Behind the legend of ‘Shotgun Willie’ lies a shocking true story of violence that even fans never expected. ML

There was a whole landscape of musical brilliance for Willie Nelson, as he became perhaps America’s ultimate traveller. By 1973, Willie Nelson was done with Nashville.

The legendary country singer had spent more than a decade in the genre’s capital city trying to make a name for himself. Although he was well respected as a songwriter, notably writing Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Paper’ and Patsy Cline’s ‘Crazy’, he had yet to experience any real success as a solo artist. Nelson kicked back at the clean-cut look and buttoned-up attitude of Nashville, and not long after his house outside the city burned down in 1970, Nelson decided that it was time to move.

He eventually found his ideal home in Austin, Texas. The city was a nexus point between the southern redneck ideology and more progressive hippie ideals, something that Nelson himself represented. The laid-back atmosphere of Austin meant that Nelson could grow out his hair and wear whatever he wanted, operating outside the headquarters of country music back in Nashville.

“I liked this new world. It fit me to a T,” Nelson claimed in 2015. “I never did like putting on stage costumes, never did like trim haircuts, never did like worrying about whether I was satisfying the requirements of a showman. It felt good to let my hair grow. Felt good to get on stage in the same jeans I’d been wearing all damn day.”

To celebrate his newfound freedom, Nelson began recording his 1973 LP Shotgun Willie. The initial sessions for the album were relatively uninspired, and Nelson began to think about more personal subject matter for his songs. While recalling one violent incident involving his family, Nelson began writing what would eventually become the album’s title track while seated in his hotel toilet.

The origins of ‘Shotgun Willie’ came from Nelson being informed by his daughter, Susan, that Nelson’s other daughter, Lana, was being abused by her husband. A tragic story that befalls too many families, Nelson knew he had to step in to make a serious statement.

Nelson immediately went to Lana’s house and threatened to kill her husband if he ever hurt Lana again. While it is depressing to note that such a threat is even necessary, it tragically is. With such instances, very rarely does it truly end any future violence.

Not long after returning to his own house, Lana’s husband and some of his friends followed Nelson back and began firing rifles at his front porch. In response, Nelson and his drummer, Paul English, began firing back with shotguns. When Nelson hit the combatants’ car, they surrendered, eventually giving Nelson the nickname ‘Shotgun Willie’.

The structure of ‘Shotgun Willie’ only partially has to do with Nelson’s incident with his son-in-law. The song’s first and final verses were directly inspired by the incident, but the other lyrics had to be pulled from Nelson’s other experiences. The second deals with Nelson’s own lack of inspiration during the initial album sessions, while the third was about John T. Floore, the owner of the famous John T. Floore Country Store honky tonk in Helotes, Texas.

In order to bounce ideas off of other artists, Nelson often held get-togethers where friends would show each other their material. “You might say it’s like a bunch of Old West gunfights coming together to see who is best – only instead of slapping their holsters and coming up with six guns blazing, they unsnap their guitar cases and come up singing,” Nelson stated in his 1988 autobiography. It was at one of these sessions that Nelson got critiqued by a famous peer. “Kris Kristofferson told me later the song ‘Shotgun Willie’ was ‘mind farts’. Maybe so, but I thought of it more as clearing my throat.”