Like his wife and children.
Like his famous guitar, Trigger, the one with the hole worn through the top from strumming.
LikeFrank Sinatraand country music.
Now just one lesson remains: how to remain yourself while getting old.
I dont think that my attitude has changed, he told me.
Im still doing what I want to do, and I suggest everybody do the same thing.
I could make a run at sell you on the importance of Willie Nelson, but why?
He notched his first hit as a songwriter in 1960 with a tune called Family Bible.
Hes appeared in more than 40 movies and headlined thousands of sold-out concerts.
He has his own satellite radio station, Willies Roadhouse, which is partly programmed by his daughter Paula.
Hes at work on a collection of Sinatra tunes, including My Way.
He wants to talk about his life instead.
He grew up in Abbott, Texas, a blink-and-youll-miss-it spot 70 miles outside Dallas.
They say the population never changes, he told me.
Every time a babys born, a man leaves town.
Comfort came via radio, old-time music wending through a Texas night.
It suggested another kind of existence.
At some point, Willie picked up a guitar.
I started when I was 5 or 6, he told me.
When they healed up, though, they were pretty tough.
Those first songs came under the influence of country legends.
Bob Wills era, he said.
All those great Western swing bands.
Flat broke, Willie headed to Nashville, Tenn.,the mecca of country music.
Singers and songwriters partied at Tootsies from can till cant.
Dick took Willie home, woke Cline and made Willie play her the demo tape.
It was called Crazy, and it went Top 10 for Cline in 1961.
Released before she died, its forever associated with the sadly beautiful mood of that short life.
The rest followed as in a dream surprising yet inevitable.
Records and movies, sold-out stadiums, tours.
Before dope, hes said, he was angry a lot of the time.
It represented not just a catalog of songs but a way of being in the world.
By the mid-1970s, hed become that rarest of stars an icon admired by even bigger icons.
Willie and English had driven down there in an old blue Mercedes 300 from Texas, Dylan said.
I thought these were the most perfect songs that ever had a right to be written.
I thought he was a genius then, and I think the same thing now.
Ive listened to Willie Nelson all my life but fell in love with him in 1992.
It happened in a bar in New York City called the Lions Head.
One night, I happened to play his version of Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain on the jukebox.
It carries echoes of the oldest American music.
Its an intimate hillbilly whine.
Willie recorded it in 1975 forRed Headed Stranger,one of his first million-selling albums.
It was among the breakthrough songs that took Willie from Nashville 1960 into the 1970s and beyond.
He found his mature style on that song, realized that he could sing anything and make it new.
His voice was humorous and sad and full of wisdom; I knew hed understand everything.
He was sitting at a small table in back .
Looking over his shoulder was Annie, his fourth wife.
You cant ask for anything more than that!
Willie was married three times before and had five other kids.
In 1991, his oldest son, Billy, died at age 33.
