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

It's a Long Story

Willie Nelson

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.

side car > George Harrison vs Allen Klein

Reader, if you somehow came upon this first, please go back and start here.  Well, actually this rant stands on its own, content-wise.  So much so, that I felt it pulled energy from the original piece, which is a book review on Allen Klein... the worst man in the history of the music business.  If you want to go back, here is that piece.

I realize I referred this Allen Klein story, but didn’t tell it.  I have likely told it somewhere else,
but it is so gonzo it bears repeating.  Here is how Allen Klein legally assraped George Harrison. 
You may remember the great George Harrison song ‘My Sweet Lord’.  It was far and away his
biggest hit post Beatles.

 and here is a mashup someone wonderfully did comparing the two.

That chorus of that song kinda sounds like ‘He’s so fine’ from the Shirrells Chiffons.  It’s only 3 notes.  It could be said he lifted it from there.  He claimed (like most do)

that if he did lift it, it was not deliberate or even conscious.  However, the courts have since

ruled even an unconscious or accidental ‘theft’ is still theft.

But I want tell the story of the court battle.  It took 20 years, so let’s try it in a few paragraphs.  This is to illustrate thoroughly why Allen Klein is/was the worst person in music business. Shortly after the Beatles’ breakup, Klein is still representing everyone but Paul McCartney.  George gets sued for copyright infringement, and Allen Klein is his lawyer.  Make no mistake here, at this point Klein is legally, financially, and morally obligated to represent and protect George.  George gets sued for 'My Sweet Lord' sounding to close to 'He's so Fine'.  The premise of this is if/since George stole the melody, he should have to pay the original songwriters.  None of this is debated, and that isn't the real story of this lawsuit.  During the early part of the legal proceedings (it’s very early 70s at this point), Klein has a brilliant idea.  I mean that genuinely and without sarcasm.  Klein tells George ‘we got Beatles money, bro-ham.  It would be cheaper and cleaner to just buy the company that owns that song.  We can literally afford to buy the entire company and every song in their catalog rather than fight it." (not a direct quote)  It then not only ends the lawsuit, it will become a new revenue stream for George and Klein.

George likes the idea and says ‘let’s do it’.  Like all trials of this scope, a bunch of time passes in between court dates.  They come back to court, and things have changed drastically.  During the recess, Allen Klein goes out and buys the Chiffon’s catalog HIMSELF.  For HIMSELF.  Not on behalf of his client, but in opposition to his client.  He then continues the suit against Harrison… since it is HIS song now.  In the space of a year or two, Klein goes from defense to offense.  Does that seem fishy?  It gets worse, though.  The original plan was to settle for about 50 grand.  Problem is, Klein has seen the other side, and knows the assets Harrison has.   Allen Klein was George’s business manager, so he knows that Harrison has Beatles’ money.  Now, the request for damages goes from 50 grand to 1 million.

And he got away with it.  The suit went on for decades, and cost Harrison a fortune.
It’s way two that John Lennon breaks up the Beatles.  The first way was bringing Yoko everywhere, including band recording sessions.  That happened… but don’t blame Yoko.  Blame John, as this was clearly a power home on his part.  The second way Lennon breaks up the Beatles is he brings in Allen Klein to manage the Beatles’ affairs.

Know what he did ‘for’ the Stones?  He was their manager, too, see.  Like he did for the Beatles, he gets their percentage doubled on publishing royalties.  Great, right?   No, because of how he did it.  Let’s say the Stone’s cut is 2% of album sales.  He gets their cut upped to 4%.  What we find out later?  He actually had the cut at about 10%.  AND… he was now the owner of the Stones’ catalog… for the next ten years.  Of course, the band doesn't find this out until way later and too late.

*** not so quick sidebar to this sidebar.  Here are a couple of music lawsuits I must mention.  I have sure I have written in depth about them over the years either here (my main writing site, I am Correct.com) or here (my music writing site, Maybe I am Wrong.com)

Neil Young was sued by David Geffen (his record company) for willfully not sounding Neil Young enough.

John Fogerty was sued by his record company for sounding TOO much like John Fogerty.

and a classical music guy wrote a piece of music that was 9 minutes of silence.  Not a single note.  AND... he was able to copyright it.  Some years later, another artist released several minutes of silence - and dared to also call it silence... and got sued for copyright infringement.  Oh Todd Snider, how we this song more than ever.

This is why the terrorists hate us.

You have found my storage locker

Allow to explain.  no wait... there is too much, allow me to sum up.

This page is archives and storage for my other sites.  Perhaps I am reviewing a book here.   What I want to do is a tight couple of paragraphs.  It is not easy for me to be succinct.  Get me talking about the Beatles, or Allen Klein, or the business of music business.   Well, I can and will talk about for hours.  In order to not drag down flow, I post the content here... and then link back to it.  I guess you would say this page is m footnotes and index page.

In the content around here, hopefully it will always link back to the original post for context.  I don't believe there is any stand alone content here.  But, there may be.  I do cold storage here for the following sites:

I am Correct.com > my main writing site.  Nothing thematic, just rants and essays

Maybe I am Wrong.com > my music writing site.  I like writing about rock music, and I should do it more.  It is not bragging for me to say plainly, I know about rock music history than anyone you know.  More likely, more than everyone you know combined.  This site is also titled 'the Phantom Blog'.  It is a terrible name for a music site.  I think the name came from the exact idea of this site.  It started as a visual beta best for IamCorrect.com   When i started blogging in 2003, there were none of these handy sites where you just type and publish.  I had to write everything in HTML.    conent, fonts, colors, even paragraph breaks.  It sucked.  But... I did it for you.

Free TV stand

Here are some pictures, and measurements.  It is yours free, long as you come and get it.  Nothing wrong with it, we just simply changed it out for aesthetic reasons.  All the necessary bolts and screws are included.  It's a flat screen TV stand/entertainment center.

it is 3 layers of black colored glass, though in the pics we only have the top two in.  Behind it, centered, is a spine of sorts, that holds your TV.  It comes with braces and screws to attach to your TV.  Then, the TV just hangs in place by gravity.  It should fit all TVs and all TV sizes, as the screw holes in the back of each TV are a universal design.

also cool is the tube 'spine' is hollow.  It is designed to fun all the cords and cables through... so it is a very clean look in the end.  Here are some pics with, and without, our crap on it.  It is now dissembled and ready to go.  The brand?  I have no idea where we got it.

the top shelf is 20" off the ground.  Not sure if you can tell from pics, but it tapers back.  Ours sits in a corner, so we love the design.

toward the very front, it is 50" wide

at the back, it is only 34" wide

shoot me a text.  303.901. 5235  > First come first served.  We live up on Rampart Rd off 186

Let me tell you about this picture, it's not how it looks!

I love this picture. I think this is objectively a great photograph.  We took this last week (Oct 2019) in Cusco, Peru.  I just feel it needs some explaining.  If I step outside myself (no, I didn’t do any Ayahuasca… which would have had that experience)… here is how the picture looks to me.

Come here weirdo native people, please. I know you are on your way to work, to likely toil somewhere that involves you taking home 50 pounds of bananas on your head.   Please, though, indulge me and the wifey with a picture.  I think your lowly poor hobbled existence is just adorable.  It will show all my friends back home how in touch we became with local culture.  I will tell our friends made up back stories about us all, and how we promised to keep in touch.

That, to me, is how all of these types of pictures look.  In a word… exploitative.

Doesn’t it?

Well, there was exploitation involved, but we were kinda more the victims.  Allow me to explain.  “No, there is too much.  Let me sum up.” – Inigo Montoya... who kinda looks Peruvian.

These ladies are full time tourist picture be-inners.  See, Peruvians in the city don’t dress like this.  They dress like you.  We did see ladies who genuinely dressed like this, but not on stoops in the city.  It was in drives through the countryside.

We were talking down the incredibly and brutally steep streets of Cusco looking at touristy is you can:  four white people wandering around with big ass backpacks. 

how steep?  That steep.  Not exactly 'to code'

I looked over and saw them on the stoop and made eye contact, because it was such an adorable site.  I nudge the wifey, and she looks over.  These astute capitalists ran over and literally handed my wife that… lamb?  “we take picture together?”, may have been their only English.  But, I did really want a picture like this, and I didn’t want to exploit the locals.  I even thought about sneaking a photo to try and capture a genuine moment, but took the high road.

Before we know it, we are sitting their with these wonderful ladies taking out picture taken.  “10 Soles?”.  Sole is the Peruvian dollar, and they were 3 to our dollar.  So, 10 soles is about $3.  Absolutely worth it.  I would have paid that just to take a picture of them, not to mention with them.  After the great photo, we give them 10 soles (do I capitalize the S there for currency?  Don’t know.  They say “20 soles!”.  I explain that is all I have (wifey and I both speak Spanish).  They start chasing us down the street yelling “20 soles.”  Obviously, we gave them an extra ten soles.  They made $7 in about 4 minutes.  Well done, ladies.  Happy to share the wealth.  As we walked around more, we saw several groups like this, sitting and being adorable with baby llamas and alpacas making themselves available for tourist photos.

Again, TOTALLY worth it to get that photo above.

For the record, I did sneak a photo of a genuine adorable real life Peruvian moment.  See this pic below. 

This is in Ollantaytambo, one of the gateway cities to Machu Picchu.  The father had a huge blanket set up selling wares to tourist.  This was his child, who likely spends hours a day there with his father.  Like any adorable child, he was bored and started playing a beautiful steel drum they had out for sale.  I can tell you it was a kid just being a kid, and not a kid trained to be adorable for tourists because after I got this shot his dad kinda yelled at him and told him to put the drum down.

my rant on cops vs bikers

This is an aside from my book review of 'Ratsnakes', about an undercover cop.  You can find the book and its review over here.  This was a long winded rant that had nothing to do with the book, but i felt like publishing in anyway   -  Oct 2019


More and more I am seeing things that really really trouble me about the bike gangs... er... gentleman hobbyists?  The stealing and looting and terrorizing and drug dealing... don't much care.  It isn't my business.  What upsets me is the violence towards their women.  These guys beat up their women.  They do it a lot, an for a lot of reasons.  The obvious is insecurity and poor male role models.  It is also to make sure the women 'know their place'.  They do it to impress their needy ass peers.  They do it because the realize after being in the gang for 20 years has gotten them nowhere in life.  I think they went in looking for fun and adventure and camaraderie.  By the time you are 40, though, you being to realize you are just an unemployable douche-bag.  They are disappointed with their station in life and the sacrifices they made for the club.  Lastly, I think the do it because they are totally fucked up and out o their mind on speed and booze every waking moment.

That is my armchair assessment.  It makes it tough for me to to read about.  I can't root for these guys.  As example?  In the late 60s, Hunter S Thompson famously lived and rode with the Hell's Angels.  He was transparent about about writing the book, and was fully accepted into the club.  It was a natural fit, as Hunter was much loser to being an Angel than a journalist.  He loved guns and booze and motorcycles and was at least as crazy as the crew he ran with.  Shortly after, famously, he got kicked out.  Not just asked to leave politely, but nearly beaten to death.  What does this have to do with anything?  Bear with me.  Hunter was stomped because he intervened on a club fight, which is a big no no for an outsider.  This guy was beating up his 'old lady' something fierce.  hunter didn't mind, it wasn't his business.   This Angel was so riled up he starts kicking a dog.  That is when Hunter stepped in.  A dog, and a motorcycle are both higher in the caste system than women are.

Thompson got drunk and stoned with the Angels on the beach, and stuck around when things got ugly — something he avoided while writing the book. An Angel named Junkie George started beating his wife to a pulp on the rocks. When Junkie George laid into his dog as well, Thompson spoke up. That was all it took for several Angels to start pounding on Thompson’s skull and ribs.

I have zero respect for that level of stupidity and misogyny.  I can't root for that, or romanticize and rationalize that behavior.  Of course, cops are notorious for beating their women, too?  Why?  I have a theory, and this is a thoughtful assessment.  For cops, like football players (perhaps the most notorious of spouse beaters) violence works!  Violence solves all problems.  When reasoning doesn't work, be it for a cop, a mobster, or a biker... a swift and thorough beating ends the problem.  I just think maybe violence isn't intended, but it lies closer to the surface than many other solutions.  For football players, I don't even think they try the 'reasoning' stage... they just hit.

the whole thing about beating up women, though... I just to speak my piece.  Let's close this out with a  quote from the Beastie Boys.

“I want to say a little something that’s long overdue
The disrespect to women has got to be through / To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends / I want to offer my love and respect to the end.” 

Here is the book that started the rant.  As I got through the book, I realized this rant was way off  base for the text.  That is why I pulled it from the review.  But it needed saying -

Snakes: Cheating Death by Living A Lie: Inside the Explosive World of ATF's Undercover Agents and How We Changed the Game

Vincent A. Cefalu 

addendum - Hillbilly Elegy

This is a sidebar to my book review on 'Hillbilly Elegy'

My 'review' went a little of course,  so I pulled it aside.

ust started this a couple of days ago, and it is a powerful and beautiful listen.  Read by the author, a wickedly thoughtful and insightful guy.  Saw him on 60 Minutes the other night, and this book was mentioned.  There is a lot to digest here, so for now I will just give you the official blurb.  Will update with my thoughts postmortem in a few days.

In the meantime, in order to maybe better understand the struggles of the poor and downtrodden left behind white folk of Appalachia… I think cultural mensch Paris Hilton has some thoughts on that.***  I believe this was her 3 word review in the New York Times Sunday edition.

*** apparently, this was photoshopped and it spread like a virus.  I don’t care.  It’s funny.  Reading this book shows me that poor white folk down South shouldn’t be our cultural punching bags anymore.  So, let’s pick on Paris, instead.

The poverty rate increased in 12 states. In America, 14.8 percent of the population, or 46.7 million people, were living in poverty in 2014.

In the top 20 poorest states (data linked here), 14 of them are in the ‘bible belt’.   Why do I throw these numbers are you? They weren’t in the book, I researched them to make a point.  Why is no one talking about or fighting for the very very poor (black… or white)? The only leader I remember who really brought of the issue and put it right in our face was presidential candidate John Edwards.  He talked about ‘the two Americas’. Why is no one fighting for them or talking about it? Am going to make a few theories, based on wild and often uninformed observations. These poor folks in the bible belt don’t vote in high numbers.  So many are fully disenfranchised. This means politicians aren’t going ‘to the mattresses’ for them. There is neither money nor opportunity in it. That is how Trump won the election. He brilliantly reached out to this Demographic and somehow convinced them a billionaire slumlord would be their advocate.

“[Hillbilly Elegy] is a beautiful memoir but it is equally a work of cultural criticism about white working-class America….[Vance] offers a compelling explanation for why it’s so hard for someone who grew up the way he did to make it…a riveting book.” (Wall Street Journal)  >March 2019

update – lying in bed last night right after I wrote this, I have an epiphany.  I don’t know shit about real struggle, class warfare, or family abandonment.  That is why i am reading the book.  You should too  It’s quite a ale, and very well written.  I always tell y’all I read these books because I want to walk in mile in their shoes. Having read this book gives me no excuse to pontificate on any of it.   Look at all that high minded pseudo-intellectual garbage up there.  What an asshole I am.  I could just delete it.  I’d rather be honest and d a strike through.  This way, you can see through my crap.  This is what happens why you try and write book reviews at 3 am.

I don’t quote the Times because I read it.  I quote the times because I want you to think I read it.  Plus the NEw York Times carries a little more cultural weight than if I cited Tweaker Bob. who told me the same story