Waylon Jennings performing on the Johnny Cash Spring Fever Special in 1976 (Photo courtesy of RCA Records)
Waylon Jennings Rips Into Record Companies In Resurfaced Interview
An old interview with Waylon Jennings from 1995 is back in the news because he’s ripping into record companies.
He didn’t hold back, ripping into the Nashville machine and calling out the executives who swore by a certain way of doing things and cared little about the music itself.
As he put it, Nashville didn’t want artists to come in with their own ideas, and Waylon Jennings was overflowing with them.
“They would rush you. It was kind of like assembly line music. Where they just did it like a car, no matter what, when it got past you, the other guy was working on something else. If you weren’t happy, that’s too bad. You had to record in their studios, you had to use their producers…I couldn’t understand how a guy could go to college and get a four-year degree in marketing and he’d come and tell me he knew more about my music than I did. They didn’t want you to have ideas. They wanted you to come in and do it in a thing called the ‘Nashville sound.’ Me and the Nashville sound was like oil and water: it just didn’t mix. There was no edge to that music. It was one thing, and everybody recorded it, and it all sounded the same.”
