On the Road Again

This was written on the spur of the moment on an airsickness bag when Nelson was on a plane with Jerry Schatzberg, the director of the movie Honeysuckle Rose and its executive producer Sydney Pollack. He recalled to Uncut magazine: “They were looking for songs for the movie and they asked me if I had any idea. I said, ‘What do you want the song to say?’ and Sydney said, ‘Can it be something about being on the road?’ It just started to click. I said ‘You mean like, On the road again, I can’t wait to get on the road again? They said, ‘That’s great. What’s the melody?’ I said, ‘I don’t know yet.'” This was a #1 Country hit for Willie Nelson, and also one of his biggest crossovers.  As a writer, Nelson crossed over with the Patsy Cline hit “Crazy,”  He had many other hits as a writer, but his biggest hit as an artist is a song he didn’t write: “Always On My Mind,” which reached #5 in 1982 and sold over a million copies.