Willie Nelson, Metallica, and The Punisher
Trust me, this isn't as random as it might seem.
As I have said in the past, I am not an expert in the history of country music. However, when presented with a question, I aim to do sufficient enough research to arrive at a proper answer. Is it the right answer? Perhaps not. But, it will be coherent and accurate enough to my research and thoughts that I will feel comfortable sharing it. I will often read, if not entire books, large swaths of books in preparation. I'll read academic studies, peruse website archives, and listen to copious amounts of interviews, podcasts, and obviously lots and lots of music.
Spurred on by the news a couple years back that Willie Nelson was going to release a Frank Sinatra tribute record- which incidentally was quite good- I began to undertake a proper Today I Heard deep dive into Willie Nelson. Willie has a prolific discography to say the least. Without even a shred of understanding about where to start, I did a desperate google. Thankfully, a magazine named Texas Monthly did yeoman’s work and ranked every single album Willie has graced us with.
Texas Monthly is not a country music magazine, but any publication dedicated to the great state of Texas will have encounters with country music abound in its pages. The Willie Nelson album rating article is an exhaustive, thorough, and concise resource for someone looking for a breakdown of Nelson's output. It is immensely useful as a guide about where to find his peak performances for beginners, and also perhaps what to push off for a later date when deep cuts and failed experiments would have more resonance.
With Texas Monthly's trusty guide, I slowly selected a handful of elite albums that properly represented Willie's various eras, and began to dive in. The material was unsurprisingly excellent. What did come as a surprise to me was how little further interest I had in diving further into Nelson's expansive discography aside from the albums I hand selected. Why?
Although I cannot say that my hesitant unwillingness to delve deeper into Willie Nelson‘s back catalog is shared by readers of the blog. I would imagine that in a situation where the aspiring music discoverer is presented with a murky mass of unknown, there is a doubt within all of us. We don't know where to start. We don't know what to expect. And, let's be real, the time commitment is massive. Even when a flashlight beam pierces a path through the thick darkness, the surrounding mass of darkness is intimidating and discourages further foraging.
There are two reasons for this difficulty. They are both rooted in one simple issue. When it comes to these old artists, there is just too much darn music to digest. It’s very rare to have released more albums than years of your life. Maybe some child stars. Otherwise nearly impossible, especially for a nonagenarian. Willie Nelson has one hundred studio albums (the big 152 number in the magazine article includes live albums). For modern ears this seems hard to believe but recording artists in the mid-twentieth century put out albums yearly. Willie Nelson, with his indomitable strength of will, has kept up that pace and then some for his entire sixty plus years as a recording artist. This creates a nearly incomprehensible reality.
Metallica is an illustrative counterexample. They have been recording music for forty years. Willie has been putting out music for sixty. Back of napkin math would suggest that Nelson would have a 3:2 proportion of material compared to Metallica. Instead it is 9:1. This means delving into the top four albums of Metallica allows one to arrive at a clear grasp of what they sound like, stand for, and even get a feel for the evolution of the group over the years. Conversely, it means needing to listen to ten times as many Willie Nelson records to get a similar depth of understanding. A few hours vs. a few weeks. This is the surface level difficulty.
However, even if enough will is summoned, meetings canceled, and time carved out of schedules to grant one the time to engage with the lengthy discography, deeper problems arise from beneath the surface. Our conception of what an album is and ought to do has changed over the years. This can lead to a sense of dissatisfaction with older lengthier discographies.
Perhaps we can explain this murky idea via another personal anecdote regarding a different artform: Comic books.
Following the successful Netflix run of Jon Bernthal’s excellent portrayal of The Punisher, I was curious enough about the character to dig into some of the source material. Aside from watching the excellent and highly underrated film Punisher: Warzone, my attention focused mainly on the Garth Ennis written run of the comic. After acquiring a digitized version of an omnibus collection, I eagerly jumped right in. The pages flew by. Garth Ennis has a keen understanding of what makes the character tick. The drawing team did a fantastic job bringing the images to life. I was hooked and furiously read through large swaths of the run.
As I delved further into the lengthy omnibus, a peculiar feeling arose. Not a disappointment, but a malaise. There is a rhythmic quality to the series. Bad deeds occur, and righteously violent vengeance is enacted. The exact details differ, but the violent comic book wish fulfillment core is constant. It can even be deeply satisfying, the same as it was in the live action big and small screen adaptations. However after reading the equivalent of multiple years worth of a comic book run in a short span of time, the repetitive nature began to dull the enjoyment. No more than a handful of settings are utilized. The lack of character development year-over-year is both indicative of the repetitions of life, but makes for unsatisfying resolutions in fiction. Yet, this is not considered to be a fatal flaw of a successful comic book run. This is the medium of the literature. If the characters changed drastically over a relatively short time they would be wholly unrecognizable a handful of years down the road. The Punisher sells copy because people both know what to expect, and also want to see what is done with those expectations. Mild tweaks on the edges suffice to freshen up the essential template within a run.
So too with music. The knock on effects of distance between recordings led to an understanding of the album as a signifier of an era. Evolution is expected between projects. An album is meant to speak to the time, both of the world and of the artist in a way that coheres beyond a collection of great songs.
This construct of an album signifying a distinct era isn’t really present in Willie Nelson's music. Sure, over a span of five to ten years, broad themes emerge about the direction and scope of his career. And certainly specific albums are themed. But unlike say Metallica, where at most two albums exist per era, with Nelson, it easily could be six or seven albums coexisting in the space of what would be one cohesive era for a more modern artist. Listening to Willie Nelson's music may seem like treading water. The same ideas get churned over and over. Certainly in creative ways, but not progressing from album to album in the way most of us would expect. Instead of each album representing eras, each one is an issue in a comic book run. A critical component vis. understanding the artist. A whole work of art. But not one that stands independently boldly representing years worth of work, focus and identity.
And perhaps that explains both why the sheer number of albums stands to intimidate us and especially why even if we barrel through, we don't get the finality expected. Simply put, because we transplant modern conceptions over what an album “means”, we therefore find difficulty and frustration in the digesting and processing of the different, more iterative paradigm of older music.
(Caveats for concept records aside. I think those do tell a full and whole story about Willie Nelson the artist and his muse during certain periods.)
There is a further issue that these ideas lead into. I will hopefully expand this conversation further in a part two.
Thanks for reading,
Joe
This month was a slog. Suffering from writer's block. Was digging through my notes and found this idea. Decided to flesh it out. There's more, but I didn't have the headspace for a full on 3,000 word essay. This seems a full thought and that's fine. Not everything needs to be big and bold. Further reviews hopefully coming within a week. Spoiler alert, I really like the new Scotty McCreery album.
Photo Credit: Fresh Comics website via Google Images