“People in Nashville Weren’t Ready”: How Willie Nelson Rewrote Music City After It Almost Broke Him

Willie Nelson is synonymous with country music these days, but back in the late 1960s, the genre’s capital city of Nashville, Tennessee, almost broke him before he could land his big break. Nelson found himself at an all-time low, professionally and personally.

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It would only take a few years for Nelson to realize that the problem wasn’t that he wasn’t ready for Nashville. Music City just wasn’t ready for him.

The Aspiring Country Star Reached An All-Time Low

While it’s hard to imagine a world in which Willie Nelson isn’t one of the biggest names in country music history, such was the case for a still straight-laced-looking Nelson who was trying to cut his teeth as a songwriter in the 1960s. He had some successes with other people recording his songs, most notably “Crazy” and “Hello, Walls.” But Nelson hadn’t found his own place in the spotlight yet, and it was starting to wear him down.

One fateful night at Tootsie’s, Nelson was having a drink and thinking of an old Lightnin’ Hopkins song: I’m gonna lay my head on somebody’s lonesome railroad line, let that ol’ midnight special ease my troubled mind. Severely depressed and deep in the throes of alcoholism, Nelson thought he might try to do the same. Not being near any railroad tracks at the Tootsie’s bar, he decided to lay in the middle of Broadway and wait for a car to run him over. “I lay, prepared to stay,” Nelson later wrote in Me and Paul: Untold Stories of a Fabled Friendship, per People. “Maybe it was the bad weather and the late hour, but there was no traffic. Was I relieved? Was I disappointed? Can’t say for sure. All I know is that I got up, went back to Tootsie’s, and had another drink.”

Shortly after, Nelson’s house burned down. At that point, the singer took it as a sign to get out of Music City and return to his native Texas. The move would prove incredibly beneficial for Nelson, who strengthened his creative voice in his home state. His transition out of Nashville helped spur the Nashville-reject offshoot of country music, outlaw country, with like-minded artists like Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson.

Willie Nelson Knew Nashville Wasn’t Ready For Him

Some artists would hang up their guitars for good after going through what Willie Nelson did in the early years of his career. Fortunately, Nelson never did. He continued honing his unique blend of country and jazz while playing shows across Texas. Several years after making his move out of Nashville, the red-headed stranger could see the writing on the wall more clearly. “People in Nashville weren’t ready for what I was doing at the time,” Nelson said in a 1974 interview with Zoo World.

“I think now a lot of the people are listening to lyrics more, and they’re finding what I was saying ten, fifteen years ago wasn’t all that far out. It made sense back then, but there might have been some chords or phrases that weren’t country. So, they didn’t know what to do with me exactly. I was only writing what I was feeling.”

Indeed, even those negative, painful feelings turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Nelson. “I think my best material came out of depressive moods when I was really down and out, feeling sorry for myself,” the singer mused. “When you get happy, you don’t want to write. You don’t want to do anything. I’m going through that kind of period. I know after enough time elapses, I’ll start getting guilt feelings, and I’m sure something will depress me enough to write about it. It always has.”

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