Mark Seliger on "Stardust"

One by Willie

John Spong

Music, Music Commentary

4.8 • 833 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Revered photographer Mark Seliger—who’s taken iconic images of everyone from Barack Obama and the Dali Lama to Kurt Cobain and Ice T—talks about the song that he says has informed almost every photo he’s taken of his friend Willie Nelson, 1978’s “Stardust.” Mark was a college freshman on a long, lonely road trip the first time he heard it, and he describes channeling that experience, plus the work of Edward Curtis, into his first great Willie portrait nearly twenty years later. From there he gets into what you learn about Willie from a close look at Trigger, plus the wonders of playing a Fourth of July Picnic with his own country band, Rusty Truck.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Still Austin Whiskey Co makes award-winning whiskey completely in-house from grain all the way to glass.
0:08.0	They only use 100% Texas grains and distill right in the heart of Texas, where the wild weather helps age their whiskey to perfection.
0:15.0	Go to stillaustin.com today for delivery right to your door.
0:18.0	Still Austin Whiskey, the art of Texas Whiskey.
0:28.5	There's nothing better than pulling on a pair of Western boots and listening to some good tunes.
0:34.5	At Toccovis, we honor classic bootmaking traditions and craft every pair with premium authentic materials. Find a Toccova store near you
0:37.5	or shop online at Toccovus.com.
0:42.4	One by a Willie is produced and distributed by PRX
0:45.7	and we are brought to you by Still Austin Craft Whiskey
0:49.2	with additional generous support from Toccova's Boots.
0:55.8	Hey there, I'm John Spong, and this is One by Willie, a podcast in which I talk each week
1:01.7	to one notable Willie Nelson fan about one Willie song that they really love.
1:07.4	This week, we talked to one of the all-time great rock and roll portrait photographers, Amarillo, Texas native Mark Seliger, about the song and album that first made him a Willie fan, Stardust.
1:18.6	Now, back in 1978, Mark was just a college freshman when he found a cassette tape copy of Stardust sitting on the dashboard of a car he'd
1:28.5	borrowed from a buddy. And though it'd be nearly 20 years before he'd work with Willie, and become
1:34.0	friends with him and his harmonica player Mickey Raphael, he says that that original experience
1:38.9	with Stardust, and the song itself, had informed just about every photo he's ever shot of Willie.
1:45.2	And that's where the conversation gets cool.
1:47.6	It marks 30-plus years of shooting celebrities for publications like Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone.
1:53.0	He's created iconic images of everybody from Kurt Cobain and Drew Barrymore
1:57.3	to Ice T and Keith Richards to Barack, and the Dalai Lama.
2:02.6	But maybe because of the friendship he built with Willie, Mark's images of him seem to go a little deeper.
	...

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