Outlaw's finger still on the Trigger

Country legend Willie Nelson, who plays in Ireland this week, is known as a man of a thousand lyrics but fewer words. Now approaching 70, the farmer and 'outlaw' tells Peter Crawley he enjoys 'talking about things' but is happiest 'on the land or on the lam'

"He looks pretty tough," says Willie Nelson's warm, weary voice. "A little scarred up, but he's alright." Trigger, the long-serving and battle-worn guitar, has been with the singer-songwriter since the beginning. Over five decades, Trigger has had to adapt to the shifting styles of his owner. Once a classical guitar, it was altered forever in Nashville, and is now plastered with fading signatures - there's Johnny Cash's, scrawled in large, childish letters. A second hole in its varnish-stripped body resembles a slash wound.

Nelson has rescued Trigger from a burning building; he has hocked and redeemed the instrument when his fortunes seesawed; once they narrowly escaped separation by the Internal Revenue Service.

"He suits me fine," sighs country music's living legend.

Willie Nelson is a man of a few thousand lyrics but far fewer words. When he does speak, a brittle Texan drawl bends an extra syllable from the word "well", which precedes every other utterance. Halfway through a European tour, Nelson admits to missing his home town of Austin.

"Of course, I miss Abbott too. I miss several places," he says.

Born in Abbott, Texas during the Depression, Nelson was abandoned in infancy by his mother and then his father. "The experience of being raised without parents is a fate worse than death," he has said.

Brought up by his paternal grandparents, Willie was picking cotton by the age of three.At four, he was writing poems about broken hearts. In 1960s Nashville, the Mecca of country music, he wrote several songs for other artists, including Crazy for Patsy Cline and Hello Walls for Faron Young. Nelson, the original hit-maker, bought a farm with the royalties, while his own recording career stagnated.

Dissatisfied with Nashville, Nelson was reborn in Austin in the early 1970s.

"The music scene was picking up pretty good. There was a lot of talent in town, a lot of freedom of thought," he says.

He traded his squeaky clean-shaven image for a counter-culture uniform of jeans, trainers and a bandanna. Twin tight braids of long red hair reconciled his Irish and Indian blood, while he broke down further boundaries by merging doleful country and searching acid rock in a psychedelic prairie sunset.

The "red-headed stranger" had arrived, and the self-styled "outlaw" of country music flew proudly in the face of convention.

How things have changed.

His most recent album, The Great Divide, is a collection of guest duets and covers, featuring only one song co-penned by Nelson himself. Producer Matt Serletic and main contributor Rob Thomas are today's hit-makers, having worked their market-wringing magic on Carlos Santana's Supernatural. Another product of the recent vogue for matching wizened faces to fresh larynxes (Santana, Tom Jones and Lulu have all had a crack), The Great Divide is by no means a bad album, but feels a far more forced affair than his duets of old. Farewell Bob Dylan, hello Kid Rock. What once seemed like a blissful honeymoon now sounds like a shotgun wedding.

"Well, I just believe that it's always a good and positive thing to bring different singers together," Nelson says. "Not only can you make good music, but you people who might not have had a chance to hear you. It's just a good way to build up the audiences."

Nelson does recognise the risk of listless synergy, however, and such worries are not alleviated when he refers to one singing partner, r'n'b boy Bryan McKnight, as "Bryan Adams". Later, when asked if he was aware of Serletic and Thomas's previous success, he responds: "I was aware of Supernatural. I was also aware that it sold 10 million albums."

Bill Hicks, the late Texan comedian, had a routine about celebrities who endorsed products being struck from "the artistic roll-call" forever. "That goes for everyone," said Hicks, "except Willie Nelson. I just avert my eyes when he sings about tacos."

Nelson was exempted because of his alleged $32 million tax debt to the US government. It seems lifelong money troubles have taught him the value (and persuasion) of a dollar.

"I think money is pretty much the bottom line over the entire planet," he asserts.

If so, can an American music icon remain a liberal outsider, or is he drawn into the establishment?

"I really think that most of the establishment is pure outlaw. And that's good, because we still ask questions," he says.

Is it difficult to be a dissenter in a wounded America?

"It's important, now more than ever, to speak out."

Nelson's debts were eventually settled in 1993, after the darkest period in his life, which included an album recorded for the Internal Revenue Service, the subsequent seizure and auction of his properties and, in 1991, the suicide of his eldest son.

"It seemed like the most negative part of my life turned out to be one of the most positive," says Nelson. "Because of all the help I was receiving from friends and strangers."

A ragtag consortium bought every auctioned item, from homesteads to memorabilia, and returned them all to the man whose involvement with the Farm Aid charity had shed light on the hardship of the US's small farmers. Thinking back on this unimaginably difficult time, Nelson describes his feelings thus: "Oh well, you had naturally mixed emotions. Kind of like the guy who saw his mother-in-law drive off the cliff in his new Cadillac."

His laugh is slow and dry.

As stories are confirmed or denied, Nelson's legend is elucidated - but the man is almost obscured. He will answer any question, but reveals hardly anything.

"I enjoy talking about things," he semi-confides. "It's probably a lot like psychiatry. I'm on the couch a lot and I get to talk about my past. And it doesn't cost anything."

Psychiatry is an interesting analogy, but he finds music more healing and considers his songs therapeutic.

"Most of them are  things that have happened to me, or people very close to me," he says. "Performing these songs every night is good for me."

Meanwhile, his medication is self- prescribed: "Oh, I smoke a little grass every now and then. It calms me down, and, as you probably know, stress is the major killer on the planet."

Next April, Willie Nelson will be 70. Continuing the contradictory roles of farmer and outlaw, he claims to be happiest "on the land or on the lam". Recently, he received a black belt in tae kwon do, but his contemporaries continue to fade away like the signatures on Trigger's belly.

"I was looking around," he laughs sadly. "And there's Ray Price, there's Merle Haggard, George Jones . . . then you start running out of names."

With 200 records under his belt, Nelson's workrate continues to be phenomenal. He estimates that he has 2,000 unrecorded songs, and still has a collaboration with Prince and a long-threatened reggae album due for release.

"Everything you do is not going to be a major, knockdown, bases-loaded home run," he says of his fecundity. "But if you're having fun doing it, and you're putting out what you think is quality stuff, the rest of it will take care of itself.

"You know, you read in the trades that sales are down, but I think music is the last thing people are going to give up."

Willie Nelson should know that better than anyone.