The Lost Loretta Lynn Interview: Read our conversation with the country star, published for the first time online.
went to 82 on the pop charts in 1971); “One’s on the Way” in 1971; and on and on until, in 1972, Loretta Lynn became the first woman to be named the CMA’s Entertainer of the Year, its highest award. The next year Loretta was featured on the cover of Newsweek. And she’s still going strong: she had two Number One country hits last year—”When the Tingle Becomes a Chill” and “Somebody Somewhere.”
Mooney Lynn now spends most of his time on the 3,500-acre combination farm and dude ranch at their home in Hurricane Mills, actually a town they own about 70 miles from Nashville. He and Loretta seldom even see one another; he seems to have wrapped himself up in his land, where he raises purebred mules and Belgian draft horses. A solitary, taciturn man built like a banty rooster , Mooney Lynn is a bit puzzling.
And, many of Loretta’s songs come from personal experience. “Fist City” was written for a woman who was making a play for Mooney: “I wrote ‘Fist City’ for her and she knows who she is,” says Loretta. “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ ” means just that. But Loretta hasn’t lived a normal married life for years. Since most of her time is spent on the road, Loretta has drawn material for her personal songs from the time when she was a housewife, before she came to Nashville.
“It’s a strange deal. I’m supposed to be a country singer, writing songs about marriage and family and the way normal folks live. But mostly I’m living in motel rooms and traveling on my special bus … I don’t even open the shades in my bus anymore. I’ve seen every highway in the United States and they all look alike to me.”
, the book by Piers Paul Read about the survivors of the Andes airplane crash. She wants to know about the cannibalism part. “I don’t think I’ll try it again because I think, what am I a’gonna be doin’? All I’m doin’ is benefitin’ somebody else. It’s these men. They put you way up here, see, and if you feel like you can’t hold up to that, then you feel like you’re lettin’ ’em down. Women are human, just exactly like a man. But they all put you on a pedestal and hope — I think they put you on a spot.
“I don’t even open the shades in my bus anymore. I’ve seen every highway in the United States and they all look alike to me.” Back on the road. Caught red-handed by Conway Twitty. Spirits were sagging — as if everyone in the room were thinking, “Won’t weget away from Nashville?” Loretta fell silent, and giving in to the inevitable, the rest of us started talking shop — besides me, there were two songwriters along. The customary topic of conversation in Nashville is songs, songwriters, publishing, and we were talking about a song from last year called “Where the Good Love Has Gone,” when Loretta interrupted.
The rest of us began to get edgy when Loretta started talking this way. We all knew she’d had a breakdown in the spring, and this sounded alarmingly like the way she talked then. Someone changed the subject.Loretta looked up — almost woke up — and gave the speaker a long stare. “Yeah,” she said. “But them scars can’t heal a broken heart.”
We stopped to visit Herman and sit on the porch, which has a view of a wide and dusty road, a dried tip creek bed and some junk cars. It had become infernally hot and the road ahead looked like the Gobi Desert. Nothing was stirring except the sweat bees and two dusty boys on motor scooters. Not far away was the mouth of the mine where Loretta’s father worked and across from that was a dump, where two mangy bitches were fighting for possession of an old easy chair.
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