One of the many pitfalls of being a celebrity is that the general public often questions your authenticity. Even if a musician is authentic, and what you see is, in fact, what you get, there are still loads of people who call BS. However, one individual who seemingly doesn’t have this happen to them frequently is the realist of the real, Willie Nelson.
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Willie Nelson has always been unapologetically himself, and he’s introduced the world to his troubador and colorful lifestyle through multiple different avenues, but of course, most notably his music. In a handful of his songs, Nelson sings about gunfights, smoking dope, treacherous scenes from the road, and generally, stories that could fill the pages of a short story collection. The things mentioned above and their adjacent elements are certainly part of Nelson’s “brand.” However, they were not fabricated out of thin air. Rather, they are true, and here are three off-the-wall Willie Nelson stories that prove the man practices what he preaches.
He Bailed an Acid-Tripping Famous Actor out of Jail in New Mexico
In the mid-1970s, the iconic film actor, Dennis Hopper, known for Easy Rider and Apocalypse Now, shot a tree in Taos, New Mexico, because he mistook it for a bear. Needless to say, Hopper was on drugs, and consequently, he was arrested for the irresponsible use of a firearm. However, his knight in shining armor was none other than Willie Nelson.
Recalling the incident, Hopper stated in Nelson’s autobiography, “Come on, man, who do you think you’re kidding? You’re gonna lure me out and yell jailbreak and blow my a** away! But I thought, ‘Hey, be cool, you are, after all, hallucinating all this.’” “So I walked out of jail and got into Willie’s Mercedes with him and his wife Connie and his golf pro Larry Trader. We drove across the desert towards Las Vegas,” concluded Hopper.
Children’s Jump Ropes and a Flustered First Wife
To truly relay and capture pain in a song, one has to live through it. Willie has seemingly lived through such pain, and a fairly public romantic pain that Nelson has shared with his fans was between him and his first wife, Martha Matthews, whom he married in 1952.
In his book, Willie: An Autobiography, Martha explained the time she tied a drunk Willie Nelson up with their kids’ jump ropes and gave him quite the beating. Regarding her reasoning behind it, she stated in the book, “Hell, we were just kids trying to deal with being married and having babies, but no money and no home life to speak of… Neither me nor Willie knew what to expect from marriage. We thought being young and in love was all we needed.”
The Reason We Know Him As “Shotgun Willie”
Arguably, the most famous off-the-wall Willie Nelson story is the story about how he got his name “Shotgun Willie”, and the story that inspired the song of the same name. If you frequent this website and or are a true Willie Nelson fan, then you likely know this story. However, if you are not, then here is a brief retelling from Willie, per his autobiography.
“I ran for my truck and drove to the place where Steve and Lana lived and slapped Steve around. He really pissed me off. I told him if he ever laid a hand on Lana again, I would come back and drown his a—. No sooner did I get back [home] than here came Steve in his car, shooting at the house with a .22 rifle. I was standing in the door of the barn, and a bullet tore up the wood two feet from my head. I grabbed an M-1 rifle and shot at Steve’s car. Steve made one pass and took off.”
Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
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