Merle Haggard – Branded man
Haggard has met those problems with frightening honesty throughout his best songs. “Some of it is dramatized in order to make the songs work, of course,” he says, “But it’s like ‘Mama Tried’, I wasn’t doing life but I was in prison and I did turn 21 there. For the most part it’s 98 percent fact, and the rest of it’s to shape the song right. I get my enjoyment or appreciation out of all music if I’m totally honest about it. ‘Footlights’ is probably my honest attempt at my own self-descriptions.'”
Then something in his voice changes; one can almost hear his spine straighten. “Life is a tiger, and it’s no easier for any of us,” he says. “I think Willie said it in ‘Nobody Slides’ — life is going to deal its misery to all of us.”
And its good as well. Haggard’s fifth marriage has produced a second batch of children; they figure prominently in the emotional underpinning of Like Never Before, and throughout his conversation.
“To have children late in life is, in some ways, the greatest gift God could offer one man,” he says. “I would have thought the direct opposite. In fact, I was fixing to retire an old single country music star, partying my way out, on a houseboat. But these children were given and it just changed my life, changed my values, made a different person out of me.” That houseboat is now for sale on his website, the kids are almost teenagers, and his first batch of children has produced 13 grandchildren.
Not so fast. He is asked the old campfire question, if a UFO lands tonight and offers you a one-way ride, do you climb on?
“Yessir,” he answers quickly. “I’ll jump off this island if I get a chance.” He chuckles. This is a man who does not like to fly.
In the winter of his years, Johnny Cash found another layer of fame, his ears ever open to the work of songwriters with whom most folks would’ve figured he had nothing in common. Merle Haggard, too, has found his pen again, wielding it as casually and as topically as Woody Guthrie once did.
They are — Merle and Cash, Dolly and Dylan — the rarest of beings, entertainers who are simultaneously artists. Singers whose songs are inextricably linked to the lore of their private lives. Songwriters of subtlety and great substance.
“All I’m trying to do is entertain, be unpredictable and maintain honesty,” Haggard demurs, and then stops talking for a long moment.
His future is not to resemble Cash’s immediate past. The new album appears on his own Hag label, an enterprise with which he seems to hope to take control of his own legacy.
“I just sorta figured my big record-selling days were over,” he says, without rancor, “and I think a lot of other people agreed with me, because I couldn’t get a lot of money for a record deal. I just thought, hell, I’ll start my little ol’ company and do my own stuff. It’s sorta took on legs of its own and it’s jumping up here and acting like it might really be something. I know as much about the music business as most of those young kids who are trying to run the big companies.”
His new label is also bolstered by the recent reversion of his MCA masters from the late-’70s and ’80s to his control. “That immediately makes my little Hag Records worth a lot more money,” he says with evident satisfaction. “Little by little I’m going to get control, if I can, of all the music. Somebody said, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” He laughs.