With a face that wouldn't look out of place carved into Mount Rushmore, Willie Nelson has done and seen it all. A dope-smoking, whisky-drinking, latter-day cowboy with Native American blood, four wives, and seven children, Nelson has a career that spans half a century of American music. In this revealing, intimate, and insightful biography, Graeme Thomson goes beyond the myths, talking with Nelson himself, his band, and those who know him best to discover the real Willie Nelson. Nelson's life has been a journey of incredible highs and crashing lows. The armfuls of awards, huge record sales, famous friends, and creation of Farm Aid and his annual Fourth of July picnics have been achieved in the shadow of his mother's early desertion, penury, three turbulent marriages, drug busts, drinking, bankruptcy, and his son's suicide. This biography brilliantly describes a complex, compelling man, whose life and music reveal and reflect something fundamental at the very heart of 20th-century America, explaining along the way why Willie Nelson is nothing short of a living legend.