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Willie Archives: McLeese’s dilemina
This great column by Don McLeese originally ran Jan. 5, 1997:
Even some of us who don’t bother to make resolutions that we know we’d break use the new year’s transitional lull as a chance to get our houses in order, to come to terms with those obligations that we’ve been postponing for way too long. To that end, I hereby promise my editors that I will finally get around to writing Willie Nelson’s obituary.
This is an assignment I’ve been dreading since it was given to me a year and a half ago. In my mind, a Texas without Willie is unimaginable, and the prospect of writing about him in the past tense, even before the fact, is more than a little creepy. So what if the calendar says that Nelson will turn 64 on April 30, and photos show the Red-Headed Stranger with a gray beard? Whether through good karma or the medicinal properties of marijuana, I fully expect Willie to live longer than I do.
Yet newspapers routinely assign appreciative obits of prominent figures well in advance. If Nelson should somehow lose his life while I put this off, I could lose my job. Thus, when a friend said that he might be touring with Nelson this summer, all I could think was, “Please, keep him alive.”
It’s tough enough to do the obit reporting at the proper time, to intrude upon private grief for public consumption. In the name of my chosen profession, I have interviewed a sobbing Buddy Guy after Stevie Ray Vaughan’s helicopter crash, called a stunned Lyle Lovett when Walter Hyatt’s plane went down and spent the evening at Second City’s “show must go on” vigil when the overdose of hometown hero John Belushi sent all of Chicago into mourning. In the aftermath of John Lennon’s murder, I was so frazzled writing a memorial section for the following day’s newspaper that I had no time to feel anything but numb.
At such times, newspapers provide a ritualistic catharsis, offering a connection through which an entire community can share its grief and ensure proper due to the deceased. When one considers how large Willie has loomed in Austin, in Texas, in the world of music and the world at large, it is hard to imagine the extraordinary outpouring that will occur when he dies.
Which is part of the problem for a writer trying to conjure the proper ex post facto spirit, while Nelson remains so very much alive. Should I start by calling his friends and asking, “When Willie dies (or if, since I’m still not entirely convinced that the man is mortal), how bad do you think you might feel?” How can I put an assessment cap on the career of an artist whose creative juices continue to flow?
It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it, and I can procrastinate no longer. With the tragic inevitability of Townes Van Zandt fresh in mind (and with Willie’s tender voicing of Townes’ “Pancho and Lefty” fresh in ear), I enlist your help. If you know Willie, share with me what makes him special — an enlightening incident, a funny story. If you’re a fan, share the reasons why the man and his music have meant so much to you.
And Willie, wherever you are, I’m offering you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Though it is common to fantasize about spying on one’s own funeral (if only to count the house and gauge the grief), few folks get the chance to read their obituary. In this case, I’ll not only let you read it, I’ll let you write it.
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