'I hoped a car would run over me': Willie Nelson was 'slowly self-destructing'
Willie Nelson tried to take his own life "a couple of times" amid marital problems with his first wife.
Willie Nelson tried to take his own life "a couple of times".
The 90-year-old singer recalled how he was "drinking more than ever" amid marital problems with his first wife, Martha Jewel Matthews, and financial woes and when he hit rock bottom, he even tried to get a car to run him over.
Speaking on his new docuseries 'Willie Nelson and Family', he said: “She and I were fighting worse than ever, and I started drinking more than ever.
"I would get drunk every night and go home with someone different every night. [I was] slowly self-destructing. I really didn’t care.
“Back in my drinking days, I tried to commit suicide a couple of times. One time in the dead of winter I was so down on myself I laid down in the middle of the street hoping a car would run over me. No such luck. I had to get up and kept on trying to figure out how to make a living.”
The 'On the Road Again' singer met Martha when he was 19 and she was 16 and they eloped because her mother felt they were too young to get married.
While the former couple - who had three children together - had "a lot of fun" in the 10 years they were together, they also had explosive rows, and one argument even saw Martha accidentally stab Willie with a fork.
He recalled: "We had a lot of fun together but we fought, and we both were drinking a lot in those days.
"One morning we got in this argument, and she picked up this fork and threw it across the table and it stuck in my side. It sounded like a tuning fork.”
Meanwhile, the show also revealed Willie's second wife, Shirley Collie, only found out he'd been having an affair when she saw the medical bills from his mistress having had his baby.
Willie said: "Shirley wanted to know who in the hell was Connie Nelson. The truth is Connie [Koepke] had been my girlfriend for several years before becoming pregnant."
His daughter Lana added: "She had no idea there was a Connie. She had no idea there was a baby until she got the hospital bill. That’s how she found out about Connie. That’s how I found out about Connie."
