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Willie Nelson<\/a> recalled that, the first time he made real money from music, he blew it all on partying \u2013 and the help of older musician Ray Price<\/a> rescued his career.<\/p>\n Nelson’s\u00a0first big paychecks came in the 1960s when he was in his thirties, but in an excerpt from his upcoming memoir The Last Leaf<\/em>, via The\u00a0Guardian<\/a><\/em>, Nelson admitted he didn’t know how to handle it.<\/p>\n “I was going wild,” he wrote. “My hit songs were hitting even harder. Every night was a party, and the party was on me. I booked big suites at the hotels and treated the boys in the band to all the booze they wanted. I drank like a fish and acted like an ass.<\/p>\n “It didn’t take more than three weeks for me to run through all my money. Like a patient father, Ray watched me play the fool and didn’t say a word until I was dead broke.”<\/p>\n READ MORE<\/strong>: Top 10 Willie Nelson Songs<\/a><\/p>\n Nelson said Price \u2013 whose voice and songwriting innovations are said to have revamped country music \u2013 didn’t attempt to lecture him. Instead, “he saw that I was speeding down a dead\u2011end street. Didn’t it make sense to slow down and turn around?”<\/p>\n He continued: “Even in my boozy condition, I recognized positive energy. Ray’s energy was generous.”<\/p>\n Price invited Nelson to take part in sessions for his next album \u2013 even though he didn’t use a note of what they younger man played. “He knew I was broke. The gig meant decent union pay. … I didn’t know his new music and there wasn’t time to learn it.<\/p>\n “That\u2019s why he handed me a guitar without an amp: so I wouldn’t be heard. I pretended to play, and when the session was over, Ray pretended that I played well. ‘Take this money, Willie,’ he said. ‘Write me some songs, and leave the bottle alone.'”<\/p>\n Nelson accepted that it “took a long time \u2013 way too long \u2013 to renounce whiskey in favor of weed<\/a>. But I never forgot how Ray looked after me.”<\/p>\nHow Ray Price Turned Willie Nelson’s Career Around<\/h3>\n