Willie Nelson is one of the all-time greats in music, but he was also one of the original founders of the “Outlaw Country Music” movement.
He’s a living legend who has tried to live his life by his own rules.
And Willie Nelson didn’t want people finding him so he committed this crime to try and stop them, and his legend grew larger.
Willie Nelson returns to his roots in his Texas hometown
Willie Nelson was born in 1933 in Abbott, Texas.
Abbott is a small town located between Waco and Dallas.
Nelson was raised by his grandparents, who made the fateful decision to give him his first guitar when he was only six years old.
Willie started playing at local bars and honky-tonks when he was a teenager before he left to join the Air Force in 1950.
Texas was a big part of his life and his success as a musician.
But after the Air Force, Nelson spent the 1960s in Nashville, Tennessee.
But things weren’t going well and by the end of the decade, he was about ready to throw in the towel on music.
The restrictive Nashville sound and the country music business led him to move back to Texas to retire from music.
But thankfully, Willie couldn’t stay away from music for long.
He rejuvenated his career and refined his sound in the burgeoning music scene at the music hall Armadillo World Headquarters, in Austin, Texas.
Willie debuted his new sound on the 1973 album Shotgun Willie, an album which would go on to help kickstart the outlaw country music movement.
After the success of his 1975 album Red Headed Stranger, he was well on his way to becoming a major star in country music.
Willie said in his 2015 memoir It’s a Long Story: My Life that after he became successful in country music, he yearned to return to his hometown of Abbott.
He bought the home in Abbott of the doctor who delivered him
Willie returned to Abbott and even bought the home of the doctor who had delivered him.
Abbott became the perfect place to get away from it all in the familiar small-town surroundings of his youth.
But when the small town of fewer than 500 decided to celebrate his return, Willie was not thrilled.
Residents put up a billboard on the I-35 – a major interstate that runs next to the town – that said, “Abbott, home of Willie Nelson.”
Nelson was worried that random people traveling the highway would pull off the road and come looking for him in the spot he had moved to get away from it all.
One night he and his buddy Zeke Varnon were playing poker, and Nelson was complaining about the billboard.
So Wille hatched a scheme to deal with the billboard.
“Burn the f***er down!” Willie said.
So, he and Varnon set out to burn down the billboard.
They ran into a cop when they stopped to get the gas they were planning to use to burn down the billboard.
“We stopped to buy a can of gas. A cop came by, recognized me, and said, ‘Hey, Willie. What are you guys up to?’ ‘We’re going to burn down a sign,’ I said. He just laughed and went on his way. He didn’t believe the truth,” Willie wrote.
That didn’t stop Nelson and Varnon from carrying out their plan.
Willie doused the billboard in gasoline and tried to light it on fire, but it wouldn’t ignite.
He figured it was treated with something to make it fireproof and went home frustrated.
“Next day I learned that the sign actually did catch fire some time after we left and had to be extinguished by the lone Abbott fire truck. Not only that, but an innocent teenager was picked up and charged with arson. I called the police and told one of the boys to let the kid go,” Willie stated.
The police told Nelson they would have taken the billboard down if he had just asked.
“Was more fun to try and burn it,” the old outlaw musician told them.
This is yet another example of how Willie Nelson became a legend.
Informed American will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
