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By PAUL ZOLLO
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 erle Haggard is one of the true patriarchs of modern Country music, having written many hundreds of songs, including classics such as "Silver Wings," "Mama's Hungry Eyes," "Okie From Muskogee," and "Sing Me Back Home." He's recorded over 65 albums, generated 41 Number One singles, and received 56 BMI awards. Many of his songs have been recorded by many different artists, such as "Today I Started Loving You Again," which has been cut by over 400 artists to date. At the time of our interview, he had recently signed with Epitaph Records, home to Tom Waits, who counts himself among Merle's fans, an ever-expanding league of devotees which also includes Johnny Cash, Elvis Costello, Dwight Yoakam, and even Keith Richards, who said, "There are only a handful like Merle. I can't remember a time when I didn't listen to him. And he's from Bakersfield instead of Nashville. Big difference!"
Haggard's life reads like the lyrics to an old blues song: Born on April 6, 1937 in a boxcar in Oildale, California, he wandered east to Texas, got arrested, incarcerated, and escaped, a pattern of behavior he repeated a few times till he got hard time at San Quentin. Eventually emerging as a powerful songwriter, by 1965 he was a hit recording artist with great records that reflected the hard times he knew well, such as "Lonesome Fugitive" and "Branded Man." His most famous song is probably the infamous "Okie From Muskogie," an anti-marijuana song that he dismisses now as the result of cultural brainwashing.
Today it's morning in Nashville, Merle's favorite time for songwriting and interviews, and he's got a lot on his mind. When asked about the inspiration behind his most recent album at the time of our interview, Wishing All These Old Things Were New, he expounded at length on the way almost everything was better in the past. "They used to treat you like a king when you flew the airlines," he said. "Didn't matter what class you were in."
Record companies and radio stations received his rightful wrath. "They're all dictated to by programming. The bottom line is all that they're interested in. They're not interested in programming something which appeals to the entire listening audience. It's all about what they like to call `targeting.'" Merle also had little love for modern studio recording, which can alter a vocal to make it sound on tune. "Some people even use it for live shows, you know," he said with dismay. "You don't have to be Frank Sinatra anymore. With this tampering, how can the consumer even know what they're getting anymore? How can the consumer say, `Man, that Britney Spears can really sing.' How do we know?"
"I wonder," Johnny Cash said, "from where comes this newfound creativity? The answer is: it isn't newfound. Once you've had it, you always got it, and Merle has always had it."
Bluerailroad: What do you think of the state of modern music?
Merle Haggard: There's very little substance to anything anymore. I think it's due to the times in which we live. Dictated by several different things. The computer age, number one, the ability to make everyone sound like they can sing in tune. They got a machine, it costs about $490 you can put in your studio that will make it sound like you're singing in tune. Some folks even use them on their road shows.
Then there's the dictation of programming. It's sort of an onion-skin deal. The bottom line is all that they're interested in. They're not interested in programming something which appeals to the entire listening audience. Everybody has a phrase they call 'we're targeting' - as in "We're targeting Mexican broadcasting," or "We're targeting 13 to 24-year olds." It's like we can't have a clear picture anymore. We can't have a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
There are no barrooms to play in anymore. The nightlife has completely gone away. You can fly over the entire United States in a Lear jet and the only thing you see are streetlights. You don't see no honky-tonks anymore. Even Las Vegas closes at 2:00. [Laughter] It's a time in which I'm sort of amazed. I'm amazed with how people will put up with the plebeian force-feed that they're going for in music. Nowadays most of us could turn it on and you couldn't tell any difference between anybody. You certainly couldn't pick out any musician playing on there. Even though there are only about seven of them that they use. it's exactly opposite of what I like. I don't know about you, but there are a lot of people like me who would like to have a little more selection in programming. For example, you can't combine Talk Radio and music anymore. You can't go in there anymore with a guitar like Arthur Godfrey used to do many years ago and play a song and then talk about politics. I tried to do that but they wouldn't let me. You either have to be Art Bell or be on the hit parade during the daytime.
In America now every city and town looks absolutely the same. There is not a bit of character to the entry of any city in America anymore. There used to be a time when I could wake up on the bus, look outside, if you were coming into Amarillo, you'd see a big old Santa Fe engine sitting off to the left, and you knew, well, this is Amarillo. If you were coming into Modesto, California, you'd see the big archway over the city that said, "Welcome to the Waterwell of the World." There was some pride in each city. Now it's an off-ramp with a Windy Burger and those other things all sitting there, and they all look alike, and you could be anywhere in the USA and you couldn't tell. I wake up in a different world every day. Used to be fun. Now I don't even ask where I'm at. It don't make any difference.
This war against drugs is a joke. It's a big cycle that they depend on, and they encourage, and act like they're trying to stop. [Laughs] I think everyone knows it's a joke.
Radio music is kind of like sausages. You pinch off another one every time to start another one. You might as well just have kept the last one going. They're all the same. Being honest, you can't really tell what they're singing about. And if you take the time to investigate, then you're even more disappointed. My wife said, "It sounds like they're singing about air." [Laughs] I thought that was a good description. Because they really have nothing. There's not even a catchy phrase anymore. And there are no melodies anymore.
Do you feel it's tougher now to be a songwriter than it used to be?
Yes. It's a hard time now to be a songwriter. With the Internet now, and the ability to download music, there's really no way to protect yourself from copyright infringement. There is no respect at all in that area. There's not a lot of future right now for songwriting, unless they come up with some way to protect the things we're up against with that Big Brother. I know there are people who think all music should be free, like the wind. They don't understand, do they? They think it's all just something that everybody should be able to enjoy. And what's going to happen is that it's going to kill the incentive of people who have talent. If I had another lifetime left, I'd move to Australia. Yeah, I'd go over there. It's like a new country. They got that big old country over there and nobody's there. We went over in '96 and saw only two police officers. [Laughs] Isn't that the reverse?
When did you start writing songs?
It all started when I was about in the fifth or sixth grade. I started getting those bad report cards. It said, "This boy is capable of doing anything in school but he won't pay attention." They said I was looking out the window. I guess I was trying to write songs then. I managed to get passing grades, but the things they were teaching didn't seem to be very entertaining, by any means. I think I must have started writing very young. it's been a hobby. I go through periods where I don't write something for a year. I started playing guitar the same summer. I think I was nine when I learned C, F and G. My brother had a service-station, and some old boy came through there and didn't have no money for gas, and traded his guitar for a few dollars worth of gas. It was an old Bronson. A Charles Bronson guitar. It set around there in the closet for a couple of years. Steel strings. One of them old Gene Autry guitars that you could put any name on. They probably sold new back then for about seventeen dollars. it sat there for a couple of years. When I got about nine years old, my father passed away. He played guitar, but my mother didn't really play. He had showed her as couple of chords and she remembered them. She showed me C, F and G. It was right about the same time that I started dreaming at school, and thinking about songs, and trying to write.
Have you had that dream where you can fly? Writing a song is the conscious version of that same dream. Every time you start to write a song, there's a chance that maybe you can fly with this damn thing. Maybe you can lift yourself out of obscurity. Maybe you can become somebody. Maybe you can become an Ernest Hemingway. You never know. Every time you start writing, it might be the one. I guess it could be called an addiction as well as a talent. It is something that is necessary for me to do to release anger, and to express love, and it probably keeps me from going down to McDonald's and shooting all the hamburgers. [Laughs]
Music was just something I enjoyed at first. I never thought of doing it for work. Work was something you did outside with a hammer. I never thought I could make my living doing it. I certainly never thought I'd be a Frank Sinatra, or somebody great. I didn't have any ideas like that. But I kept doing it until, when I was about thirteen, all the kids would ask me to come over to their house, or go to a river party with them - we used to have a lot of river parties on the Kern river - and they'd always ask me to bring that guitar. About then I started to realize there was some power and clout in that. And also that I could do something that all those other kids couldn't do. Even the ones with better grades. {Laughs]
I had idols growing up, like Jimmy Rodgers and Hank Williams. Country records were called hillbilly records back then. They were on 78 records. My mother bought me an album that had four of those in it - a fold out of Hank Williams. And one of Jimmy Rodgers. There was no television back then, and there was not a lot going on. And I think you paid a little closer attention back then. I got to looking at these records and noticing that some of them had Jimmie Rodgers as the artist and then down underneath it was the name of the songwriter. I got to noticing that he delivered the songs that he wrote with more conviction. I started to realize that the guy who writes the songs gets more attention. I knew early on that the ability to take your feelings and things that occur in your own life and write about them, those same events were going on around the corner, too, and people identified with them.
I wrote "Mama's Hungry Eyes" about the days of the migration, the people from the dust bowl all moving west, there was many a mama who had hungry eyes. And many a dad who couldn't do anything about it.
When I was in jail, my mother bought me a guitar. We were a poor family, so for my mother to buy me a $250 Fender Jazzmaster guitar was a chore, and probably took her two to three years to pay for it. She sent that to me in the penitentiary. She came to see me every month. It was 300 miles, and she had to ride a Greyhound bus. That's a pretty good mom.
"Sing Me Back Home" was one I wrote on a trip from somewhere to somewhere in Ohio. It conjured up a lot of the feelings that took place around an execution. I had the privilege to talk to one of the condemned guys.
Songs don't take a long time for me to write because I don't force write. Most of my writing is done in the morning. If something has offended me or affected me deep enough to touch my soul, sometimes early in the morning things come from somewhere and I write them down. Sometimes I'm as surprised when I write them down as anyone who hears it. There's a certain amount of talent you develop in writing songs. Methods and ways of proving whether a line should be there. The best songs I've written, like "Mama's Hungry Eyes" or "Mama Tried" came so fast I could hardly hold the pencil. I could hear the whole song, and I would just try to get it all down before I forget it. There is no doubt that songs are gifts. People who don't believe in another dimension, a higher plane of existence, have never written a song. Or have never had songs given to them. I've read some songs back and wept.
The good songs are completely done when I get them. All I have to do is learn them. Sometimes I get a song with a great melody, but I let it slip away. And I have to go back and write a phony melody to it. I hate doing that. If they're not good enough to remember, it doesn't make it to the record.
I keep a guitar close by, pencil and paper, and if something good comes by, I can catch it. I never sit down with an intention of writing a song. A song comes to me, and then I sit down to write it. It has to be good enough for me to pick up a pencil. And then it gets exciting - it can really be like someone sending a teletype to me from the other side.
I don't know where songs come from. If there's a force of good and evil that's represented just out of our vision, maybe there's subject matters that need to come across. Maybe they try to get it to me, or maybe they try to get it to Keith Richards. Or somebody else. Maybe it takes some time for them to find someone sensitive enough to realize it's there. Hank Cochran, who wrote "I Fall To Pieces," said, "If I hadn't wrote that, Harlan Howard would have wrote that the next night."
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