ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 6, 1996 TAG: 9609060003
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PARIS, TENN.
SOURCE: JIM PATTERSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
Two wooden Indian statues stoically stand watch behind Hank Williams Jr. He's seated at his desk in his office complex, which is packed with guns, gold records and other slices of Hank history.
The statues once kept vigil 86 miles east at the Williams home in Nashville, and inspired Hank Williams Sr. to write the classic country hit ``Kaw-Liga.''
Williams Jr., 47, likes his history close by - that of his estimable musical family and that of the South, especially the Civil War. Among the hundreds of artifacts: a cannon that was used in the War Between the States, a rifle fired at the battle of the Little Big Horn and a fearsome, 8-foot stuffed bear.
There also are two vintage liquor decanters: With one, you twist off the head of Hank Williams Sr. to quench your thirst; the other is, of course, Hank Jr.
Like a historian, he looks to the past to find the future. Before the surviving Beatles used technology to reunite with long-dead leader John Lennon, Williams Jr. had done a 1989 single and video as a duet with his legendary dad, ``There's a Tear in My Beer.''
He takes it a step further with ``Three Hanks (Men With Broken Hearts).'' The new CD sports 12 Hank Sr. songs sung by three generations. Aspiring country singer Shelton Hank Williams, 23, professionally Hank Williams III, makes his debut on the project. It's being released this month to coincide with what would have been Hank Sr.'s 73rd birthday.
Two Williams women make cameos on the CD: the late Audrey Williams, wife of Sr. and mother of Jr., and Jr.'s youngest child, Katie Williams, 31/2.
Hank III once was a devotee of The Sex Pistols, Williams Jr. recounts with roaring laughter. ``It was so funny, he said, `I guess I'll play this ... country music, but my heart's not in it.' But this is four years ago. He's aged along the path of life quite a bit since then.''
Williams Jr. was just over 3 years old, same as his youngest child today, when his father succumbed to alcoholism, pills and general despondency and hard living on New Year's Day 1953 at age 29.
``I remember him laying right on a couch, and his bald head shining,'' Williams Jr. said. ``And I had a wooden hammer, and I had beat all the furniture up at 4916 Franklin Road. And I remember him, and those sideburns, laying on that couch.''
Pushed by Audrey Williams, just as his father was in the beginning, Hank Jr. spent his adolescence and early adult years as a Hank Sr. impersonator. He did it well, but came to resent the pressure to BE his father. He let off some steam by playing rock 'n' roll in a different persona, Rockin' Randall (his full name is Randall Hank Williams), but it wasn't enough.
For a long time, he hated the job of singing his father's songs. He acquired some of his father's drug and alcohol habits, as well.
``It just kept on and on and on,'' Williams Jr. said. ``There were some dark days there. You been taught to look like, act like, blah blah. You will be just like your daddy except you'll be dead at 26, you'll have him beat. That'll really bring you around.
``A certain guy was the only one ... to say it. But he wasn't in the music business, he was in the doctoring business. But it made a lot of sense.''
Musically, Williams Jr. started edging out of his father's shadow, feeling a kinship with the Southern rock movement. But everything was put on hold for two years when he literally scraped his face off in a 500-foot fall down Ajax Mountain on the Idaho-Montana border in 1975.
``I said, `You know, Lord, I told you many times I never wanted to sing another note. And this looks like we got a square deal here.'
``No teeth, no jaw, no cheek, no forehead,'' Williams Jr. said of his condition after the fall. ``There were a lot of things to put back together.''
To this day, an ever-present beard, dark glasses and hat (cowboy onstage, baseball off) hide what damage couldn't be fixed.
Surviving the tragedy seemed to make Williams Jr. more confident than ever. His voice was changed, now deeper than that of Williams Sr., and he brought more rock and blues influences to his records.
By 1979, he was comfortable mixing such autobiographical fare as ``All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down)'' and putting his own stamp on Williams Sr. classics such as ``Honky Tonkin'.'' Both were No.1 hits.
He reached an artistic peak with the moody ballad ``A Country Boy Can Survive,'' which could be a national anthem for survivalists. He stirred controversy with hits such as ``If the South Woulda Won'' in 1988, which made critics squirm with its happy depiction of a very different post-Civil War United States. He threatened Saddam Hussein in 1990 with his ``Don't Give Us a Reason.''
The hits got harder to come by in the 1990s. Radio programmers identified him with the old guard when there was a new generation of singers (Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, etc.) to get excited about. Today, he gets massive exposure by way of increasingly elaborate opening montages on ABC's ``Monday Night Football,'' and his concert grosses are the envy of youngsters with No.1 hits.
``We're the No.1 grossing act of 1996 of the William Morris Agency,'' Williams said. ``That's a FACT, by the way.
``I'm going to be doing `Monday Night Football' for the eighth year in front of millions. I don't have much to complain about. I've got the most knockout, ex-model wife in the world [Mary Jane Williams] that climbs up in trees and hunts, [and] a beautiful daughter.''
``It would be great if you could get played [on the radio]. [But] you see where I live up here. I'm not going to beat my head on a wall.''
His son will soon be playing that game. ``Three Hanks (Men With Broken Hearts)'' is designed to use the past to help Hank Williams III ease into the future.
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Hank Williams Jr.'s new CD, ``Three Hanks (Men withby CNBBroken Hearts,'' has 12 Hank Williams Sr. songs sung by three
generations: Hank Sr., Hank Jr. and 23-year-old Sheldon Hank
Williams. color.