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Transcript
John Spong (voice-over): Hey there, I’m John Spong with Texas Monthly magazine, and this is One By Willie, a podcast in which I talk each week to one notable Willie Nelson fan about one Willie song that they really love. The show is brought to you by Boot Barn.
This week, another installment in our special, four-episode miniseason of the podcast, that we are calling One By Willie: Live from Luck! That’s right—these are interviews taped this past March at Willie’s ranch–slash–golf course–slash–Old West town with four artists who’d come to play his annual Luck Reunion, and that we recorded in an old Boles Aero camper-trailer that Willie’s great-nephew, Joe, tricked out just for these conversations and parked about a hundred yards from the main stage. And if, by chance, you are having a hard time picturing how cool that was, you need to get to the next big show in Luck and check it out for yourself.
This week, Americana singer-songwriter Charley Crockett—who may well be the current generation’s single greatest champion of real-deal, old-school, gut-punch country music—talks about another of Willie’s old Pamper demos, “Face of a Fighter.” It’s a fairly forgotten weeper that Willie cut for his publishing company in 1961 and then, for whatever reason, never did get around to recording for a proper album. But as Charley opines, it’s a song so strong that if just about any other country artist had come up with it, it would have been the best song they ever wrote. From there, he’ll get into the Willie songs he used to listen to when he was a homeless guitar picker playing subway platforms in New York City, and the truly wonderful way that Willie’s music almost—not quite, but almost—helped him avoid a marijuana bust a few years later.
Let’s do it.
[Willie Nelson singing “Face of a Fighter”]
John Spong: You said you wanted to talk about the Willie song “Face of a Fighter.” A lot of people probably don’t even know that song. What is “Face of a Fighter”? And what’s so cool about it?
Charley Crockett: “Face of a Fighter” is one of those forgotten Willie Nelson songs that, you know, in my opinion, he had too many good songs, so they couldn’t all be hits. And especially before he broke through in the seventies as a front man, or you know, he had commercial success, went to a broad American audience, he wrote so many great songs that, I mean, really, he was always going against the current when it comes to country music. I just think he was ahead of his time, vocally, and as a performer, just both of those things. I think he was just ahead of his time—took America a long time to catch up, with him being the actual, you know, the singer. And so many of those songs, like “Face of a Fighter,” to me, would be the best song another artist would ever come up with. And I had a hard time thinking of all the ones I wanted to bring to you guys that nobody had mentioned. But I picked “Face of a Fighter” because I actually had one of the—it’s like a European kind of bootleg, Exact Records. You know all those?
John Spong: I know some of those companies. And when someone brings up one I haven’t, I’m like, “Well, yeah, there’s a lot. And it’s obscure, isn’t it?”
Charley Crockett: Yeah. Well, and—
John Spong: Exact.
Charley Crockett: Yeah. I don’t think those came out on—I don’t think “Face of a Fighter” ever appeared on an LP, or that got pushed by a label. At the time it wasn’t on Liberty, none of the RCA stuff. And I heard it through . . . I just buy, especially if I see vinyl of his—it’s all repackaged stuff, but if it’s that early sixties stuff, I always buy it. And a lot of those might even have outlaw, bandanna-wearing Willie Nelson . . .
John Spong: Willie on the cover.
Charley Crockett: . . . on the cover. And it’ll be a lot of his earliest recordings. “Everything but You.” He has “Blame It on the Times.” All of these songs, I believe, would be hits for other artists. I think they could be hits right now. And “Face of a Fighter,” to me, it reminds me—I just picture Willie Nelson driving down a highway in the middle of the night in Houston, Texas, coming up with “Face of a Fighter,” right alongside “Night Life.” I think it’s that good. “Mine is the face of a fighter . . . My heart has just lost the fight.” There’s just something that he captured in, I don’t know, the way that it could be so devastatingly sad, but the way he delivered it made it, I don’t know, almost, it’s comforting. “Face of a Fighter,” to me, is a very sad song that is delivered in a way that it comforts you in your sadness, in a way that nobody else ever achieved that in country music—not quite.
John Spong: I say, let’s spin it.
[Willie Nelson singing “Face of a Fighter”]
John Spong: What’s that do to you?
Charley Crockett: Reminds me of why I sing and write country music. Puts me in . . . tells me that everything I’ve been doing to get this far, you know, puts my mind at ease about doing it. I feel like I’m chasing Willie down that same late-night Houston, Texas, freeway.
John Spong: There you go.
Charley Crockett: You know what I mean? I want to stay on that freeway.
John Spong: Well, that’s it. This is kinda the golden era of country songwriting, which I think of, at least, as the early sixties and, you know, right after Harlan Howard, and Hank Cochran, and Willie, and Roger Miller, and Mel Tillis, and those people get there. When people talk about you, for whatever reason, when I read about it, they always want to compare you to the late sixties, early seventies, which is a slightly different time and different sound. But, lyrically, you’re this. Because for me, like when I look at this, when I look at an old Willie song, or any song that I dig, I guess, from that period, where did it start with? And this started—they usually start with a line or a metaphor. And the line you just quoted, you know: “Mine is the face of a fighter / But my heart has just lost the fight.” You know this song started with that line. And he said, “Oh, we’re going to turn the whole thing into a fight metaphor.” And so you have “round one,” and you have “my heart.” What does he say? “I fought for your love with all my might.” That’s a song that shows up in a hundred songs, I’m sure. But here, it’s got that extra thing, with the old-school country metaphor. It’s interesting—with Willie songs, there’s others that have more thought. I don’t want to say deeper thought, but they might have a little more going on. This is pretty basic. Sixty-one, he had just got there. He’s just doing it.
Charley Crockett: I mean, I’ve heard him say in movies that if you can get the point across without saying anything, do that. And I would argue that it’d be awful hard to paint a picture of the idea in this song better than this. And you know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of Bob Dylan. It reminds me of the way that Dylan took a song like “Who Killed Davey Moore?” and used the culture around boxing, and attached all these metaphors to larger American society and a lot of the issues within the country. This reminds me of that, but it’s more universal. He’s singing about love, and that’s the one thing that everybody listening can relate to. Because, maybe not—I love songs that are making points about culture and society. But those points don’t always come across. And this is, to me—I like songs like this, whether it’s Willie Nelson or Bill Withers, where I can put everything that I’m going through, maybe the really deep stuff in the dark corners, that maybe I’m going to get misunderstood for, I can pour it into those simple lines. And that says it all. And my girl, Taylor Grace, has said this a lot about him. The phrasing on a song like this reminds me of—she said this, and I agree—Dinah Washington. You know, that type of jazz phrasing. I mean, the Ray Charles comparisons are there, and we know that the Sinatra and Ray Price and all these people, you can hear those influences. But his unusual and amazing—I mean, nobody in country music ever phrased like that, in that era, period. Not before that and not since. It reminds me so much of Dinah Washington. And she also was a firebrand that was, what’s the word? Incomparable.
John Spong: Yeah. Well, it’s funny, ’cause a lot of the people that come on here to talk about Willie with us have sung with him. But to be more accurate, I would have to say, tried to sing with him, because they even talk about, like, “Jesus Christ, that’s impossible.”
Charley Crockett: Yeah. You can’t phrase with him. You can sit there and practice all year, and you can’t phrase with him. And that, to me, is an achievement. And then, of course, when he gets in the seventies, and a lot of the songs that he’s singing are a lot easier to sing along to. But you’d be mistaken in thinking that just because those are easier to sing along to, that you can write those or you can do it like that, because he’s carrying all of these songs all the way there with him. And the reason that everybody always wants to talk about the late sixties and the seventies is because that’s the era that everybody’s aware of.
John Spong: Right. That’s him breaking.
Charley Crockett: That’s him, and a lot of people. That’s country music going mainstream in a way that it never had before. So Willie, and Waylon, and the boys . . . I’m a huge fan of all of that material, especially Willie’s stuff. And he was saying on Shotgun Willie, the first record he cut at Atlantic, right?
John Spong: Yeah.
Charley Crockett: He later described recording that record as him clearing his throat. And you can see that. It’s like Willie’s got his hands on the wheel at that point, and he’s starting to drive to this place where he changed the face of American music. But I always tell people that are always talking about all this type of stuff, I’m like, “There’s no sense in asking Willie Nelson what size boot he wears,” because you can’t fit the shoe if you haven’t paid the dues. And so Red Headed Stranger, and Shotgun Willie, and Phases and Stages, and Yesterday’s Wine, and Stardust, and all that stuff, you know, you’re hearing—he’s singing through the face of a fighter. He’s the guy that wrote all those songs, man. And he was ahead of his time. Dylan said that. Dylan said when he first got signed to the publishing deal—I can’t remember which one of those old-timers it was that said it to him, but they said, “If you’re any good, you’re probably going to be three to five years ahead of the public. And that’s yet to be seen with you, young man.” And then, of course, Dylan was absolutely ahead of his time.
John Spong: He went on ahead and hit.
Charley Crockett: And so did Willie. And Willie’s so interesting because Willie was writing some of the greatest songs that would become American standards right from the beginning, in terms of when he shows up in Nashville. And that’s a testament to how hard he played the Texas circuit—the Texas beer joint, the Texas dance hall.
[Willie Nelson singing “Face of a Fighter”]
John Spong: Well, so, I forget exactly what you said a second ago, but you were talking about life being hard and needing music like this. I know this much about your biography. What Willie do you listen to when you’re living on the street, supporting yourself, playing the guitar in a subway station?
Charley Crockett: On the street, man, I was listening to so much. I was just living so hand in mouth. It was so many different sounds. I had a Greatest Hits . . . one of his random greatest-hits compilation CDs. And I had, at that time, in terms of dealing with Willie, I was in a bad way with the law. I got in a lot of trouble transitioning out of street life, trying to make it onto a stage, and be electrified, and be taken seriously. And I really, at that time, when it comes to Willie, I was really gravitating towards two songs, “Me and Paul,” and “Bloody Mary Morning.” And actually, I got in a lot of trouble in Virginia.
John Spong: [Laughs] Sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing.
Charley Crockett: Oh, no. It’s all right.
John Spong: Well, I should let you finish before I laugh. This might not be funny at all.
Charley Crockett: I was listening to that great—I was driving through southwest Virginia, and I was listening to that Greatest Hits compilation. And I was listening to “Bloody Mary Morning” when I got pulled over by this state police officer. And when they pulled me out of the car, and they busted me, and they found all this stuff on me I shouldn’t have had, and I knew I was going to jail, right before they busted this suitcase open that, you know, I knew I was done, they were making fun of me, these cops. They were making fun of me because they knew they had me, and they saw how nervous I was. And we were on the back side of this little car on the side of the freeway—it was off of 81, but on like a exit ramp—and they were like . . . and I was just doing my best. I was telling them, “I’m a country music performer. I’m on my way to a show. I got to make this show, man.” They said, “Well, you don’t even have a driver’s license. You ain’t taking this car nowhere.” And I said, “Okay.” And I had a Telecaster, that I’d bought off a guy on the street in New York City several years prior, in its case. And they were like, “Yeah, boy, you’re a country music singer. I’ll bet you are. Why don’t you play something for us right now.” And I swear on my mother’s soul—and she’s the best person in this country, greatest person I know. So I swear on her soul this is true. I pulled out that guitar, nervous as hell, and the only song that I could think to play, that, I swear to God, was “The Party’s Over,” man. I could not think of anything. [singing] “Turn out the lights / The party’s over / They say all / Good things must end.”
[Willie Nelson singing “The Party’s Over”]
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