Watch Townes Van Zandt’s stunning cover of Hank Williams ‘You Win Again’
Kris Kristofferson called Townes Van Zandt the “songwriter’s songwriter” and you wouldn’t have to look far to see that same quote applied to Hank Williams. These late, great souls were figures of pure artistry. Born to be musicians by their own admission, they bore the artist’s hardship out in their art and paid the price for a poet’s lifestyle.
Bob Dylan once said that “the highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for anybody but inspire them?” Well, these two heroes have inspired more than their fair share of classics. Their mark on the course of music is no secret when you delve into the archives of lauding quotes from their contemporaries.
Both would be attracted to the arts at an early age. Both would live the life of wandering outsiders. And both would succumb to the tragedy of addiction. Death would strike before Williams himself could bask in the fruits of his labour. To return to the words of his foremost figurative son, when Dylan was just about ready to start worshipping his newfound hero, Williams passed away at the age of 29 on New Year’s Day in 1953.
Sadly, the turmoils that the country star endured led to a dependence on alcohol and morphine, and he suffered a fatal heart attack. When a young Dylan heard the news, he recalled: “It was like a great tree had fallen.” As it happens, the felling of this grounded tower of song was a long time in the making.
His music proved to be a post-war boon for many. It contained the losses and pains of his own childhood and tempestuous life thereafter, which gives the music the cognizant side it needed to take root in a world reflecting on its own sorrows, while his chirpy ways also provided enough exultation to lift them from despair. Sadly, however, his wry smiles were more of a mask than the same mark of duality that the public loved.
Townes Van Zandt did much the same for the post-Vietnam War generation. Sadly, he would also succumb to woes while alleviating others of theirs. As he extolls in the clip blow, this isn’t all that uncommon in the arts, at least according to Van Zandt. He figures he was cut from the same cloth as the likes of Vincent Van Gogh, and he paid for his art with troubles (even if I don’t agree with that assertion when it comes to Van Gogh myself).
The kinship between the pair is evident in the beauteous recital of ‘You Win Again’ below. Hard luck is a coat that Van Zandt sports well, and you won’t find many lovelorn tracks better than this Williams classic.
