Editor's note: Willie Nelson turned 88 on Thursday. In June 1974, I was at a friend’s house when he played an album that I had never heard, by an artist I had not heard of. I was enthralled. “Phases and Stages” was an album of sad, cryin’ in your beer country. It was a concept album, with the long standing country theme of divorce, beginning, ending, and intersected with the words “Phases and Stages, circles and cycles, scenes that we’ve all seen before, let me tell you some more.” Side A was the woman’s side of the story, side B was the man’s; all songs were Willie Nelson originals.