It seems appropriate to start this new year by listening to Willie Nelson’s forgotten (and thus hard-to-find) 1976 album “The Hungry Years.” In the title cut (a Neil Sedaka tune), Willie laments the fading of his early years, and, ironically, this album of forgetting has itself been forgotten, so the years are doubly forgotten. This album was recorded in 1976, but not released until 1991, around the time of the IRS Tapes. The personnel include Willie’s family band along with Johnny Gimble on fiddle and Rex Ludwick helping out on drums. The original recording was made in Louisiana in 1976, but overdubs were made in 1989 and 1991.
If poetry is the “synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits,” then Willie’s music is the synthesis of years and tears, time and emotion. His music is feelings organized in time. In other words, measured feelings. Put another way, "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility” (Wordsworth).
This album is one of Willie’s most Proustian, as it dwells on time and mind. You have “Hungry Years,” memories that won’t die, “Time Changes Everything,” and “Carefree Moments.” It confirms that Willie is the hardest thinking honky tonk singer in show business.
In the title number, Willie seems to regret all the fame and fortune. He misses the hungry years, the “lovely long ago.” He misses what they lost along the way. How could he have been so blind? He misses the past. Like Proust, he is in search of lost time. “The things that we were after were much better from afar.” And now they have “everything and nothing, too… it wasn’t worth the price we had to pay…let’s go back to yesterday.” This raises the question, why do we always seem to miss the detours of time? The two roads diverging in the yellow wood? “Detour” (track two) makes concrete the abstract detours of “The Hungry Years.” “I should have read that detour sign.” Even with our ability to do abstract reasoning, we seem incapable of reading the detour signs in life. “I’m Ragged but I’m Right” is a lively George Jones romp. “I’m a rambler, and I’m a gambler, and I lead every life.” That’s Willie, leading every life, having it both ways. Living in the past and giving no thought for it. Caring and not caring, staying and going, standing still and moving. In “It Wouldn’t Be the Same (Without You),” Willie ponders how he could start his life over, how he could re-wind, re-do, re-mix, or overdub his past, but it wouldn’t be the same. The past both matters and doesn’t matter. He moves on and leaves it in the dust, burning bridges as if it doesn’t matter, yet he dwells on it and laments it as if it does. In the recording studio, Willie likes to do things in one take, no re-dos. And yet so many of these one-take recordings are of songs that long to re-do or recover the past. Willie doesn’t want to re-do a song in the studio, but “Your Memory Won’t Die,” so he is forced to re-do the past in his mind. His mind is not like a studio that he can control. We can’t TIVO the past; we can’t fast-forward or re-wind. Gimble’s fiddle makes this song a five-star recording. In “Your Memory Won’t Die” (one of only two Willie Nelson-penned songs on this album), Willie claims he’s “feelin’ kinda free” but he’d rather “feel your arms around me.” He wants to be held and let go at the same time, bound and free, captive and fugitive. Mickey Raphael’s harmonica makes this song about memories memorable. Emmylou Harris accompanies on “When I Stop Dreaming.” Willie claims, “You can’t teach a heart to forget,” and yet this is exactly what carefree people try to do. Let bygones be bygones. Except when they won’t get gone and stay gone. This is another version of “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” A serious version of “Funny How Time Slips Away.” Willie vows to love forever, but he’s had four wives. “He Stopped Loving Her Today” is the serious version, and “Funny How Time Slips Away” is the sarcastic version. In “If That’s the Fashion,” Willie says he can’t hold with those who brag about cheating. “I vowed in my heart to be true, dear, when God made us one; you took the same vow, and shamed those who cheated for fun. Now you see no glamour in love that is faithful and true, and if that’s the fashion, it’s the kind of love that I never knew.” Willie doesn’t hold with time slipping away, with disavowing timeless vows. Neil Sedaka’s “Solitaire” is about a lonely man who lost his love through indifference. Solitaire is another name for freedom. Carefree is another name for lonely. How can Willie care so much about everyone and be so carefree? This is the paradox of Willie Nelson. This version of “Milk Cow Blues” (track nine) has a rousing piano solo by sister Bobbie and one by Mickey Raphael (or T.J. Clay) on harmonica. Willie hits his falsetto in this recording more than almost any other time I can recall. “Linda” is another pleasant song to relieve the heaviness of tracks four through eight. Gimble’s fiddle shines. Willie lives in a dream world of love even though “Linda doesn’t know I exist.” Another example of mind over matter. Love is always cerebral, always filtered through mind, Platonic and ideal. “The Last Thing on My Mind” (track eleven) is another “Always On My Mind” song. It’s “a lesson too late for the learning, made of sand.” “I should have loved you better. I didn’t mean to be unkind. You know that was the last thing on my mind.” “You have reason aplenty for goin’. This I know…Please don’t go.” Willie regrets that he didn’t love her better. His love was perfect in his mind. In his autobiography he talks about how it is easier to say things in a song than in real life. But why is that? Why are artists famous if saying things in art is easier than saying them in real life? Artists say what we can’t say for ourselves and what they can’t say for themselves. So they speak for everyone and no one. “She is Gone” (track twelve) is the only other Willie Nelson original on this album. A classic “my woman left me” song. With harmonica and fiddle to accentuate the pain. Willie revisits this song in “Spirit.” It is one of his saddest and most meditative songs. This version of Rodney Crowell’s “Till I Gain Control Again” (track thirteen) confirms that this album makes my untenable top ten list. In “Time Changes Everything” (track fourteen) Willie sings of the healing hands of time. Time remixes itself, overdubs itself? “There was a time when I thought of no other. We sang our own love’s refrain. Our hearts beat as one as we had our fun, but time changes everything. And when you left me my poor heart was broken, and our romance seemed all in vain, but the dark clouds are gone, and there’s blue skies again ‘cause time changes everything.” In other words, ain’t it funny how time slips away? “You can change the name of an old song, rearrange it and make it swing. I thought nothing could stop me from loving you, but time changes everything. So goodbye, good luck, may god bless you. I can’t say I won’t love again. You go your way, and I’ll go mine ‘cause time changes everything.” But does it really? For Gatsby? For Proust? Juxtapose this to the final song on the album, “Carefree Moments.” “Just for a few carefree moments, I lost the one I loved.” Willie wants to be forgiven for being carefree. He knows he’s to blame, and he’s so ashamed. He always is. And is it really just a few carefree moments or is it a whole carefree way of life? Doesn’t reincarnation make everything carefree, because you always get a do-over? Which is also interesting because Willie never does a re-do in the studio, but he loves the notion of reincarnation, so he wants an infinite number of re-dos in life. This reminds me that there are no tears in Gupta era Hindu literature. Because of reincarnation, there is never any reason to cry. So how does Willie manage to care so much that he cries, yet remain so blissfully carefree that he can maintain his beatific, Buddhist smile? This is the puzzle, the paradox, the enigma, the allure of Willie’s music.
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