Willie Nelson - It's a Long Story > an Autobiography

As you can imagine, it’s Willie’s life story, and its terrific.  It isn’t read by Willie, and was initially bummed about that.  However, the reader did such an amazing job that after a couple hours I was truly hearing Willie.  It’s got everything you want, talk about women and weed and Trigger and his tax problems.  Its also got plenty of perfectly sprinkled f bombs.  When I saw the ‘and also’ under Willie’s name, I thought it would be totally ghost written (like every Anthony Bozzo rock bio), but this genuinely felt like Willie’s voice on every level.  Get this book.  NO, it may be boring as shit.  LISTEN to this book, and I guarantee you will fall back in love with Willie.
Also fun in listening to the book was the diversions I would take to stop and head over to youtube or spotify to listen to the songs he talks about in the book.  You'll find yourself doing the same.  In fact, let's just stop here and do just that.  This is my favorite Willie song, at the moment at least.


[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn5cp0OCQ3k&w=560&h=315]

I rarely recommend reading musicians autobiographies.  It’s not that they are too self indulgent, they just tell too specific a tale of a life that isn’t that remarkable.  You can see probably 20 different ones below.  As always, I recommend a super music fan read books by managers and promoters, they are always most interesting… and they tell the most tales.   As I have mentioned in the past, here is a fact check you can use on any promoters book… if they have a Chuck Berry story.  They all do, and it’s never pretty.  This book, though, is an absolute exception to that rule.

further reading:  stuff I have written about Willie over the years, including a concert review from 2016.