Country music legend Willie Nelson has recently released his long-anticipated autobiography, “Me and Paul: Untold Stories of a Fabled Friendship.”
In the autobiography, Nelson openly discussed a past suicide attempt, recalling a time when he felt so low that he considered ending his life.
However, Nelson has no intention of leaving the music business. He’s focused on enjoying the good life and improving it as much as possible. He emphasized the importance of optimism and revealed his daily routine, including jogging and singing to keep his lungs healthy.
Nelson also plans to continue performing live gigs in the years to come. Despite his past struggles, Willie Nelson remains resilient and committed to his music career.
Nelson was born on April 29, 1933, in Abbott, Texas. The son of Myrle and Ira D. Nelson, Willie and his older sister, Bobbie, were raised by their paternal grandparents during the Great Depression.
With their grandparents, Willie and Bobbie attended their town’s small Methodist church, where they received their earliest exposure to music. Their loving grandparents had a musical background and Nelson has described them as “dedicated musical teachers.” They encouraged Willie and his sister to play and learn, going so far as to order musical books from Chicago.
Nelson got his first guitar at the age of six — mere months prior to the death of his beloved grandfather — and he began writing his own poetry and early musical compositions shortly thereafter. His famous gospel song “Family Bible” draws from his early exposure to religious music. He sold the song to his friend Paul Buskirk, a guitar teacher, for $50 in 1959.
Though family and faith were and remain top priorities for Nelson, in his 2015 memoir It’s a Long Story: My Life, the self-described guitar “picker” recalls that church “did not calm my restless and rambunctious soul. … Mama Nelson had to tether toddler Willie to a pole in the yard to keep him from wandering off. Don’t know where I’d have gone if I could have, but I had the itch early on–the itch to look beyond the end of the road.”
A few years later, he started playing his first professional gigs with a local polka band. A job at odds with his Christian upbringing. “I was ten, a member in good standing of the Methodist Church and a devoted grandson,” Nelson writes. “At the same time, when I was invited to play music in a beer joint, I said to hell with all the objections raised by the bible-thumpers.”
