Willie Nelson

Critical Praise

"Willie Nelson: An Epic Life, is a mind-bogglingly thorough biography by Joe Nick Patoski, who's authored similar tomes on Stevie Ray Vaughan and Selena."
-Villagevoice.com

"Beautifully written, it is a lived perhaps even more than researched book from a man who first interviewed Nelson in 1973 -- and never stopped, allowing Patoski a contextualizing read that is trustworthy and a sense of Nelson that is spot-on. To understand what it takes, to celebrate the beauty inside a mortal, to realize the price paid and harvest reaped, this is a deeply human, absolutely divine exercise on both."
-Yummylist.hollygleason.net

"This impressive, entertaining chronicle of Willie Nelson's life is replete with exactly what you'd expect—honky-tonk, long nights on the open road, whiskey, womanizing and weed—but Texas writer Patoski (Stevie Ray Vaughan: Caught in the Crossfire, Texas Mountains) looks beyond country music trappings to find the funny, talented, determined man who became an unlikely icon."
-Stillisstillmoving.com

"Fans who've come to believe that Willie-ness is next to godliness may be surprised by the coarser reality of his life, from cotton-picking poverty through an eternity on the road—not to mention the raging lunacy of his Fourth of July picnics and his (well-documented) affinity for smoking dope and rough-edged pistol-packing associates."
-Texasmonthly.com

"Patoski effectively captures Nelson's transformation from struggling songwriter to American musical icon. But more importantly, he shows what Nelson's career has meant to Nelson's and Patoski's native state: Texas."
-AmericanWay.com

"I closed the book with a sense of melancholy. I think it's an emotion Willie Nelson might share—the idea that success might not be enough. Patoski doesn't offer that opinion, but he's a dedicated biographer who does justice to an American original in this fine volume, simply telling the man's life story—words by Willie himself, family, fellow musicians, friends, and those fortunate enough to have met up with the legend."
-Internetreviewofbooks.com

"Joe Nick Patoski writes about Texas, and calls this book the "culmination." It's a whopper, like the Lone Star State itself.”
-Curledup.com

"Made me get out the old cassette tape of 'Nightlife' to savour that clever brand of songwriting and jazz phrasing that makes Willie such a unique and timeless commodity in country music."
-Compulsivereader.com

“The research is exhaustively thorough, and includes a fascinating, encyclopedic knowledge of the Texas music scene, past and present. The authors portrait of Nelson is entertainingly, and sometimes uncomfortably, intimate, beginning with five year old “Booger Red’s” first public performance and following the little boy through an amazing series of triumphs and an equally staggering number of tragedies on the road to becoming the musician and the man we know as Willie."
-Popmatters.com