Willie Nelson has had the most amazing life, both onstage and off.
Born Willie Hugh Nelson in Abbott, Texas in 1933, during the Great Depression, Nelson wrote his first song at the age of 7 and joined his first band at 10. He served in the Air Force and worked as a disc jockey before moving to Nashville, where he became an in-demand songwriter.
Nelson wrote a number of classics that were made famous by other artists, including "Funny How Time Slips Away," "Hello Walls," "Pretty Paper" and "Crazy." His early solo albums saw reasonable success, but after he moved to Austin, grew his hair and re-invented himself as a self-styled country "outlaw," he became one of the leaders of a new Outlaw Country movement in the 1970s.