Waylon by Waylon Jennings, Lenny Kaye Page B

and
     passed out. We were all over each other, flopping around. I woke up one time and my head was behind his back, and I’d done
     fallen down in the seat. When we finally got to Amarillo, we broke out some of the money and bought Mexican food.
    Sonny took me by my mother’s house in Littlefield, and he continued on to Lubbock. I got out of the car and went in the door.
     It was like somebody who had been through a hurricane and survived it. I had no earthly idea what I was, or what it was all
     about, or what had happened. I just knew I was back where I’d started.

CHAPTER 3

PHOENIX, ARIZE
    M y whole world was destroyed.
    I didn’t know what I was going to do. I thought it was all over for me, even though I was the center of attention. Everybody
     wanted to talk about the crash, and why I gave my seat to the Big Bopper, and what Buddy was like in his final hours; but
     I didn’t have anything to say.
    How could I? He was the first person to believe in me. He was my friend. All I could think about was what a good soul he was,
     and what a happy man. He loved living. He was in love with his wife and in love with his music. He was so young. To this day
     it doesn’t seem fair.
    He had all these plans. Instruments don’t make music, Buddy liked to say; it’s what you do with them. He thought Ray Charles
     was the greatest, and wanted to use his arranging style, only move the licks over to guitars. It was like the strings on “I
     Guess It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” and “Raining in My Heart.” “That guy who put his name on as arranger, all he did is what
     I do on the guitar,” Buddy told me. He made me see that music was personal, and it didn’t have anything to do with what people
     called it. All through my life, there isn’t a couple of days that go by that I don’t think about him.
    Buddy was the biggest thing to ever come out of Lubbock. His folks never got over his loss. It just broke them in two. You’d
     visit Mr. and Mrs. Holley’s house, and it was always 1959, until the day they died. His pictures were on the wall, and everywhere
     you’d look, there’d be something of Buddy’s. They were such sweet people. I’d go over to the house, and they’d show me his
     shoes, and things they had in the closet. They gave me his guitars one time, but people would try to steal that Stratocaster,
     so I took them back. Mr. Holley wanted to promote me, because he said Buddy believed in me, but I had enough sense to know
     that wouldn’t be right. He bought me clothes and things like Buddy would. I wrote a song called “Buddy’s Song,” using all
     of his titles, and I gave that to them. I also signed over any royalties I might receive from “You’re the One.” I said, we
     didn’t write any of that; we just finished the one line and Buddy took it and straightened it out.
    I went back to work at K-triple-L, but I was useless. All the sparkle had gone out of me. I was supposed to be a wildman disc
     jockey, though I couldn’t turn it on the way I used to. Even if I’d play Buddy’s records, I wouldn’t say much. I had lost
     my center of gravity. I wasn’t worth shooting.
    I didn’t want to sing; I didn’t want to play guitar. I had no interest in anything. I left my guitar at Momma’s house and
     couldn’t even pick it up. I was empty, drained of hope. Maybe I felt a little like my dream had slipped through my fingers.
     I didn’t know that hard work and paying your dues was how you got ahead. I thought people like Buddy could just make it happen,
     and now I’d blown it.
    At the station, Sky and Slim Corbin tried to help me along, but the only one who made any sense was Hi Pockets. He knew what
     was wrong. He was an older guy, and he understood what I was going through. Hi Pockets could see I was messed up, and that
     I was feeling guilty, because I was the one who survived.
    One day he sat down and talked to me. He spoke for over an hour, saying it wasn’t my fault and that I