(4 of 6)
Despite the underlying unity of the progressive country style that burgeoned beneath Willie's—and Austin's—banner, its exponents were diverse and farflung. Some were identified with the city's rowdy club scene, like the hard-drinking Jerry Jeff Walker, whose life-style could qualify for federal disaster relief. Others, like Michael Murphey, started in Austin but moved on to other locales. Now living in Evergreen, Colo., Murphey has a cooler sound than many of the progressives and writes lyrics about themes like urban sprawl and the advent of fast-food chains where the Cavalry once rode. Still others, like Waylon Jennings, the only member of the movement to share superstar status with Willie, never lived in Austin at all. Jennings comes by his affinity through his outlaw tendencies and through his capacity to make honest and appealing music, as Willie does, out of all his disorder and early sorrow.
Today Willie has become not only an Austin but a Texas institution. He has performed with the Dallas Symphony and golfed with the then Texas Longhorns Coach Darrell Royal. Around the state he sees T shirts reading MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE AND WILLIE. He hears his name lightly mentioned for Governor. His father and stepmother—universally known as Mom and Pop Nelson—bask in the legend. Together they run Willie's Pool Hall in Austin, and Pop fronts a country band. Nowadays Mom and Pop also occupy Willie's $300,000 ranch house outside town. Willie's third wife, Connie, 34, a former Houston lab technician, got tired of the way fans treated the house as a combination crash pad and national shrine. So last year she and Willie retreated to a three-story Swiss chalet in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies.
Counting their Malibu Beach place, the Nelsons now have three residences, but Willie's true home is still the road. He travels 250 days a year, crisscrossing the country from bastions of the Bible Belt to glittering emporiums like Las Vegas' Golden Nugget, with forays to outposts like New Jersey's Meadowlands stadium, across the Hudson River from Manhattan, where he recently played before a youthful crowd of 62,000 (most of them fans of the headline act the Grateful Dead). He carries with him his "family" of 25 musicians, technicians and hangers-on, who use nicknames among themselves like "T. Snake," "The Beast" and "Fast Eddie." Some of their escapades are memorialized in Willie's song about his longtime drummer, aide and confidant, Paul ("The Devil") English, 45, who packs a .38 special on the bandstand:
... Almost busted in Laredo
But for reasons that I'd rather not
disclose...
We received our education
In the cities of the nation,
Me and Paul.