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Sept. 2, 1997 - Art Bell
03:06:07
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Merle Haggard - Interview
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From the high desert and the great American southwest where the storms are raging.
I'll tell you all about it.
This is Coast to Coast AM, that show.
Bird from in the west, the Hawaiian and Haitian island chains.
Eastward all the way to the Caribbean and the U.S.
Virgin Islands.
Soon Puerto Rico.
South into South America.
North all the way to the pole and worldwide on the internet.
This, once again, is Coast to Coast AM and I'm Art Bell.
Good morning.
Well, I don't know whether El Nino has begun or not.
But if this is what it's going to be like, we're headed for trouble.
Here in the desert southwest, as well as in California, we are experiencing violent thunderstorms.
And I mean violent.
With torrential rains and hail.
We've had hail pelting us for the last, oh, I don't know, four or five hours.
It is remarkable out there.
And my understanding is that it also is occurring in Southern California.
Hail, lightning, it's all around us.
So, we're getting exactly, I guess, what Southern California is getting.
And to add to the mystery, my network in Medford, Oregon, is getting clobbered tonight as well.
They've been, uh, having all kinds of technical weather-generated difficulties.
So, it's gonna be a dicey situation tonight.
In more ways than one.
And whether we remain on the air, they remain on the air, it's going to be an adventure.
And if you hear a few lightning crashes in the background, thunder that is, as a result of the lightning, you'll know why.
So that's what's going on, and I think that the Express may be generating itself, or maybe this is just some sort of Freak weather.
But let me tell you, friends, freaky it is.
All right, I've got some stations to welcome.
For example, KFMJ in Kachikan, Alaska.
Pretty well rounding out Alaska as far as I know.
Great to be out in Kachikan.
You know, I was in Alaska last week.
As a matter of fact, the pictures, photographs of the visit to Alaska, along with being able to cozy up to a Black Hawk helicopter and all that kind of cool stuff, ...are up on the website at www.artbill.com.
So anyway, welcome, Ketchikan, Alaska.
Also, W-W-R-C.
Anybody have any idea where they are?
In the nation's capital, Washington, D.C.
They're a monster, W-W-R-C, 980 on the dial, in Washington, D.C.
So, we have switched affiliates there to a real monster, and good morning everybody in Washington, D.C.
This is a program that defies conventional explanation.
We do something different just about every night.
And tonight is going to be no different in that respect.
My guest coming up in a moment is Merle Haggard.
Country star Merle Haggard.
If the question were asked, who forged the genre that is known today as modern country music, only a very tiny group of country immortals could step forward to share the spotlight.
One out of that handful would be Merle Haggard.
No, he was not the delivery room on the morning country music was born.
It just seems like he was.
Merle Haggard's not just a legend with a P.O.
box, in a once-in-a-lifetime deal, he's a permanent condition of country music's soul, and that makes him a very interesting individual.
I understand he does not do a lot of interviews, so I'm honored in that regard.
Coming up in a moment, from Nashville, Tennessee, appropriately, Merle Haggard.
All right, here he is, Merle Haggard.
Merle.
Good morning, Art.
Good morning to you.
I'm told you don't give a whole bunch of interviews, huh?
Well, that's really not true.
I've heard that rumor.
I enjoy giving interviews.
So, Merle, who do you think killed Princess Di?
Well, I don't know.
It's a combination, I guess, of bad ingredients.
Sounds like Some of the old enemies of speed and alcohol.
Yeah, that's exactly what I think it do.
You drive 121 miles an hour and have a drunk driver three times legal there and something
is bound to happen that's not good.
I've been in situations similar to that where I've been with people that were bigger stars
than I was trying to get away from someplace and it can sometimes be really dangerous and
question as to why they didn't ask to slow down.
Yeah, um...
Actually, you're a big enough star as it is.
What do you do about that when you have people chasing you?
It happens.
It happens and it's an individual, a brand new deal every time.
I just got back from shooting a little game of pool here in the hotel and a guy grabbed my hand and like broke my hand.
Really?
Some drop.
You really take your life in your own hands if you go out into the public and someone recognizes you and it snowballs.
People don't understand that unless they've had to live sort of that way.
I really was moved by her having this accident, as everybody in the whole world seems to be.
Actually, that's a really interesting question.
Princess Di, of course, was a very gracious, apparently very much loved person, but the reaction to her death almost seems disproportionate to the amount of knowledge we had of her here.
It's almost all-consuming.
She was almost like family.
There was something about her that gave her that special closeness.
To the whole world.
She was doing some things that no one her stature, I think, had ever even thought of doing.
It was visiting people with leprosy and things of that nature.
So it was the common side of royalty that kind of endeared her to Americans who probably are not much in love with royalty anyway.
Well, we don't have that.
She was sort of our princess as well, I guess.
She favors my wife.
She's just one of my favorite ladies, speaking from the male gender.
She was a beautiful lady and I compared her to my wife.
I have a tall blonde and she's about half my age, I'm fortunate to say.
She just kind of reminded me of someone in my family.
I felt close to her and didn't know her, and I think a lot of people are expressing that.
It just hit really, really hard, and I've yet to fully figure it out myself, but I'm actually working on that angle, why it's so all-consuming over here.
So there's something we all identify with that I haven't quite put my finger on yet.
It's interesting.
What about you, Merle?
Tell us about Merle Haggard.
How did you get to be such a big country music star?
Well, I went around about things I guess you would say happened right for me.
There's going to be a film produced.
United Artists brought my life story.
Really?
Robert Duvall is producing and Billy Bob Thornton and Epperson are doing the script writing.
And there's going to be a full Full blown major motion picture of my life, or a period of my life.
I guess if you could paint a picture of a guy that was supposed to be a country artist, things happened to me that didn't happen to President Lincoln.
It was like it was all thought out.
If you believe in predestination, it proves itself almost every day in me.
My father passed away when I was nine and I had an older brother and sister but they
were already busy with their lives.
It left me with an older mother and it wasn't long from nine until about eleven and I felt
out of place and I started leaving home when I was that young.
I started riding freight trains and I eventually got into trouble and wound up in San Quentin
when I was nineteen years old.
And all of a sudden I'm there in a cell next to a guy named Carroll Chessman, you may remember,
I remember.
I had been making some beer and we got caught making beer in the yard at San Quentin and
I was in what they called the shelf.
I was not yet 21 years old and I was talking through the vent to a man who was going to
death and sleeping on a Bible for a pillow and no clothes.
It just kind of hit me.
I said, you know, maybe this is not what you had in mind.
Let me back up a little bit.
You rolled through an awful lot of stuff awful quickly there.
What did you do again to get thrown in San Quentin?
Well, it took seven years.
It wasn't really anything.
That I'm ashamed to talk about.
I grew up a poor boy and I learned how to work early on in life.
I started working in the potato sheds in California.
I'm from California.
Just happened to be in Tennessee tonight.
They had a real strict truancy law in California and I wanted to work and they didn't want me to work under 16.
So they would take me to juvenile hall and give me so many days in some juvenile road
camp for not going to school and I broke out of there and stole a car and got caught stealing
the car and wound up going to a bigger place and doing the same thing again and running
from the law just trying to be a man.
I was too young to be a man they wouldn't accept me that way and I didn't understand
it at the time and I never hurt anybody I just kind of hurt myself and stole cars and
wound up in the big house when I was 19 years old and they called me an incorrigible prisoner
you know someone that would always be in jail.
I did two years and nine months there.
That's a long time for a 19 year old in San Quentin.
Yeah.
That's a bad place.
I mean, you've got to be one of the worst, don't you, to be going to San Quentin?
Well, that's what I thought.
And the reason they sent me there is because I'd ran away so many times from the other places and they didn't feel like they could hold me, I guess.
Because it wasn't that my type of crime was... My worst crime was a burglary.
I went to jail for seven years to learn how to be a good criminal.
You know, I rubbed up elbows.
They put me in jail for truancy, and I rubbed elbows with people who were going to rob people.
And I learned things, bad things from them.
They taught you how to do... Of course, then you're learning, of course, from somebody who obviously didn't succeed.
That's right.
I was in there beside people who were actual, real criminals.
And here was this young boy, under 16 years old, in Los Angeles County Jail.
Listen to these guys talk about how to pass bad checks, how to hotwire cars, how to break into safes, things of that nature.
I've always been a kind of a guy that I needed a lot of money.
I had never been able to hold on to money.
And I was fortunate that when I came out of prison, you know, jumping ahead with the story,
I had a lot of God-given talent with the music.
And I came out and...
Where'd that come from?
I mean, you say it came from God, but... Well, it's from my father.
My father was very talented musically, and my mother was a writer.
She was the penmanship champion of the state of Oklahoma when she was 16 years old.
Wow.
So I got some writing from her, and I got some music from my dad.
And then all these things happened to me when I was very young, which allowed me to experience maybe some things that I would never have known about otherwise.
My sister compares me to Paul in the Bible.
I mean, it's like, I had to go to, or David, you know, I had to go, I had to be king, then I had to go to jail, or I had to go to jail, then be king, or something in order to see both sides of the coin.
Do you remember making any conscious decision, you know, sitting in jail, saying, not again?
Or did it happen a different way?
I mean, did you just sort of get lucky?
Well, yeah, I kind of jumped ahead on you there.
I went to San Quentin, and I thought it was a joke.
I thought, here I am, 19 years old, I got in there, I knew two or three guys, we played guitars, and I didn't worry about getting out.
And back in those days, they didn't have a definite sentence.
I don't know.
like six months to 15 years.
That was my sense.
Well that meant that you could get out in maybe 18 months or a year or two years or
you could be there the full time.
Depending on how you behaved I guess, huh?
Yeah, well it was kind of, it's kind of an un, you can't really plan anything when you
don't know where you're going to be.
That's for sure.
And when I woke up in the hole and realized where I was at I made a turnaround in my life.
On the shelf there in the north block in San Quentin I just said, hey, you know, this is
not what I had in mind.
I don't want to be Clyde Barrow.
And I...
You could have been, you probably could have been in another timeline.
You could have been.
I believe there may be different timelines, and if there are, you could have made a different decision going a whole different way.
That's right.
I did make a decision to come out and do everything I could do.
I never was afraid of work.
I came out to work as an electrician for my brother.
I was 22 years old.
I started playing four nights a week in a little bar in Bakersfield for $10 a night.
That was 1960.
And then one thing led to another.
By 1962, I was in Las Vegas working the best country band on the West Coast, Vince Stewart.
I worked there on East Fremont back in Las Vegas.
It was just a little town.
Yeah, that's when I lived there.
It was about 150,000.
It's a million people.
Benny Binion was one of my closest friends.
I was very close to Benny.
Those are the old days.
He was really great.
Do you remember those days?
Well, yes.
That was one wild time.
It was very different than the way it is now.
People wouldn't understand, would they?
No.
It's turning into Disneyland now.
Yeah.
It's family oriented.
We're trying to do everything.
I'm afraid they're going to lose the uniqueness of it all.
I have the pleasure of being well acquainted with Steve Wynn, and I disagree with a lot
of things he's done over the years.
I think he could have preserved some of the old Las Vegas as well as develop some new
I was sitting at a table with he and Benny Binion and listened to him discuss what he was going to do with the old Golden Nugget.
To me it was a piece of history that was going to be torn down.
I couldn't believe it.
I said, you know, you're going to put in another kiddie bar here and tear out this lounge where Bob Wills and all these people played.
Chet Atkins, Earl Travis, all the great names in country and western music have been here over the years and you're going to tear it out and make another kiddie bar.
Yeah, well every time, a building gets to be about two years old now in Las Vegas.
And they implode it, and they build a new one.
That's how it works now.
I don't have anything against titties, but, you know, I thought, why don't you do that, too, and leave that like it is?
But, you know, it was something else back when they... Actually, we're at the bottom of the hour here, so I'm going to take a break.
But I want to talk to you about Las Vegas more than we have done to this point.
Because I remember the way it used to be run.
And this was one strange town.
But I'll tell you, it was run Now, back to Merle Haggard.
people. This is Coast to Coast AM.
Now, back to Merle Haggard. Merle, there was a day when Las Vegas was run by the mob.
And the sheriff here was a rough son of a gun.
And we didn't have gangs.
We didn't have taggers.
We didn't have problems.
And when we did, they usually ended up out in the desert somewhere.
That's how things ran in Vegas.
And I'm sure if you know the old Vegas, you remember that real well.
Well, I tell you, I used to play 21 at Benny's place down there.
I remember one incident where Elvis was in town and he invited me and my band to come
out and I had won $25,000 at Benny's place.
And to me Benny had two guys following me all the time making sure nobody robbed me
because he knew I'd been out a long time.
And I went out to the International and wound up getting robbed anyway.
But it was one of the strangest things you've ever heard of.
I had the money sitting in front of me on a table, eating a steak, and I had an envelope.
I was gonna put it in the cage before the show.
And this money was laying on this table and I went in to shave and I turned my face
to do the right side of my face.
And in that period of time, the butler or the waiter came in
and wheeled that table out, don't you see?
And when I turned back around and the table was gone, I hollered at the other people in the room.
It was a couple of girls, guitar players and things.
I said, now we're, we didn't take it out.
I ran out there, and I opened the door, and by the time I got to the door and looked at the table, I could see this guy running at the end of the hall.
And he had the .25.
I think it was .235, to be exact, is what it was.
So he'd been following you all along, just waiting?
Huh?
He'd been following you all along, just waiting?
Yeah!
And he finally got a chance, and he's gone, and he'd probably be building himself a new life, and I hope he did.
I doubt you looked at it that way at that moment.
No, me and some security guards tore that room up.
Yeah, I'm sure.
And we had everybody that knew Benny.
At that time, you know, Mr. Binion could make a phone call and every cabbie and every limousine driver in town was like an arm, like a force for him.
A lot of people wound up in the desert out here.
I don't know how to make sense out of that.
Real law and order came.
I don't know how to make sense out of that.
I mean real law and order came, real rules.
We started to get Disneyland over here and now we've got gangs, we've had race riots,
we've had all the problems all the other big cities have and the good old days, the good
old days of the bad old guys are gone.
The strangest thing you've got right now is rain.
We don't have just rain.
We have flash flooding now, Merle.
It's really serious.
We have some very serious storms coming over.
I'm watching the weather channel here on the satellite.
It's raining in Barstow.
Yeah, I'm in a little place called Pahrump, Nevada, about 65 miles west of Las Vegas.
I'm near Death Valley.
Yeah, I know right where you're at.
It doesn't rain a lot out here.
I live in Palo Cedro, just like due west, right straight over the mountain, over Area 51 and come right at 270, 270 degrees from where you're at, you'll land on top of a house and you get over the mountains going west towards the ocean.
You're not far then.
Well, there's something going on with our weather, Merle.
Oh, I know.
It's unbelievable.
To see it cool off.
This is the coolest, I think the coolest August they've ever had in history in Florida.
It's 58 degrees down there today.
And now we're having the same sort of thing on the west coast.
Usually we're burning up this time of year.
Well, we're really burning up at this time of year out here.
And summer began very late and it's ending very early.
It's like we've vibrated out of our correct orbit.
You know, they say the atomic clock is off something like 11 hours in the last 10 years
due to that vibration that we've got going here.
Well, there's something happening.
There's no question about it.
I'm just a talk show host.
I wrote a book about it called The Quickening.
I haven't read it yet.
I'm hoping that maybe I can get a free copy.
Yeah, I'm sure you can get a free copy.
We can arrange something.
But basically, it suggests that something's going on in just about every area.
I thoroughly agree.
It's a feeling that's shared all over the world.
They're talking about it in classrooms.
We are speeding up and it is like we are headed towards something.
I thoroughly agree.
It is a feeling that is shared all over the world.
They are talking about it in classrooms.
There is something going on.
We are creatures that sense things before they happen.
Yes.
A lot of us have kind of lost that through the modern buzz that is going on every day
working all the rest of it.
Bye.
But a lot of people have a deep sense that something is really profoundly wrong.
There's a theory that they're calling the zero point that we've sometime over the last
250 million years of some 40 times we've wound to a complete stop and had to pull back.
all three-person larry and
and stand still as it's spoken of in the bible as constantly
and some people believe that actually occurred about eleven thousand years ago
and then we started in the other direction
uh... like a reset button gets pushed right i'm a believer in that i think that happened
i really believe it happened and i think it's foolish to imagine that we've uh... just
been around once I think that civilizations probably have come and gone.
And that the Earth has been here a long time, but, you know, somehow, and I'm, you know, I'm really not an all-fired environmentalist, but I'm also not blind to what's going on.
And it's easy to see that we're undergoing, I mean, fish are dying by the millions off the coast with this new They're closing waters in Maryland.
We can't go swimming because of this new Fisteria thing.
And the Antarctic has cellular changes, not just cellular, but DNA changes in small animals, and our weather is changing.
It's all headed toward an event, and I'm really curious.
I wonder what it's going to be.
I think the most valuable thing on earth very soon is going to be water.
You're talking about that storage you put away for the rainy day thing.
The biggest problem is going to be getting water, good water.
I agree with you.
It's amazing what's happened to water.
They're selling water in Oregon to people in Los Angeles.
They're shipping it down through California in several different ways.
It's possible for people to get water.
For me, I have creek furniture up there in Northern California to actually sell my water rights to somebody in Los Angeles.
Is that right?
It's becoming very, very valuable.
Yes, we have, even though we're in the desert, we have one of the largest underground aquifers in the country.
It's good water below the desert here.
People don't realize that.
Well, yes they do.
Las Vegas realizes it, and they're trying to get our water.
Yep.
So you're right.
Is it rumored that there's a river the size of the Colorado River that runs like seven miles below the surface of the city of Las Vegas?
Have you heard about that?
I've heard that rumor.
That's kind of a rumor to me.
I've heard about it.
That'd be a big well, though.
That'd be great to tap into that.
Yeah, that'd be a big well.
Right now, the water they get when they drill down in Las Vegas is not good.
it.
Cow urine?
Yeah, because for 200 years there's been cows running around up there.
And if you have a small drought and the water doesn't come to clean it out, then you wind up with the possibility of E. coli and all that.
So, you're not going to sell that water?
No, and that's the condition of a lot of the area in the northern part of California where
people think it's great water.
Yeah, I know.
It's not great water.
Well, even, you take the case of North Carolina, the estuaries of North Carolina, that's where
this hysteria thing began.
It's called the cell from hell.
This is this dumb little cell that lays at the bottom of water, even salt water, Merle, and when enough pesticide pollutants and runoff from Pig farming and that kind of thing reach this cell.
It activates, and it starts killing fish, which it is readily doing now by the millions.
They get open, bleeding sores on them, and now they're learning that this is affecting human beings.
It's almost an AIDS-like thing.
As a matter of fact, some call it fish AIDS.
And I am worried for us, but maybe it's like you said earlier, you know, things are sort of predestined.
It seems to be.
It's certainly a good format for a subject to talk about this evening.
Not bad.
I'm taking you back for a second.
When you were in St.
Glenn, you talked to Carroll Chessman.
He's been a pretty mysterious character.
What kind of things did Chessman have to say to you?
Well, I learned more about him actually through being there while he was there than I did actually talking to him.
His case was an interesting case because of the fact that he was never really positively identified.
He was a guy that should have been locked away forever and all that.
But they never did.
was laying and raped the girl and killed the guy or whatever.
And it was like he was politically put away and they hung this crime on him because they
wanted to get it off the books.
So he never talked to you about it?
He never admitted the crime?
Oh, he never admitted the crime to anybody.
He wrote two books while he was there, one of them on carbon paper.
He wrote one book and got it out and he stirred up so much problems for them that they didn't want him to write another one so he wrote another one on carbon paper.
uh...
so it is a very bright and and and uh...
and just uh... you know he called me he became a good attorney
well it was very important that's where i think He educated himself, self-educated himself and defended
himself.
He hired attorneys to represent him outside.
He wrote two books while he was there.
When I got to talk to him, my questions were simple to him.
He had like three or four weeks before he was to be executed.
I heard him talking over there.
I hollered over to the vet.
I said, my name is Haggard.
I'm up in the yard doing seven days for drunk.
I said, what's your chances?
He said, no problem.
He said, I'm going to make the stay.
He did.
He made that stay.
He got a 60-day stay and then he died, I think.
One more 60-day stay after I talked to him, like 120 days.
I said, I'm going to make the stay.
He said, no problem.
I said, I'm going to make the stay.
He did.
He made that stay.
He got a 60-day stay and then he died, I think.
One more 60-day stay after I talked to him, like 120 days.
I said, no problem.
He did.
He did.
Exterminated, yeah.
What do you feel about the death penalty?
It's a double edged sword.
They have no control over prisoners without it.
I don't believe it's anything short of barbaric.
I think it's terrible.
But as to what I'm for or against it, I'm kind of like you are about some people in the Bible.
It's just hard to say.
Yeah, it is hard to say.
I think I sort of generally support it in the very worst cases, you know?
There has to be some sort of... There has to be something that holds certain people in line.
Certain people will not stay in line without the threat of their own life being taken away.
You think the death penalty would stop somebody in prison from knifing another prisoner or knifing a guard trying to get away if they could?
In other words, the question is deterrence.
I believe it's more for the protection of the help of the guards than it is anything else.
I mean, it used to be when I was there that if you had, say, one year to life, it was your sentence.
If you were to draw blood on another convict or a guard, that lifetail would get you on death row, and they would
sentence you to death.
And so...
You couldn't walk around.
There were very few fights in prison when I was there.
Really?
You always sort of hear the opposite.
There is now.
There's a lot of racial things I understand that are in high spirited fashion going on there, like between the blacks and the Mexicans and the whites.
It's really bad now.
You can't even speak to someone outside of your own race.
It wasn't that way when I was there.
I wonder, you know, prison is like just a microcosm of society, and we're a little bit more polite about our racism out here, but it's still everywhere, and it's probably worse, not better.
What is it with people anyway?
I don't know, I hate it.
I'm not a racist.
I believe everyone is created with the same... Everybody's got two legs, and a brain, and you know, and the color of their skin is immaterial.
We're all individuals.
I raised fox terriers.
I can't even get a dog that resembles the other dog.
All dogs are different.
People are all different.
But we can take a lesson from the animals.
Birds of a feather flock together, but when they go to the water hole, they all get along.
It's true, but what I can't figure out is why it's getting worse.
I mean, we've got laws.
The laws are all there.
They say everybody's equal.
Hiring practices, all that kind of stuff.
But I believe, you know, the hearts are getting worse.
I really believe, Art, there is an increased endeavor from the dark side to intensify satanic Whatever represents the bad side.
There's been some intensification of that lately.
Yeah, I would have to agree.
You know, if there's really evil, and I think there is, if there's really God, then there's probably the opposite.
There's opposites for everything else.
Well, that's the way I look at it.
How could there be the evil?
On this earth without there being the opposite somewhere else.
That's right.
That's right.
And I wonder if the evil side is going through some sort of stronger time or working on being victorious or something.
I don't know.
I hope that some of the great parts in the Bible and Revelations are true.
I hope we're about to enter that thousand year period they talk about where there is
no satanic interference.
And that period where I think the meek inherits the earth.
I hope I'm one of the meek.
I'd like to steer for a thousand years without any trouble.
That would be something.
But I have this terrible feeling that before it gets better, it's going to get worse.
Yeah, it's going to probably get worse.
All right, Merle.
Hang tight.
We're at the top of the hour and we'll be right back.
My guest is Merle Haggard.
He's in Nashville right now.
And, uh, yes, we will get to, uh, telephones.
But right now, we're just sort of chatting.
The lightning strikes are all around.
The hail is falling.
The winds are blowing.
I wonder if this is the beginning.
Anyway, that's what's happening here.
We'll be back.
This is Coast to Coast.
I'm going to be doing a video on the beach.
Art Bell is taking calls on the wildcard line.
Now, here again, Art Bell.
Okay, once again, here I am.
I just watched the news, the local Las Vegas news.
Interesting, interesting developments.
They, as their lead item, had the storms that were going through here in Pahrump.
And I told you, we were having violent windstorms, hail, and rain.
And there's more of it, apparently, on the way.
But guess what?
Here in the desert, in the last several hours, we have had almost two inches of rain.
And people, I suppose, in California, in areas where there's rain, chuckle at that and say, Two inches.
That's not much.
Oh, yes it is.
Believe me.
Dumped on a desert floor that's not used to getting rain, we have flash flooding.
We have the highway between my little town of Pahrump and Las Vegas probably on the verge of being closed, they reported.
And looking to the west, there are more storms they say may be headed for this direction.
So Las Vegas escaped and we got clobbered.
And when I say we got clobbered, I mean we really got clobbered.
And the rain is just in gigantic pools, and it's very dangerous, so if you're in my area of the desert right now, my advice to you is to watch very carefully where you go.
Flash floods occur with just about no notice at all, and kill quickly.
So watch your step out there, and if you don't need to drive, don't do it.
Alright, I have got something here I've got to read from Stan Dale that just arrived and it kind of punctuates what we're talking about and in fact what's going on right now.
And I'll just read it.
Art, as you know and have known for some time now, The El Nino effect is evolving into something new and devastating, especially in the North Pacific off the U.S.
coastlines, Alaskan and Hawaiian coasts as well.
The increased temperature average for this time of year thermal anomalies for the western and northern sectors of the Pacific Ocean are enormous.
On my homepage, Stan's homepage, which folks can access from your website, Under news bulletins on the homepage and under thermal electric maps for 3 September 97, on the page that comes up, you will see the current Otis Thermal Anomaly image is from the US Naval FNMOC at Monterey as of today.
It is the worst we have ever recorded already.
A large circular heat pattern is forming off the west coast of America.
It is about two-thirds the size of America.
It has a cold spot in the core and a heat ring around the outside.
It is producing unusual vortex thermals up into the jet stream.
The results are already beginning to flow into the newsrooms.
Over the next 18 months, the grain crops in America are going to be heavily damaged in some places from flood.
From drought, from hail and snows at the wrong time in the wrong place.
And that's from Stan Dale in Perth, Australia.
So, Merle, there you go.
This is beginning to get to be very serious.
And if what we were talking about earlier is correct, I think that whoever it is has got their finger on the reset button.
Yeah, the weather controllers have decided to intensify the condition.
They're going to bear down on us a little bit, I think.
That's really interesting about that thing.
You know, that's been increasing for the last 20 years, I've been noticing.
You know, the only thing you can tell about the weather over the last 20 years is that there's no one year similar to the other.
There was no pattern at all, and it seems as though we've fallen out of our clock.
Our clock is right.
It seems more like October than it does September.
It's more like November.
And even then, our rainy season doesn't begin to happen usually on the West Coast until January.
And that's not been the case for the last couple of years, and certainly not right now.
It's starting with this, uh, looks like it's coming all the way from Baja.
Mexico all the way up to your area and then back down to Roswell.
It's going to be interesting to see what happens next.
It's in the area that doesn't get rain this time of year.
It just doesn't happen.
You know, I'm not a prophet and I suppose you're not either, but I don't have to be a prophet to know that something's
going on.
Something big is about to happen.
Something's happening.
Listen, back, just for a second, all the way to San Quentin, you said you got caught making beer in jail.
How do you do that?
Well, it's very simple.
All the components are there.
We had some oranges, and we had some sugar, and the biggest thing we had was time.
Yeah, lots of that.
Yeah, so we just let it kind of, you know, keep working.
It really wasn't all that big a sin, I don't think.
We were playing guitars down in the yard, drinking this homemade beer, and we just got a little too much of it and wound up on the shelf up there.
but it was the thing that scared the hell out of me when I looked around and really
seen who I was sitting among and where I was at and how old I was.
That was some kind of a... what was that officially?
Isolation?
It was a turning point for me.
It was isolation.
It was actually when my life turned around.
I never went back.
I never had any more problems.
I came out and I was one of the two percent that go to jail.
and come out and was fortunate in the fact that I was able to prove my worth out here
with my talent and had a catch hold early on in my parole and was able to get off parole
and then later on President Reagan gave me a full and unconditional pardon.
I mean, you said you're among the 2%, but you also said that, you know, you learned a lot about how to commit crimes in jail.
So you must have some views on jail in general.
Are these just training places for In other words, should the young be separated from the hard criminals?
Should there not be jail the way we know it?
How would you change it?
I tell you, it's become a business now.
And we're putting each other in jail for things that we wouldn't have gone to jail for a few years ago.
It's not a dope war that we've got going on over here, a drug war, it's a war against
the people and the people's privacy.
The security at the airports is ridiculous.
They haven't found one bomb and they've cost the public an enormous amount of money.
The airlines a lot of money.
They scare the hell out of people.
Oh man, and it's...
You think the drug war ought to be ended? Just ended?
The jails are the product of a business that's happening.
And there's more jails being built in America right now than there ever has been.
They're going to have a million, five hundred thousand people in jail.
Yeah, that's what I've heard.
And it's a business. And they've got unfair laws.
If you're a young black man, you're going to go to jail quicker because the crack laws are different.
And there's things that are not right in this country, and the jails are filled with about 70% of people I don't think should be there.
And it's reduced to a liberal society that we had back in the days of the mafia, running Las Vegas, the need for those jails wouldn't be
there.
Things were handled in different ways then.
And, you know, drugs is a bad thing, but there's no drug on earth as bad as wine.
You know, you go downtown, you see these guys stumbling around looking up in the air.
It wasn't because of crack, it's because of wine.
Yeah, that's right.
That's absolutely right.
Our values, our priorities, our double standards for everything is really beginning to bite us in the ankle, I think.
Would you end the drug war?
Legalize drugs?
Absolutely.
I don't see any other way.
Immediately you'd do away with the...
The war would be over.
There wouldn't be any drug war.
Other countries don't do it the way we do.
Holland gets along very well.
They get more problems...
They have more problems out of the coffee house than we have to do in the pot houses.
Yeah, I know that is true.
I've long been for the legalization of pot.
Oh, absolutely.
It's the most ridiculous thing on earth.
And it's because of a lot of reasons, I think.
Probably because of petroleum, because of the timber industry, because of the cotton industry.
But, you know, marijuana is a cultured form of hemp.
And hemp can solve a lot of problems.
Including a lot for farmers.
Oh my God, put this country back to work.
We could grow our own fuel.
We could have paper without cutting the trees.
Well, I always thought, Merle, that the first time a Democrat achieved office, whoever it was, you know, after the Reagan years and so forth and so on, Bush, when a Democrat finally got to office, they'd probably legalize.
pot or at least decriminalize it.
But here came this President Clinton who got himself in a political jam over, you know,
well I took a mouthful or a pot or something and never inhaled, somehow got himself in
trouble over that to the point where he couldn't do anything.
You know, I sometimes wonder in reality just how much authority a President has now.
And does he, the first day in office do they take him in a little room and set him down?
And then I look, this is what's going to happen.
Here's the real rules of the road.
Here's the real world.
Here's how nature actually works.
And I've wondered about the same thing myself because they promise one thing of course and
they always do another.
They said, you know, like President Carter, I think I heard this on your show, said that
if he was elected President, one of the things he would level with the public about would
be the UFOs.
And when he was asked about that after he was in office, when he looked, tears came
in his eyes.
Yeah, that was the first time I heard that.
And I think that's what he said.
That's right.
The guy made contact with the president and asked him why he never followed through.
And he just stopped dead and tears came to his eyes.
He's that kind of guy.
So, you know, you might be right.
They might sort of lay down the rules of the road for a president once he gets into office.
I don't know, but I do know this.
What's going on back in Washington right now.
I used to talk a lot about politics.
Years and years and years ago.
But what they're doing back there right now is not particularly relevant to our lives.
I mean, the arguments they're having aren't real arguments.
It's almost like it's for the ears of the public.
It's the same thing as the theory of Area 51 being the real deal and NASA being for the public.
I've got a picture of Area 51 up on my website, the non-existent Area 51.
I wonder how long it's going to be able to remain there, but you can see all the buildings, the whole site there.
And I'm just, you know, over the hill from it here.
And we have seen some pretty strange things.
Have you ever seen a UFO?
Well, I'll tell you what, I'm a pilot.
I have a pilot's license.
I've flown probably more commercial hours than most people.
I've been flying them since about 63.
And one night coming out of Vandenberg Air Force Base, I played there.
And we were in a little 206 Cessna, which is a funny little airplane.
And I was flying it.
It's got a prop on the back.
And we're tripping along at about 200 miles an hour.
And I'm not flying the plane.
I got this guy hired, and I'm laying with my head over against the right-hand door sleeping.
And we'd been cleared to come out through that restricted air space there from Vandenberg
because there was no activity.
In other words, we'd been cleared to fly through there.
And in my half slumber, half state of slumber, I saw this light begin to fill the cockpit, and I thought,
well, a car is going to pass us.
And then I realized it was an airplane.
And I saw my nephew was in the back seat, and he and I both turned around,
and we looked, and we saw this enormous searchlight that just seemingly it was like upon us.
And then we realized that it wasn't even anywhere close yet.
And for about 10 minutes, it came at us, and then it just kind of seemed to be about 1,500 feet above us.
It shot over us at an enormous speed.
And it's hard to see light when there's nothing for light to shine against.
But the light was so bright, we could see that light shining out into the darkness.
But we couldn't tell what was behind it.
It couldn't have been another aircraft conventional.
No, we called the center there at the tower at the Air Force Base, Vandenberg, and said,
hey, did you guys shoot something at us?
And they said, we don't have anything working there.
And I said, well, did you get anything on radar?
And they said, no, we didn't see anything.
But my wife saw during the Arizona skirmish down there with all the sightings.
Well, she was on her way back to see me in Texas to join me on tour.
She was parked at an RV camp on the Colorado River, and she watched five UFOs for about an hour and a half do
their little dance back and forth like they're mapping out the Colorado River or something.
What they act like, they act like they're doing a survey.
And she described it that way to me.
And she said that she watched them for a long time and went to the camper,
finally just quit watching them.
They were still there.
And she went to the camper, and she opened up this little square camper lid on top, the air,
opened it all the way up, and one of them was right directly over the center
of the camper.
And we tried to call you on the line to let you know about that story.
And I have a real estate lady that lives in Phoenix and was one of the people that I think got a VCR of that
thing that hung over the city there for a while, whatever it was.
a call earlier today from unsolved mysteries about the phoenix lights
They're going to do a big story on that.
Hold on Merle.
We'll be right back and we'll talk UFOs a little bit.
I'm Art Bell.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
♪♪ The devil went down to Georgia.
He was looking for a soul to steal.
He was in a bind, but he was way behind.
He was willing to make a deal.
When he came across this young man sewing on a fiddle and playing it hot.
And the devil jumped up on a hickory stump and said, boy, let me tell you what.
I guess you didn't know it, but I'm a fiddle player too.
And if you'd care to take a dare, I'll make a bet with you.
Now you play a pretty good fiddle, boy, but give the devil his due.
I'd better fiddle with gold against your soul, because I think I've bettered you.
the the
goes to go to him with our bill
uh... back now to my guess who happens to be moral haggard and uh...
Merle, you're back on the air again.
All right, I'm here.
UFOs, I've seen one, actually two, but one very, very close up.
And once you have seen something like that, it kind of changes your life.
Because you know that either we've got some big stuff that We're not telling people about we've got it or it's
something from somewhere else.
It's one of the two.
But once you've seen it for yourself, you know it's one of those two.
Both would be big stories either way.
What do you think?
Well, I tell you, I've had some strange connections to the subject.
My brother-in-law Bill Ray was part of the Reagan political team and wound up with all
the old blue book files.
Really?
And my sister, Asda, who's at the moment, she's talking about disposing of them.
Oh no.
And I said, no, no.
No, no, no, no.
Anyway, I may get my hands on them.
She actually has those files and, you know, it's pretty much believed to be a That was just another front for something the government was trying to do without us knowing about it.
What they call the Project 12 or something like that.
Majestic 12.
The what?
Majestic 12.
That's right.
The Majestic 12.
It was actually supposed to be the ones that were pursuing the UFO sightings and I have read and stayed abreast of just about everything
that happened on that Roswell thing down there.
Did you see the Air Force News Conference?
Yeah.
That and the 1952 thing that happened over the White House where they appeared and they
sent up fire planes and they disappeared.
Yeah, I've seen the pictures.
I've actually seen the photographs.
These are non-deniable conditions that have been recorded that we seem to kind of have
not come to terms with as a society.
There's been something going on since about 1933.
Well, again, if you had to guess, do you guess which it might be?
I think, just a wild guess, I think they're from our solar system.
I think it could be one of those... Europa?
Europa?
Yeah, they say there could be life on Europa.
Or else there's some sort of a...
Yeah, you pretty well nailed it.
and uh... there are spiritual creatures
something to do with uh...
with the uh...
their watchers yeah you've you've pretty well nailed it i i i i think
those are basically the possibilities myself
and i i don't know what it is but i one thing for sure i know there's something
They know what we're doing, and they're more intelligent than we are.
There's a lady that, a guitar player, a friend of mine lives in Las Vegas, and his wife is a security guard at Area 51.
And I don't have any punchline to this story other than to say that I asked her, I said, tell me what you got out there.
I don't know, man.
I was wondering today if maybe that was where they wanted to keep the set that they used on the film footage they shot on the moon landings.
it may be that was where they wanted to keep the set that they used on the film footage
they shot on the moon landings. Maybe they were keeping that set hid out there, you know?
The debate...
I've got a letter here from somebody who claims that he still works at Area 51.
we did uh...
or a good argument well i've got some i'll read after after the top of the
hour i've got a letter here from somebody who claims that he still works at area
fifty one this is a very very unusual letter
i'm gonna try to get fellow on the air but he makes a pretty incredible claims and i think this is
a credible letter I'll read it after the top of the hour.
Anyway, something's going on out there.
We see things in the sky here all the time, Merle, as things that are simply not, cannot be easily explained.
I was in the Air Force, you know.
I know what aerodynamic flight is, and I know pretty well the advancements we've made.
Now, I'm sure there's lots I don't know, but I do know that We have not publicly claimed to have conquered gravity yet.
The control of gravity and the craft I've seen have defied gravity.
They seem... They don't even... From the descriptions, they seem to almost be a reflection.
Sometimes, the way they're described.
It's almost like they're slipping in and out of another time zone.
It's like two time zones rubbing together and things of that nature have occurred on the triangle out there where boats seemingly just Yep, and I'll tell you something.
I think that the weirder things get in society and with the environment, the more of this that we're going to experience.
Now, I don't know why I feel that, but I do.
Now, maybe that means they're watching us, watching over us, waiting for us to destroy ourselves.
I have no idea.
Well, the increase of earthquakes alone, seismographic activity, is a reversal.
From all scientific ideas of the cooling of the Earth and of us being shot out of the sun some millions of years ago, that's an opposite.
That shouldn't be.
We should be having fewer earthquakes, but we've had more earthquakes to a degree of, like, There was something like 18 in 1946.
Now they're having something over 150 a year.
That's right.
No, the number of six-plus earthquakes has gone up very, very dramatically.
Yeah, and there's got to be some sort of a... There's got to be some sort of control in place or otherwise We're on the verge of a chaotic ending that no one wants to face up to.
I want to go back to something you said early on about your career, because I wonder about this myself, Merle.
I'm doing very well.
In fact, unaccountably well.
I wonder about it a lot.
Sometimes I reflect on it, and I feel like it was all predestined to occur.
I struggled.
I did a lot of bad things early in life.
I was very rebellious.
I didn't end up in San Quentin, but I ended up in trouble.
I was in radio, knocking around for a lot of years.
Radio is probably like your business a lot of ways.
You knock around from city to city a lot.
All of a sudden, whoosh!
The career took off to such a degree that I sometimes sit down and I wonder about it myself.
I wonder, why was I chosen?
Why am I being so fortunate?
Why is all this working?
I wonder, wonder, wonder.
I wonder if it's just all predestined.
Do you think about that kind of thing a lot?
I can't see how it could be any other way.
a creator who has an oversight of this development.
And we're in some sort of a test, some sort of a farm.
A cellar.
We're a live experiment.
And there's got to be someone in control, otherwise some idiot would have blown San Francisco off the map by now.
I mean that's absolute proof.
The fact that someone hasn't held us up with a nuclear bomb is proof that there is someone with the power to keep that from happening in charge.
Or Las Vegas, Mo.
I always figured San Francisco or Las Vegas.
Yeah, most of the movies have Las Vegas.
Getting bombed first?
It's made its way to the movie script, but it's never happened.
And it's really an interesting question as to how and why that hasn't occurred.
Think what a valuable thing it would be if America could pull off this deal about going to the moon.
We didn't go to the moon.
If we could convince China and the rest of the world that we went to the moon, They're going to throw down the wall, which they did.
I'll tell you, I interviewed Professor Michio Kaku a couple of weeks ago before I went on vacation.
He's probably the next Carl Sagan.
He's a brilliant, brilliant man.
And he said, we are at type zero planet civilization right now.
And we will know that we have achieved type one if we make it through The point where we might blow ourselves to bits, and we're not there yet.
We still might do it, he said.
I believe he's right.
Yeah, I think he is too.
Yeah, we're there.
We haven't, we've discovered it just enough to destroy ourselves, and whether we handle it right or whether we don't is the question at the moment.
Well, he said civilizations are measured by their ability to pass Safely through the discovery and development of Element 92.
And so we'll see.
I don't know if I'll be around long enough to see whether we make it or not, and I'm not sure whether we're going to make it.
I hope so.
It would be nice to know that we're more than just sort of an experiment that failed.
Something that caught my interest is you take these prophets, people like Nostradamus over
the years that have made these prophecies.
Edgar Cayce?
Edgar Cayce.
These people who made the predictions that we've listened to and who had a great percentage of being right about certain things.
I think Cayce claimed something would be discovered in the left-hand paw of the Sphinx this year.
That's right.
And I believe that they have through sonar somewhere or another proven that there is a chamber there and they analyzed whether or not they What they found there, I haven't heard yet.
Are you up on that story?
I'll tell you where I am with that story.
I'm going to Egypt.
October 4th I'll be at the pyramids.
And I had a scheduled interview with a fellow named Zahi Hawass, who is the Antiquities Director.
In other words, he's the guy in charge up at Giza of, you know, the whole affair there.
all the pyramids and the sphinx and all the rest of it.
And he called me, he's a very unusual fella.
He called me the other day and said, Art, I'll tell you what, let's put this interview off.
You come to Giza, I'm going to personally take you into all of the new digs.
And he admits there are new digs.
You can see for yourself and then interview me and it's gonna be a very dramatic program.
Oh boy.
That's got a spine tingling.
I thought so.
Yeah, that's great.
What I was, the point I was driving to a while ago, or towards, was the fact that there's
been no predictions by anybody, uh, made after I think, uh, 2005.
There's no predictions by anybody.
There is no prophecy of any sort.
And if you want to hear something even more chilling, you've probably heard it if you listen to the program, I've done shows with a whole number of remote viewers.
And the majority of them say there is a point just about where you're talking about there, past which they cannot see.
And they say there is some sort of event that's going to occur.
And they can't see past it.
And that bothers me a bit.
Yeah, and all of these people with these strange powers all agreeing upon the same sort of a wall or time blockage there is kind of disturbing, isn't it?
It is, and maybe that's when the button gets mashed.
Yeah.
I have no idea.
I just know that the next few years are really going to be interesting years.
Listen, we'll come right back to this after the top of the hour.
I've got one question for you from a listener here, which I thought was kind of intriguing.
He's asking, why did you like to drive your 56 Ford on the railroad tracks?
Did you do that?
Yeah.
Out of all the notoriety that I've acclaimed through music and all that, I built a model railroad and built a railroad car that had railroad wheels that came down to the track like the official used on the railroad track.
You've seen that?
Sure.
Well, I just made sort of a backyard model of that and for some reason a little Life magazine was just blown away with it.
How well did that work?
and all I used it for was like going on abandoned tracks and going back up and duck hunting
and finding abandoned water holes where old steam engines used to fill up with water and
you'd find great fishing.
How well did that work?
I mean you take a 56 Ford and convert it to sort of a railroad engine.
Yeah.
And how efficient was that?
Well, it's just not too good on your tires.
You've got to let your tires out.
And if it rains a little bit, you'll slip pretty good.
But other than that, it's all right.
And there's an awful lot of abandoned railroads in America.
Yes, there are.
It's going to waste.
I just kind of like did that and had some fun with it.
It caught the interest of Life Magazine.
They did a cover story on it in 1974. Oh, I missed that one.
All right.
Hold on, then.
Stay where you are.
When we come back, I am going to read a letter, actually, an email I just got that I'm going to follow up on.
I think you'll find it really interesting, so will everybody else.
So relax, and we'll be back to you in just a few moments.
All right.
I'm hanging in there and enjoying every minute of it.
All right.
Stay right there.
I see trees of green, red roses too.
I see them bloom for me and you.
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue and clouds of white.
The bright blessed day is dawning.
All right.
I'm going to read a letter that I promised to read here in a moment before we go back to Merle.
What a wonderful world.
From the Kingdom of Nigh, Coast to Coast AM continues with Art Bell.
Alright, um, I'm going to read a letter that I promised to read here in a moment before we go back to Merle.
Uh, tomorrow night Joyce Riley is going to be here with some of the most incredible news, incredible news you've
ever heard.
heard.
The next night is Mark Furman.
Remember Mark Furman?
And then Friday night, Saturday morning, Albert Taylor, the guy who wrote Soul Traveler, which also, by the way, is about to become a movie.
I want to read this letter to you, and I think it's the real McCoy.
I'll let you judge for yourself.
I have invited this person.
Uh, in the manner he prescribed to get hold of me.
I'll tell you more about that.
Dear Mr. Bell, I've listened to your show with interest over several months now and was tempted to call in on a few occasions when the subject of Area 51 came up.
I was a former employee at this installation with a top-secret clearance and was privy to some rather interesting information and sights.
The reason I did not call, however, is because I don't want to simply spring this information on you or your audience without discussing a few things with you first off-air.
Mr. Bell, I have information that I believe would astound you and your listeners up until now.
I have let fear for my safety and the safety of those around me stop me from going public.
Only recently have I realized it really doesn't matter what happens to me The American people have a right to know the truth about this installation and its true purpose.
I have also taken several security precautions to ensure my safety, beginning with this email address.
Needless to say, this is not my real name, but it is one generic enough to blend in.
I believe the time has come for the American people to know the truth.
What puts me in a position to enlighten them?
A top security clearance at the installation does.
Although I'm no longer an employee of Area 51 as of March, I still hold my clearance because I am still called to work there occasionally.
Because of my clearance, I have been privy to a lot of things that most people could only hope to learn about.
To tell you the truth, Art, the information I have to share with America will probably not be believed by the masses.
It is too fantastic and terrifying.
If America only knew what was going on there, they'd be scared to death of their government.
Time travel?
Achieved.
Alien research?
Psychic research?
Reverse engineering of alien technology?
Only the tip of the iceberg.
Can you now see why I've chosen to keep quiet?
But you see, I feel the time has come for the truth to get out.
I guess I kind of I have adopted a consequences be damned attitude, but before I present my material, I would like to discuss some things with you.
I'd very much like to use your show as a medium to release the information.
However, I'm also concerned about my safety and that of my family.
There are things we need to discuss.
I will include a toll-free number to a pager.
You may call it, and I will return the call.
I have a secured number from a close friend and it is virtually untraceable.
I will call you back.
Leave a voice message of up to 45 seconds when you call with a number to reach you.
Mr. Bell, this is not simply an attempt to get on the radio.
If that were the case, I would have called in as a normal caller.
I really want to get this information to the public.
I'm not so bold as to publish a book or put it on a website as that would surely ensure my demise.
But I feel your show is the best forum for what needs to be done.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Continued success with your show.
And I won't give you his name.
Actually, I can.
Or maybe I'd better not.
I really don't know that this is not his name.
At any rate, I left the number and I await a return call.
Anyhow, there it is.
I think that's the real thing.
And there's one other thing I want to share with you and Merle.
And that's this.
It just came in.
Art, just a quick fax to let you know that way up here in B.C., Canada, we've had the same kind of weather you've had today.
Thunderstorms.
Heavy falls of hail the size of golf balls.
This was out in the valley near Vancouver.
We also had a couple of inches of snow at one point in the B.C.
interior last July.
The weather is definitely changing everywhere.
No question about it.
We have the first 1997 crop circle reports near Raymoor, Saskatchewan on August 7 and 11.
One triplet formation in one single circle in wheat.
Reports are on my website.
Thanks again, Paul, Director of Circles Phenomena Research in Canada.
So yeah, the weather is changing all right.
And Merle, what did you think of that letter from this fellow who claims to be working at Area 51?
Well, you know, odds are it sounds like it might be authentic.
He certainly placed his words well, the right way.
That's what I thought too.
And it sounded like he was afraid of what was going on out there.
That disturbs me.
I hear, I don't know if you hear them down on your side of the mountain, but every evening,
not every evening, but about three or four times a week, at about 4, 3.30 or 4 o'clock
in the afternoon, we hear these explosions.
Peace.
Booms.
Do you hear them?
Yeah.
Yeah.
They come across the valley and... Are they coming from the direction of Area 51?
They're coming from, yeah, I think the general direction.
It's very difficult to pin it down because you'll be sitting here and all of a sudden the whole house will go kaboom, like that.
You're hearing that too?
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Let me ask you, this is a theory.
Do you think that that could be the results of pilots breaking the sound barrier several times over out there in some sort of a machine they're trying to learn to fly?
Well, it could be, but they're not legally supposed to do that, of course, over U.S.
airspace.
So, I don't know.
I can't think of anything else.
I can't imagine what they would be doing if they say they're blowing up all the ammunition.
You know, that don't make sense, why they would blow up all the ammunition.
I don't understand that.
No, I think these are sonic booms.
And I don't know where they're coming from.
They're coming from the general direction, west, north, west, I believe, of me.
But even that's hard to judge.
It's really hard to judge because when it hits your house, you know, it just shakes the whole thing.
Is this gentleman that wrote the letter, is he where you can call him and bring him on the show now?
Well, no.
He left me a pager number and I called that pager number a few hours ago and left my private number.
And I'm waiting to hear from this man, and when I do, if I can talk him into it, obviously I'm going to arrange to try to get him on the air.
And I hope that what's going on out there is not as frightening as he suggests that it is.
But it wouldn't surprise me.
You know, there was a day... How old are you, Merle?
I'm 61.
I'm 60.
I'll be 61.
Well, I'm going to be 53 pretty soon.
And you would, even more than me, remember this.
When we were young, even though we didn't know everything our government did, we were innocent.
And we believed them, for the most part.
I mean, I used to believe the FBI.
When they'd come out, I'd believe the FBI when they'd say something.
Their integrity was above reproach.
It seemed, or at least seemed to be.
We believed it was.
We thought it was.
That all that's changed and I'm pretty much prepared to believe the government's doing just about anything.
I think they're totally out of control when they look us straight in the eye and deny that the Area 51 exists.
It's just bold rebellion in regard to the Constitution.
Well, America, the home of the free and the brave and all that.
They did it on us in Las Vegas.
did all kinds of experiments on the American people that they had no knowledge of.
I mean, this is stuff you'd expect to have heard maybe back in Germany, but not here.
They did it on us in Las Vegas. I lived there in 1962.
And the same time they were exposing those people up there in Utah.
That's right.
We were getting the same sort of a situation, I'm sure, there in East Las Vegas out there.
Do you remember when the above ground test went off?
Yeah, I was around there.
I was born in Bakersfield and I started coming to Vegas as early as about 1953.
Can you remember the sky lighting up?
there for one year, 1961-62, and that was during all of that stuff going on.
And who's to know, I may live to die from the results of something that they did over
there even yet.
Can you remember the sky lighting up?
I don't remember that.
You know, it's hard to see the skylight from downtown Las Vegas, you know, where the lights
Right.
Unless you have reason to be looking up, you might miss something like that.
I was working about 12 hours a day in nightclubs and hosting a show on the rock and roll station at 11 o'clock every night.
Were you?
Yeah.
Great years in the music.
You worked in rock and roll?
Well, we were the Buddy Holly, sort of between Buddy Holly and I don't know who else, something in that vein.
The Winn Stewart's band was a big band on the West Coast and I was playing bass for him over there at the time
and was able to impersonate Winn and Winn could get away with not being there.
And I could introduce the band and pretend to be Winn and he got a big kick out of that.
Some of the people who knew I did it.
It was just, I worked over there in radio and I have a friend that lives over there
who contacted me for me the other day.
That was in radio in Las Vegas for a long time.
And uh...
Paul Harper, do you know Paul Harper?
I know the name, yes.
Yeah, he was a big disc jockey in Las Vegas for a long time.
There's a lot of years I'm sure that we could remember together.
Have you been in Pahrump for a long time?
Yeah, a long time now.
Over ten years.
I went in a big circle from Redding, California.
I took off to find me a place to live and somewhere in the desert.
And I just, I went by, by Tombstone and then turned left and went back over into Phoenix
and saw some unusual things out there and couldn't find any place that wasn't taken.
There's somebody living everywhere out there.
And, but there's an eye that looks like a UFO that's sitting over on top of the mountain
just outside of Tombstone, Arizona.
It has, I understand the capability of seeing 200 miles in all directions.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Really?
Sitting up on top of this damn mountain over there.
And I want to know what it is.
So do I now.
I've never even heard of it.
Yep.
Anyway, look, I worked in rock and roll radio for 20 years.
And I bounced all around.
And I'm going to be absolutely bluntly honest with you.
When I was younger, I hated country music.
I hated country music.
So did I. And one day, instead of starving to death, which I was on the edge of, I took a job at a country station.
And it's the darndest thing.
When I first went to work, I hated every day.
I hated it.
I couldn't believe that I was playing this music.
And then, slowly, insidiously, First, there was one song that I started to like.
Then there were two.
Then there were three.
Then there were more.
And as the months went on, I spent quite a number of months at this country station, all of a sudden, I began to like country music.
I couldn't believe it.
So it's an acquired taste, I guess, huh?
It's changed and there's some intelligence in country music that maybe wasn't in tune before.
and uh...
There was only a few country artists that were worth mentioning, like the greats like Jimmy Rogers, Eddie Arnold, Ernest Tubb, and people like that.
But those people I liked.
As a child, I grew up listening to Bing Crosby and Bob Wills.
But I did not like what they called hillbilly music at the time.
I'm with you.
I liked Elvis Presley.
I liked Frank Sinatra.
I liked Bing Crosby.
I liked Bob Wills.
And I liked Lefty Frizzell and Hank Williams.
But I didn't like a lot of that Stuff that sounded like it was coming from the, was it closed down on the notes?
Yeah, exactly right.
I didn't like that and I wanted, when I went into the music business and started making records, I wanted my records to sound classy and I wanted them to have style and we've had a band for 32 years We've been on the music charts for 24 years.
24 years?
With our own sound.
And we're still together.
They've not missed a paycheck since 1965.
And I'm really proud of the band.
We have a great band.
And we play everything.
We play everything from blues to rock and roll to jazz and to country.
And pop!
We play all sorts of music.
I think it's great.
This is Bob Marley.
Are you a fan of him?
Have you heard of him?
I think his name is Bob Marley.
whatever's necessary.
I'm intrigued by reggae music.
I think it's great.
This is Bob Marley.
Are you a fan of...
Have you heard the...
I think his name is Bob Marley.
He's a big star down in Jamaica.
No, I don't know the name, but I'd love to hear it.
I'd love to hear it.
Alright, hang tight.
We're at the bottom of the hour, and I've got a good question for you when we come back.
From the high desert where the weather is weird, this is Coast to Coast AM.
Back now to Merle Haggard.
Merle, I'm going to ask you a real direct question.
You, by now, you've probably made a lot of money.
So you must be rich.
Well, let me say this to you.
I've made a lot of money.
I've spent a lot of money.
I've invested in a resort in Northern California.
Yeah, it's out there in the middle of Lake Shasta somewhere.
But I'm not broke.
My time has been better as far as airplay goes.
We've come upon bad times.
People like Willie Nelson and I and Johnny Cash were not being played.
America, I think, the way we should be because I think we've earned the right to be part of the playlist in America.
Long time ago.
Yeah.
And same as Eric Clapton has on rock and roll stations.
and uh... in some places they play johnny cash and myself and william and people like a rock and roll artist
in fact they play us more they're more likely to play us on a rock and roll station nowadays than they are to play us
on what they call this new country new country yeah i was gonna ask you about new country but
before i get to that the reason i asked you about money was because ted turner
said something that's always haunted me And he's got an awful lot of money.
And he said, you know, it's a funny thing.
But now that I've got all this money and he's got baseball teams and CNN and all this stuff
he said, actually being rich is kind of an empty bag.
I've been there.
I've never, I've never feared, I was never afraid of being without money.
I knew that it was going to be a long time.
I guess it's called having confidence in yourself.
I knew I was going to come up with some way of earning a lot of money.
You always knew that?
Yeah, there was no doubt in my mind.
I had to make a lot of money.
You know, in some way, because I was going to need a lot.
In order to do the things I wanted to do, I had things mapped out and I've done those things and went far beyond them.
I saw in a book today, we were looking at a thing I'm very proud of, I'm the number four biggest selling country.
Artist of all time.
Of all time?
Really?
Yeah, Eddie Arnold, George Jones, Johnny Cash, and Merle Haggard.
Wow!
That takes you all the way through every name that there is.
We've sold that many records.
How many records is that?
Do you know?
I have no idea.
I know that we probably only got paid for the tip of the iceberg.
How can we fight the corporate attorneys that were already ready for us before we got there?
You know what I'm saying?
If they paid me for two million pieces, they probably sold thirty.
I interviewed Willie Nelson.
As you know, I think you're pretty good friends with Willie, aren't you?
Willie and I have been friends for thirty-five years.
We've played a lot of five-card stud.
Well, he had a real serious run-in with the IRS, as you well know.
together i think he said i think it's a great start
uh... well he had a real serious run in with the i a r s as you all know
uh...
have you had any similar problems with the uh...
with the federal people well i i i'm in the process of
as we speak of of of actors working my tail off
thirty eight years of this and this plan america uh... of of being somewhere near
paying the i a r s off uh...
Thank you.
You know, there was a lot of cattle buys that didn't really exist that were only on paper during the 70s.
Willie Nelson, people like me in Tennessee, A lot of people were taken in on big scams that turned out to be scams and they came back on us for a lot of IRS money.
When you're talking about $12 million, cowboys don't make that much money.
That's a lot of money to me.
We're talking about back when $12 million was still $12 million, like 10 or 12 years ago.
It's still 12 million to me.
You know what I'm saying?
Now you'd have to be talking about 60 or 70 million to be really talking about a lot of money.
On the same scale.
I suppose so.
I heard you talk about how much you love radio.
I heard you talk about how much you love radio.
I do.
I love radio the same way as a listener.
I loved what I do for a living as much as you loved that.
It's just natural for me to do what I do and you do what you do.
I think you do the best job of what you do of anybody I've ever heard.
Well, that's very kind of you.
Yeah, you're right.
I love it, and money is a byproduct, and now it's a byproduct, but I'll tell you what.
I starved to death for a lot of years.
Oh, yeah.
I did, too.
I didn't come out of San Quentin with $15 shoes and walk into the Hall of Fame.
It wasn't anything like that.
But you knew it was going to happen.
I wasn't all that surprised.
I'll put it to you like that.
I felt like when we recorded a hit record, I knew it was a hit record before the public did.
You can feel it when you get one?
Absolutely.
This book of yours, you may write another book, and you may feel differently about it.
You may feel like it will sell, and you may feel like it won't.
You'll probably be right from your experience that you're having here with this book.
Well, it's a funny thing.
It's like, this is my second, but I wrote a book about myself, which was interesting, and about radio and all that sort of thing.
But then this second book wrote itself, sort of.
I didn't... That's the way good songs do.
Is that right?
Yeah, they write themselves.
They just kind of come together before your very eyes.
And you wonder why you were blessed to be the one to Exactly, exactly.
I wonder about that very same thing all the time.
I wonder about it.
Why?
Yeah, it's real.
You know, there is a, you know, to not get religious or spiritual or anything, but there is somewhere in the Bible that says there has been some chosen out from the rest that your names were spoken before the worlds were formed.
I sure don't understand it.
That indicates that whoever God is, he knew who we were going to be before we are.
Because he sees the whole scope having no time as a framework.
He's able to see the beginning and the end.
I guess maybe in a lot of ways.
I don't think I'm that good.
In other words, there's a million people Behind me, working in a million small markets because I was there.
You know, everybody always thinks you're an overnight success.
Doesn't really work that way.
But there's a million people with as much talent as I've got.
I'm convinced of it.
And for some reason, the same things didn't happen to them.
And there's a lot of good singers out there, too.
I'm sure you hear from them and they probably come up to you all the time with their songs and their hopes and their dreams.
There's a million of them out there, but somehow you're there and I'm here.
And I don't know how.
Well, I don't, I don't think that, uh, I don't think that even people that are listening to us will argue with the fact that we are, that we've been gifted.
And, uh, there is, there is two forces.
There is an evil force and a force for the other side, other direction.
And it's obvious.
In the world, it's obvious that there's two forces.
For some reason or another, we've both been chosen to deliver messages.
We're messengers.
Of some kind, yes.
Yes, Willie Nelson and I discussed that.
We have a message, a continuing message to deliver as writers and as People of integrity, placing our name beside nothing we don't believe in with our hearts.
You know how I feel about, if you're a listener, you know how I feel about the song Highwaymen?
I would imagine I know how you feel.
Very strongly.
Oh, that's great!
It's obviously a song about reincarnation.
And, um, all years ago, I just happened to be watching MTV, and I caught that song, and it just, it hit me so profoundly, and it always has ever since.
It just, it says the right things.
It says, I think what I believe.
I think I believe in reincarnation.
I believe that the God that I believe in is big enough to supply I believe he is really that big.
I really believe there is somebody in charge with the size and the magnitude to cover your
religion, my religion and everybody else's.
It almost has to be that way, doesn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
It has to be.
There is someone, there are a few people in the world that actually believe that someone
spoke and not a thing became everything.
And it favors that way of thinking more every day as science probes deeper.
They're coming up with more reasons to find the spoken word to be the thing that holds the whole deal together.
Somebody spoke it into existence, just like it said.
If you take the Bible literally, and you take it in little bitty words, and you take them apart and you analyze it, it says more than it appears to begin with.
And it's right on the money with Prophecy.
I believe that too.
Somebody here asked me to ask you, speaking of Willie, to ask you about a song that you did with Willie, somehow, how you finished it, Poncho and Lefty.
Well, we were recording it.
I think probably the story they're wanting to hear.
We really hadn't found this... We'd recorded like twenty-something songs, but we really didn't have a title song.
And he came into the bus at about four o'clock in the morning, and I'd been up for like five days with him, fasting and recording.
We were not eating.
We were doing what was called a cayenne pepper fast.
That's all we had to eat.
Does the creativity get better or begin to slide as the days go by?
It gets better.
It gets better?
Yeah.
Willie went ten days without eating.
I went four.
Oof!
And I'm telling you, your mind becomes so sharp and your voice becomes so fine.
And your ears become, you hear things that's so, so much better.
And your eyes, you see the leaves are more brilliantly, they look like they did when you were five years old.
And things, everything changes when you go into the fast.
And we recorded that album while we were fasting.
And he came in and woke me up after five days of being awake with him and doing this fast and everything.
I'd laid down for 30 minutes.
If you've ever been up for a long time and laid down for 30 minutes, you're really tired.
Oh yes.
That's the moment you're just about to go under.
He woke me up out in the bus.
I had this parking lot out there.
He said, Merle, he said, I found this song on this Emmylou Harris record called Poncho and Lefty.
He said, I think it'd be a hit.
And he said, I think we ought to cut it.
And I said, boy, I think you're right.
You know, he said, well, I've got the band in there right now.
I said, well, it's 430.
And I said, I'll put my part on in the morning.
He said, no, he said, I want you to do it live with me.
I said, you're serious?
He said, yeah.
He said, get up, come in here.
So I got up and went in there and they had the band, some of the greatest players in America was in there, in that room.
And they kicked this song off and handed me these lyrics written on the back of a paper sack.
That's an incredible story.
I went back and went to bed and about a month later it was number one.
And that is an incredible story.
I was fully awake and totally fine.
I think a good song is almost like writing a good song.
You know, it's the next thing to it.
And he found that great song, and it was written by,
I'm trying to think of the kid's name.
Can't think of his name.
Well, anyway, it's a grand song.
Townes Van Zandt.
Townes Van Zandt wrote the song.
Huh.
And incredible song.
I mean, it sold a million quick, you know.
It was one of those instant hits.
Creativity comes in these great bursts.
And for a while, you just can't do anything wrong.
Everything you do will turn out right.
And it can go the other way, too.
Oh, yeah.
I'm having the other side of the coin right now.
Johnny Cash and I was talking the other day and I said, uh, Cash, I said, I haven't had a number one record since 1989.
He said, Haggard, he said, I haven't had one since 39.
Ha ha, I'll give you, listen, rest.
I want to open up the phones when we get back.
Let people ask you some questions.
Would that be alright?
That'd be fine.
Alright, stay right there and we will be right back.
And we'll let this one take us to the top of the hour.
power.
I'm not a liar.
Many a young maid lost her babbles to my trade.
Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade.
The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five.
But I am still alive.
I was a sailor.
I was born upon the tide.
With the sea I did abide.
I sailed a schooner around the Horn of Mexico.
I went aloft and furled a mace, a little float.
And when the yards broke off, they said that I got killed.
But I'm living still.
I was a dam builder, across the river deep and wide.
Where steel and water didn't collide.
A place called Boulder on the wild paradise.
I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below.
They buried me in that great hill that knows no sound.
But I am still around.
I'll always be around, around, around, around, around, around, around, around.
From the kingdom of NAR, across the country, around the world, and throughout the universe,
this is Coast to Coast AM with...
with Art Bell on the CBC Radio Network.
It is kind of an odd, strange, even eerie, discomforting feeling to see the things that
I wrote about in my book coming true.
I just got this fax and it fits in with what we've been talking about.
It comes from John in Falls Church, Virginia.
Dear Art, hope you get this fax.
Our governor, rather the governor of Maryland, was on TV on Saturday and made an announcement that the Pocomoke River, I hope I'm saying that correctly, was closed to all people and boats, etc.
This is due to the ongoing problem with hysteria in the river.
He also said four state workers who were trying to solve the problem had been infected from the water.
And they, in one other case, all had memory loss as well as lesions now showing up on their brains.
Like the ones on the fish.
They're now worried about getting into the Chesapeake Bay.
No one knows what to do at this point in time.
And I'm wondering how much farther this is gonna go.
I'm here.
I'm right here.
No, I'm fine.
makes two of us and with Merle, three. And I suspect a whole planet full of people out there. I'm, I don't know
what's going on, but I'm not happy about it. Merle, welcome back. I'm here. Yeah. Hanging in there. I'm right here. All
right. Well, look, if you get, if you start getting tired, you let me know. No, I'm fine. I'm just, I was involved in
listening to what you were saying there. And it's remarkable. I
I don't know exactly how to react to that.
Yeah, I don't either.
I just, I knew this change was on the way and now it's sort of here.
Let's try the phone and see what's out there.
First time caller line, you're on the air with Merle Haggard.
Hi.
Hello, Art.
Where are you?
I'm Melissa in Glendale, California.
All right.
And it's an extreme pleasure to speak with you and your guest.
It's a wonderful show.
I have two questions for Mr. Haggard.
The first is, Mr. Haggard, where did you meet your wife?
She sort of came and met me.
She came to the show that I was doing on Lake Shasta.
Wow.
Well, how long ago was that?
Oh my gosh.
Well anyway, I've enjoyed your music for so long and another thing you said caught my attention.
I sing and play guitar as well and something about your cayenne pepper recipe really caught my attention.
I was wondering what the recipe for that was.
For the fasting you mean?
Yes.
It's like a table full of cayenne pepper and like a drinking glass.
And one lemon, which would be like a quarter inch of lemon in the bottom.
Same amount of pure maple syrup.
Wow, okay.
And it just tastes kind of like a hot orange juice is what it tastes like.
And you just stir it up and you drink that and then you drink an equal glass of water with it.
I guess it happens.
You need something like some sort of a rite of passage also.
Otherwise, once you start to cleanse your body, you become poisoned from these things that come loose from the insides.
And you don't pass on through.
So how much of that do you drink per day?
We were really an eye on this.
When we were talking about it a while ago, we were doing a glass of that every 30 minutes and a glass of water along
with it.
Oh my gosh.
We just got stronger and stronger and our minds got clearer and clearer.
Wow, everything was clear.
Yeah, really, it's amazing the high that you acquire from it.
We were told about the sixth day, there's like a, some sort of adrenaline sack that hangs at the base of your skull or
something to break in case of emergencies.
Well, here's Buster, you know, and he said...
Who came up with this idea?
I never felt anything like it in this life. It was the greatest high or any experience you'd ever had.
Where did that come from? What source was this?
That's a good question.
That's a body figure. You're starving to death, I think.
No, no, no, no, no. Where did you guys hear about this in the first place? Who came up with this idea?
I heard about it through Willie. Someone said it's from the Bible that it was recommended by Christ as a method of
fasting.
It has the lemons as a cleanser and the sugar is like glucose.
Sure.
and you're provided with all the nutrients that you need and then you take this laxative
and you start to live off of things you've all stored up in your body that you really didn't need
all these years and you begin to cleanse yourself and it's amazing how it makes you feel.
Would you still do that again?
Oh, absolutely.
No hesitation.
It's a, and it's a, it does something to your mind.
I mean, your mind is cleaner.
That's all I can, only way I can explain it clearer.
I wonder if I could do that and go on the air every night.
Absolutely, you could do it.
You think so?
Absolutely, any day of the week.
Would they discern that I was getting even weirder than usual, or?
No.
You wipe into health food and all that sort of thing.
Oh, yes.
Well, have her get you the correct laxative to go along with this recipe.
And it tastes very good by the way.
And it's a, you will not go to sleep.
This is like, cayenne pepper is a healer.
Also it's an upper.
And it lowers your blood pressure.
And the composure is unbelievable.
I mean if you wanted to go play golf, the second or third day,
the fourth day, you'd have to play greater.
I mean you have total concentration and all that sort of thing,
and separation of thought.
So then it's not like speed.
It's not like coffee or speed or something like that.
No, no.
No, it's, it's, in fact it's in some ways the very opposite of that.
It's strength and composure and control of meditation.
Clarity.
Yeah.
That's really intriguing.
It's really true.
I think next time you talk to Will, talk to him about it.
He's very good at describing the effects from it.
And it's very good for you.
I mean, it has all kinds of repercussions that They're in favor of it.
My wife is into herbal medicines, and she, with regard to laxatives, uses natural ones.
My wife would kill me if I didn't mention that she's into the same thing.
Is that right?
Yep, absolutely.
Alright, Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Merle Haggard.
Good morning.
Morning.
Morning, Merle.
It's an honor to speak to you.
I love your music, and I had a couple questions for you.
Where are you, sir?
I'm in Illinois.
Illinois.
All right.
And I heard you on WTAM in Cleveland.
And I would imagine WLS, too.
Well, I've been listening to just WTAM, but there's been the signals mixing back and forth.
We've had a couple geostorms, in fact, for the first time this year, last week, geomagnetic storms.
Well, it's about time.
Yeah, actually the solar cycles were at the low point and it should be ending soon.
That's another very odd thing while we're on the subject of odd things.
The solar cycle is 22 years, actually, 11 year cycles.
And we should have been coming up out of this one and for some reason we haven't yet.
Yeah, the data center, that's our, you know, the geodata center, Hey, listen, I don't want to get you off on a sidetrack, sir.
You had a question.
Yeah, did you ever, Merle, did you ever meet Harry Chapin?
Harry Chapin?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
I know he would have probably been, you know, a lot when you were younger.
It was like, Early 80s, late 70s.
He passed away in 77, I believe.
Yeah, I'm sure that is.
I really, you know, your philosophy in some ways is a lot like him and I really like him and I like you even more now and I'm going to be actually getting all your albums.
Right.
And I just really am glad that, you know, you're saying what you know and what you believe.
You know, there's a lot of people now that just don't do that anymore and when you were talking about your fasting.
Yeah.
You talked about the bursts of energy, and I like to think of that as like spontaneity, you know, spontaneous energy.
It's just, you give your interior organs, I think, a break, and all the energy comes to the surface.
And you're getting rid of poisons, too.
And you're getting rid of poisons and things maybe that may have been in there since you were two years old, you know?
Um, thank you.
So consult your doctor, tell him what you're going to do, and see if he says okay.
I think they should probably see a doctor and let the doctor say that they are alright
to do that.
I wouldn't want to recommend that and have somebody sue me and Art Bell.
That's right.
So, consult your doctor, tell him what you are going to do and see if he says okay.
I wonder how many doctors would say okay or would say you are out of your mind.
I think there are a lot of doctors that are trying to update themselves on the health
kick of America.
The sudden need for an alternative medicine.
It's really big.
So you're more likely to find one that would be synthetic to it?
I think doctors are becoming educated as well as we are.
That's good.
Alright, here's somebody, a fax.
Let me read it to you.
I think it's important to drag you back to something you really already mentioned briefly, i do i think having more on show hope you can ask him what
his opinion is concerning the state of country music radio today radio
today as it is artist like moral
george willie tammy sarah can't be
found on major big city market radio stations these artists
and many many hits that still observe rotation and they still uh... put out new albums and it's criminal
for country radio to outcast them
for country radio to outcast them
morals last album nineteen ninety six was adopted pick of mine in ninety six
morals last album nineteen ninety six was adopted pick of mine in ninety six
and so you know it's a good question
and so young it's a good question
what's going on with country music generally well it's uh...
what's going on with country music generally well it's uh...
the bottom line i think it's money you know i think uh...
the bottom line i think it's money you know i think uh...
but what the public is listening to right now is is uh...
but what the public is listening to right now is is uh...
is background music for videos
is background music for videos
uh... the young kids who have and they still uh... put out new albums and it's criminal
uh... the young kids have had got a couple of stations uh... mtv uh...
uh...
three or four different television
satellite stations that are playing these videos
and used to music was written so that it stood up on its own
instead of being uh... didn't need a video didn't need a video and that was the idea of trying to use
words to describe a picture or a story
now it's the other way around they've got these bad videos
they're not in hollywood and then filming
filming is not their expertise in nashville so then the music is supporting the video
yeah and and and and uh... it sounds that way
you know and uh...
to me I wish I could say otherwise.
There's exceptions to the rule.
There's been a few great songs, but it seems like we're way short of good songs to me.
I don't know.
I can't think of anything that I could whistle or that you could whistle back at me in some time.
It's been a while since there's been a tune that actually had wide enough appeal that a youngster could whistle or
would want to learn how to play on a guitar.
I wonder if it really is that change, and I suspect it is, but I remember when I was young, my dad would come in and,
I mean this stuff is great now, 50s, early 60s, but mid-50s my dad would come in, I'd be playing whatever was on the
radio.
I don't know.
and he'd say my god how can you listen to that crap turned down turn it off i want to hear it
here i am looking at most of the music they're playing today
on rock stations uh... and i'm saying
how can people listen to that crap and i guess that some of the same things going on in
country huh i don't know that
it's different it's not the same thing
there's an extraction of humanity So, the question is, is it our age?
Like, uh, I heard Burt Reynolds talking about films.
Same thing in films.
They don't do the stunts anymore.
The computers, uh, do it.
For example.
You know, it's funny you should mention that.
I sat down earlier today and watched a movie, uh, called Volcano.
It was all special effects.
Yeah.
All of it.
Computer.
So the human element of music, or the expression, the producers allowing an artist to express himself is not really part of the scene anymore. He has to fall into a criteria
or they won't even let him in.
But what's so worrisome is that's what's selling.
Yeah, and I have no idea why that's the truth.
Although country music has sold about half I heard today, this year in comparison to last year.
Yeah, it's suddenly in trouble, isn't it?
Yeah, and I believe it's because of the very things we're discussing.
It's lack of substance, it's lack of what has made country music successful out of these years,
is that it was about something.
And it doesn't seem like that it's about anything.
Alright, that's a good point to pick up on after the bottom of the hour, and that's where we are right now, the bottom of the hour.
Merle Haggard is my guest, I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM.
Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM
Say Art, about a week ago we had the most intense lightning storm in ten years of my time here in Albuquerque.
It lasted for hours and hours, poured, hailed.
The lightning was something like a bad science fiction movie.
Alex.
Yeah, Alex, I know.
And I just, I keep getting faxes and email like this from all over the country.
Anyway, back now to Merle Haggard and Merle, you know, you were saying back when, you know, the music was about something.
And that makes me ask a couple of questions.
One, do you think that it is important that people like yourself, Willie, others had to go?
I mean, you went to prison.
You had really a hard life early.
Is that an important ingredient in being able to do what you do?
You know, I wouldn't recommend what I did to anybody or how it happened for me, but
it was a way of education.
It was a method of discovering maybe things that I would never have known for sure and
was able to write about and we're going to be able to tell about in a full blown motion
picture.
There's a lot of child abuse and things that have come to surface and that exists and goes
on right now in California.
You mean in the movie about you?
Yeah.
The period of my life that they're going to... there's a film about it from about the age
of nine to like 22 or 23 when I come out of prison.
I'm going to go ahead and close this out.
And I did all of the juvenile joints on the way, you know, over a period of seven years.
And there's a lot to tell about the way that they treat kids in this state.
And the way that they still, it's pretty bad.
Well then, here comes part two.
Is it not possible then that the present generation, Generation X, they call them, they haven't been through a big war.
A lot of them are pretty well-to-do from well-to-do parents because America's been pretty well-to-do.
And they haven't had the same kinds of strain and pain and trouble that A lot of people from earlier generations certainly have had.
And if you don't have that kind of pain and trouble, maybe you can't write the kinds of songs that you've written.
Well, I think you've answered the reason why there's not as much success in my backyard right now.
is because a lot of these same people that you're talking about can't really
sincerely identify with a guy like me. They've, you know, it's been so good that I can't
think about having to go to prison, you know.
In some way or another, I don't think they identify with me right now.
Well, country music was always, at least it was always my understanding that it was about the real basics of life.
If you've never really experienced the real basics of life, if you're a pretty shallow person, how do you write about it?
It's like the trip that, you know, the Mark Twain, legendary Mark Twain, he traveled everywhere
and the stories were about what he saw and what he lived.
My father passed away and it was devastating to me.
I think that's why the Princess Diana thing was personal to me is because my father
was the hero of my life and he died when I was nine.
And I thought about those boys.
And, you know, take all the royalty, strip them from everything and just make them human beings.
They lost their mother and I identified with that.
And I try to care too.
Didn't realize it.
it's on the is just uh...
and we're talking about it earlier i a i a it's happening to most americans and
i can't account for it fully and i'm i'm gonna give it some thought but
this she was more important to us then we possibly knew
didn't realize it didn't realize it until she was gone huh yeah it was uh...
uh... when the century is all done it's all boxed up and we look back at it
it's gonna be most uh...
notorious death
in the entire century It may be.
It's just, I've never seen such an outpouring of sameness in the area of one human being.
There's no negativity at all.
It's an interesting phenomenon.
Maybe it's a good thing.
Yeah, it's the best thing I've seen out of the people we call ourselves in a long time.
I'm glad to see that we still have emotion as a society.
Me too.
Ease to the Rockies.
You're on the air with Merle Haggard.
Good morning.
Hi, Merle.
Hello.
Hi there.
Where are you, sir?
I'm from Milwaukee.
Milwaukee, all right.
And I wanted to call about some of your earliest recordings.
Okay.
Pardon?
Sir, are you there?
Yeah, some of your earliest recordings.
Your first album was recorded for Capitol in 1965?
Uh...
Well, uh, no.
My first album was recorded for Tally Records in 1960.
Yeah.
That was called Sing Me a Sad Song.
Yeah.
Uh, what was that?
That was called Sing Me a Sad Song.
Sing Me a Sad Song?
Yeah.
In 1962.
Uh, so...
So you've been at it for, uh, a little over, uh, thirty years then?
Been at it, uh...
Uh, professionally that long.
Uh-huh.
And, of course, there were some years of...
...of amateur, uh...
Starving.
Starving to death.
Right.
Welcome to the Rockies.
You're on there with Merle Haggard.
Hello.
Hello.
Where are you, sir?
Pahrump.
You're in Pahrump?
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
All right, you're going to have to speak up good and loud because you're not allowed.
Get into the phone and yell at us a little.
All right, is that any better?
Yeah, it is.
Okay, well, I'm from the Generation X, and I have to say that I actually like your music, Mr. Haggard.
Oh, God, I'm glad you do.
Yeah.
I think, I mean, it's real down to earth and I really get into that.
I mean, all these, like you were saying earlier, the people now, I mean, the videos, that's just what's ruling it.
But I have a question.
You were talking about, well, y'all were mentioning the Phoenix Lights and Mr. Bell had a guest on before that said he could make the lights appear over prompt here.
Yes, and I'm still looking for them, unless the light show we just had last night was... I don't think it was.
Yeah, me neither.
It didn't sound like George Burns, did it?
Caller, you confirm, if you're really here in Pahrump, you tell everybody, we really got clobbered last night, didn't we?
Oh, God.
We got clobbered at night with lightning and rain and hail.
Yeah.
And wind.
Yeah, it was absolutely incredible.
Anyway, do you have a question?
Yeah, my question is for, well, Mr. Hager, do you believe the lights over Phoenix were actually UFOs?
All right, good one.
Earl?
I believe that there's a possibility that they could be from our own Air Force, or we call it nowadays our own
military, but I don't think we're...
I think they were there from somewhere else. I think our government knows any more about it than we do.
I lean in that direction myself, because it seems to me if they have something secret going on, the last thing they
want to do is display it over an area of about 2 million plus.
I'm looking at a book here called Top Secret UFO, and there was an incident in Los Angeles in 1942.
Yes.
And there's a band member, a saxophone player, It was actually there.
I actually saw this event.
They had something similar occur that was over the city less than four months after the police bombed Pearl Harbor.
Here is Norma's deal over Culver City in Los Angeles.
They shot 1,400 rounds of ammunition at it.
It sounded like very similar Well, I vacillate between several theories regarding our government and UFOs.
in that way. And they fired at it for hours, a couple of hours, and then just started to
drift off towards, I think, the east, and then sped away.
Well, I vacillate between several theories regarding our government and UFOs. One is
that they know exactly what they are, and are somehow, somehow have made some sort of
the technology. And then on the other hand, I sometimes think that the slightest idea
either what these things are and what they cannot explain, they deny.
So I don't know what the truth is but it's one of the above.
What if I had a theory, a religious, that the people, religious people would like, you know, just a theory, but what if the Christ, God, and the Ten of Flesh and the Bible says he's going to reappear on this planet
when we die.
And what if nobody knew about Francis Field and we do, and from all over the universe,
they're coming here because it's nearing the time in which he said he might
give us the biggest show of the universe.
I think that's entirely possible. That's entirely possible.
And, uh, I'm... You know, I don't know that to be true, certainly, but I think that's possible.
All the other explanations, sure it is.
We're getting ready for the big show.
Yeah.
I don't doubt that at all.
Uh, East of the Rockies, good morning.
You're on the air with Merle.
How are you, please?
Uh, Rochester, New York.
Rochester, New York.
Okay, we hear you, so you're gonna have to yell at us a little bit.
Do you have a question?
Yeah, I have a question in regards to a show that was aired over last week before he came back, aren't they?
Briefly, what was it?
Okay, you had someone on your show, Joe, and you were talking about Joe, what do you recall?
Well, it was Joe and Spiritual One.
Okay.
It dealt with spiritual awakening and demonic forces.
Uh, there was one guy named Joe and one guy named, uh, that you were talking to.
Well, Amberhunt, I wasn't last week and I wasn't sure what shows they did in replay, so I'm not sure what you're talking about right now.
It was an encore show from March.
On Buzz.
Um, anyway, it was the kind of, I really can't remember his name.
Alright, one question.
Well, my question was, I wanted to be able to get in contact.
We're asking that, did they have, um, did, have they ever experienced spiritual, like, awakening or spiritual movement?
Uh-huh.
All right.
Do, is to call the, the tape number.
You can get a tape, Ram, and from that, get all the information that was on it.
That's the best I can do for you right now.
100-917-4278.
1-800-174-278.
Uh, hope that helps you.
I'm sorry I didn't immediately.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Merle Haggard.
Hi.
Oh, okay.
I'm on the air.
Yes, you are.
Yes.
Well, it's a pleasure.
I enjoy your show, Art.
Thank you.
Great show.
I'm a musician also.
I've been since I was 14.
I'm 41 now.
And if anyone doesn't realize what it would be to... Merle Haggard has got the most pure and original voice I've ever heard.
Incredible.
And my question for you, Merle, is you have a couple of telecasters Were they made special for you before there was a Fender Custom Shop?
Did Pearl have an inlay on the headstock?
We were talking about, um, they're doing a new kind of, um, guitars with Fender.
Fender out of my special guitar and it's called a Dogtelic.
Oh, okay.
And, uh, that they're, uh, as a custom, uh, where you can order it, you know, like at a music store.
Yeah, and you've had it probably maybe 10 or 15 years, or maybe 10 years.
It's a design that I came about after, you know, all the caring, and they're, they're, they're just, the stuff that, uh, you know, all the years of doing it, uh, it's, uh, it's all in that one guitar.
Yeah.
Well, I'll tell you, you're, the music that you wrote and sang back in the days is just incredible, I'll tell you, and there's nobody here now that, As any amount of soul, I mean, the stuff you're writing and you're singing all together as a pack, to me, the best, you know, for rock and roll.
Thank you very much, that's awesome.
It's been an inspiration.
Alright, well, uh, Carl, uh, you know, I'm not mad about certain electrons, I'll just cut them, I won't let them go,
I can't, I don't just turn them away like um, parted something or another, is there, it's, you know,
I'm a ham radio, I'm just so into radio, uh, Merle's crazy that way, and is it that way with a
guitar? I mean, do you get snatched?
Well, there's a lot of years of uh, of playing guitars that weren't quite right,
and what wasn't right could fix it, and that's kind of what bit with this new guitarist guy's
It's a Connell Gibson.
It's a Fender, and to the point where there's nothing entering with you and playing the music, nothing.
It's about the guitar that is perfect.
And no blame on the guitar.
That's right.
Senator, uh, is that in Nashville?
Uh, uh, Dean Factory, uh, Bruce Bowden, uh, uh, uh, and, uh, I think I said his name.
Is that in Nashville?
Nashville and Los Alamos.
Well, the Nashville folks live this property every night.
Every single night.
Well, they build the best guitar in the world right now.
I really believe that.
There's like 50 bars in there.
Really?
They're really good, you know, and that's to do anything on a similar lighting quality at all, and they're doing it.
Well, it's night, America.
Yeah?
Uh, some of us want to be hanged.
We've got exactly one more hour, and yours, if I can afford it.
I'm, I'm up for it.
Well then, you'll stay there.
We're gonna break here at the hour.
My guest is an absolute legend.
If you're in for him, it's what we have phone lines for.
So I assume you do have questions.
I'm Art Bell and this, of course, is Coast to Coast AM.
Welcome to Coast to Coast.
and Merle, here's a fact I want to read you.
I recall Mr. Haggard when I was growing up in East Bakersfield in the 50s and 60s.
I was a boy at the time, and I remember him to be a near-desperado musician, always at the forefront of the local country music and always in trouble with the law.
Please ask Merle about his memories of Bakersfield in the 50s and 60s, most particularly, How the country music scene and the honky-tonks along the
Edison Highway affected his music style and did he play with Cousin Herb, Henson, Buck Owens
or Rose Maddox?
Did he work for or know Semmy Mosley?
Can he tell us his most memorable experience from that time?
Merle?
I did know Semmy Mosley and I did work with Cousin Herb and Buck Owens and Rose Maddox
and all those people that he mentioned.
and what was the last part of the question?
Well, he referred to you as a desperado musician, always at the forefront of the local country music and
always in trouble with the law.
Well, he might have known me...
I never had any trouble with the law after I started playing music.
Music was my savior.
And I was notorious for having been a juvenile delinquent, but I kind of proudly, I can say, I pulled myself out of
that, up out of that by my own bootstraps.
I haven't seen the inside of a police car in a long time.
Sort of a thing that sticks with you, I guess, as a reputation.
Oh yeah, it runs ahead of you.
No matter how much good I may do in my life, it's almost a bit of a shame that that has to somehow get all the attention.
But I guess you've got to ask yourself whether you'd really be where you are now if you hadn't been there.
I doubt that.
I realize that it was like going to the army for some guys.
I grew up there.
Some people grew up in the army.
But it was certainly an education.
There's a lot to be learned in prison.
If a kid or a man or whatever should I remember being down at Lackland Air Force Base in basic training with a first sergeant screaming and yelling in my face.
can take, there's educational, there's education available there.
I, that's right, and for some it was military, I went in the Air Force and I remember being
down at Lackland Air Force Base in basic training with a First Sergeant screaming and yelling
in my face and I remember lying in the bunk in those early days of basic training saying
to myself, oh my God, what have I done to myself.
Have I lost my mind?
I've got to get out of here!
And you grow up quick.
You grow up quick.
There's a period.
You change from a teenager to a man.
Or to a young man.
Yeah, there is.
And it's done in different ways.
Everybody's different.
A lot of it was very military.
The reform schools in California were militarily conducted.
I know how to march.
There is one more thing.
I'm getting a lot of calls.
It's inevitable since you talked about it.
Art, I missed the recipe that you were talking about, the cayenne recipe, and so, in order to prevent my having to answer this question for the next year and a half, would you one more time, although, listen folks, we must, for the sake of our own tales, say you should go and see your doctor before you ever endeavor to do something like this.
Having said that, what is the recipe that you used?
Uh, you take a lemon, you cut it in half, and if it's a juicy lemon, you try to get about a quarter, a little more, a quarter of an inch of lemon in the bottom of a 8-ounce drinking glass.
And you take a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, preferably fresh cayenne pepper, and the same
amount of pure maple syrup as you had with the lemon.
We'll call it one part lemon, one part maple syrup, about a quarter of an inch.
Then you fill it up with water and you just stir it up.
You drank that.
And you drank another glass of water, a matching glass of water with that.
You need it, actually.
Naturally.
That's the cleanser.
The lemon is the cleanser.
According to my understanding of physics, the lemon turns counterclockwise inside your body.
So it serves as a cleanser.
And then the maple syrup, pure maple syrup is like glucose in the hospital.
And it keeps you going.
Right.
And then the cayenne pepper is a healer and it's also loaded with vitamin C.
Then you want to do like a sphalane or plankton type laxative, something light that takes the things that begin to jar loose from your interior and takes it on out.
Otherwise you end up poisoning yourself.
That's right.
Alright, well there it is.
And remember folks, go to your doctor first.
Uh, we told you that.
Remember, we told you that.
Ease to the Rockies.
You're on the air with Merle Haggard.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Uh, I assume I'm on right now?
well you better be or we're all in trouble i'm calling from philadelphia i've been listening to the
interview start i've really been enjoying it
i've heard about tonight's interview as you read about it on my
uh... internet discussion group It's a group that's devoted to a discussion of a book called The Arantia Book.
Oh yes.
And a subscriber, I think Merle, was familiar with this book and some of the things Merle has said recently in the interview, particularly the possibility that there's conversions of celestial persons coming to this world in some way connected to the teachings of Christ.
I have some deafening opinions on it.
Strangely enough, I've been a possessor of that book for about 20 years.
Are you familiar with that art?
you ran out your book and if so what do you think of it?
I have some deafened opinions on it.
Strangely enough I've been a possessor of that book for about twenty years.
Are you familiar with that art?
Oh yes I am.
And uh...
I believe that uh...
the book is uh... spiritually uh... inspired
and uh...
I'm also uh... not sure
as to whether or not there might be some demonic uh...
interference there also.
Yes, there are many authors I think that should be noticed.
What I'm saying is that I think there's a lot of truth in it.
And I think that it would be a perfect way for the lower power to try to confuse us on
the issue as to who messed up on the family tree.
Sure, yes I know the part you're alluding to.
What do you think in particular about the last fourth of the book?
It's the part I like best and it's the life and teachings of Jesus where the missing years of his life are included.
That's the part I find interesting.
Supposedly the only book containing the entire 33 years of Christ's life.
Yes.
And some of the things that he did that is not recorded anywhere else claims to be in this book.
And it makes it worth at least an opinion.
You need to read and see if not.
Some of the The great philosophy found there is almost remarkable, to the point of being from a messiah's mouth.
Yes, I find it also a beautiful rendition in the English language, but I agree there are some problematic parts in other places of the book, but again, many different authors.
Well, you must remember that according to the Good Book that I think we're still in charge of this part of the universe.
Well, there's more evidence of that today than ever.
Yep.
Alright, Caller, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I have an interesting offer.
There's a lot about organized religion, Merle, that I'm not so sure about.
I've interviewed a wonderful man named Father Malachi Martin.
And I'm going to have a chance.
I'm going to Rome next month.
I heard the interview.
Oh, alright.
He actually told me that, contact me, I will get you down into the Vatican archives.
Seven miles of archives below the Vatican in these catacombs.
And that's, to me, that's absolutely incredible.
things that uh...
he may know more than the president you know what i'm saying?
i know that, you said it perfectly i believe that uh...
you know he's uh...
consulted by all levels of government
That's correct.
He may know more than anybody else.
He's been advisor to two popes, and no, you're exactly right.
You have that sense when you listen to the man, that he well may know a whole lot more, and he alludes to the fact that he knows more, and he's such an honest guy that I believe it.
Anyway, West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Merle Haggard.
Hello.
Hello.
Yeah, this is Brian from Ground Zero once again.
Phoenix, huh?
Yeah, Phoenix.
Okay.
Anyways, this is actually kind of like a fantasy land for me.
One, talking with Merle Haggard, being a musician such as I am, and also talking with you again, Art, being a DJ such as myself here in Phoenix.
I do have one question for Merle.
I basically, I don't know if you've heard me lately before, but I did write a tune referring towards your book about the quickening, and it'll be done probably September 15th, and I'll send you a copy, and hopefully you'll like it.
Thank you.
I hope.
It's heavy, but you'll like it.
But one question for Merle is, what do you think about I don't think he's had a chance to read my book yet.
the Pacific and possibly this upcoming winter and all hell's basically going to break loose
on the West Coast.
Alright, well, I don't think he's had a chance to read my book yet.
I haven't had a chance to read it, but I have a feeling that I know what he's going to,
what a lot of it is about, referring to the weather in the El Nino.
I have a feeling that he's hit it right on the money, if he's predicted it to be.
It's that, but it's much more than that.
It has to do with our social behavior changes, our economics, our government, our...
It really touches on every aspect of human life.
And I came up with this theory that things are moving faster and faster, exponentially faster,
and people began to say to me, uh-uh, no, it's not true, what you're observing is...
is our increased amount of communication.
In other words, we hear about things faster and more than we used to.
And so I felt that I needed to prove my case.
And that's why I wrote the book.
Because I wanted to prove that no, it's not just communication.
Social behavior is changing.
And it's not just that we're hearing about it more.
We've got gangs.
We've got people killing each other.
We've got children killing each other.
We've got This is one of my favorite examples of a change in human behavior.
And you'll relate to this.
I've said this on the air many times.
There was a time in this country when, if you were down and out, and you were going to go rob a 7-Eleven or whatever, you'd walk into the store with a gun and say, give me your money.
And the guy would give you the money and you'd back out the door and take off in a car.
Yeah.
uh... it's a little different more times not
the guy goes in with a gun says give me your money
the guy gives him the money and as an afterthought he puts a bullet through the guy's
head and then takes off human life
has cheapened you know so
So that's just part of it.
I mean, that's, you know, that's part of what went into the book, a very small part.
But it's all mixed together to try to show that we are headed toward some sort of event at a rather... Climactic event.
Climactic event.
Yes, sir.
It's uh, there's uh, almost every religion and all of the uh, things that the Vatican claims to know, there's a uh,
supposedly the knowledge of uh, Wormwood. Are you aware of the...
Oh I am Merle. You know the Vatican, the Vatican uh, uh, muscled their way onto Mount Graham in Arizona.
Uh, and...
And I mean muscled.
There were environmental problems that nobody else could have overcome, but the Vatican Well, I think they're watching for a big star.
I think you're right.
get the environmental concerns. They're on Mount Graham and they've got a big observatory
there and I've frequently wondered what they're looking for.
I think they're watching for a big star.
Yeah.
Well, you know these...
I think you're right. What do they call them, one of those big rocks?
One of those big rocks.
Yeah.
I agree with you.
Maybe a big rock that could even potentially poison the waters.
One never knows.
They're training.
They're in the process, but for some reason the government has taken on the task of training several hundred cities in America over the period of the next four years in the event of germ warfare or Chemical warfare.
As to what to do, I guess the thing would be to invest in masks.
Yeah, there's a reason they're doing that.
I mean, they're not doing that without cause.
There's a reason.
There's something to warrant that.
Merle, hang tight.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
We've got 30 minutes to go, and we'll be back with that shortly.
From the now finally clearing high desert, we had storms here like you wouldn't believe last night.
I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
We're all back again.
You know, I'm not a weather expert by any means, but I would have thought with what came through here last night, which was unbelievable, the temperature plunged to about 60 degrees right now, which is cool for, believe me, for our desert at this time of year.
And there should not be enough energy out there to be producing what I see headed our way right now.
It's really weird.
Well, I'll tell you what, I'm looking at the weather channel on the It looks like you've got a thunderstorm of about 250 miles circumference there that's just stalled out right over your area.
It doesn't seem to be moving.
It shouldn't be so active at this time of night.
I mean, here we are in the dead of night.
That's not the right time for it, you're right.
Strange stuff.
All right.
I've got a lot of people here who want to talk to you and not a lot of time left.
So, west of the Rockies, you're on the air with Merle Haggard.
Good morning.
Good morning.
This is Jeff calling from Sacramento.
Yes, Jeff.
Yeah.
First, Art, I just wanted to tell you I saw on the news a little while ago they were showing surfers off the coast just south of San Francisco Surfing without their wetsuits on, which is highly unusual.
It certainly is.
Yeah, because the temperature of the water rarely gets that warm.
To do that, they would die of hypothermia within minutes if they're out there surfing like that.
I know.
Secondly, it's a pleasure to talk to you, Merle.
It's just absolute pleasure.
You've been my favorite.
I've been a great fan of yours all my life.
Oh, thank you.
Yes.
I was wondering, have you seen the movie Contact, and if so, what did you think of it?
A wonderful question!
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Have you yet seen it, Murr?
No, I haven't seen it.
I've heard about what the theme of it is, and I'm anxious to see it.
Have you seen it?
I have, and I loved it.
I absolutely loved it.
Interestingly, I've had an array of people on, including Mr. Spock from Star Trek.
Leonard Nimoy.
And he didn't much like it.
And quite a few others in the industry, for some reason or another, didn't much like it.
But Little Me, I loved it.
I thought it was an extremely profound movie.
I thought that, anyway, I'll tell you what, we'll talk after you've seen it.
And I want to get your, definitely get your opinion on it.
I thought it was a very profound movie.
You let me know what you think.
I'll read it and take a look at it.
All right.
These are the Rockies.
You're on the air with Merle Haggard.
Good morning.
Good morning, Art Bell and Merle Haggard.
It's Bob from Bradenton, Florida.
Yes, sir.
You know, it was kind of ironic to hear you fellows talk about the impression that Princess Di left on the American people, and both of you, in your passing, will leave the same impression.
Two very famous people I'm proud to talk to at the same time.
Thank you.
Being a musician, I've played your music in hockey talks and bar rooms up the eastern seaboard for the last 20 years, and always respected and enjoyed your music.
Back 10 or 15 years ago, I was given a record recording of a song called Out Among the Stars, and it left an impression on me that kind of, I guess Art could explain to you, when he listens to Willie the Highwayman, it's kind of a haunting Impression, and I was wondering if you could tell us something about that song, and maybe who sang that song with you, the female voice that was on that recording.
Uh, Janie, um, uh, Freaky.
That was Janie Freaky?
Janie Freaky, yeah, that came about, it was kind of an odd way it came about.
I came into, she had guest, she had done a guest shot on a record previous to that, a song of mine called A Place Far Apart.
And I came into town, she asked me to do a return guest shot on her record, and it was out among the stars.
And I went over to do a couple of lines on it, and they just flipped over what I did, and I wound up taking that piece of material away from her.
I'll be darned.
And they did it right before my eyes, and I never forgave them for it.
I forgave them for it.
Because it was so cool, they took that song away from her and gave it to me, and I'll always be apologizing to her for that.
But it was a great piece of material, and they thought it was better for a man to sing it.
Beautiful piece of music, and maybe Art gets a chance to listen to it.
I think it'll be one of his favorites to put in his favorite collection.
Yeah, I'll send Art some music.
There you go.
All right, thank you, caller.
Thank you, Art.
Take care.
I'll look forward to that, Merle.
I'd like that a lot.
Thank you.
Wild Card Line, you're on there with Merle Haggard.
Hi there.
Merle, first I've got to thank you for the music you've been putting out over the years.
Maybe, Art, you and the listeners don't know that Merle is not only a major influence and a major singer in country music, but is actually a founder of a whole genre of country music.
And there's a whole, like, sort of Bakerfield scene now that emerges from his music.
And your music has just moved me so much over the years.
But I do have a bone to pick with you, and it's admittedly, at this point, kind of an old and moldy bone.
But back in the 60s, you were really negative on the people like me that were protesting the Vietnam War, that said that there needed to be change in this country.
And I think that you're, you know, there's a lot of people in the counterculture in the left that really love country music, that we didn't hate America.
You may have misread me.
Well, see, we didn't hate America.
We loved America.
We wanted America to change.
We wanted to save America.
We didn't want to destroy America.
We loved America.
See, I wasn't disagreeing with you.
I was only pointing out that there were people who felt a different way.
I wasn't necessarily saying that I agreed with them.
Don't you see?
But someone had to say something in that direction, otherwise there would have been no argument.
But you were playing to a bigotry of people that put down people for having long hair or having a different lifestyle.
And you were playing to that and you sold a lot of records, but you hurt a lot of people.
Well, I think you misread it.
Merle, what was your attitude about Zeno Moore?
Well, you see, the song he's referring to is called I'm Proud of Being Okie from Muskogee.
And it was written about my father who was from Muskogee, Oklahoma.
And about people who lived there who felt the way that I would imagine they felt about the time that he was talking
about.
When there was a period of disrespect for anything.
And I was as dumb about it as anybody.
And that's the result, the song is the result of my ignorance, if it's not written correctly.
Um, my attitude about the Vietnam War, um... I didn't know anything about it.
Just be honest with the caller.
and i don't think a lot of people the people who were protesting
knew enough about it or had enough answers to be making the noise that they made in rebuttal to what
he said i was there
and so i guess i had a kind of a different attitude about it
My attitude about war is that if you're going to fight it, fight it to win, or don't fight a half-assed war.
And I'll tell you something, Merle, Lyndon Johnson, President Johnson, if I could have gotten to that president, I would have throttled him until all the air was gone.
That man sat in the White House and plotted out the deaths of more people You know a lot more about it than I did.
or remember and i've touched a lot of them up
murrell he uh...
he he fought that war in my new shirt he featured himself to be a general
told us what we could include not attacked got off a lot of people killed in my opinion so i was very
strong opinions about the war
you know if you don't know about it uh... soldiers people were proud of
over here I wrote songs about that.
I wrote a song called The Fighting Side of Me.
It implied that maybe I wasn't for change, but that's not right.
So, if it implied that, I withdraw my statement.
Because I believe that the Vietnam War was something that everybody needs to take a long look at,
see what it was all about, because I'm not sure yet.
And only people that fought it may know the truth about it.
No, they don't.
No, they really don't.
I've never heard it explained very well.
No, and the people who fought it mostly fought it either to keep themselves or their friend alive, mostly themselves, and didn't see the bigger picture, and the bigger picture is still to this very day, totally confused, and staying away from the right or the wrongness of the war, morally.
What I couldn't stand was the fact that we were sending people to their deaths fighting a half-assed war.
You don't fight a half-assed war.
or you either go in there and fight to win or...
Anyway.
I totally agree with that.
And I agree with the liberal side of most all political issues in this country.
I think it's terrible.
What's it doing to the tobacco companies?
The smokers are the ones who are gonna pay for all that.
It's not the tobacco companies or the people that they're trying to get to.
They're all balls back to the smoker.
The poor old guy that's smoking the cigarettes isn't much going to pay for all that.
Well, I'm one of those poor old guys.
Yeah, you know, your guy's going to pay it.
They're going to get it out of your pocket.
I'm sure.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Merle Haggard.
Good morning.
Hi, am I on the air?
You better be, or we're not, and that's tentative right now.
You ought to hear what's going on outside.
I can hear it here.
Can you really?
Yes, I can.
I'm Becky from Vancouver, Washington, and first of all, it's a great honor to talk to both of you.
I never thought I should live so long as to have Merle Haggard on the phone.
I have a comment and a question for Merle.
Okay.
My comment is that, you know, you were talking about putting feeling in your songs.
Am I wrong in thinking that part of that has to do with the way you grew up?
I came from an abusive family myself and I think because of that I tend to feel things more intensely.
And it seems like that comes through in the music from the vintage that you and Willie Nelson and Freddie Fender and all of those good old boys put in their music, am I right?
Right?
Yeah, there's definitely a missing element in the music today, for whatever reason,
be it the lack of an interesting childhood or the lack of a hard childhood or whatever.
the lack of an interesting childhood or the lack of a hard childhood or whatever,
there is a lack of, there is a missing element.
There is a lack of, there is a missing element.
I don't know what to say about it.
I don't know what to say about it.
I think probably there's some people out there that have that sort of music to offer,
I think probably there's some people out there that have that sort of music to offer,
but we're not here because we're into some sort of sameness that has to do with computers
but we're not here because we're into some sort of sameness that has to do with computers.
and people are making decisions about music that don't have any ear.
Right, and the simplicity seems to be gone these days.
Well, it's made, and the decisions are made like, they don't make decisions on who operates on you.
A doctor doesn't make decisions, but the insurance man does.
Yes, that's true.
It's kind of like that.
And there's a target that they're after, and they're not interested in the culture of the music
anymore at all.
Yeah.
Well, my question for you is about Willie Nelson.
Um...
Years ago, and I mean years ago, when I first heard Willie Nelson sing, just over the radio I got the impression that he was just an honest, open, down to earth kind of nice guy that he'd be real fun to sit across from a table with over coffee and just converse.
Is he that type of person?
You know, I kind of thought he probably was.
You know, especially the first time I saw him in concert.
I thought, boy, there's a man I'd love to just sit and talk with.
He just seems like a neat guy.
He's the only guy that I converse with on a regular basis.
I'll call Willie at any time of the day or night.
We'll just pick up our conversation and talk.
He's one of the most interesting people in America.
Well that and I think he'd be real approachable, very easy to talk to as celebrities go.
I've seen him talk to, I've seen him sign autographs for three or four hours at a time and talk to everybody about whatever they wanted to talk about.
And he knows a lot about a lot of things.
He shoots par golf and plays real good poker.
And he rides horses, that can't be all bad.
Well, I've got a Willie question then.
Thank you, ma'am.
Let me follow up very quickly.
We're almost out of time, but Willie... Willie... I asked Willie... Somebody faxed and said that Willie Nelson smoked pot on the roof of the White House.
Willie...
I heard that same story and I hope he did.
I tell you what, I got one white house story.
I heard that same story and I hope he did.
I tell you what, I got one white house story.
We played for President Nixon and Pat Nixon's birthday and they had guards at the bottom
of the first floor going to the second floor where Lincoln's bedroom was.
And Ron Ziegler was the press secretary at the time and my press secretary was running
around with a guy he was calling horsefly all evening during this cocktail party at
the White House.
Well during the night they conned these blue uniformed marine officers into letting them
go upstairs talking about my press secretary who was wanting to meet Ron Ziegler but he
didn't know he was anywhere around him but he was with him and he was calling him horsefly.
And he's calling Ron Ziegler horsefly and he said horsefly, see if we can talk him into
going up the stairs.
They went upstairs, and they laid down in Blanket's bedroom, and this Lewis Talley friend of mine's laid there, and he said, bro, I've done just about everything I think in life I want to do.
I said, I've laid in Blanket's bedroom, and he said, horse fly, if I could just beat Ron Ziegler, my evening would be complete.
and uh... ron tigler just ran over to bed and shook his head and he said, oh it's right, ron tigler.
haha well that's great up Merle, that's five hours.
That's five hours.
That's five hours.
What a pleasure it's been.
It's been a great pleasure for me, too, Art.
And we will hopefully do this again sometime.
Just any time you want.
And sometime I'll come through Prump.
I live in Northern California.
Yeah, please come through Prump.
When you do, you call me.
You've got my number, I hope.
I've got your number and we'll get together.
Merle, thanks.
Thank you.
Good night.
That's it.
Merle Haggard, everybody.
And I'll tell you what.
To the network, we are not going to do any after-liners.
We are not going to do any commercials this morning.
We are having violent weather.
And we're going to shut the Uplink down.
We've been lucky to get these five hours on, because there's a storm a-comin'.
Actually, it's about here.
From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
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