Tellin’ it like it is.
For someone who had as much success as Waylon Jennings had throughout his hall of fame country music career, he didn’t much care for the pomp and circumstance of the mainstream music industry, which includes meaningless awards and accolades he largely rejected. His legendary note on one of his CMA nomination certificate is incredible…
The man amassed 16 #1 hits, four CMA Awards, two Grammy awards and sold thousands of tickets over his decades-long career, but he always kept it about the music, and that’s something many artists unfortunately can’t say.
But even for an icon like Waylon, eventually, a new group of artists comes in and there’s a certain changing of the guard, if you will, with younger country singers coming in and becoming stars themselves. Waylon’s career was at its height during the country outlaw movement of the ’70s, which he pioneered alongside Willie Nelson, so by the mid-80s and ’90s, he was certainly more of a legacy artist than a chart dominator.
With that comes the fact that less of his music was getting played on the radio, which at the time, was the only real way to find success in the music industry… there was no TikTok or YouTube you could go viral on, and even older artists like Waylon, who were already considered legends, had to fight for radio play.
In fact, at one point, Waylon considered quitting music altogether because it was becoming so frustrating to push new music, and he revealed in a vintage interview with Waylon from 1998 with Bill DeYoung that he truly did come close to it. But at the end of the day, he reminded himself that he started his whole career to make music, and for the love of music, so he would be doing a disservice to himself and his passions if he did quit.
He explained that he rediscovered his love of writing, and as long as he still felt the love of playing music, it became more about that fulfillment than anything else. Waylon wasn’t going to let the industry dictate how long he would do music:
“You know what, I did. But then all of a sudden I started writing again, and I picked up the guitar and started tryin’ to play again. So as long as I feel like playing, as long as I like it, as long as I’m having a good time with it, then I’ll do it.
But they’re not going to dictate to me when I quit. Or how long I can stay in this business. The business is not going to dictate that to me.”
I imagine it can become a real struggle as a legacy artist at a certain point, especially if you still have the love for playing music but don’t necessarily have the fresh excitement around it that you did when you were first breaking out.
Waylon said it actually became a lot less frustrating to not get played on the radio with some of the music that started coming out around the time of this interview (in the late 90’s), because he hated the “Levis and hats” tropes that were already popping up in mainstream country back then.
He thought the girls were bringing it with the nest stuff, and I have to agree with him there, and I think that’s true still today in many ways:
“With the music that’s on the radio now, I do not want to be mixed up with that. I want nothing to do with that, and I don’t want to be known to be from this era. These tight Levis and these hats … I’ll tell you who are wonderful, and that’s the girls.
The girls are gettin’ better material, and they’re workin’ harder at it. And I think they’re cuttin’ better records than the men.”
He’d HATE to hear some of what gets played these days, that’s for darn sure. But it’s a timeless statement, and Waylon Jennings never goes out of style…
