Willie Nelson is getting candid about life and death. Ahead of the release of his memoir, The Last Leaf, the 93-year-old country music legend revealed why he didn’t think he’d be alive and working well into his 90s.
“The way I was going, I never expected to be here,” Nelson told The Guardian. “I don’t think anyone expected me to live beyond 21, the way I was going.”
As for why he didn’t think he’d last so long, Nelson explained, “I did everything wrong. If it was wrong, I did it. And if it was really wrong, I did it twice.”
“I drank too much, I smoked too much. I took too many pills,” he said.
The fact that he is here, Nelson said, makes him feel “lucky.”
“I’ve lost a lot of my good friends along the way,” he acknowledged. “You know, Johnny, Waylon and Kris. I feel fortunate that I’m still here.”
Because of that, Nelson said he feels the need to keep performing as long as he can.
“It’s what I’ve done all my life,” he said. “I always feel good before, during and after.”
Willie Nelson Reveals the Key to Longevity
That, he thinks, is the secret to his longevity.
“I have a saying: imagine what you want and then get out of the way,” Nelson said. “And make sure that what you’re asking for is what you actually want.”
What Nelson wants is to live a happy life with his wife, to play his music, and to not fret about what’s to come.
“Everybody’s gonna die, so it ain’t no big deal how long we got,” he said. “We live and we die, and I believe we come back again.”
In his forthcoming memoir, which Nelson previously discussed in an interview with Anderson Cooper, the singer he writes about what he believes happens when people die.
“Thanks for letting me go on this ride. Thanks for letting me take this trip. I don’t know when the trip is going to end, but that doesn’t matter, because I do believe that when it does end another trip will begin,” he writes. “And that trip and the one that follows will go into that good night forever and a day. So there is no end. There just is.”
The Last Leaf is due out Nov. 10.
Photo by Gary Miller/Getty Images for Shock Ink
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