Willie Nelson “Always On My Mind”
In 1982, Willie Nelson was nearing fifty. He was coming off a historically fertile and critically acclaimed run, wherein he had left Nashville behind, moved to Austin, helped invent Outlaw Country and released several unequivocal masterpieces, including “Shotgun Willie,” “Phases and Stages” and “Redheaded Stranger.” Ten years earlier, in 1972, before Austin reclaimed and reinvigorated him, Willie had retired. Candidly, it would have been a well-earned retirement even then, at that young age. Before the age of forty, Willie Nelson was already one of the most important Country songwriters and artists of the twentieth century.
It was in this extraordinary second act -- this middle-aged miracle -- that Willie fully loosened up, perfecting the laconic jazz nods in his songs and fully mastering his behind the beat delivery. He found his home. He found his family. He played every city and town in the country. He wrote Country hits and Pop hits and Soul hits and future Standards. He was the well that never dried. And he did this every day of every year for most of the 1970s. Willie Nelson was a hippie industry. He was a benevolent empire. He was a Country utopia.
Something happened with Willie in the 80s, though. It’s hard to know if it was a creative choice or exhaustion or age or a dry spell. Or none of the above. I guess a lot changed that decade. Country music had gotten wind-swept into the realm of Adult Contemporary. Steel guitars and fiddles were replaced with more saxophones and synthesizers. The wind carried most everyone in this direction. Well, at least the big names. Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Eddie Rabbit and Conway Twitty all got nudged to the right by this wind. And, yes, so did Willie.
1982s “Always On My Mind” is the album where Willie goes full Pop Adult Contemporary. It was also an album that features eight (of ten) songs written by people not named “Willie Nelson.” It includes covers of Procol Harum, and Simon & Garfunkel as well as iconic songs, previously mastered by Elvis and Aretha. At first glance, without history or context, it is a curious set of choices, all the way down to the oil painted cover portrait of Willie, complete with a teal headband and silver jacket. Critics and a vocal minority resented all of this at the time.
And yet, it would go on to become the biggest Pop album of Willie’s career. It won him Grammys. It won him Country Music awards. But, nearly forty years later, it still stands out to the Willie-purists as the album where he traded in Country histrionics and his own voice for Pop maudlin and cheap sentiment. The songwriter’s songwriter had put down his pen. He’d edited out the lap steel and fiddle. It must have something to do with Reagan. Right? There could be no other logical explanation.
I was not yet ten when this album came out but I remember the title single clearly. I remember Willie Nelson, friend to Muppets. I remember him appearing on Solid Gold, with a ventriloquist before him and spandex-clad dancers after him. I didn’t know about Shotgun Willie or The Red-Headed Stranger. I just knew this kindly singer with a braid. And, like my mom and her mom, I really liked the guy. Nearly forty years later, without that baggage and context, it’s easy to see why.
Let’s be clear -- “Always On My Mind” is an Adult Contemporary record. But it’s also a simple, laconic, plain and occasionally beautiful set of (mostly) interpretations. It’s not Outlaw Country but it’s certainly closer to Folk Music, Country Music and Pop Standards than to Michael Bolton. The records Daniel Lanois did for Dylan are far more sedate and slick than this record. This record is subtle, deft and generally sparse. The band is pro but rarely in the front of things. The sound frequently brings to mind, not Dylan or Johnny Cash, but Elvis and Aretha, whose edges softened as they matured. The echoes of Elvis and Aretha are, in fact, explicit and implicit here.
Having been covered so many times since 1970, it can be easy to forget that Elvis had a top twenty hit with “Always On My Mind” a decade before Willie did. Reggie Young, from Elvis’ TCOB band plays on Willie’s record. And, listening to 1982 Willie, you can really hear how he and Elvis both grew so comfortable in carrying a tune from just behind the beat.
In retrospect, “Always on My Mind,’ the song, was imprinted upon me as a Willie Nelson song. But, in truth, it never belonged to Willie. It didn’t belong to Elvis. It doesn’t belong to the Pet Shop Boys. It’s one of the great oddities in pop music -- the song with no owner.
Aretha is there, as well. Willie covers “Do Right Woman. Do Right Man” Willie’s voice strains a bit to reach the highs of the chorus, seemingly aiming for Aretha’s version. His voice isn’t up to it. But that’s sort of the thing with Willie -- he wants to be a better man than he is even though he is so much greater than the sum of his parts. The same could be said about his duet with Waylon on the cover of “Whiter Shade of Pale,” which is perhaps more poignant because Waylon’s voice lacks the range and ease of Willie’s.
It’s easy to wonder what Willie wanted to add to songs like “Whiter Shade of Pale,” “Do Right Woman” and, most notably, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (forever owned by Art Garfunkel but best covered by Aretha, for what it’s worth). It seems that critics thought the answer was “nothing.” But, if you’re not looking to the follow-up to “Red Headed Stranger” and not preoccupied with Willie Nelson, the songwriter, it’s much easier to love Willie, the performer; Willie, the stylist. Willie the bandleader. He nurses everything with tender care. Everything slows down to a leisurely walk with the freedom to stop, look and listen to the jazz in each melody. He plays his guitar solos, like he sings and like he lives -- slowly, patiently, moving forward, even when he stumbles, and never racing, even when he’s behind.
Yes - there are a few modest clunkers. “Staring Each Other Down” is just an idea for a late night, post-whiskey apology. It never takes hold. It just falls asleep. And “Old Fords and a Natural Stone” takes off the country mask and goes full AC. The very Adult 80s sax becomes the fiddle.
But, the album closes with two Willie originals. “Last Thing I Needed The First Thing This Morning” is not only a great title, it’s also a great set up for a song about being left behind (and knowing you deserved it). “The Party’s Over” is a fun and appropriate closer. Willie reminds us just how good he is at writing choruses. He’s really the best. It’s a self aware, good time song about knowing that it’s time to shut down the fun and the mess, but also knowing that tomorrow we’ll give it all another go. Another song. Another album. Another tour.
In 1982, Willie Nelson was forty nine. He was already about 30 albums in, but it is possible that he was only half finished. He’d done all the things, with all the people. He had reinvented himself at least twice and probably one time too many for some people’s taste. Impossibly, though, when I hear these songs, he sounds like the exact same man to me. In his voice. In his songs. And in others’.