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Watch Waylon Jennings Rip Into The Nashville Country Music Machine In 1995: “I Had Ideas Of My Own… They Weren’t Used To That”
It’s not everyday that you get to see an old interview for the very first time.
Thanks to a YouTube channel called “Video Stock Archives,” old interviews from the 1980s and 1990s are once again seeing the light of day. Fortunately, one of the more recent interviews that they unearthed and posted was a sit down in 1995 with the late, great Waylon Jennings.
Jennings was interviewed by what sounds like a German reporter, and for whatever reason, Waylon was very open and frank answering the man’s questions. The “I’ve Always Been Crazy” singer rarely ever shied away from speaking his mind, it’s why we all love him, but this sit down cultivated some very thoughtful and drawn out answers.
Like when Waylon was asked about his experience with Nashville.
Anyone who is familiar with Jennings’ outlaw nature knows that he and Nashville, Tennessee didn’t exactly mesh well together. Waylon shared a lot about how he felt towards Music City, like the inauthentic vibes he got from those who worked in the music industry from the very start:
“I wanted to come to Nashville. That was my big dream. And I did, and I came here one time about six months before I recorded and it was a very closed society. It was very cold. But then, when they wanted me here, and asked me to come here, then they were excited and everybody said, ‘We love you.’ But I found out pretty quick that that’s not necessarily true.”
That basically opened up a can of worms for Waylon.
He continued by calling out the record companies in Nashville, and how during his heyday (and probably still today), they didn’t ever prioritize the artist. They were more interested in the numbers behind the artist:
“Record companies are big corporations, and you are a number in a computer. If that computer kicks your number out, you’re in trouble. But my problem was I had ideas of my own, and they weren’t used to that… I just wanted a little freedom. I didn’t want to sound like everybody else.”
Jennings mentioned that “Why?” was not a welcome word in Nashville… and that he asked it a lot.
As he put it, Nashville didn’t want artists to come in with their own ideas, and Waylon Jennings was overflowing with them. It’s at that point that Jennings gave a scathing comparison for how Music City was churning out country music:
“They would rush you. It was kind of like assembly line music. Where they just did it like a car, no matter what, when it got past you, the other guy was working on something else. If you weren’t happy, that’s too bad. You had to record in their studios, you had to use their producers…I couldn’t understand how a guy could go to college and get a four-year degree in marketing and he’d come and tell me he knew more about my music than I did.
They didn’t want you to have ideas. They wanted you to come in and do it in a thing called the ‘Nashville sound.’ Me and the Nashville sound was like oil and water: it just didn’t mix. There was no edge to that music. It was one thing, and everybody recorded it, and it all sounded the same.”
Crazy that this interview is 30 years old, right?
Waylon admitted that the “Nashville Sound” worked, but that he didn’t want to be a part of it Jennings then suggested that Nashville tried to destroy him for not complying, and they destroyed themselves in the process. The country legend insisted that the system was briefly gone, but eventually came roaring back.
Throughout his rise in country music, it truly seemed like Waylon was attempting to push the genre into a more creative, freeing space. But Nashville never saw eye to eye with him, and thus he was labeled as an enemy:
“When I came to Nashville, I was known as a trouble maker because I really had my own ideas of what I wanted to do. Country music has always been a closed society, and it’s always been suspicious of change and suspicious of outsiders… I was pretty well free to do whatever I wanted to, and I loved rock and roll music.
I could not figure out why you couldn’t put a rocking beat to a country song. They borrow from us, you know? The Beatles and the Rolling Stones did a lot of things that had a country base to them. I thought, ‘Why do you have to have all these limits?’ (Nashville would say), ‘Oh, you can’t do that, that’s rock and roll. You can’t do that, that’s pop.’ I said, ‘No, wait a minute. Let’s just try it and see.’ I did change a lot of things in country music.”
That he did.
One of the other highlights of the interview was when he told a story about how he wrote “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?” while driving, which is just an iconic, subtle flex. And that’s about as anti-Nashville song as there is, which is fitting for much of what he had to say about his experience (mostly butting heads) with Music City.
You can hear the country music legend rip into Nashville in both Part 1 and Part 2 of the 1995 interview:
Part 1
Part 2
The post Watch Waylon Jennings Rip Into The Nashville Country Music Machine In 1995: “I Had Ideas Of My Own… They Weren’t Used To That” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.
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