When you think of “outlaw country,” one of the first names that comes to mind has to be Waylon Jennings.
The embodiment of the “I don’t give a f*ck” attitude, Waylon’s drug use and wild ways could get him in trouble sometimes, like the time he narrowly escaped a DEA raid by flushing cocaine in a recording studio.
But he also made some pretty good friends along the way.
As the story goes, Waylon’s new-found success and notoriety as a country music outlaw had gained him the respect of The Hells Angels motorcycle gang, to the point where they would show up to all of Jennings’ shows.
“We show up at a festival somewhere and Waylon would be like ‘Oh God, here they go again.’”
In fact, Waylon’s son Shooter recalled being babysat by the Hells Angels while his dad was touring or off doing whatever.
Shooter said:
“I was literally being babysat by Hells Angels, they were very nice. This one guy Hotfoot, I remember him going to a putt putt course with me when I was a little kid.”
And there was another guy named Boomer who was one of the original members:
“I remember from a very little age, I was like ‘That guy was cool.’ He had a cane with a skeleton on it. He gave me a Pez dispenser with a skull on it because he knew how much I loved that cane.”
Practically all of Waylon’s band and his family were under the protection of the feared motorcycle gang, and nothing would ever happen at his shows because everybody was scared of them.
It’s good to have some tough friends in your corner.
Waylon Jennings Recalls Wild Days Living With Johnny Cash
You thought your college apartment was a wild living situation…
There’s perhaps no names more well known in country music than Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash.
The two have shared many stages over the years, including as part of supergroup the Highwaymen, but what you many not know is they also shared an apartment while their careers were still on the rise.
Johnny had been living at the Madison Apartments outside of Nashville when Waylon needed a place to stay, so in he moved. Of course, thinking about the two of them in their youth living together leads you too imagine some absolutely wild nights, which was absolutely the case.
They spoke to this in the past, including an appearance on the David Letterman Show where they admitted to spending $1,000 a day on drugs.
Well, before the interview took that turn, David asked about their experience living together and the two went back and forth telling some stories on their arrangements, with Waylon joking that he did the cleaning, but Johnny making sure that June Carter, who went on to be his wife, got the credit for making sure their place stayed livable.
Waylon was on Letterman a separate time where he went into further detail of their time in the Madison Avenue Apartments.
As you would expect, the two of them tied one on quite frequently, leading to Waylon taking some extreme measures to get back in the house if Johnny conked out a bit early…
“I was about 26, 27 years old… John was the cook, you should see him with that black suit on and baking powder all over it. I don’t know what I did but I kicked the doors down a lot, you know?”
Of course, Letterman had to ask a follow up on why someone would need to do that, so Waylon elaborated:
“To get in the other side of the door… John would be going in there and I would be coming in and he’d put the latch on… sometimes when we’d go to sleep we went to SLEEP, boy, and so I had to kick it down to get in.
Another thing too. There ain’t nothing feels better than that door giving under your foot.”
Can you imagine being their neighbor and constantly being woken up in the middle of the night to Waylon stomping down the next door over? Guess you’d have to expect that living next to those two, but would imagine that they had a few people around who weren’t too friendly…
The wild lives of country music greats.
It never gets old hearing stories from the good old days.
Check out their appearance together on the show here.