Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [1]
I’m still writing songs, of course. As you know, I’ve written most of my songs. I like to write; it’s what makes me happy. I’d rather write than sing, which is a surprise to most people. But it seems to me like I get a lot out of my system when I write. People often say, “Where do you come up with all of these songs?” Well, I don’t come up with them! I’ve lived them! I tell it like it is. In the hills, we don’t write songs, we just tell the truth, that’s what I always say. And I still believe that. It’s just life. I don’t think I could sing a song if it didn’t fit and if it wasn’t true. Even all my cheating songs. It all happened. And let me tell you, my old man got the devil for it!
When I write, it just takes me over. I remember when I was writing “Fist City” (“You’ve been makin’ your brags around town / That you’ve been a lovin’ my man / But the man I love, when he picks up trash: He puts it in a garbage can”); I was writing away, which means all I was thinking about was that song, and I was getting in my car to drive home to the ranch from my birthday party in Nashville. I wasn’t paying any attention to what I was doing—’cause I was just thinking about that song!—when I saw this light and I thought: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a light like this between Nashville and my house. Guess what? I never saw such a light ’cause I was all the way in the middle of Memphis! I had to run around and come back home and by the time I got there it was three o’clock in the morning! That’s how I wrote “Fist City.” I don’t know no other way to do it. People always say they love the way I communicate. But I’m just talking about my life, that’s really all I’m doing. Maybe that’s why I love writing so much, ’cause I love tellin’ it like it is. I have a little writing room that’s beside my house where I usually work. And just thinking about that room, I’m realizing it’s writing time again. I gotta get back in there and go to work.
People are always asking me about Patsy Cline. I cut an album years back called I Remember Patsy, but nobody can sing Patsy’s songs like Patsy. Let’s face it. Nobody can do it. She was great and that’s the beginning and end of the story right there. She wasn’t just a person that sang. She had greatness and I think that came across in the little time that she was here. I loved her; she was my girlfriend—the only girlfriend I had when I first came to Nashville. And she kind of tucked me under her wing. The age difference wasn’t that much apart; I was a couple of years younger, that’s all. But she knew a lot more than me. And we stuck together until she was gone. That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. Patsy had two little kids, a little girl and little boy. For her to just up and leave this world, that was awful. Awful for her, awful for me, awful for the world.
A few years back, Jack White, the rock ’n’ roll singer, me and him worked on an album together—Van Lear Rose. Jack told me he went and saw the Coal Miner’s Daughter movie—when he was a lot younger—and that he sat in the theater all day long and wouldn’t leave. They just let him stay in there and he watched the movie over and over. Years later, I met Jack and Meg; they’re a duo called The White Stripes. I made them chicken ’n’ dumplings out at my house. And then I did a show with them up in New York City. So me and Jack got together to try a few songs in the studio. Well, we ended up doing a whole record. And we did that in just ten days in this studio in an old house over in east Nashville. And me and Jack won two Grammys for that record!
The first song on Van Lear Rose is about Mommy. She died before it came out, of course, but she would have loved it. You know, Mommy sang a lot, too. Of course, she just sang at home, but she was good. Real good. Her twin sister was a singer, too. They had a whole thing going. They sung “The Great Titanic” and “In the Pines.” Like I said, back in them hills, you don’t just make up a song, you sing true stuff.