Lee Hazlewood: cynical cowboy bard
September 27, 2007 Not long before he died, the man who wrote "These Boots Are Made for Walkin' " and much, much more sat down for a wide-ranging, freewheeling interviewContinued...
MGM considered the pastiche of country, pop, jazz and blues too off-kilter for a recording artist already considered eccentric.
At 78, the Henderson resident was still deadpan, droll and sharp as a tack, having recorded his farewell album in the throes of terminal illness. Cake or Death is a big-sounding collection of promises kept and decades-old in-jokes. Behind his give-a-damn façade, Hazlewood was a man of profound depth and integrity. Renal cancer “doesn’t lead into remission, it leads into death,” he chuckled during our interview, one of his last: Hazlewood passed away August 4, having enjoyed one of the most idiosyncratic careers in music.
You’re the son of an Oklahoma oil-field wildcatter and came of age in rural Texas. How did you develop your enthusiasm for music?
When I was in high school, I listened to blues because a friend of my dad’s owned a blues club. An all-black blues club, where I had to sit in the back. My favorite outside of listenin’ to the blues was Stan Kenton’s band. In later years, I got to use them on some sessions. It was fun to use ’em on rock dates.
You have a very distinct, dry lyrical sensibility. How did it come about?
You have to be very careful in the South, where I grew up, if you’re the least bit creative. Because, you know, all of a sudden, you might just be a sissy. I didn’t know it until I was older, of course, but the way I conquered it was I started writing. You didn’t write about the beautiful rain falling on the morning flowers and all that, you wrote about falling off the back of a wagon. Funny, never serious—so the girls thought you were cute and the boys thought you were clever. Most Southern writers, not necessarily songwriters, but writers, they kind of have that in ’em. When I read ’em, I kinda go, “Uh-oh. He coulda softened this up a little bit, but he wouldn’t do it.”
Consequently, when I went to university, I wrote for the school paper. “That’s Lee, he writes funny stuff. You know, he’s all right. We can accept him because he makes fun of what should be made fun of,” in a place where creativity will certainly be criticized. So that’s how you sneak through that. I knew you shouldn’t go in certain areas, because there were guys who did. And they certainly failed at it. “Oh God, that’s awful, why’s he writin’ about that stuff?” So I stayed away from “that stuff,” whatever that is.
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