THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 16, 1996 TAG: 9610160411
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 62 lines
Outlaw Waylon Jennings, interviewed Tuesday morning on National Public Radio, was deploring New Country, or Young Country, music, and he sang the title song of his new CD: ``She Was Right for the Time, but Time Has a Way of Moving On.''
Pure, raw, old-time country.
Time has moved on and left wailing Waylon behind. He hasn't had a record on the charts in three or four years, more's the pity.
And it's been that long since my car radio sat on a country station.
And I was country before country was cool - in 1928, when we had the ``Prisoner's Song'':
If I had the wings of an angel
O'er these prison walls I would fly.
I would fly to the arms of my poor darling
And there I'd be willing to die.
I like country music that lifts its head to the sky and howls like a lonesome dog, that whines with a twang in the lyrics and the music.
Back yonder some people called it hillbilly in a condescending tone. Its followers rolled up their car windows so nobody would hear what was playing on their radios.
New Country, as I get it - or don't get it - has more aggressive instrumentation, more rock 'n' roll volume and theatrics - more rock 'n' roll than does much of today's rock 'n' roll. It has less twang, less lamentation, less story.
It really ain't country.
Waylon didn't spare himself. He recalled the eight or so years when he was drug-ridden, smoking seven or eight packs of cigarettes a day. Going five and six days and nights at a time, without sleep, ``My voice has stuck with me somehow.''
Everything you do when you're doing cocaine you can blame on your addiction, he said. Afterward, it was as if his old self was ``another person,'' someone dead and gone, to mourn. It was hard to break away.
``You have people telling you you're much better when you're on drugs,'' he said.
Arriving in Nashville, he had bucked the establishment, insisting on singing his way, using his own band, with whom he'd gone hungry.
``They didn't quite know what pocket to put me in. I didn't want to wear new, spangly suits.''
Unkempt, unshorn, he and Willie Nelson appealed to the young as outlaws.
``I guess we looked like hippies. I know we did. Cowboy hippies.''
He and Nelson wrote the song that proved a breakthrough for Waylon: ``She's a Good-Hearted Woman in Love With a Good-Timin' Man.''
Waylon doesn't need records. People, including the young, flock to hear him.
``I do what I want to do, and I'll never let them get that control back.''
Still an outlaw.
Thanking the young woman who had interviewed him, Waylon said, ``I've enjoyed it. I really have. You got some good questions there, girl.''
Pure country. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Outlaw Waylon Jennings doesn't need record sales to prove that he's
pure, raw country. by CNB