Product Description

Willie Nelson has spent the last 30 years on that higher plane of celebrity where he signifies many things to many people--American folk hero, national treasure, Nashville rebel, Texas outlaw, country traditionalist, lover of old pop, jazz hepcat, white blues man, white reggae man, movie star, television, personality, composer, actor, producer, disc jockey, host, motivational speaker, lifestyle trendsetter, Zen Bubba, King of the Honkytonks, philosopher, poet, gypsy, outlaw, hustler, pothead, healer, preacher man, hippie, benefit fundraiser, friend of the farmer, champion of the common man, road dog, and thief.

Texas Monthly writer and acclaimed author of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Nick Patoski offers a frank and thorough portrait, adding some surprising insight on this beloved performer. From Nelson's humble beginnings cared for by his grandparents in Waco, Texas, when he learned to play the guitar at six and wrote his first song at seven to his remarkable rise to legendary status as a genre-bending music maker and a bona fide Hollywood darling, Patoski draws from his own association with Nelson, a relationship that began in the 1970s when Patoski began writing about the man and his music.

Why does Willie Nelson keep going down the road, steady as a mountain stream, creating an illusion for the millions that sit in awe of him as he sings the same repertoire night after night? With relish, Willie delves into these questions and more as Patoski reveals the true motivations for the Texanmost Texan.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #79315 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780316017794
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This impressive, entertaining chronicle of Willie Nelson's life is replete with exactly what you'd expect-honky-tonk, long nights on the open road, whiskey, womanizing and weed-but Texas writer Patoski (Stevie Ray Vaughan: Caught in the Crossfire, Texas Mountains) looks beyond country music trappings to find the funny, talented, determined man who became an unlikely icon. Raised in Abbott, Texas, by impoverished grandparents, Nelson was writing songs about "love, betrayal and cheating" by the age of seven, but was told throughout his life that he couldn't sing, play or keep a beat. As an adult, Nelson worked odd jobs-encyclopedia salesman among them-while selling songs in Nashville; he had an early hit in 1961 with Patsy Cline's "Crazy," and soon began recording for RCA. Fourteen albums later, "with not much to show," Nelson fled to Austin, Texas, a move many viewed as career suicide; instead, it was a launching pad to stardom, propelled by the up-and-coming hippie movement and the strength of his groundbreaking album Red Headed Stranger. Patoski conducted over a hundred interviews for this thorough, well-noted "epic," peopling it with "pickers, gypsies, pirates, vagabonds, wanderers and carneys," including fellow performers like Kris Kristofferson, Kinky Friedman and Leona Williams. Writing with an affectionate country twang, Patoski gives his subject the consideration he deserves in a fine, fluid piece of storytelling that any Nelson fan will appreciate. 8 pages b&w photos.
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From Booklist
Country singer-songwriter Nelson’s performing life turned 50, so to speak, at least a decade back and has been so closely coterminous with his biological being that Patoski’s biography basically just chronicles gig after gig and session after session. Spaces between professional musicmaking are filled mostly by driving between them, deal-making, collecting performance fees, and jamming with confreres. The ordinaries of most people’s adult lives—marriage and family, householding—receive the least attention, apparently because they always got the short end of Nelson’s stick. He has been happiest on the road, as he admits, and those who went with him, blood-related or not, came to be his family. As Patoski relates it, Nelson’s way is harder on everyone else than it is on him. They succumb to the booze, drugs, bad food, sleep deprivation, and violence of the road. Nelson breezes along, the calm center of a ceaseless storm. Those who cherish his voice will tell you that’s how he sounds, too; since such are legion, this book will immediately grab a sizable readership. Those who know only his name may be bored by Patoski’s naming of every person who ever impinged on Willie, every country music club in every Texas town Willie has played, every track Willie has laid down—but evoking precious few of them. --Ray Olson

Review
"Patoski's profound understanding of Nelson's life, character and milieu make this the Willie bio to get." (starred review) --- Kirkus Reviews "For a guy who isn't me, Joe Nick Patoski can really write. Willie Nelson: An Epic Life is heartbreaking enough to have been ghostwritten by Hank Williams. It may be the best book ever written about the life of Texas's greatest gift to the world." --- Kinky Friedman "A fine book worthy of Willie...A lively, substantive account." --- Bob Ruggiero, Houston Chronicle

Customer Reviews

This Will Be Definitive
If someone had asked me who would be the best person to write a biography of Willie Nelson, I would have said Joe Nick Patoski without any hesitation. He's been "on the story" for years, as a journalist and as a fan. (I have too, in fact, but Nick got there before I did!)

What fascinated me about this book was how well he negotiated the huge cast of characters -- and I mean "characters," a term used in the Texas underworld for small-time criminals, as well as dramatis personae. Willie has never been able to say no to anyone, resulting in a "family" the size of a small town, and it looks like Patoski has interviewed all of them.

And although I've been covering Willie since his 1973 Atlantic sessions, and have interviewed him numerous times, I was astonished at how much new stuff I learned from reading An Epic Life. It's great to have all this information in one place, and for serious fans, or, indeed, anyone interested in Texas music, the history of country music, or what it's like to be a superstar today, this will very likely be the definitive book on the life and work of Willie Nelson for some years to come.

At which point, I don't doubt Patoski will get back on the case and update this one.

All There Is To Know - And More - About Willie Nelson !
"Willie Nelson: An Epic Life", written by acclaimed Texan Joe Nick Patoski, is a meticulously researched and very readable documentation of the life and career of the legendary Willie Nelson. Combining insightful observations about Willie along with exclusive interviews of Nelson and the people that have been closest to him in his personal and professional life, this official biography has a very engaging and fluid style that makes it an entertaining and enlightening read for those either new to the story of Willie Nelson or for the long-time fan.

From the Blackland cotton patches of Willie's boyhood home in Abbott, Texas, through his musical "coming-of-age" in the rough and tumble, blood and guts honky-tonks of Fort Worth, his trials, tribulations and ultimate successes in the music business of Nashville, Nelson's return to his roots in Texas and to Austin, then on to the heights of The White House and his well-deserved legendary status worldwide, Patoski wonderfully leads the reader on the road of Willie Nelson's life.

This well-written, flowing " page-turner " is a joy to read.

Jim Yanaway

I learned so much about Willie Nelson from Joe Nick Patoski's book

No matter how many stories you have heard about Willie Nelson, or what you know about him -- I promise that you will learn new things about him when you read Joe Nick Patoski's book, 'Willie Nelson: An Epic Life."

I have been reading Joe Nick's articles about Willie Nelson for years. It's always like I'm sitting down listening him to tell a story. You can kind of hear his southern accent in your head while you're reading :)) Joe Nick doesn't ask the same questions of Willie, and he always gets new answers. This book is so well researched, well written, and entertaining. Joe Nick tells the stories behind the stories. He is a Willie Nelson fan, and you can feel when you read it that this book was a labor of love.

The book is about Willie Nelson, but it is also tells the history of music in Texas, and the characters and musicians. There are several books written about Willie Nelson, and I've read them all. This one is the best!

Thank you, Joe Nick, for writing this book!