Wherever the road led him on his brief fifty-two year tour of this sad and beautiful planet, Townes Van Zandts reputation had a way of preceding him. He was a living legend albeit more often than not an unknown one. Van Zandt was a rambler, gambler, hell-bent drunk and arguably the greatest American songwriter of his day. The first time Emmylou Harris laid eyes on him in the late sixties, at Folk City in Greenwich Village, she swore Van Zandt was the re-incarnation of Hank Williams but with a twist. That twist to which Emmylou referred was Van Zandts incandescent lyrics, which he expressed with pristine imagery and harrowing honesty.

John Townes Van Zandt came kickin and screamin into this life on March 7, 1944 in Fort Worth Texas. A true Texan, Townes kin were both oil barons and cattle rustlers. He wasnt born to money as much as history. Van Zandt County in west Texas had been christened in honor of his fathers illustrious ancestors(Isaac, who was sent by Sam Houston to Washington cut the deal to annex Texas and Keebler, a General who built banks and brought the railroad to Fort Worth).

Townes was named in honor of John Charles Townes, his great-grandfather on his mothers side, for whom Townes Hall, the main building at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, was memorialized.

As a teenager his memory was irreparably fogged by a series of electro-shock treatments after being diagnosed as manic-depressive with schizophrenic tendencies.

But before the evils of modern psychiatry took its toll, something just as powerful had zapped him. On September 9th, 1956 Townes Van Zandt suddenly came down with a serious case of rockin pneumonia. Like the rest of his generation, he sat before his TV set mesmerized by the sight of Elvis Presley in a loud plaid jacket and shiny pompadour singing Dont Be Cruel on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Van Zandt soon became infatuated with a slew of rock and rollers from Ricky Nelson and Jerry Lee Lewis to the Everly Brothers and the hard knocks country crooner Johnny Cash. That Christmas his father gave him a guitar under the condition that Townes would learn the old folk chestnut Fraulein.

He spent his youth moving around the country with his family as his dad went from job to job Texas, Illinois, Montana, Colorado until his last two years of high school when his parents sent him to the exclusive Shattuck Military Academy in Faribault, Minnesota, where Townes got what he later described as a real serious private prep school ivy-covered education. In actuality Van Zandt was a hell raising punk with a reputation for tossing cherry bombs down dormitory toilets, causing the pipes to burst and freeze over in the dead of a Minnesota winter.

Discovering the blues as a teenager most likely saved Townes from juvenile delinquency. He soon became obsessed with Texas blues masters Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin Hopkins. Although they both hailed from the Lone Star State, their music was as different as night and day. Lipscomb was known for clean picking and a humble, earthy delivery while Lightnins fiery style seemed inspired from a hotter, more supernatural place than the Piney Woods. Townes hunted down Hopkins obscure albums and played them repeatedly in hopes of learning some of Lightnins slippery licks. It wasnt just Hopkins guitar that spoke to Townes, but the raw poetry of his hard life as a sharecropper and a gambler that inspired him like the mystical scripture of a forgotten religion.

Townes influences were literary as well as musical. He voraciously read poetry by Dylan Thomas, Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost.

Townes was a genius, with an IQ way above 140, claimed Fran Lohr, his first wife. But like the parents of most geniuses, Townes folks hoped their son would settle down some day and have some sort of normal life, which in the Van Zandt family meant becoming a lawyer or politician and living in Texas. But thankfully it was never meant to be.

Van Zandts songs soon began to mirror the down and out drifters he befriended. Waitin Around to Die, a stark Appalachian style ballad sprang from the lonely drone of an A minor chord and the experience of spending an afternoon drinking with an old man at the Jester Lounge. A few weeks later Townes wrote the lovely, lilting For the Sake of the Song by candle light in his lonely room above the Sand Mountain Cafe, where proprietor Ma Carrick let musicians stay for five dollars a week.

But it was Bob Dylans defiant anthem of the new generation, The Times They Are A-Changin that inspired Townes to take his job as a songwriter more seriously. That did it to me, he exclaimed. I realized, man, you can write songs that really do make a difference. Suddenly Townes devoted himself to the idealistic mission of saving the world with a song. Id like to alter the course of the Universe, make it a happier place, he once mused. No death. No disease. No depression. Nobody getting older All the babies would get older, but once they start getting too much older they die. Im not sure how exactly to do this. I havent made my move yet.

In the meantime Van Zandt slept on floors and couches, and even ate dog food when things got tough (although his third wife Jeanene refutes this tale as a hoax perpetuated by a journalist after Townes shared a Gaines Burger with his dog Geraldine in an attempt to fluster him).

Townes soon found himself opening shows for musical legends like Doc Watson and Lightnin Hopkins. While his peers sang old English folk ballads and wrote glorified visions of the driftin way of life, Townes dove in headfirst, experiencing that life first hand. He thrived living on the edge and miraculously survived longer than most people expected to sing about it.

Like his hero Hank Williams, Townes predicted he would only achieve fame after death. Proving himself a master of divinity, Van Zandt died on New Year's Day, 1997, the same day as Hank, 44 years later. Most of his friends were surprised that Van Zandt even made it as far as he did.

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