Merle Haggard

Merle Haggard: Work in Progress

“The Hag” talks politics, drugs and turning 70 in this internet-only article. For even more on Merle, check out his story in the Sept. 10 issue of Country Weekly.

Merle Haggard has proven almost impossible to pigeonhole politically, surprising fans who might have assumed the man who wrote “Okie From Muskogee” and “The Fightin’ Side of Me” by opposing the Iraq war. He spoke out in defense of the Dixie Chicks, and decried the banning of the Ten Commandments from government buildings.

Merle’s politics may seem difficult to zero in on, but he says it’s actually pretty simple. “I believe in liberty,” he declares. “I don’t believe in prohibition. There’s different places in America where prohibition is still in place, whether it be about alcohol or drugs or something else. And we, the American people, don’t seem to realize that this thing we call freedom is not really happening.

“You can’t do anything. Should you stay out after 9 o’clock, somebody will check your ass out. What happened to the night life in the country?”

Earlier this year he debuted “Hillary,” a new song extolling the virtues of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton. Still, he says, “I’m not really sold on her. It wasn’t about anything to further her presidential campaign. I write from impulse, from mood and conditions and situations and all that. It came to me, and I wrote it.”

Merle says he nonetheless offered the song to the Clinton campaign, which gratefully accepted—then, rather than adopting it as a theme song, conducted a poll of supporters to choose a campaign anthem instead. “That pissed me off at her,” he admits. “I felt like that was sort of a slap in the face.”

Told that the winning song was Canadian pop singer Celine Dion’s “You and I,” Merle snorts. “Celine Dion?” he chuckles. “Well, that’s good.”


More From Merle

On Turning 70 in April:
“I’m sizing it all up, and I think I feel better than I did 10 years ago. There’s a lot of things a 70-year-old person knows that maybe a 50-year-old person doesn’t know. I certainly have learned a lot in the last 20 years.”

On Pal Willie Nelson’s Drug Use:
“Willie don’t do drugs. The real drug is heroin, maybe cocaine, and he don’t fool with anything like that. He just does cannabis. He’s 75 years old, and the cliché that marijuana makes you forget words? That sort of blows a hole in that bubble. The drug war is all something that’s been drummed up to create commerce. The government was the one that made the methamphetamine. They’re the ones that came up with it. They issued it to all the soldiers throughout World War II and Korea and Vietnam, the soldiers brought it home to everybody, everybody got hooked on it and they criminalized it.”

On What Attracts Young Fans to Him:
“Maybe the music? Could be. It’s surely not my good looks.”

• August 24, 2007
• story by Chris Neal
• Merle Haggard photo by Pamela Springsteen/Capitol

Review: Gary Allan at the Ryman	Joe Nichols: I’m Grateful To Be Here	10 Years of Rascal Flatts	Keith Urban Duets With Kentucky 8-year-old	Martina McBride: Sharing the Table	Kris Kristofferson: Highwayman	From the Vault: Little Big Town
ARCHIVES