Interviews
The Completely Unexpurgated Merle Haggard Interview #2
by Felix Thursday
This is the second interview I conducted with Mr. Merle Haggard.
If you haven't read the first interview or its unexpurgated
counterpart, or the second (expurgated) interview, then you are a
really strange duck for deciding to read this one first. And, go back
and read the others for a very abridged summary of Mr. Haggard's
accomplishments and so forth and so on and so...there! Because I'm not
going to repeat myself when I'm not in the mood to repeat myself. This
here interview, in case you're wondering, took place sometime in 2002
(I think).
Let's talk about the new album, Roots, a little bit.
Merle: Alrighty.
You recorded it in your house?
Merle: My choice. We have an odd configuration in the foyer of our
house, and after years of playing different buildings and all that I
thought that might have a good sound--and it did. We were looking for
something that would be the likeness of the Jim Beck studio in Dallas
around 1949 to about 1956 or something like that--it burned down.
Anyway, there was a lot of great records that was made at that place
during that period of time, and I was looking for something that might
simulate that because I wanted to do a tribute to Lefty Frizzell. His
music was done in that kind of a studio and we wanted to do it the
same way, with the direct to DAT without the abilities left to
punch-in and do things in addition to the original track. In other
words, just take it like it fell in a room that sounded like it did
back in those days, and see if we could recapture that great sound
that was around.
I think it worked. I love the new record.
Merle: I gave us about an 8 on what we were going after, and I'm
pretty critical of my work. I enjoy the record myself.
You hooked up with Lefty Frizzell's original guitar player, Norm
Stephens for this recording...
Merle: He, unbeknownst to me, was living here. He's like 12 or 15
miles from me--at the max--in a little town called Cottonwood. He's
been living there since 1954. To me, he fell off the end of the world
in the music business. I've wondered many times in my life where Norm
Stephens went to and why he wasn't playing, because he played on those
great first things that made Lefty Frizzell a legend. I wondered what
the hell happened to that guy all my life, and Doug, my piano player,
and I were driving down the road and he asked me if I had ever heard
of a guy named Norman Stephens, a guitar player. And I said, yeah, he
played on all of Lefty's first stuff, and I said "why?". And he said
he's got an ad in the paper, and he wants to give kids lessons to help
them develop swing styles--advanced playing lessons. I said "He's got
an ad in the paper?". It was like somebody telling me that Babe Ruth
or Ty Cobb was living down the street, and nobody said anything about
it. I said, you've gotta be kidding. It was incredible. All through
the years he never wanted to bug me or come up and say 'Hey, I'm the
guy that played on those records that you first started to play like."
In other words, those were the guitar licks that I first started
trying to learn to play, and was my first inspiration. My most vivid
inspiration--along with Lefty's singing--was the music. It was just
incredible finding out without knowing that he was living here like
that, and to find him in good health. He'd just retired from a career
as a civil engineer. He moved up here right after he got out of the
army in '54. He played a year with Hank Thompson, and Bob Wills, I
think, offered him a job up here--he came through and he turned down
his life's ambition to work with Bob. Stayed up here as a civil
engineer, raised a family and he's just an absolute neat person.
There's this great guitar player living here next door to me and I
didn't know it. It really kind of inspired me. We got about 23 sides
in the can--that's why we said "volume one". We're real pleased with
what we got there. First of all, it cuts down a lot of man hours to do
it that way--to just walk up there and sing it and get it over with,
walk away and say that's it. Don't have no echo, no compression, no
limiters or any gauge on anything, and just let people pop around
there and make mistakes and everything. Anyway, what it sounds like is
music.
Yeah, that's how they used to make 'em--you know. That's volume one,
so are you planning on pursuing that and coming out with additional
albums?
Merle: I think so, because, like I say, we've got 23 sides. We've got
some new songs--most of them are done with the same preface as the
older songs. We did "Faded Love" and...I did it like I imagine Lefty
would have done it had it been his song in 1950. So we got things like
that in the can. We've got several other major songs; "Mom and Dad's
Waltz", "I Love You A Thousand Ways", "More and More of Your Kisses",
and we're gonna do another session or two. In fact, we're getting
ready to record here right away. We're gonna try to record that
way--whether it be with new songs or new attempts--to compete with the
cutting edge. I'm still going to try to do it that way because you
eliminate people's opinions between here and the consumer. It's really
hard to explain to an engineer what I want to do sometimes, so if I
don't have to use an engineer and do it right, it just saves a whole
lot of problems.
Lefty Frizzell is a huge influence of yours. I was reading in your
book, My House of Memories, this really great story about you riding
the rails back to Bakersfield, and you were down in Dunsmuir and you
didn't have that much money on you. You bought a cup of coffee and
some breakfast, and put the rest of the change in the jukebox and
listened to a Hank Williams tune while you were on the phone with your
mom. That's a lot, when you don't have money to put food in your belly
but you love music so much that you're gonna spend your last dime on
it.
Merle: You couldn't buy anything else with a dime that was worth a
damn. I had a new t-shirt. I got $32 is what it was, and I went out
and bought myself some new Levi's, a new t-shirt, a coat--and still
there was like $15 left. I sat down there and...my total worth was
about $32 in the entire world. Hearing Lefty and Hank when you're
alone, tends to your emotional needs.
Not to change the subject too much, but you've got the "New Country"
and all of that...did you happen to watch that Garth Brooks special
that was on television not too long ago?
Merle: No, I really didn't. I'm so busy with my own backwater that it
really gets disgusting to try to climb inside my life and realize that
I have to wake up and eat, breathe, and look at my own pictures
everyday...it's a really boring way to make a living, but it's also
better than picking cotton. So it is what I have to do. But what
happens is I become the victim of a person who doesn't really get a
real honest take on what's going on musically right now. I haven't
been able over the last five or six years to give you an honest
account except the extreme "hits". These Dixie Chicks knock me out.
They play good, and they look good, and they act like they've got a
little sense. And the songs they play are about something. I really
give them a thumbs up. Of course, you know, you've got an enormous
Garth Brooks following out there...I don't know anything about it
because I've never seen him perform.
The reason I brought it up is your songs are so emotional, and the
people who influenced you were so real, it just seems like this
so-called country music around today isn't real at all. There's no
emotional connection with that whatsoever.
Merle: The bottom line is this: it's cheaper to force-feed chickens
than to give them what they want. The method of broadcasting is about
force-feeding. It's about being able to clone things that are working
for you, and not having to pay people in individual markets to
represent you, so that you can put 800 stations on the air and control
all that. Until we get some sort of law in there that requires a radio
station to play a diversity--in other words, they must give a certain
amount of time to Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Dolly
Parton, and going in to the rock 'n' roll area in the same way...there
must be a diversity--until we get that law passed, they're not gonna
do it, because they can make more money force-feeding these kids and
messing with the consumer; that's what it's about, I think.
Have you made any public statements about this World Trade Center tragedy?
Merle: I wrote a song about the flight that went down. I'm fixin' to
record a song that Red Simpson wrote, it's called "Osama Bin Laden".
It's really a good song. It says: "You're messin' with the ol' red,
white and blue. We got Hitler, we got Mussolini, and we're gonna get
you." That's really good, ain't it. But I wrote a song that I'm really
happy with, called "The Great United Flight"--I've got it laying
here...
There were heroes on that great United flight
They gave their lives and chose to die
to keep the White House white
Now, we all love the army, but civilians
won that fight
Because there were heroes on that great
United flight
The great United flight, flight #93
Without a gun of any kind, they defended you and me
Outlaws had the guns, but still they won the fight
Because there were heroes on the great
United flight
And it's got a melody and everything and I'm real proud of it. I'm
fixin' to record it here in the next few days.
Thanks for reading that to me.
Merle: You like it?
Yeah, I do like it.
Merle: I think it's really the only battle we've won. The army is over
there with all of their might and we haven't won yet, but they won
that battle there. It was won without any weapons. When they took it
out, they gave there lives. It may not have been just a few of them,
it may have been a whole bunch of them rose up and said "uh-uh",
you're not gonna take the White House.
America's changed for sure.
Merle: It's done more good than any event that's happened since Pearl
Harbor. I don't mean to sound like General George Patton, or a
warmonger, because I'm totally the opposite--I hate war. But the
benefits of war are there, and you'd be a fool or an ostrich if you
didn't notice. It's gonna be good for the economy. It's gonna be good
for the rich guys and all that stuff, and all the people who are
making the stuff that we use in war. And it will be good for music,
although we're having sort of a valley right now--the whole industry
is not doing all that well. A big record last year was O Brother Where
Art Thou? which sold like 2.8 million, where they were selling more
records than that of a big record 3 or 4 years ago.
But then you've got Harry Potter--and that's another subject.
Right. It's great to see people believing in the country again, the
only thing is--I guess maybe I'm the only one--I'm a little disturbed
about the commercialization of it.
Merle: Well, it's all about force-feeding. If you take it back to the
fact that the conglomerate is a guy who does not know anything about
what he owns--all he looks at is the bottom line, whether it be films
or the citrus business. It's all done the same way. There's more
payola going on right now than there ever has been in every area. You
can't make a Wal-Mart store take records on Merle Haggard when they've
made some sort of a deal all the way down on boxing nobody but George
Strait--you can't change that. Consequently, the consumer--even the
store manager, they call me and they say "Hey look, I need a bunch of
Merle Haggard records in here", and he said "They looked at me with
blank stares and went right in there and brought me out a big stack of
the new Garth Brooks record and the new George Strait record. I said I
need some more of those Merle Haggard records, and they just kept
walking." What causes that? Well, what that is is somebody's paying
their ass! You hear what I'm saying?
I was talking with (name omitted) about the same thing. It's almost
like maybe the things you say are a little too true, and they're
trying to keep you from saying them.
Merle: They don't want my ass. The record companies don't want to have
to deal with me. It's a lot easier to deal with boys who have no
experience who are still listening to lawyers. We're really in a
strange condition in this country--I don't know if it's gonna stay
that way. I'm hoping that September 11th will maybe jar some fear into
the land to make 'em look up and notice. Have we been cheated out of
our freedoms? Have we been isolated? Are we now a police state? Have
we now joined the world community with M-16s in the street? What is
all this about? How much could we actually convict him if we had him
in jail? It's really some interesting subjects. It's on everybody's
mind, and everybody's wondering what is gonna happen next. Music may
be a very important therapy at this moment, I think.
About the civil liberties...I saw up in Southern Oregon they had a
thing where if there's a ranch or a farmer and they've got an injured
animal, they can send in some government subsidized organization. They
can just walk across the boundary of their land and fix that animal.
It looks good from the outside...
Merle: Say that again, now.
They got a thing up in Southern Oregon where they're talking about a
rancher or a farmer--if they've got an animal down, sick--they're
talking about sending in vets--without permission--on to their private
property to help that animal. And from the outside that doesn't look
very harmful, but they're still taking away their right to private
property by crossing the boundary to their land.
Merle: I agree. No matter what the issue is, they shouldn't have the
right to do that. The issue shouldn't change the intention of the law.
Right.
Merle: Like they said there was child molestation going on inside that
David Koresch thing...that doesn't give them the right to poke tanks
in the goddamn building.
Yeah, same thing.
Merle: We don't go poking tanks in the Vatican and hell, there's child
molestation going on there, too--they didn't blow that motherfucker
up. David Koresch didn't do anything the pope hadn't done. I hate to
say it--they don't want to hear me say that. I told Willie Nelson, why
don't we get us a talk show, and he said, "Merle, they ain't gonna
give us the mic! They're not going to give us the microphone!" And I'm
beginning to believe he's right because they don't want to hear the
truth. For some reason or another, we're living in a double
standard--if not a triple standard--with several different levels
after you arrive at one standard. And it's really hard to follow.
People can exist in the law that are total criminals. Mike Curb is a
criminal--he owes everybody money, but he hides behind a level of the
law. Well, I've got my freedom of speech so I can call him anything I
want to. But he hides behind the law because he was lieutenant
governor--he's a member of the bar, he understands how many levels. He
can do anything he wants to with a civil contract, and there's nothing
a guy like me can do but hire a lawyer and go after him. I'd rather do
other things with my life, and he realizes it--that's how he exists.
We've got a lot of that going on nowadays--people just taking
advantage of people, and they do it until they get caught, then they
say "Oh, I'm sorry".
Yeah, they use the system against the people the system is supposed to protect.
Merle: Yeah. He hadn't paid Leann Rimes, he hadn't paid Tim McGraw, he
hadn't paid me--he hasn't paid anybody! Every time he sends me a
statement, the cost of my album goes up. And he does it because he
knows that he can. Because he's an attorney and that's what they were
taught to do. They really have an edge on the rest of the public
because they understand how the law can be used as a criminal. Boy, he
really uses it that way. Damn, we oughtta be prosecuting him for child
abuse the way he treated Leann Rimes! God almighty, I'd like to get
him in a boxing match--a three-round boxing match in Madison Square
Garden: "Cowboy whips Mike Curb".
Yeah, I heard you say something like that the last time I saw you play.
Merle: I'm serious, man. I could take out a lot of anger--couldn't
you--on a son of a bitch like that, that's screwed so many people,
that needs it so bad.
Yeah, that's how society's changed--people are no longer responsible
for what they do. If they know how...
Merle: How can he hold his head up? How can he get up each morning and
be proud of himself, without paying his debts? He pays nobody. And
still, everybody--including Sony and all the big four or five record
companies--he still does business with 'em. He's got his fingers and
his claws into all of their affairs and he owes 'em all money, but
they still do business with him! Like (name omitted) called me the
other day and said, "Is Mike Curb still alive?" (laughs)
Maybe they cloned him?
Merle: Oh god, don't give them the idea. Hell, that'd be worse than
releasing anthrax. Smallpox would be better than that.
Another thing I've noticed is Capital records has just released a
four-CD set of yours--Prison, Drinkin', Hurtin', Cheatin'...
Merle: Are they selling any of those, have you heard?
Well, they sold four to me. I'm sure they're selling them. I didn't
know if you had a hand in that or if that's just something they did.
Merle: The same lady at Capital that developed the box set on me--I
forget her name at the moment, but she's done a wonderful job--is
trying to keep my body of work at Capital alive. All I can say is
thanks. It's a concept to break it down into different emotions that
I've written about over the years. One's called Haggard Hurtin',
Haggard in Prison, Haggard this way and Haggard that way, or
something. But it's a good idea, it groups together some songs that
can be brought up on the computer and it fits into today's categorized
society.
They're all good songs.
Merle: Thank you.
You're welcome, you wrote 'em. A couple more questions...I was
watching the George Jones Show about a year ago and you were on there
as a guest. You were playing some Lefty Frizzell and I think you sang
a song with George, and he had John Anderson on there. You and George
Jones were kind of picking on him a little bit.
Merle: I don't remember. Was we giving him a hard time was we?
Just a little bit. I was just wondering if you and the old guys get
together and pick on the new guys.
Merle: I'm 64 years old. John Anderson came out here and helped me
record and Stu, Johnny Cash's old manager who passed away last year.
But anyway, he was here at my studio. Stu was kind of like the Walter
Matthau of country music--very forward and very funny--and Anderson
was in there doing this song with me, being very cordial--he came out
from Tennessee to do this for me--and he made one pass at it and Stu
got up and hit the talk-back switch and said "Hey man, we can get
Johnny Paycheck in here overnight. If you can't cut it, get out of the
business!" (laughs)
Well, you and George Jones were picking on him for having long hair.
Merle: Oh yeah, we've picked on him ever since we started knowing him.
I love him, though. I really love his music, and I think we're real
good friends.
Another question is the last time I interviewed you, you were talking
about retiring...
Merle: Well, I looked at my tires and hell, they're alright.
Glad to hear that.
Merle: I can't quit nothing--even the thought of it scares me. What
the hell would I do? I'm too old to play ping-pong very good.
My dad's the same way. He's 63 and he's got cancer, but he refuses to retire.
Merle: It would be easy just to kind of go to sleep. I'm tired, I
wanna go to bed. But you can't let yourself think that way. You gotta
get up and go play. If you don't, you die.
Yeah, and you've got a young family to keep up with and everything.
Merle: I've got a young boy who's 9 years old. I bet Robert Redford
would like to have a son that looked like him. He's a pretty
good-looking boy and he's got some sense--that's the unusual part.
I remember on the last album, If I Could Only Fly, you sang a song,
"I'm Still Your Daddy", about being in prison and having to tell your
kids. Do you ever worry, with all the crazy things you did growing up
as a kid...do you worry about kids growing up today.
Merle: Oh, just about every four or five minutes. (laughs) Just about
all the time. The only thing I care about is doing the right thing for
this last chance family that I've got. I've got four children that are
grown and I can't do anything about their lives anymore, but I've got
these two that I'm really trying with. Up until now they've had sort
of a Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn existence. It didn't hurt 'em,
they're both wonderful children. They've got characters of their own,
and I'm a little jealous of how they've grown up here over the last 10
or 12 years. But, in all seriousness, it's kept me alive and turned me
around. I was all set up to party it all out as a bachelor out here on
a houseboat and die like Errol Flynn did, but the old man upstairs had
other plans for me. They say if you wanna make god laugh, tell him
your plans. Here I am, and I'm still doing what I do. I try to do it
better all the time--always working on the band, always trying to keep
it better. We're losing some really good players because of one thing
or another--personal problems and illness--it's a big change in my
life, things I don't want to put in the article. But we're
gonna...it's gonna be different. I guess change is good, but it
doesn't feel good at the moment.
There's always a plan you don't know about.
Merle: Yeah.
One more question--a comment actually. The last album that came out,
If I Could Only Fly, that did pretty damn well, didn't it?
Merle: It did real well. I think we made everybody happy. They wanted
to do a second album, and they're talking about a third. We're
fighting an ongoing battle with trying to get airplay. I've got a
video that hit the market today for "If You've Got The Money, I've Got
The Time"--a little simple barroom performance video--that might help
us to get some recognition that the album is even out there. People
don't know it. But the people in the stores that want to fill up an
empty slot--in other words, there might be a lot of things that might
not be selling--they may have made a deal on a lot of Garth Brooks
records, and they may have to eat those son-of-a-bitches and say them
sold 'em. Set 'em in the back, and put some of mine out there. I
betcha there's a whole bunch of them son-of-a-bitches sitting around
this country, that they get "sold" credit for.
How do you get along with the punk rock guys that own your record label?
Merle: Ah hell, they're about as crazy as I am. They like me, and
they're proud to have me over there, so I'm proud to be there. They've
got some weird stuff hanging on the walls and all the crap, but that's
their business. I believe like Jesus Christ, what I believe in and
what they believe in is something that should be left alone. That's
the way I feel about religion. I'm like George Carlin about that:
whatever you believe in, keep it to yourself. Let somebody else be the
spreader of the absolute, whatever it is you choose to say it is. It's
all a matter of faith. It's individual, the way I believe.
Well, that pretty much concludes things for me.
Merle: Thanks so much, thanks for the interest and everything.
You're my favorite singer and songwriter.
Merle: Well, try to figure out some way to get 'em to put our records
in there. We've got into some sort of a marketing niche that we can't
seem to find our way out of. I really believe that they've bought and
paid for those Garth Brooks records, and Garth doesn't give a shit.
They've sold 68,000 but I bet they bought 250,000. That means his fan
base is 68,000. Well, hell, our fan base was over 100,000 last week.
Yeah, every time I've seen you play it's been sold out.
Merle: Figures are really deceiving unless you really think about what
they're about and stay abreast of what they're discussing. He needs to
be a role model for all of us--he's a marketing genius. That's sort of
what everybody needs to be in this business if they want to make
money.
I've gotta ask you one more thing. When they had that big concert on
all of the television networks right after the World Trade Center
catastrophe, I noticed they had all of these people there--Willie
Nelson was there--but I noticed you weren't there. Did they not ask
you or what?
Merle: Most everybody that was there was from the East, and I live in
the extreme West. Like we've got to New York this coming January...we
plan to do the Letterman show, they asked us to, me and Willie. But
Willie's gotta drive from Austin and I've gotta drive from Redding,
CA. And I'm not gonna fly, I'm not gonna take a chance on
inexperienced rifle protection. I'm just not gonna travel by air until
they get the M-16s out of there, or let me carry one too. That's the
way I feel about it--I've got just as much right to protect me as they
have.
Sure.
Merle: So anyway, I disagree with all that shit that's going on with
the airlines. I think they're gonna bankrupt everybody, and then we'll
have just one or two, and then we'll have some sort of world society
that they're trying to create. American Airlines and everybody else
will be gone--you'll have Southwest and that'll be it. You'll have a
little bitty deal and one big deal that serves the whole world. I
think that's what they're gonna try to do--monopolize it like have
everything else. You look at communism 50 years ago and look at
democracy today--see if they're similar.
It's beginning to look that way.
Merle: I wonder if they're gonna paint all the airplanes the same
color. Might as well.
Well, I've taken up a lot of your time...
Merle: Well, we'll talk to you later then.
Good luck with the new album.
Merle: Thank you very much
I hope everything goes well for you.
Merle: I appreciate it.
finis.
Did you actually read all of this? Good for you. It may seem
excessive, but I think people should at least have access to
everything Merle has to say. I've read too many interviews where he's
been "edited". Plus, for you inspiring interviewers, this is what
happens in interviews. You have to listen to a crappy cassette tape
over and over and over and over again, and pull what you can from it.
They seldom come in neat little packages. Once more, I must encourage
you--if you still need encouraging after reading this--to go out a buy
yourself some Merle. There is nothing in your record collection, I
guarantee, that's better than Merle. In fact if you don't have any
Merle, you don't really have a record collection. In fact, if you
don't go get some Merle I never ever want to talk to you again. Our
relationship is over--kaput! GO GET SOME MERLE! GO GET SOME MERLE! GO
GET SOME MERLE! ELREM EMOS TEG OG! Now, dammit!
