\n<\/p>\n
\u201cRoll me up and smoke me when I die,\u201d Willie Nelson sang from the stage of the Hollywood Bowl during his 90th birthday celebration in April.<\/p>\n
As usual, Mr. Nelson looked very much at ease. He was wearing a cowboy hat over a red bandanna, and his hair spilled down his back. His trusty guitar, a road-worn classical acoustic model named Trigger, hung from the red, white and blue strap around his neck. At his side was his longtime friend, the equally relaxed Snoop Dogg.<\/p>\n
The duet with Snoop was one of many high points for Mr. Nelson in 2023, when fans and colleagues expressed their appreciation for one of the great survivors of American cultural life. In February, he won the Grammy for best country album. Two months later, he was joined by Beck, Rosanne Cash, the Chicks, Gary Clark Jr., Sheryl Crow, Keith Richards and other artists for the two-night Hollywood Bowl concert.<\/p>\n
In November, shortly after his latest book, \u201cEnergy Follows Thought: The Stories Behind My Songs,\u201d appeared in indie bookstores and Wal-Marts alike, Mr. Nelson was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame<\/a>. This month, CBS broadcast the Hollywood Bowl concert; and a four-part documentary retrospective, \u201cWillie Nelson & Family,<\/a>\u201d which made its debut at this year\u2019s Sundance Film Festival, started streaming on Paramount+.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But there was a time when Mr. Nelson\u2019s prospects seemed shaky at best, when he was just one of many Nashville strivers who was trying to follow a path mapped out by music executives who supposedly knew better.<\/p>\n The turnaround came when he made a break from all that and decided to be fully himself, not only in his musical approach but in how he presented himself to the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Willie Nelson who appeared on the covers of the albums he made for RCA Records in the 1960s would seem to have almost nothing in common with the \u201ccosmic cowboy\u201d (as he once described himself) that audiences would come to know and love.<\/p>\n On the cover of his 1962 debut album \u201c \u2026 And Then I Wrote,\u201d he is a short-haired fellow wearing a suit and an anxious grin. For his eighth studio album, \u201cGood Times,\u201d released in 1968, he hit a fashion low, posing in golf attire on a putting green while draping himself around a young woman in a miniskirt. The albums sold poorly, and Mr. Nelson grew more and more frustrated by his lack of agency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In addition to foisting upon this sui generis singer-songwriter the image of a generic country star, RCA insisted that he use top-flight session musicians in the recording studio, rather than the down-home band that backed him on the road. It seemed that the label was doing everything to make Mr. Nelson a star but allowing him to be himself.<\/p>\n His transformation began in earnest after his farmhouse outside Nashville burned to the ground in 1969. As Kinky Friedman noted in the foreword to Mr. Nelson\u2019s 2012 book, \u201cRoll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die,\u201d the down-on-his-luck singer launched into his next phase by channeling the spirit of an earlier American iconoclast.<\/p>\n \u201cWillie told the Nashville establishment the same words Davy Crockett had told the Tennessee political establishment: \u2018Y\u2019all can go to hell \u2014 I\u2019m going to Texas,\u2019\u201d Mr. Friedman wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 1972 he settled in Austin, a city known for its progressive politics, laid-back vibe and mix of musical styles, from conjunto to the blues. He grew out his hair, started wearing bluejeans and T-shirts to perform at clubs like the Armadillo World Headquarters and doubled down on his switch from alcohol to pot as his preferred mood enhancer.<\/p>\n To keep the sweat out of his eyes, he wore a red bandanna around his forehead. He grew mutton chops, then a scruffy beard. The new look fit the changing times, though it wasn\u2019t a calculated appeal to the counterculture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt felt good to let my hair grow,\u201d Mr. Nelson reflected in his 2015 autobiography, \u201cIt\u2019s a Long Story<\/a>.\u201d \u201cFelt good to get onstage wearing the same jeans I\u2019d been wearing all damn day. As I look at it, I was turning exactly into the person I was.\u201d<\/p>\n He also managed to bridge a great divide in American cultural life. As Turk Pipkin, a writer and filmmaker who has coauthored two<\/a> books<\/a> with Mr. Nelson, put it: \u201cHe united the hippies and the rednecks.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1973, he hosted the first of what would become an annual event, Willie Nelson\u2019s Fourth of July Picnic<\/a>. The concert, on a ranch in the Texas Hill Country, attracted dyed-in-the-wool country music fans as well as young progressives who were discovering his music through albums like \u201cShotgun Willie,\u201d released that June on his new label, Atlantic Records.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Nelson\u2019s willingness to follow his instincts was a key to his crossover success, said Peter Blackstock, who frequently covered Mr. Nelson for The Austin American-Statesman.<\/p>\n \u201cCowboys like Willie because he came from a country background and was born and raised in Texas,\u201d Mr. Blackstock said. \u201cWhat was unusual is that all these people who were listening to Led Zeppelin or Frank Zappa also got interested in Willie. They appreciated the individual streak there.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Though he was considered part of the so-called outlaw country movement, Mr. Nelson couldn\u2019t have chosen a more patriotic day to assemble his flock for a picnic; and his set list in those years, as today, included \u201cWill the Circle Be Unbroken,\u201d \u201cFamily Bible\u201d and other songs that reflected his upbringing in the Baptist Church.<\/p>\n By 1978, Mr. Nelson was wearing his hair in long braids \u2014 a radical act for a male country singer. Even his fellow male \u201coutlaws\u201d Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Tompall Glaser adhered to gender norms in their appearances.<\/p>\n In 1979, he showed up at the White House waring jeans and a sating jacket to present a Country Music Association award to President Jimmy Carter. That night, Willie smoked what he called \u201ca fat Austin torpedo<\/a>” on the White House roof.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Much has been made of Mr. Nelson\u2019s appreciation of marijuana and advocacy on its behalf. A 1978 profile in High Times magazine<\/a> began, \u201cWillie Nelson smokes a lot of dope.\u201d In the 1990s, he joined the advisory board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite the waist-length hair and frequent pot-smoking, Mr. Nelson never abandoned his heartland roots. The High Times article quoted a friend who said he drove \u201ca pickup truck with a gun rack\u201d; and Mr. Nelson would go on to be a founder of Farm Aid, the annual benefit concert that has raised millions for American family farmers over the last four decades.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As the nation grew more divided, his still had a knack for bringing together opposing camps. In 2015, he stood<\/a> on a stage in Washington, D.C., to accept the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Applauding him from a few feet away were Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California. In its report on the event, The Texas Tribune<\/a> called Mr. Nelson \u201cthe only person who can bring Democrats and Republicans together in the nation\u2019s capital.\u201d<\/p>\n Contradictions have defined his life and career. Mr. Nelson is someone who owns a home in Maui, Hawaii, with views of the Pacific Ocean, yet for several years also operated Willie\u2019s Place, a truck stop and biodiesel processing plant in Carl\u2019s Corner, Texas. He has taught Sunday school in Fort Worth, Texas, and praised Las Vegas for its \u201chustler energy.\u201d He has had his assets seized<\/a> by the I.R.S. and sung with President Obama at a 2014 benefit concert<\/a> for veterans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe common thinking for almost all of us is to see things as contrary positions, and we all fall into it,\u201d Mr. Pipkin said. \u201cWillie doesn\u2019t necessarily see them as contrary. He doesn\u2019t see the billionaire and the bum in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n Or, as Mr. Nelson put it in his autobiography, \u201cI\u2019m a man of many parts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n