In a 1984 episode of the PBS series Austin Pickers, Van Zandt said of “Pancho and Lefty,” “I realize that I wrote it, but it’s hard to take credit for the writing, because it came from out of the blue. After a couple of days of driving an hour into the city to play a show only to turn around to return to the same dingy room, Van Zandt resolved to sit down and not leave the chair until he wrote a song. A Billy Graham crusade billed as the Christian Woodstock had filled hotel rooms within 50 miles of Dallas, where Van Zandt was playing a three-day gig. He wrote the song while stuck in a lousy motel outside of Denton, TX. It was widely assumed that the song told the tale of famed Mexican revolutionary and guerrilla leader, Pancho Villa, who in fact had a friend whose name translates as “Lefty.” Only Van Zandt didn’t know that. Willie’s vocal takes the first part of the story, his uncanny lilt introducing the two characters: a fallen bandit and the friend who escaped north by betraying him.įor the second half of the story, Merle’s inimitable phrasings, where notes drop like a duck felled by a hunter, add gravitas to the curse of Lefty living with that betrayal. Credit it to Willie’s wisdom or Merle’s weariness, but the two did-it-my-way country stars don’t get in the way of the song’s poetry. “Pancho and Lefty” was indeed that song they were looking for it became the title track to Haggard and Nelson’s 1983 album, Pancho & Lefty, that went on to top the Country charts. By the time of that 1972 album, Townes Van Zandt had earned a cult following, particularly among other songwriters, who felt his songs’ twofold poignancy - their obsidian beauty and the weight of realizing that you’re unlikely to ever write anything that good. It doesn’t get more Country than a story song that echoes the old west, but the one Willie had heard sung in Emmylou Harris’ angelic voice was rooted in different desperate circumstances: “Pancho and Lefty” first appeared on The Late Great Townes Van Zandt, a bleakly ironic title for a songwriter releasing his sixth album in four years. By morning, the song had already been sent to Columbia Records’ headquarters in New York and was on its way to being a hit. Willie coaxed him into the studio for a vocal that Haggard thought would be properly cut the next day. Willie said he had the song they needed, which was all well and good, but Merle was done for the night. On it was scrawled the words to a song from a five year-old Emmylou Harris album, one that Willie’s daughter Lana was suggesting. It was about 4 am, and Merle had just laid his head down when he heard Willie banging on the bus’s door with a brown paper bag in his hand. The two Country greats had been working on an album together for the better part of a week but hadn’t found a song worthy of a single. Merle Haggard’s bus was parked outside Willie Nelson’s Cut-n-Putt studio (and golf course) in Pedernales, TX. Living on the road my friend was gonna keep you free and clean
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |