Before Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson started the outlaw country movement, much of the Nashville music scene was controlled by record labels, producers and publishers. Frustrated by the lack of creative control, Willie Nelson moved to Austin, where he encoutered a new, youth rock-based audience mixed with a traditional country audience.
In this excerpt clip from The Highwaymen: Friends Til The End, Waylon Jennings talks about how he started the outlaw movement, which was epitomized by his 1974 album, “This Time” — produced by Waylon and Nelson.
Jennings said in his autobiography: “For us, ‘outlaw’ meant standing up for your rights, your own way of doing things. It felt like a different music, and outlaw was as good a description as any.”