(audience cheering)
Thank you for being here.
Oh, thank you for asking me.
An honor to have you on the show.
Thank you so much for coming.
You've written a novel.
This is very cool.
It's very novel.
Yeah, yes, bing bang.
And I love this photo on the back.
Check out this photo.
This is you in a bar with a horse.
(audience laughing)
Where are you allowed to take a horse into a bar?
Well, it's my bar, so,
Oh, okay.
This is my bar.
Okay.
This is actually a bar that you own?
Wow, and so you can do whatever you want.
Almost.
Yeah, almost, okay.
And the horse has a drink when he's there, that's nice.
He can do almost anything he wants.
Okay, good.
You know, it's so funny
cause you walk out here.
I tell the crowd that you're on the show.
They go crazy.
You come walking out.
You are an iconic presence in America.
(audience cheering)
You are one of those--
It's true, this guy,
One of the most famous faces in American music.
Can you go anywhere and not be recognized?
Oh, I hope not.
[Conan] Yeah, you like being recognized?
Oh yeah.
If they don't recognize me,
I say, hey man, I don't see realize who I am?
(laughing)
Snap out of it.
Willie Nelson.
Yeah, okay.
You've been doing this a long time.
You started writing songs when you were a kid.
Is that right?
How old were you when you started writing?
I started writing poems when I was about five years old.
And then I learned to play guitar a little bit
when I was about six years old.
So I started writing melodies to the poems
and next thing you know, I had some bad songs.
Yeah, well, everyone's got to start somewhere.
I'm just curious,
what kind of songs you writing
you know, when you're five, six years old,
what kind of life experience are you drawing on
for your songs?
You know, years later,
I first realized how
there must be reincarnation,
there must be other lifetimes before you,
because I was writing about things that I had no idea
what I could have been talking about.
Divorces and heartbreak at seven years old.
That's sad.
Really you were writing sort of like she'd done me wrong.
Yeah, at seven.
She left me for another man
when you were six, seven years old.
With my children.
Yeah, wow, incredible, incredible.
And so you were you writing about anything
that was really happening in your life at that time?
You know, a really good peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Well, you know, I wrote a song called 'Gold Star,'
which came from a music lesson.
My grandmother gave music lessons
and every time one of her students would do well,
she would take a little gold star and lick it
and put it on that piece of paper.
So I wrote a song when I was seven years old
called 'Gold Star.'
You took a gold star away from me, dear,
when you left me for another long ago.
That's right, but it works.
It's sad, but it's very sweet.
But you were taking something from your life
and that's really all it is.
You know, I want to talk about something,
so much to talk about in your life.
There's one thing that you wrote about
a number of years ago
that happened in the 1970s
and I still can't believe it really happened.
So I have to ask you.
You wrote that when Jimmy Carter was president,
you visited the White House,
you snuck up onto the roof of the White House
and smoked a joint.
(audience cheering)
Is that something that--
I hope that happened.
You hope that happened?
I really hope I did that.
(audience laughing)
That short term stuff.
So you have no idea if that happened?
That's too bad.
I'd like to know how you got up there,
what it was like.
Yeah, all that good stuff.
I bowled while I was in the White House.
Did you know they have a bowling alley?
They do have a bowling alley, uh huh.
Were you high at the time or no?
That was a...
Was that a day that ended (drowned out by laughter)
Okay, well now that we're on the subject,
and I think I got us there,
you are a strong advocate for the legalization of marijuana.
You believe in that.
(audience cheering)
Have you ever thought of taking it up
as an official cause,
be the spokesman for this cause?
Is that something you'd be interested in doing?
Well, you know, I'm a member of NORML, you know,
and I'm on the board there.
Right, right.
So I'm pretty much out front on everything.
And I have a card in Maui that lets me grow seven plants
if I want to.
[Conan] Really?
So and there's several States that have
that same kind of law.
So yeah, I'm out front on it.
I think it's ridiculous to put people in jail
for smoking pot, when you know,
they're smoking cigarettes, drinking whiskey,
everything else that'll kill you.
And yes, you can't smoke pot.
I don't think that's right.
(audience cheering)
Okay, well, I think they're behind you on this one.
I'm told you love a good joke.
And in fact, if I'm not mistaken,
Johnny Cash, whenever he saw you always wanted
to hear a joke from you.
Do you have a joke?
When John was down, he always called me.
Oh yeah, I got a joke.
A guy went to the doctor and the doctor looked at him
and said well, I got horrible news for you.
You're not gonna make it.
You're gonna die.
Then the guy said, well, that's pretty cold blooded.
Ain't there something I can do?
He said, yeah, you might think about
taking three or four mud baths every day.
He said, will that help me?
He said, well it'd get you used to the dirt.
(laughing)
(audience cheering)
(laughing)
Man, that's tough.
Yeah, that's cold.
That is very cold.
You just, is this right?
You just turned 75 years old?
75 years young.
In April, yeah.
Very good.
(audience cheering)
What kind of did you have, it's a nice round number.
Did you have a party, did you do anything?
I celebrated my birthday in Amsterdam.
(laughing)
Willie, I'm sensing a theme here.
No, I was touring
and I always start my tours in Amsterdam.
When we go to, you know, to tour in Europe.
[Conan] You like to begin in Amsterdam.
I'm surprised there's a tour after that.
(laughing)
Well, we do stop back in Amsterdam.
You go there.
There's a lot of napping.
(laughing)
What, so you just like it there, it's a nice town?
It is a nice town.
And they must, you know, they love you over there.
They must just--
We have a lot of fans over there.
We play a lot of shows in Amster--
Last time I was there, Snoop Dogg was there.
(laughing)
I'm guessing you two bump into each other a lot.
(laughing)
Snoop, Willie!
(laughing)
How are ya?
'A Tale Out of Luck.'
This is a novel that you've written.
What inspired you to write a novel?
Well, let me show you this.
This, it says me here and it says Mike Blakely
in really small letters.
In all honesty, he should have the big letters
and mine should be smaller.
He and I got together and we talked about a town
that I own bill called Luck, Texas.
We talked about a story of what could have happened.
And Mike went away and wrote the book.
And so I'm getting a lot of credit for his work.
So thank you, Mike.
That was nice.
Well, good luck with this.
Do you like it?
Are you proud of the way it turned out?
Yeah, I really do like the way that Mike writes.
(laughing)
Willie, have you read it?
(laughing)
I have read it.
I hear it's good.
No, I have read it.
It's about a talking whale.
(laughing)
And we're gonna make a movie out of it.
Oh great. So yeah.
He's already written the screenplay, so.
All right, well just work me in there somewhere.
You got it.
Rangy, red haired cowboy comes to town,
Redheaded stranger.
Yeah, red headed stranger, very nice.
Got kind of an annoying voice.
I alienate everyone.
'A Tale Out of Luck' is in stores now.
You should check it out.
A real honor to have you here.
Thank you so much.
A real pleasure.
(audience cheering)
Willie Nelson will be back.
South Side Johnny with La Bamba's Big Band.
You better not screw this up.