Classic Waylon.
The country legend had a reputation for walking out whenever he felt like he was either being disrespected, or something wasn’t worth his time. He did it at the CMA Awards, the recording of “We Are The World” in the 80’s, and the Tom Snyder show in 1998. According to publicists, Waylon only agreed to come on The Late Late Show if he was the only guest.
And after the show introduced a second guest with quite an extensive interview, it started cutting into the 30-minute time-slot he was promised. Jessi Colter, Jennings wife at the time, recalled Waylon watching the interview between Tom Snyder and his other scheduled guest backstage, then looking over at her and saying, “we’re leaving.”
Jessi explained:
“He’s sitting there watching Dr. Laura and Tom talk. In 20 minutes, he says, we’re leaving. So they came over and said, ‘It’s not going to be very long, just a few more minutes.’ So we sat there, and at 35 minutes he says, ‘Call the car.'”
This walk-out left host Tom Snyder stunned with over 15 minutes of television time to fill by himself. When the show went live after Waylon’s exit, Snyder was left tripping over words. He told the live audience:
“Waylon Jennings walked out of here about 5 or 10 minutes ago. He is not here… there is nobody in the chair. I have never had anybody leave before they came on.”
Willie Nelson recalled the event, and how it became such a legendary moment at the time, and even still today:
“Had it not happened it would’ve just been another television show that Waylon did, but since it did everybody talks about it.”
Tom learned that the hard way that Waylon didn’t play games, and he was stunned, to say the least, by the whole ordeal:
But there’s a lot more to the story, as per usual… in a vintage interview with Waylon from 1998 with Bill DeYoung, Waylon explained that he had already turned the show down twice, so he obviously already had a certain attitude about the whole thing. When 30 minutes went by and they still weren’t ready for him, Waylon had enough.
They can’t say they weren’t warned… Waylon said he would’ve done it all over again the same way, too.
Just classic:
“I had turned that show down twice because there were two guests on it. If you count the commercials and everything, there’s about 40 minutes of the entire thing. Well, they said ‘She’ll do six to eight minutes,’ the lady psychiatrist or whatever she was, ‘we’ll go to a break and then we’ll come back with you.’ That was the agreement I had with them.
I got there, and 30 minutes into the show I’m still sitting there. And that’s when I told them, you got 10 more minutes and then I’m leaving. I told everybody in the room to be ready, and 10 more minutes, it still didn’t look anything was gonna happen. And so I left. You know, if I had it to do over, I’d do it again.”
He also revealed that producers were trying to get him to come back and the driver told Waylon they ordered him back to the studio… I’m not so sure they guy knew who he was dealing with, but Waylon assured him “something’s gonna happen” if he turned the car around to go back. Like I said, I can’t imagine the guy knew anything about Waylon or I don’t think he would’ve even thought of mentioning that:
“It kind of turned into Keystone Cops there for a little bit, they were trying to get me back. They even demanded I be brought back by the driver. He said ‘They’ve ordered me back,’ and I said you think about the here and now, not about what’s gonna happen later. Because if you turn this car around, something’s gonna happen here.”
This story feels even more refreshing in 2025, because I truly cannot imagine any country artist today doing something like this, mostly for fear of bad press… they just don’t make ’em like Waylon anymore, sadly.
