In 1975, John Lennon and Waylon Jennings‘ paths first crossed at the Uris Theater in New York City during the Grammy Awards. “I met John Lennon, and we were cutting up and everything at one of the Grammy things,” recalled Jennings of their first meeting in a 1996 interview with NPR.” “And I said, ‘Man, you’re funny. I didn’t know you were funny.’ I said ‘I thought you were some kind of mad guy or something like that.” Lennon responded: “Listen, people in England think you shoot folks.”
After their chance meeting, Lennon sent a partially typewritten letter to Jennings. In his salutation, Lennon mistakenly wrote “Dear Wayland,” which he corrected in writing (Waylon, Sorry about that”). Lennon also apologized for his typing and spelling at the end. In the letter, Lennon said it was nice to meet Jennings and mentioned his 1973 Mind Games track “Tight A$,” calling it “the HIT,” though he never released it as a single. Along with mentioning that he had seen Jennings on TV with his band, Lennon also hinted at the outlaw covering “Tight A$”: “It ain’t for someone else.”
“He wrote me this really nice letter I’ve still got at home that was just all over the place,” said Jennings of Lennon’s letter, which was later sold at auction in 2014 for $7,500. “Part of it was hand-written, part of it was typed,” added Jennings. “I got to meet him a couple of times after that. I was amazed at how much fun he was to be around.”
Though they struck up an amiable friendship, the two never had the opportunity to collaborate, though Jennings did add two Beatles songs to his catalog. Here’s a look behind the two Beatles songs he covered in 1966. and ’67.
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“Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” (1966)
Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
In 1966, Jennings already had two albums under RCA Victor and was cast in Jay Sheridan’s Western film Nashville Rebel, playing Arlin Grove, a man who has just been released from the Army with nowhere to go. With his guitar, he starts playing around Nashville and makes his way to the Grand Ole Opry. “I went and auditioned for that and I thought I was terrible,” recalled Jennings in his 1996 documentary Renegade Outlaw Legend. “But I was the one they wanted … I don’t know how in the world I did it ’cause I was out of it [on pills] most of the time.”
Jennings worked on the soundtrack to the film, which included songs written by him, along with Harlan Howard, and director Jay Sheridan. On the album, Jennings also covers the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” from Rubber Soul, which was producer Chet Atkins’ idea and was not featured in the film.
“Chet [Atkins] came up with the left-field idea of doing a version of The Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood,’” said Jennings in his 1996 memoir Waylon. “It was this kind of unpredictability that endeared Chet to me. He loved those Beatles tunes, and I did too.”
It was during these Nashville Rebel sessions that Jennings met his future wife Jessi Colter. “You would have thought that John Lennon and Paul McCartney had custom-written the song to be sung by a wanderlust character like Waylon,” said Colter in her 2017 autobiography An Outlaw and a Lady. “I was mesmerized.”
“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” (1967)
Written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon
After releasing Waylon Sings Ol’ Harlan in 1967, an album of songs entirely written by Harlan Howard, he got to work on two more albums that year, including Love of the Common People. Along with a song Johnny Cash, had written for Jennings, along with the Statler Brothers’ Lew DeWitt, called “I Tremble for You,” another Beatles cover slipped in: “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.”
Released on the Beatles’ 1965 album Help!, John Lennon described the song as something out of his “Dylan period.” Before Jennings, a band called the Silkie was the first to cover “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” which was produced by Lennon and featured Paul McCartney on guitar and George Harrison on tambourine; their version went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. That year, the Beach Boys also covered the song on their Beach Boys’ Party! album.
Photo: Waylon Jennings (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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