Waylon by Waylon Jennings, Lenny Kaye Page A

back, we were the only ones who cared. At GAC, they didn’t give a shit. They just wanted somebody out there.
    After the tour they called a meeting in Irving Feld’s office to see who would continue as the Crickets. Sonny, J.I., Joe B.,
     and their new singer, Earl Sinks—or Earl Henry or Snake Richards; he had several names—had been scheduled to record on February
     14 at Bell Sound Studios on West Fifty-fourth Street as the Crickets for Brunswick, and had driven up from Texas. They met
     the tour as we came in from Chicago.
    Irving Feld said “Now, Waylon,” and offered the singing job to me, and of course J.I. and Joe B. “We can’t have two groups
     of Crickets.”
    Maybe he thought I was going to play guitar. I said no. “All I want is my money and to go home. I’m not a Cricket.”
    He said, “You can be a part of it if you like,” and I said, “I don’t want to be.”
    Tommy stayed on, because he was a lead player, and J.I. and Joe B. got Earl to stand in front. They had already cut the record
     with him. Sonny and Goose were left out in the cold. I guess Goose was used to that. I don’t think his feet had unfrozen yet.
    Sonny didn’t want to do it, either. Everybody had always thought Sonny was the one that would make it, and here Buddy had
     torn up the world. We used J.I.’s ’58 Chevrolet Impala to come home in; Sonny and I, the kid—Ronnie—who Tommy had brought
     up there, and Goose. It was about sundown when we left town, the last twilight of day shining off the Empire State Building,
     and as we went out the Lincoln Tunnel toward the New Jersey Turnpike, I looked back at New York and thought, well, I’ll never
     be here again. That’s all over. But I was here once.
    Sonny and I didn’t trust the other two to drive, so we took turns at the wheel. Goose couldn’t see, and we didn’t know about
     Ronnie. That boy finally OD’d on glue. He was into drugs really strong, even then.
    It was cold, and we were hungry. I think I had about ninety dollars rat-holed, and they gave us enough gas money to get home.
     We bought popcorn and Cokes and tried to drive as far as we could without stopping.
    As we passed through Ohio along Route 22, we looked up and saw what I thought was a town on fire. There was a hotel burning,
     sitting on a hill. We stopped and stared at it awhile. Things going up in smoke; there was a moral there somewhere.
    I slept for a while, and then woke as we topped a rise overlooking Cambridge, Ohio. The antifreeze in the car was only good
     to five below, and it must have been at least minus fifteen. It was so cold we blew a freeze plug, and we coasted into the
     town, silent as ghosts. We didn’t have enough money between us to fix the car. The airbags had gone out as well.
    We waited until morning and pushed the car to a Chevy dealership. We didn’t know what else to do. Finally Sonny walked over
     to the manager and asked, “Is anybody a Mason here?” The guy said he was, and though Sonny had only gotten to the second degree,
     he agreed to fix the car for the thirty-five dollars that we could scrape together. “You’re on your way, boys,” he said, and
     we took off.
    It was Saturday night. A truck driver gave us some pills to help us keep going. We were listening to the Grand Ole Opry on
     the radio, riding right over the top of it. We were so tired, but we wouldn’t let the other boys drive. To stay awake we got
     to playing a game. If you could sell yourself right now, how much would you ask for yourself? I said ninety thousand dollars,
     because I had ninety dollars that I was hiding in my pocket. Sonny always wishes he’d had enough money to buy me then. I sure
     wasn’t feeling I was worth too much at the time.
    We finally had to sleep by the time we hit Texas. We told Ronnie we were going to let him drive, but if we looked up and saw
     he was going over fifty miles an hour, we’d take him out of the car and beat the crap out of him. We climbed in the back