In Austin at the beginning of May 1970, they lit the fuse for a march supporting the Kent State students being attacked there by the government. It marked a time of students opposing what was being done by the United States government. Again. And in Austin it marked the moment when thousands of students at the University of Texas were going to take to the streets to declare their hopes to stop where America was going–again. Needless to say the students who were killed were belittled by the government, and those who marched and were attacked, and killed by government soldiers had to put on their big boy pants tand take the attacks head-on. Needless to say in the year of 1970 and the sides of opposition were where they had been in America since the war of Vietnam had split the sides in two. But in Austin there was no turning around. The students and liberals there fought back, to their minimalized ability, and were being attacked arrested by the police and other law enforcement forces. This was not something to overlook. The battle was on.
For me, I had to watch on the sidelines where I was. I had just moved to the city after some problems in Georgetown, Texas, just 30 miles north of Austin. I had spent the past five months back in Georgetown, a time I had to really been careful of those months. A year and a half before I’d been arrested for a miniscule amount of marijuana, which was nevertheless still a felony narcotics offense that called for ten years to life imprisonment. I had been able to make a deal for five years probation and a felony conviction, along with a healthy fine. The courts were not playing around. It was inferred by my probation officer I should stay away from any and all demonstrations against the Vietnam War. So I did. I also had to keep my radar on high from being around those with free-flying behavior. Which meant rock & roll music and all that went with it. I had to turn my fun-meter off for where I went. When the judge had sentenced me in the Georgetown courtroom, his last words were, “Well, son, I have no doubt you’ll be back in front of me soon and when you are I’ll be sending you to Huntsville prison.” Standing before him when he said that I froze immediately. The possible sentence for any amount of marijuana possession was ten years to life. And I knew the odds were 50-50 I’d receive it. I was scared beyond fear. I felt like my life was ending all over again after my arrest.
But there were no choices except moving to Austin in the beginning of summer 1970. It was like a small wonderland in Texas, with music spinning around everywhere, young people at the University of Texas finally taking on a sense of freedom, and the 50,000 UT students starting to try out what life on their own felt like. I could sense way down inside me I was going to try and locate a place that offered me a way to live with joy. No matter what. I’d spent the previous 15 months waiting for trial, working 2 p.m. to midnight in a print shop as a typesetter and terrified to enter night clubs with my peers. Marijuana was everywhere, even in Houston, but it was clearly a city of strict laws and a police force ready to inflict as much pain as possible, a place where they arrested minorities and then handcuffed them and threw them in Buffalo Bayou. None made it out alive. It was called a minority probation. And I sure wasn’t ready for prison. That would be a one-way trek. So I worked setting type at Naylor’s Print and went home, and at midnight, listened to my dear records alone. It would do. If I could make it to summer maybe I could go hide in Austin and find some kicks that didn’t end in jail. Austin had taken on a bit of a freedom shine, where peyote could be found growing free in the Texas valley, and there was a nightclub called the Vulcan Gas Co. that booked bands like 13th Floor Elevators, Velvet Underground, Shiva’s Headband and the Conqueroo, along with blues pioneers Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Mance Lipscomb. At least it was something to look forward to. If I could get there. My dream level that summer of 1970 was bleak, but I could try and see a way ahead that would be better than what was life now.. Some times that is the only opening the future offers. A little step up.
But then, in August of 1970, the surprise of a lifetime opened up right before our eyes in Austin. A big empty armory had been taken over by a crew of hard-working hippies and opened as the Armadillo World Headquarters. It held over a thousand people and had genius booking agents that brought in Captain Beefheart & the Magid Band, Ry Cooder, Van Morrison, Maria Muldaur, Fats Domino, ZZ Top, and Freddy King. Every weekend some righteous rock & rollers or blues artists took the stages and educated the Austin audience with what music in 1970 consisted of. I didn’t miss a show and realized I’d landed in a city which was full of possibility. Local bands also started blooming, like Jimmie Vaughan’s blues renegades called Storm, and another called Paul & the Cobras, that included Stevie Ray Vaughan. And smack dab in the middle of town was Bevo’s Westside Taproom that featured artists like Kenneth Threadgill and Blind George McClain. Theadgill had the deepest roots. He had run a combination of gas station and bar in North Austin that was home to a group called the Waller Creek Boys, who featured a young singer named Janis Joplin. Mr. Threadgill loved the singer Jimmie Rogers from 1930s country music, as did Ms. Joplin, and they raised havoc every chance they got. When Joplin moved to San Francisco, Threadgill found players like Chuck & Julie Joyce, fiddler Cotton Collins and one-man blues buster Bill Campbell to light Bevo’s indoor/outdoor beer garden up. Along with a few other spots it almost felt like Ausiin was developing a healthy scene for live music. And as soon as the Armadillo started spreading the word about the city’s large audience of students and bohemians there was no turning back. Of course, straight ahead was the city’s nickname The Live Music Capital of the World, right up there with the origination of Cosmic Cowoys or (take your choice) Redneck Rock. Either way it felt like something was definitely going on in the middle of Texas. It was only a matter of time before the United States found out.
What Austin really needed was a leader to gather all the new musical names moving in and give the city a media face to lead this growing gang of musicians. And on October 28, 1972, right before the Presidential election between George McGovern and Richard Nixon, a small cosmic infraction occurred that offered the perfect solution. A crowd of Democrats came up with an outdoor music event in Austin’s large Zilker Park as a rally/fundraiser. And just by circumstance country & western guru Willie Nelson had relocated to Texas after his Nashville house burned down. He had a temporary home in Bandera a 100 miles from Austin and an apartment in Austin to call home and Nelson had agreed to perform at a gathering in the park tagged the McGovern Band Wagon a week before the Presidential election.
This was the year before Nelson initiated his first humongo 4th of July Picnic and there wasn’t really a precedent for it. But somehow the word got out, the Democrats got energized and several thousand people wound up in Zilker Park. With Willie Nelson performing smack dab in the hot seat at 3 p.m. Other artists like Jerry Jeff Walker, Steve Fromhoz, Storm with Jimmie Vaughan, Greezy Wheels, Turtle Creek and, with yours truly trying to play drums, our band Lea Ann & the Bizarros all bashing and wailing through a loud Sunday. About 2 o’clock backstage a large Oldsmobile pulled in and a man in a black leather jacket got it. He walked up to me and softly asked, “What city am I in?” He looked familiar and slightly disheveled, and I told him, “Austin.” He smiled, took his guitar out of the backseat and started tuning up. When I kindly asked his name he smiled and said, “Phil Ochs. I’m supposed to play today.” “Yes you sure are,” I happily mentioned and became his guide for the afternoon. That was Austin then. No big deal for anyone.
When Willie Nelson took the small stage the vibration level in the audience cranked way up, even though he hadn’t resurrected his career quite yet with 1975’s RED HEADED STRANGER album. That was still almost two years away. But when Nelson came out and took the small stage with drummer Paul English, bassist Bea Spears, pianist Bobbie Nelson, Guitarist Jody Payne, harmonica player Mickey Raphael and fiddle-player Mary Hattersley a complete cosmic charge of vibrations ran strongly through the Zilker Park crowd, and you could feel that something had shifted in Austin. And even stronger was the way Willie Nelson himself was looking at the audience. It was like he had landed in a new land, but quickly realized he knew everyone there. He immediately had the warmest, sweetest look on his face of anyone in Zilker, and knew he had made it to his new home. I have never seen such an instant wonder take over the look a person had who had just arrived, and it lit up the audience with an equal wonder. Willie Nelson was home and he and everyone standing there in the audience knew it. Over the next hour of songs that were played, the crowd grew louder and it was almost like Nelson was the one running for President, and it was a race he would have won without a doubt. It was the day that Willie Nelson not only found a new home, he also created a new niche for a music that got tagged a variety of handles including redneck rock and outlaw country. But no matter what it was called this would be the Texan to take it around the world. Unfortunately in 10 days Richard Nixon would win the Presidential election and in 1972 would begin his second stint in the White House. Even if it was to be shortened bt plenty of the President’s nefarious behavior.
In 1975 when Willie Nelson’s new RED HEADED STRANGER album was being readied for release, my friend Bill Bell stopped by the Austin Sun office where I worked as typesetter and music editor. Bell was also a silversmith and made things for Nelson and his family. He had an unlabeled cassette tape he asked me to review. It was coming out in a month. The only words scribbled on the front case read: NEW WILLIE NELSON. Nobody else in Austin had heard it . I listened to it on my player at the Sun, and while I liked the songs and the music, though it sounded a little light in the Sun’s paste-up room. The songs didn’t immediately sink in all the way. But I wrote a favorable piece, set the type myself and pasted it up on the empty page. And then went home to my little garage apartment in Tarrytown. Life was quiet and easy. And I would be getting off probation soon, and couldn’t wait for that freedom. Living on probation in Texas had its problems, especially a city like Austin searching for new freedoms. . The city had been nicknamed Hippie Heaven and between the Austin Police Department and the Highway Patrol life had its nervousness. But I could see a dose of freedom soon.
When I went to listen to RED HEADED STRANGER, I got high. And really listened and approached the songs from an expanded view.. And I heard an album I had not grokked previously that afternoon. The instruments were quietly pitched, and allowed each one to be heard like the players were in the room with me. And Nelson’s voice took on a totally new presence. They became strong enough to be brought into the room with me too, and the guitars felt only a foot away. My herbalized head was filled with warmth and wonder, and I kept saying to myself, “WHOA!. THIS IS SOMETHING DIFFERENT.” By the fifth song, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” I was in tears. I knew I was in the world of greatness. Willie Nelson greatness. And then I realized the review I had written earlier that day at the Austin Sun office was all wrong. ALL WRONG. I really hadn’t heard the songs in their fullness then. And I realized I had to go back to the Sun, take the first review off I had pasted-up on the page that day, get rid of it and start over. Luckily that was one of my jobs. So that night I returned to the Sun, and since it was locked and empty I went into the building through an unlocked window, peeled my first review off the page, typeset my new review and paste it on the now-empty page. WHEW! That was a close-one. RED HEADED STRANGER is an album that has gone on to sell millions of copies, and gave Willie Nelson a brand new–and hugely successful–career. I could hear him laughing about my whole reviewing escapade if he ever found out, with those blue eyes twinkling.
When I got back home that night after leaving the Sun with my new review of RED HEADED STRANGER firmly in place in tomorrow’s paper, I thanked my twinkling stars in the sky that when they took the finished pages to the printer and it started rolling off the press, my review of one of the best albums ever was exactly what I intended it to be, and realized that life really is a series of coincidences. Nelson’s label used the AUSTIN SUN review I’d done in much of their initial advertisements for the album, since I’d been the only one to review it that early then, thanks to Bill Bell’s gift of the advance tape and my crazy career of being a typesetter. And now, when I listen to RED HEADED STRANGER, as I do a lot, I feel a peacefulness that feels like a warm hand from a different planet is on my shoulder, telling me life is all right and just what it’s supposed to be. Somehow. And I recall again the smile on Willie Nelson’s face when playing at the George McGovern rally that day in Zilker Park on October 28, 1972. And how thinking back, he had a look that somehow said he knew that the future was going to turn totally in his direction, and he’d be able to touch the hearts and souls of millions and millions of listeners ahead of him someday. And that it was all meant to be. As the last words on the RED HEADED STRANGER album say, “I feel like I’m going home….” Don’t we all. Thank you Willie for all the help.
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