Okay, see? NOW I have to ask you about George Jones. I wasn't going to, but since you mentioned it first. (Kinda sorta.)
George Jones... I tried three times when I was in Nashville for a few months and he didn't get back to me. I spoke to his publicist, manager and office people and they never got back to me. I didn't want to harass anyone. Usually people jumped on it when the heard about the project, he didn't so I didn't want to push it.
The original title of the book was "Old Friends: Fuzzy Memories of Roger Miller" - from what I know about George from people in his circle, the memories would definitely be 'fuzzy'. I imagine if he did share some stories, they would be amazing. You also have to realize many of these guys told me stories off the record or simply told me "out of respect to his family, I can't tell you the real good ones" or they just simply stayed quiet and smiled.
Regarding Mr. Jones, he was in Canada a few years ago and I was told by a person he was on tour with him that he was threatening to cancel shows if someone so much as tried to shake his hand. This was during the SARS scare that happened in Toronto where one person thought they had it, but this was FAR from Toronto. He actually said that in concert, something along the lines of "do not come up to the stage, don't hand me any gifts or I'm leaving."
I like George and respect his talents so I just let him go, but I did get a few emails from people really angry at me because George Jones wasn't in it. The fact is, I was lucky to have any of the 100 people in the book as it was.
Perhaps I could have tried again closer to press time but this was when I already had to chop out nearly 200 pages of material. As it was, it was a ton of work to do and I didn't have time to make any extra work and didn't want to be considered a pain to him or his people. Maybe if there's a part two, he'll see the signifacance of capturing some of his memories of times spent with Roger.
Here's a clip from an interview I did with Take Country Back Magazine that sort of relates:
Style’s direct and confident approach worked more than well, and he recalls only one resistant interviewee.
“I'm a huge Lee Hazlewood fan. I knew Roger lived with him for a while in California , I really wanted to chat with Lee about it and he pretty much told me off. Sometimes it's best not to meet your heroes or have any contact with them; I haven't listened to too much Lee Hazlewood music since. Overall though, most everyone I chatted with or approached to do an interview was very nice to me and accommodating.”
- After my experience with Lee where he told me "Not now or ever!!!" I didn't want the same thing to happen with anyone else.