Lukas Nelson has been promoting his new album American Romance with a string of press appearances. On Monday, he performed the title track on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and followed it up on Tuesday with an interview and performance on The Howard Stern Show on SiriusXM.
Nelson played “All God Did” on Stern, a rambunctious dissertation on good, evil, and spiritual enlightenment. But it was his candid recollections of growing up as the son of Willie Nelson that were particularly compelling.
Stern asked him if there was a perception that everything was handed to him as the son of a musical icon. “That must piss you the fuck off,” Stern said.
Nelson said no. “It doesn’t piss me off, because I know. I worked hard so that I would know, and they can all fuck off, I don’t give a fuck. Sorry… I don’t know if I can swear like that on here.”
“Hell yeah, you can,” replied Stern, who was shocked by Nelson’s admission that he quit smoking weed and wondered if it disappointed Willie, arguably the most famous proponent of marijuana.
“I did feel at a certain point that it was something, not just with my father, but with my old band, that it separated me from that a little bit,” he said. “But my father, of anyone, respects someone for being who they are and their individuality… The biggest lie I ever believed was that you have to make the mistakes that your heroes make…. That you have to live like your heroes or icons… ‘I loved Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, so maybe I’ll die early.’”
Subscribers can listen to the whole interview on the SiriusXM app.
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American Romance, produced by Shooter Jennings, is Nelson’s first solo album under his own name and not with his longtime band Promise of the Real. It includes the first song Nelson ever wrote, at age 11, “You Were It.” His father liked it so much that he cut it for his 2004 album, It Always Will Be.
“I got lucky that my dad is an inspiring human, not just a musician, but an inspiring person to be around. He’s like Muhammad Ali,” Nelson told Stern. “He is one of the greats of all time. And not just a musician, but as a well-rounded human being.”