WILLIE NELSON/Red Headed Stranger
(Columbia/Legacy)

October / November 2000
By Al Lovelock

Willie Nelson's classic Red Headed Stranger, despite some over-giddy reviews, was not the first country album that was conceived and executed as a whole work of art, rather than just a random string of songs. It isn't even Nelson's best album. But there's no question that Red Headed Stranger holds a unique place in American popular music. It was an unexpected popular hit that secured Nelson's career and created a bona fide myth-a shadowy Joseph Campbell-meets-Sam Peckinpah slug-ya-in-the-gut-and-seep-into-your-subconscious kind of myth. Now, a quarter century after its original release, Columbia/Legacy has reissued Red Headed Stranger in a 25th anniversary edition that includes updated (and decent) liner notes, extra photos, and bonus tracks, including Nelson's renditions of tunes by Hank Williams, Bob Wills, and some cowboy named J.S. Bach. They're fine tunes, all, but totally irrelevant to the Red Headed Stranger tale.

Nelson's story begins "in the year of '01." Somehow having the action set in the 20th century—if just barely—made the story seem more real. It's helpful to consider the social context in which the album was conceived. 1975 was the year South Vietnam fell to the Viet Cong, and one year after Evil King Richard was driven from power. The country, whether or not we realized it then, was in need of honest reassurance that despite our violent heritage, despite the blood on our collective souls, there was a kernel of nobility somewhere inside us-some chance, however dim, of redemption.

In response, some Americans turned to mindless flag-waving, anticipating the unbridled deluge of patriotic malarkey in the name of the Bicentennial the next year. Others turned to mindless ass-shaking at the dawn of the disco era. And more than a few found strange solace in the disturbing tale of the Red Headed Stranger, a tale sung by a pot-smoking nonconformist, years older than most rock & roll idols (who were beginning to irritate like the pampered millionaires they really were), but willing to fight his own musical establishment for the freedom to do what he wanted. Nelson set his Stranger story in the Old West, a mythological setting Americans can relate to, familiar yet foreboding. But the protagonist is no jovial John Wayne. A mysterious character known only as The Preacher, a man who has been cuckolded by his wife, Nelson's Stranger is more the silent, angst-ridden, Clint Eastwood type. "And he cried like a baby," Nelson tells us right off. "And he screamed like a panther in the middle of the night."

He screamed like a panther! Imagine, the curtain's just rising and already the hero has hit bottom. He's not even human, just a wounded animal whose world is closing in. Nelson, though, sings it matter-of-factly, with just a hint of sympathy in his voice, but not so sympathetic as to pull any punches. "He loved her so deeply, he went out of his mind..."

Less than five minutes later, and only five minutes into the record, The Preacher explodes into violence, killing his wife, her lover, and then a Montana barroom girl who dares to touch his dead wife's pony. After (an assumed) time in the wilderness, he finds the city of Denver, meets another woman, and settles down. By the end of the story, the Preacher's at the old fishin' spot with a boy-presumably his son-and the bad, violent days are apparently behind him.

Throughout the album, The Preacher never speaks, except through old country songs. Nelson actually wrote very little new material for this landmark album, just a few "connecting tissue" songs such as the recurring "Time Of The Preacher," "Blue Rock Montana," and "Denver." Nelson's genius was in finding seemingly unrelated songs that told a coherent story.

These songs, original or otherwise, are timeless and the music holds up impeccably after all these years. Nelson's battered acoustic guitar, sister Bobbie Nelson's honky-tonk-gospel piano, and Mickey Raphael's harmonica are the lead instruments used to create a sonic environment that is sparse, underwhelming, and dreamlike. Reportedly, the Columbia Records brass initially thought that the finished product was a demo. No wonder. The musicians sound as if they're playing in your living room and don't want to bother the neighbors. Still, they earn their keep: The instrumentals move the story along beautifully, even without lyrics. At the end of the title song, for example, as The Preacher rides off after killing his latest victim, the music flows into a slow gospel song, "Just As I Am." Bobbie Nelson's soft churchy piano makes it obvious that some kind of spiritual awakening—or meltdown—is taking place. And later, after settling down in Denver, which is where The Preacher meets his new love, Nelson and the band let us cut in on the dance, as they play two instrumentals, a sweet waltz with "O'er The Waves," featuring Nelson's guitar, and a fast piano boogie-woogie, "Down Yonder."

From that point on in his career, Nelson, who wrote scores of country classics in his younger days, would mainly perform cover tunes and reinterpret his own early material. Perhaps Nelson killed his own muse when The Preacher shot his wife. But Nelson's story-"the myth"-holds just as much truth today as it did 25 years ago. The pain of The Preacher still burns inside, the curse of roaming, the shame of past crimes. So too does the idyllic vision of love, family, and the washing away of sins at a favorite fishing hole. The emotions that the Red Headed Stranger taps so well will always have an audience.