they’re like a couple of eight-year-olds. They’re laughing and talking and they crack each other up, and you know it’s a mutual exchange. I’m not saying he’s on the level of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, but there’s a recognition in each of them when they’re together. They can relate.
Ray Benson He has this Buddha-like quality. One of the greatest things I learned from Willie Nelson is how to listen. He’d be sitting in a room with all these people talking up a storm, and Willie’d be listening. Then he’d say the most intelligent, amazing thing. He would listen. And he’d sit there and just smile, kind of like what you think the Dalai Lama is supposed to do. There is that quality to him, and you know he ain’t no saint. He’d be the first to tell you that.
Kinky Friedman I’ve always called him the Hillbilly Dalai Lama. He’s a healer through music.
Kris Kristofferson He’s always had a Zen-like thing about him, even back in the sixties, when his first wife was sewing him up in a bedsheet and beating him with a broomstick.
Kimmie Rhodes Willie is a shaman, a really amazing spiritual person. But he’s also a regular guy from Abbott who likes salmon patties.
THE LEGACY
Faye Dell Brown Clements I don’t think he’s changed at all. I can still hear bits and pieces from the boy of sixty years ago. Willie has not forgotten where he came from. He bought the church here in Abbott. It would not have survived if he hadn’t have bought it. And he bought the little grocery store in Abbott. It would have closed too.
Jack Clements We put a new name on the grocery store. We call it Willie’s Abbott Cash Grocery. It probably won’t make any money, but he’s doing it as a service to the community. He said the community has to have a store. That’s his philosophy. The same thing about the church. Now we have services there twice a month. He does a lot of things for Hill County and the community. We did twelve $1,000 college scholarships through the church this past year for the four high schools in Hill County. He, of course, put the money up for that. When we made the awards to the different schools, he said, “Just tell them it’s from the Abbott Methodist Church.” He didn’t want any recognition.
Jerry Wexler I don’t think I have to get rhapsodic about Willie, but I once described him as the incarnation of humanity. The word comes from carna in Latin. It means “meat.” I called him the incarnation of decency and humanity.
Kinky Friedman His résumé reads like Jack London’s. I mean, he’s done everything—pig farmer, encyclopedia salesman, deejay—but I think all the time, since he was a kid, he really was a singer, really was a minstrel boy. He’s always wandered in the raw poetry of time.
Robert Redford He keeps experimenting, he tries new things, he starts new partnerships with other entertainers. He’s just happiest when he’s playing.
Evelyn Shriver He’s happy as long as he’s on that bus and gets to play music. It’s the most important thing to him, whether he’s in a club with a couple hundred people or a stadium with 20,000.
Turk Pipkin He still does 150 to 200 shows a year. He says every year he’s going to play less. He never does.
Ray Price Willie’s got so many concert dates. He’s like a mad witch trying to cover shit with a broom. He’s busy all the damn time. I don’t see how he ever gets any damn rest.
Budrock Prewitt I’ve heard some stuff that Willie already has in the can that is unbelievable. He’s got at least three sittin’ there that keep getting put back farther on the shelf because somebody else comes in with a better deal.
Kimmie Rhodes Willie has the basic spirit of a true artist that transcends age and fame and all that stuff. I think that he’s not the kind of artist who’d kick back and say, “Okay, I’m done. I’m going to rest on my laurels.” There’s something deep inside of him that had to create and had to have a vision. He always has new ideas. When I see him, he’s always grown artistically, and he’s moved into other genres, even if it’s pissed somebody off: “Here comes Willie making a reggae record or more gospel records.” That’s how he got the success of Stardust—he was following his heart.
Bruce Robison You can count on your one hand people who made a career in their own image, and they can do what they want to do. He created a sound, a style, and a vibe.
Kinky Friedman There were times with Willie when I wondered if he would survive certain situations in his life. He’s not only done that, but he’s just bigger than the whole, he’s bigger than country music. Willie is one of the few people that has a guaranteed legacy. He’s like Charles Schulz of Peanuts.
Kris Kristofferson He’s the closest thing to Stephen Foster since Stephen Foster. And he’ll leave a great legacy. He’s one of the few people who’s going to last much longer than he lives. His work is going to be appreciated as long as people listen to music.
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