Willie Nelson recorded an album to pay off the taxman
In 1990 the Internal Revenue Service seized Willie Nelson's assets, claiming he owed 32 million dollars in back taxes, a hole deepened by poor investments in the 1980s. His answer was a double album, The IRS Tapes: Who'll Buy My Memories?, with its profits earmarked for the government. That, plus an auction of his belongings, cleared the debt.
Money had never come easily. Born in Abbott, Texas, on April 29, 1933, Nelson was raised with his sister by grandparents after both parents left. His grandfather gave him a guitar at six, he wrote his first song at seven, and by thirteen he was singing in dance halls and honky-tonks, mostly because he hated picking cotton in the summer.
The road to success was long and occasionally absurd. After eight months in the Air Force, cut short by back trouble, and two years studying agriculture at Baylor, he worked as a bouncer, saddle maker, tree trimmer and radio disc jockey. Once, trying to reach his mother in Portland, Oregon, he failed to get a ride, slept in a ditch, hopped a freight train, and was lent ten dollars for a bus ticket by a trucker. Along the way he wrote future standards such as Crazy and Hello Walls.
He moved to Nashville in 1960, played bass in Ray Price's band and recorded his first album in 1962, but the corporate polish of the Nashville scene wore him down. In 1972 he went home to Austin and helped shape outlaw country, a rougher reaction against that restrictive sound. Red Headed Stranger in 1975 and Stardust in 1978 made him one of country music's best-known artists, and he later joined Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson in the Highwaymen.
Beyond music, he helped organise the first Farm Aid concert for American farmers in 1985 and has appeared at every one since. He sells a biodiesel made from vegetable oil, has acted in more than 30 films, and campaigns for legalising marijuana.
Source: Willie Nelson
