Words by Johnny Sharp
In a genre some way removed from country and western, indie band Arctic Monkeys cribbed a line from the film Saturday Night And Sunday Morning for the title of their 2006 album: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. It might have been even better applied to one Merle Ronald Haggard.
Across a career spanning over half a century, The Hag proved it time and time again. And damn, he needed to. Because rarely has an artist found that one or two of his many hundreds of songs have painted him into a philosophical and political corner like his have.