Tuning Up Before a Pit Stop : Waylon Jennings Refuels at Crazy Horse En Route to Summer Dates With Lollapalooza Moshers

SANTA ANA —  It’s obvious that we’re never going to see George Foreman knock Mike Tyson’s block off or Nolan Ryan make Albert Belle leave the ballpark in tears, so the no-longer-young among us need a new champion who can take up the banner of gumption and experience and wave it defiantly on turf where youth normally rules.

Waylon, hoss, it looks like you’re the man.

In an act of unparalleled show-biz bravado, Waylon Jennings--who has based his career in no small measure on an image of bravado--is going to step onstage at the Lollapalooza festival this summer to play country music to the moshing masses.

Jennings, who turns 59 on June 15, has signed on to play three Lollapalooza dates--tentatively set for Des Moines, Indianapolis and New Orleans. A spokesman for Lollapalooza said Monday that Jennings will play in a guest artist slot that will put him on right before the head-banging headliners, Soundgarden and Metallica.

By then, whetted by the likes of Rancid and the Ramones, the kids should be craving blood-curdling screams and bone-crushing beats. Like Daniel in the lions’ den, Waylon may need some divine help on this one. His kicking anthem “I Ain’t Living Long Like This” could take on new meaning in front of punk and heavy metal fans who, having grown up under today’s generationally and stylistically segregated radio formats, have almost no experience with and perhaps even less patience for a guy in a cowboy hat and wrinkles.

So Jennings’ performances nowadays can be looked at as training sessions for the Mission Improbable he has taken on. To pull it off, he’ll have to be a lot more daring than he was at his early show Monday at the Crazy Horse Steak House. But, cut away some of the lard in his hourlong set--too many chatty asides, too many songs he doesn’t really care about anymore, too few from his shining new album--and you’re left with some pretty sinewy, hard-twang music that could make the moshers want to swing their partners, instead of throwing elbows at them.

And if Lollapalooza kids have any tolerance for romantic ballads (a proposition that’s very much in doubt) Jennings might be able to reach them with an authoritative, still-powerful voice that can carry rueful, fervent yearning by the bucketful and never sound the least bit wimpy.

At their peak, Jennings and his sharp, five-man band played stuff that, given a fair chance, should knock the punks out. Ears used to the linear attack of punk and heavy metal might well be thrilled by a band that can toss solos around like so many Frisbees.

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Jennings (whose musical career dates back to the 1950s, when he was a sideman for Buddy Holly) gave the greatly appreciative Crazy Horse crowd a taste of rockin’ country glory as he and his band stretched out on a couple of hard-charging numbers, “Trouble Man” and “I Ain’t Living Long Like This.” The latter (written by Rodney Crowell) especially cooked, peaking with a tag-team rush of energized solos as lead guitarist Jerry Bridges handed the baton to piano player Fred Lawrence, then on to the band’s ace among aces, Fred Newell on pedal steel, and finally to Waylon himself, who picked out some meaty, rhythmic concluding lead licks on his custom-designed black-and-white Telecaster.

Those peak rockers both fell in the set’s superb middle section, which also featured satisfying balladry.

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“Out of Jail,” a comical barroom-conversation piece, generated a laugh with every couplet, thanks to the strength in Jennings’ writing and his gifted delivery. “Wasting Time,” another original from Jennings’ excellent new album, “Right for the Time,” was a first-class example of his mastery of the manly art of hurtin’ from heartache.

A good chunk of Jennings’ music revolves thematically around two opposed poles: the hell-raiser’s anthem, in which he celebrates the joys of being ornery and freewheeling, and the aching ballad in which the hell-raiser pauses to contemplate the damage his carousing does to that one true woman who deserves better.

He covered the latter base exquisitely with a reading of “ ‘Til I Gain Control Again,” abetted by Newell’s lovely, lonesome swirls on steel guitar, which sounded like the moan of a coyote graced with the sweetness of a nightingale.

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Add it up, and you had a perfect five-song sequence of stories, ballads and hard-twangers. Throw in a sixth highlight--the playfully bragging “I May Be Used (But Baby I Ain’t Used Up)”--and Jennings had a fine half-a-show.

Less rewarding were a half-hearted “Good Hearted Woman,” and “Luckenbach, Texas,” which Jennings prefaced by saying, “I’ve always hated this song, but I keep doing it.” His performance of the song caught fire at the end, but if there’s any truth in Tony Bennett’s saying that the older he gets, the more each song has to count, Jennings ought to be singing only the ones he loves.

The encore, “Theme From the Dukes of Hazzard (Good Ol’ Boys),” was tossed off and truncated. As for that soggy confection “MacArthur Park,” which Jennings recorded in 1968, it did--on the chorus-ending phrase, “Oh, no”--show that Jennings’ declamatory baritone can stretch for the big gesture and sustain it. But “oh, no” just about said it all.

Jennings also lost points, and wasted time, with some of his chat. He’s a funny, flinty, homespun guy, so one wouldn’t want him to shut up. But carrying on at length about one’s ailments and dubious encounters with doctors, as he did near the start, isn’t a good idea at a cocktail party, let alone in concert. “You didn’t come here to hear all that [expletive],” Jennings said, finally ending the evening’s medical report.

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The biggest disappointment was his two-song duet sequence with his wife, Jessi Colter. It wasn’t that there was anything terribly wrong with their somewhat show-bizzy reading of Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” or the solid ballad that went before it. It was their grievous sin of omission in not singing “Deep in the West,” the sublime duet they sing on Jennings’ new album.

It’s a declaration of love so piercing in its recognition of the forces pulling lovers apart, so lovely in its imagery and its melody, so rich in the Colter-Jennings performance and in the resonance that it takes from the strain that Jennings’ former drugging and carousing must have placed on their 26-year marriage, that it should be a prime contender for country song of the year.

Of course, the lords of Nashville have passed a rule against anybody over age 45 being played on the radio or winning a major award, so we know that won’t happen. Jennings and Colter should sing “Deep in the West” at every show--including, in the bravest gesture of all, at Lollapalooza, where it would go a long way toward proving whether music can, indeed, soothe the savage breast.