HANK WILLIAMS JR.
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This was his core audience, the people who have stayed with him even when country radio hasn’t–the middle-aged woman in a Bocephus T-shirt who waved two rebel flags; the guy who cruised to the show in a four-wheel-drive pickup with the words “Hot Shit” stamped on the tailgate; the people who angrily inundated ABC with calls and letters when the network yanked their boy as musical spokesman for Monday Night Football. It was the lout who screamed before the show “Wake up, you drunk, and get out here!” and then didn’t dare shout anything remotely personal once Bocephus appeared and stalked the stage 20 feet away. It was the articulate biker who thinks Ricky Van Shelton sucks and that real country should rock the house. It was the yahoos who yee-hawed and howled “Bocephus!” throughout Marty Brown’s opening set. It was two guys who ran through the balcony waving a huge and slightly different Stars and Bars; this one seemed to have a beer keg in the center. It was the people who hobbled in on canes hoping to get spiritually rocked into orbit. And it was me, clapping along and shouting “Hog-wild!” as Hank Jr. came swaggering out in a billow of smoke.
“I love my people,” said the man who brought them all to this dance. And what the people love back is a country star who, among other things, changes lyrics to suit the spirit of the moment, occasionally froths and spits when he sings, wags his butt, jams out on air guitar when he isn’t playing the real thing. He’s a big fucking baby and he’s one helluva man. He’s unpredictable, spontaneous, equal parts lummox and legend, as accessible as he is impenetrable. For the most part, Nashville would rather run a score of cookie-cutter bantamweights up the flagpole, hoping the line-dance nation will salute, than deal with such rude and garish behavior. When Hank Jr. steps into the ring he plays to the demographic that has put up with his crap and embraced his genius, some for almost 20 years now. It’s a demographic that plunges off the graph because it follows where he leads.
When he covered his father’s song “Kaw-liga,” complete with war whoops and Atlanta Braves tomahawk chops, he sawed away on a fiddle that looked like a toy in his huge hands. He finished the song by flinging the fiddle in an arc the length of the stage to a roadie waiting in the wings.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Basil Fairbanks Studio.
