Watch Waylon Jennings & George Jones Discuss Infamous Hogtie Incident: “He Was 4 Sheets To The Wind & I’d Been Up For 4 Days”

An all-time classic George Jones story.

Of course, I think we’ve all heard the stories about Jones’ wild days, like how he took his lawnmower to the liquor store after his wife hid the keys to his car to keep him from drinking… that one’s legendary. His drinking and partying earned him the nickname “No-Show Jones” after causing him to miss so many performances, and it’s something he struggled with until he finally got sober for good in 1999 after getting arrested for DUI.

His friend Waylon Jennings was part of the group of friends who convinced Jones to get professional treatment at Hillcrest Psychiatric Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, an intervention that Jones one said was “the best thing that ever happened” to him.

But well before all of that, Waylon had to tie his musical hero up when Jones came to his house, drunk, obviously, and started destroying his living room. The famous story goes that Jones showed up to Waylon and Jessi Colter’s house in the middle of a bender, and started acting wild and trying to destroy things, even yelling at Waylon’s mother-in-law, Jessi’s mom.

Waylon said he was “four sheets to the wind,” and he himself had been up for “about four or five days.” Waylon was open about his decades-long drug problem, so they were quite a combination… And this video I found on TikTok shows Waylon telling the story on a talk show while sitting next to Jones many years ago, and he laughed as he recalled:

“George came to see me one time, and he really wasn’t sure who I was I don’t think. He came in about four sheets to the wind, and I’d been up for about four or five days, so it was the blind leading blind. And all of a sudden, George gets a little wild, and he starts throwing things, so I had to get on him and sit on him.

And here I am, one of my heroes of my life, and I’m having to sit down even holding him down or he’s gonna tear me and my house up. I’m holding him like this, you know, ‘George, settle down.’ George goes… it’s like he’s choking. This is Possum, that’s why they call him Possum right here.”

When Waylon turned him loose, because he thought George had settled down, George turned right around and smacked him in the mouth. Waylon hilariously joked that that’s where he got his famous “Possum” nickname from, and George  also broke his guitar players thumb during the whole ordeal…

So much so, that Waylon realized the only way to get him to calm down, or stop, was to tie him  up… so he got a belt and made sure he couldn’t move, then put him on the couch like that. Obviously, he “felt terrible” because this was his hero and someone he looked up to so much, so the last thing he wanted was to have to be wrestling him like this. They called Jones’ manager, and eventually, he showed up to help.

Jones eventually calmed down for real, and asked Jessi to play him a song like nothing happened… Waylon described it as him somehow having the ability to go from “oblivion to a preacher’s son in about two seconds,” which he could never figure out:

“I turned loose of him, I said, ‘George, you alright?’ And he goes ‘Bam!’ And hits me right in the mouth. And I said, ‘Somebody get something. Whatever he’s doing is stronger than mine.’ I mean, he was just still going, you know. So I said, ‘Go get something, I can tie him up.’

So I got something and tied him up, and I felt terrible. You broke his thumb, kicked him, I mean, this is a wild man. So I get him on there, and I gently lay him on the couch, and I can’t really tell you what he said to me then.  We called his manager, and after a while, let me tell you… after a while, he’s calling me everything in the world, and his manager gets there and unties him.

He gets up, dusts himself off, went in there and said, ‘Jessi, would you sing me that song again?’ And then he left. He could go from oblivion to a preacher’s son in about two seconds. I don’t know what the deal is.”

In his book Waylon: An Autobiography, he confesses that Jones called him a “Conway Twitty acting SOB,” which is kind of hilarious.

Jones sat there and laughed listening to Waylon talk about it, and while it’s sad that he struggled so much over the years and clearly had a real problem, these stories are pretty funny, only because we know how he ultimately became sober and remained a faithful Christian until his death, much like Waylon.

You can watch the video here, it’s hilarious. I’ve never seen them both in the same place talking about this particular story, so it’s well-worth a watch and highly entertaining:

@seanhorton2009 #waylonjennings #thehoss #georgejones #thepossum #bobbybare #country #countrymusic #outlaw #outlawcountry #outlawcountrymusic credit to @Ty Plumlee ♬ original sound – Outlaw Country Nation

Jennings and Jones remained friends until Waylon’s death in 2002, and Waylon even mentioned Jones in his 1980 song “It’s Alright,” calling George “the greatest of them all” and saying:

“If we all sounded like we wanted to, we’d all sound like George Jones.”

Check it out:

“It’s Alright”

The post Watch Waylon Jennings & George Jones Discuss Infamous Hogtie Incident: “He Was 4 Sheets To The Wind & I’d Been Up For 4 Days” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.