I wanna start with a reflection on Lowell George’s “Willin’”— ostensibly a truck driver’s meditation, but really it’s a song about everyone and everyone’s lives. If ya’ don’t know it, here’s a link to a pretty magical live version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txX-kPn3h6s
There’s so much to say about this tiny little piece of pure fucking genius— the original version clocking in several seconds under 3 minutes— that I’m not sure where to start, but sometimes I think this is the only song in the whole world, or the only song I ever want or need to listen to, or the only song that matters, anyway. Perhaps feeling kinda the same thing, Linda Ronstadt once said that in a year where she played over 250 arena shows (250 arena shows in a year— can you imagine that? Whew!), the only song she still looked forward to singing every night was “Willin’.” On her Heart Like a Wheel album, Linda offered up the song as the back half of a kind of medley, coupling it with “When Will I Be Loved:”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_1Q2SeJ5oA
A few other people have recorded cover versions of the song, countless rock and rollers—from Bob Dylan to the Black Crowes to Phish—do it live, and nearly everyone who sits in on any kind of a jam session—from rock and roll ones to bluegrass ones to country ones to folkie ones—knows it and will jump in eagerly when it’s called by someone in the circle. Heck, as a staple of introductory guitar classes and lessons, almost anyone who’s ever messed with a guitar knows it. What’s the deal with this song? What makes it the sacred and universal text that it is? Maybe a walk through the thing from start to finish— a Rock and Roll Explication de Texte as it were— will help explain its grip on people, and give us all a greater appreciation of what Lowell left us with this one…
The song opens with an elegant, simple but haunting set of chord changes that winds up with a nifty and cool, easy to play but hard to think of, step up and step down guitar hook / riff. The chord changes evoke a sleepy, beautiful and yet painful sensation of awakening. This mixture of pain and beauty, as well as happiness and sadness, loneliness and connection, trouble and triumph, are at the heart of the songs’ gripping pathos and are what make it more a song about people and life than about just truckers. The song, changes, and hook / riff are easily reachable to guitar players of all skill levels and stripes. The opening of the Ronstadt version, with the misty changes emerging from the longing closing vocal harmonies of “When Will I Be Loved,” creates a kind of miraculous wood-and-steel evocation of dawn rising over a lonely highway that, if it doesn’t raise goosebumps on you, you must be deaf or dead.
“I been warped by the rain, driven by the snow, I’m so drunk and dirty, don’t ya’ know, but I’m still…willin’.”
The line of the melody falls as it’s sung but turns up a bit at the last line, shadowing the lyric’s portrayal of someone who has taken punches from life but hasn’t been knocked out. Simultaneously, the narrator is self-deprecating but also kinda proud of his or her survival and persistence. Pain and beauty, humility and pride all vividly painted in a precious few words.
“Out on the road late last night I seen my pretty Alice and never hit a light,* oh Alice—Dallas Alice…”
Here the mixture isn’t beauty and pain but loneliness and connectedness, the joy of motion and the joy of pausing, all at once— a similar blend, no less potent, and heartbreakingly poignant. The narrator drives by himself every night but has people, especially ladies, for whom he feels genuine fondness and whom he stops to see, in many places. *Post-posting P.S.: one perceptive reader points out that the lyric actually reads "in every headlight"
And then that guitar hook / riff again—so gorgeous, so simple and accessible, and so sinking deep into your flesh and not letting go.
“And I been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah, driven every kinda rig that’s ever been made, driven the back roads so I wouldn’t get weighed…”
On the live version especially, the richly layered vocal harmonies on the chorus deliver a kind of sky-openinig, voice-of-god effect. The lyric once again reflects a kind of self-effacing pride from a narrator who has seen a lot, who has done some things that weren’t quite right (but yet not too terrible), but who has not let those mistakes stop him (or her!). Again, a delicious, touching, and familiar mixture of good and bad—the trucker’s life is all of our lives.
“And if you give me…”
Now 3 long gorgeous notes, drawn out with pauses between ‘em that deliver a stomach-dropping, breath-stealing falling sensation.
“…weed, whites, and wine…”
Now back in rhythm…
“…and you show me sign, I’ll be willin’ to be movin…”
While modern statistics and sensibilities related to driving under the influence certainly prevent current listeners from embracing or endorsing the lyric’s celebration of a driver hauling an 18-wheeler while loaded up on any of these substances, the narrator’s brutal frankness highlights a powerful truth about all of us: we’re all hooked on something—money, competition, art, drugs, nature, power, technology, something— and whatever it is we’re hooked on can, for better and for worse, motivate and help us to accomplish goals.
The chorus closes with the hook / riff and then most versions feature a solo—piano, picked or slide guitar, harmonica, whatever— exploring the melody of the verse. Melancholy but not sad, persistent but tired, the melody itself, like most great melodies, sounds not so much like it was written or consciously guided by anyone, but rather like it has existed since time began.
Then the lyric moves into some edgy political territory…
“I been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet, had my head stoved in but I’m still on my feet and I’m still…willin’…”
A sense of larger, malevolent powers— Mother Nature and also criminals and / or perhaps even anti-labor / union forces— are now operating against our humble narrator, with economic, medical, and spiritual implications. Once again, this is a sensation we all know well in one way or another— the world grinding us down. Our narrator, of course, remains inspiringly undaunted—he’s still standing and plugging along.
“Well I smuggled some smoke and folks from Mexico, baked by the sun every time I go to Mexico…but I’m still…”
And now: ethics. Smuggling controlled substances, immigration and immigrants. A guy trying to do the right thing but for the wrong reasons? Or the right reasons? Or the wrong thing for the right reasons? Some of the above? All of the above? None of the above? Yes to all, of course-- it’s a mess, and we all face these kind of mixed up, messy–as-hell dilemmas and are operated on by these kinds of levers and forces every day. I guess I observe a fondness for the folks he’s smuggling in, underscoring the narrator’s basic good nature, and a willingness to put himself at risk, whatever his reasons. But it’s not easy—he’s feeling the heat, literally, of course, but metaphorically too. A good, flawed man, doing his honest, self-aware best. We should all aspire to this standard.
After this harrowing, revealing journey, we run through the chorus again, the song closing with the refrain “…and I’ll be willin’ to be movin’…”
Lowell George broke in to the music business playing with Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. One story (possibly apocryphal, possibly true) has Zappa kicking Lowell out of the Mothers when Lowell played the fresh-off-the-pen “Willin’” for FZ, with FZ saying something like, “You don’t need to be in anyone else’s band anymore, you need to be the leader of your own band now.” And, indeed, Lowell left FZ and the Mothers to form Little Feat and his playing and his songs graced records by Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, and many others. A lady I once knew actually cut a college psychology final to see Lowell and Little Feat on what, unbeknownst to her at the time, was Lowell’s last gig. He died of an overdose 2 days later. Lowell left us Little Feat classics such as “Sailin’Shoes,” “Roll ‘um Easy,” “Fat Man in the Bathtub,” and "Dixie Chicken," a glorious solo record which contains, among other wonderful nuggets, another heartbreakingly incisive and pithy gem called “20 Million Things To Do,” and many other treasures. But even if he’d left us nothing but “Willin’,” we’d all owe him a tremendous debt. He knew us all, somehow, and captured the world and all of us in it in less than 3 minutes with this elegant piece of perfection. Wherever he is, I think Lowell hopes that we’re all still, whatever it is that we do, willin’.
