Miraculously, just the other day I stumbled across the audio file of my interview with Waylon — so good to hear his voice, along with the late Franki Secunda, my dear friend and book agent (RIP my dear Franki — and you too, Rock!) — which prompted me to publish this piece. I think you’ll get a kicking hearing Waylon tell this story and a whole bunch more — in that wildly alluring deep southern drawl of his — including hanging with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott over the years. Enjoy the ride!
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I had the incredible honor of interviewing Waylon Jennings back in 1994 for my book Deadheads. He was in the Bay Area playing a Highwaymen gig up at Konocti, so I went up and interviewed him on his tour bus before his mind-blowing performance with Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson. Don’t get better than that, folks. Here’s a little ditty Waylon shared with me that special night. Ever grateful to you for that, Waylon, Fly on, sweet angel.
WAYLON JENNINGS: They had this brilliant idea of me and the Grateful Dead together — which was wrong It didn’t work!*
We played at Kezar Stadium. I went in there and I told everybody that worked for me and all the band members before we went down there, “Get all the water you want. Anything you want to drink, do it now. I don’t care if you open the bottle, don’t drink nothing while you’re down there.” They said, “Uh … whadya mean?” I said, “Them guys do some serious shit!” And they really do! I said, “Just don’t take no chances ‘cause they’ll play a little trick or two on ya, too!”
Sure enough, there was this kid named Larry. Larry would take a button and stay up for three days, if you told him it was dope, ya know? Here he come, and they give him some. He said, “I have found God, and I know exactly where he’s at! Matter of fact, he’s probably in one of the Grateful Dead’s pockets!”
It took us three days to get that son of bitch straightened out. Well, on the third day — I mean, it just kept goin’ on! We did that, and we wound up in El Paso without him. Me and Richie [Albright, close friend and drummer] decided we was gonna go over to ol’ Mexico, the Juarez. Well, we were in a car that half the Hell’s Angels and probably half of the damn Grateful Dead’s guys were in when we went across that border. Now I can just see them sayin’, “Hey you dropped that!” And then “Ah, I’ll get it.” And then “Naw, I don’t need it. We got more…”
Sure enough, we come back across that border, and I had emptied my pockets, but there ain’t no way to get everything out of that car; there’s a ton of roaches, all kinds of stuff. We were dead as we came around that corner. They had dogs and everything in the car findin’ all this stuff. We get outta the car and here comes this Mexican guy, one of the guys that’s searchin’ us, sayin’, “Waylon! Waylon! Waylon! I didn’t recognize you on your driver’s license.” It said Jennings, Waylon. He said, “Where you playin’ at?” and I said, “Where do you want me to play?”
About that time, he looked around and he said, “Oh. Where did those roaches go?” Turns out Richie had swallowed ‘em!
[*EDITOR’s NOTE — which might’ve surprised Waylon if he got wind of this today. The Grateful Dead’s performance at San Francisco’s Kezar Stadium on May 26, 1973 with New Riders of the Purple Sage and Waylon Jennings opening, was considered a particularly strong show. Reviews describe the Dead rising to the occasion of playing a large stadium show in their hometown, delivering a performance characterized by the band’s website as “legendary”.]
