Collage: Simone Tieber
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Willie Nelson's Take on...
By Robert Huber
Willie Nelson is 69 now. From his poor rural upbringing in central Texas during the Depression and World War II (he and his sister Bobbie, who plays piano in his band, were raised by their paternal grandparents after being essentially abandoned by their parents) to his eventual success playing music in his own signature way, he has figured out a thing or two about life. Here is Willie's take...
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on Faith
"We've already been reincarnated about a million times, maybe. I grew up as a Protestant, and knew a lot about Baptists and Methodists and Catholics, but when I was a young man I started wondering what the rest of the world believed and went to the library and checked it out. And I started to believe you have to come back more than once, because even if you believe what Jesus said, 'These things I do, you'll do also. You'll be perfect as I am perfect,' there's no way you can achieve that in one lifetime. I believe the only way you can do it is to keep coming back and keep making all these mistakes we all make and learn from them. It's a lot like a university—you start out in the lower grades, and you keep going up the ladder until you graduate, and then you don't have to come back again."
"I think I've had many former lives, because I really haven't run into anything that I haven't seen before, or heard before, and I can put myself in the place of everyone I see. I had the feeling, even when I was young, that we were all the same, that I wasn't any different from anybody—we just have different motors."
"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."
"I don't think any person has any special knowledge about what God has planned for me and you any more than me and you do."
on Getting Older
"Getting older has confirmed a whole lot of things that I instinctively knew. One is that honesty is always the best policy no matter what the repercussions. Being open has helped me, with smoking pot or anything else. It's just a lot easier not to make excuses for who I am and what I do. And it's how I retain my sanity and still progress."
"I hope I'm making better music as I get older—that whatever I do, I get better as I go. It's a combination of getting wiser in mind, body, and spirit."
"I take things not only one day at a time, but one moment at a time, and keep it at that pace."
on Relationships
"It's easier now to be on the road and be married. (Willie's fourth wife, Annie, lives with their two sons, Lukas, 14, and Micah, 12, in Maui; Willie gets there when he can.) I started to let things happen, instead of trying to make everything happen—I just get out of the way and let it happen. That's one of the biggest things I've learned, and once I did, all my relationships improved, with everybody."
"There is no such thing as an ex-wife. If you had a relationship, just because you don't live with them anymore doesn't mean that they're a non-human being, and if they want to say hello, then there should be a hello."
"If you start out looking at somebody wondering whether he's good or bad, I think you're starting out in the wrong direction. I think we're all good and we're all bad."
"A wise man, (singer) Ray Price, told me that there's one thing he's learned in life. In fact, he called me on the phone to tell me this, and I said, 'What is it?' He said, 'Money makes women horny.' "
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