![]() ![]() So I looked at it to be, "Alright, I know a man, he came from my hometown. I kind of approach the song as maybe a man and a woman who are in a relationship, and they're telling the other about him or herself. But there's something so poignant about his voice and his singing. He's probably got more life in him than we do in ourselves. And yet, I think if anybody is as far away from "Slip Slidin' Away," it's probably Willie. There was something very poignant to me about a person like Willie singing, "The nearer your destination, the more you're slip sliding away" when he's coming up on 90. I thought, well, if these are being re-envisioned as duets as conversations between people, perhaps Willie would be interested in doing this Paul Simon song. But he had never covered "Slip Slidin' Away." And because the whole album was an approach to taking the songs from the '70s, which I think are in fact classics, and traditional in their own way. And I knew that Willie had covered many Paul Simon songs. Wilson: I knew that Willie and Paul were friends, I don't know Willie Nelson. When you do this song, do you feel a different wisdom in it than he could have felt at 34? He wrote "Slip Slidin' Away" when he was 34. And I'm simplifying it in the most basic of terms but it made a lot of sense to me, because why do we cry when we hear music? To me, our bodies are like the instruments being played by the songs that we're hearing or the music that we're hearing.īaltin: Paul Simon is another one of my favorite artists of all time. So that tension and release is what makes you cry. And this is a tension and release, which is actually something that is felt by the listener. Remember when Adele had "Someone Like You" out and everybody was crying every time they heard that? Well, apparently she does a thing with her voice that isn't a trained thing, she just does it, called an appoggiatura. So emotionally, it grabs you in some way, whether it's that joyful way or it's the story or it's something that just breaks your heart. I see the story and I see the picture in my head. It's so visual, and in some ways I'm a very visual person so for me, music is almost a visual art form because I see it. Bobbie Gentry playing her guitar like that, and then those strings that come in that sound very swampy, but what is going on at that Tallahatchie Bridge? What is going on up there? These people are having dinner. I remember hearing "Ode to Billy Joe" the first time at 10 years old or whatever, however old I was when I heard it, 11, and being mesmerized by everything about it. And of course there's melody and there's rhythm and tempo and all of that stuff, but to me, the story is what grabs me. Any song that really grabs me is going to have one major component to it, which is story. You can know a song for years, but when you sing it, it takes on a whole new life. 'Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.' Like when? When I was 10?" I thought that was such a good story.īaltin: When you listen to some of these songs, do you feel that depth or that longing. So many of Nelson’s tunes can now be considered standards.Wilson: Paul McCartney once said about "Yesterday." I had actually had this conversation with him, so I said, "I can't believe that you were so young and writing these songs that were so deep and emotional, like 'Yesterday.'" He goes, "I know. ![]() He turned in the direction of the crowd where I was standing, opened his arms and heart to the crowd and grinned a grin that seemed to light up the field, and that was before he started playing a signature set of his timeless songs. Years later, when I saw him at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco, the puzzle pieces of his attraction coalesced. This was Willie in full outlaw country glory, and while I was too young to fully appreciate what that actually meant, the fact that his music so powerfully swayed the adults in my orbit impressed me deeply. I was a child the first time I heard Willie Nelson’s voice - at once heartsick and sly, weathered and smooth, vulnerable and knowing - blaring from my best friend’s mom’s favorite country radio. ![]()
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