EXCLUSIVE: Womanizer Willie Nelson confesses his 16-year-old wife tied him up in bed and beat him with a broom for cheating and he sneaked out of the Lincoln bedroom to smoke a joint on the roof of Jimmy Carter's White House in new memoir

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One of American's greatest songwriters and biggest advocate of marijuana, singer Willie Nelson confesses to smoking a reefer on the roof of the White House while spending the night there in 1977.

Jimmy Carter, 'a mighty good friend' and 'soul mate' had invited Willie to perform in the Rose Garden. At dinner, the President talked about growing peanuts, Willie talked about pig farming.

Retiring to the Lincoln Bedroom, Willie was about to fall asleep 'when I heard a gentle knock on the door'.

'It was a friend of mine who happened to be a White House insider.' He was offering to give Willie his own tour of the big house and Willie said yes.

They wound their way through back staircases and up to the roof where they were admiring the night views of the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, and the Capitol when Willie's friend pulled out a joint.

Country crooner:  Willie Nelson, here in 1967, candidly tells the story of his early years as a singer/songwriter, courting and marrying his 16-year old girlfriend, his three other wives and many girlfriends, his tom-catting around and how he gave up alcohol and cigarettes for his abiding love for marijuana in his new memoir It's A Long Story

First love: First of many! Willy was 19 when he met and fell for 16-year old Martha Jewel Matthews, a carhop waitress wearing a halter top and shorts. He took her home and then 'She let me. And then she let me some more'

Willie's Reserve: Just turned 82, Willie announced he plans to launch his own brand of marijuana for discerning smokers who demand 'the best on the market'. Willie's Reserve will be available in stores - where legal - along with branded bongs. Willie himself now smokes from a vaporizer

'Getting stoned on the roof of the White House, you can't help but turn inward. Certain philosophical questions come to mind, like…How the f*** did I get here?

'There I was, smoking weed and watching the city lights flicker like fireflies, thinking back to where I had started, thinking of the twists and turns of my crazy career, thinking how I had somehow managed to stay half sane. I had to offer up a prayer that consisted of no more than two words: "Thank you".'

Now 82 years old, Willie candidly tells the story of his early years as a singer/songwriter, courting and marrying his 16-year old girlfriend, his three other wives and many girlfriends, his tom-catting around and how he gave up alcohol and cigarettes for his abiding love for marijuana in his new memoir,  It's A Long Story, My Life, by Willie Nelson and David Ritz, published by Little, Brown and Company.

Willie's visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue came right after he returned to the States after spending several hours in a Bahamian 'pokey' charged with marijuana possession.

Coming off of a grueling ten-night tour with singer Hank Cochran in 1977, the two men headed for a short break in the Bahamas for a little deep-sea fishing off of Cochran's boat.

They arrived on one of the islands but their luggage didn't. Collecting it the next morning, Willie had to face a customs agent who gave him the look: 'We caught you red-handed, motherf*****'.

He had found the small packet of marijuana in Willie's jeans pocket. And with that he was whisked off to a cell and a high bail set. Hank brought him a six-pack of beer and took off to get enough money for bail.

When he returned Willie was ripped. Bail was paid and as Willie jumped of the porch of the jail hollering hallelujah, he broke his left foot.

Reefer madness: Invited to perform at the White House by President  Carter, Willie was offered a late night tour and ended up smoking a joint on the roof. 'Getting stoned on the roof of the White House, you can't help but turn inward. Certain philosophical questions come to mind, like…How the f*** did I get here?'

Inebriated, he appeared before the judge who let him off on one condition: 'He's never to return to the Bahamas.'

Jimmy Carter had heard about the incident. He winked at Willie and said, 'I'm glad everything turned out well for you in the Bahamas, Willie'.

Carter viewed Willie as a soul mate, 'a country boy who grew up like him in a backwoods church believing in the Holy Spirit', Willie writes.

Willie wasn't a hippie when he first stated singing in dance halls and honky-tonks in and around the small town of Abbott, Texas, where he was raised by loving grandparents after his own mother and father separated six months into their marriage.

'We were dirt-poor in material possessions but rich in love.'

He earned the nickname 'Booger Red', when he was given a poem to read at age four or five in front of a tabernacle meeting and was so nervous, he picked his nose until it bled.

His grandfather, Daddy Nelson, died suddenly in 1939 of pneumonia. He had taught Willie that there was nothing more beautiful than music.

Now six years old, Willie's heart was broken. He had a bad case of the blues.

With a Stella guitar bought  from the Sears catalog, Daddy Nelson had taught Willie how to play right before his death.

'This would be the instrument that would enable me to survive life without him and endure a whole mess of heartbreaks to come'.

He started writing songs at age seven along with smoking – but not weed --- and used that guitar to woo young girls into giving him a kiss.

At age thirteen in 1946, Willie looked pretty clean cut and was smart enough to pursue singing to escape the brutal work of picking cotton.

'As a kid, I'd sneak off and smoke anything that burned. Loved to smoke. Would even smoke strips of cedar bark.' That segued into a three pack a day habit of smoking cigarettes.

He stayed away from marijuana after seeing the film 'Reefer Madness', a cautionary, scary tale about the forbidden subject of smoking dope.

'I was a hick from Abbott (Texas). I'd seen "Reefer Madness", and I was a little worried that a little pot might get me crazy. Wasn't I crazy enough?'

He had tried smoking dope but didn't know how to hold it in his lungs to get the benefit of the drug, so he stuck with whiskey and cigarettes.

'Because I was too dumb to see the harm they were doing.'

Occasionally he smoked some grass but he was a chain smoker of cigarettes.

'The various substances have changed over the years, but the act itself [of smoking] has never ceased to satisfy me,' he writes.

Good hearted woman: Willie, here with his grandmother, wasn't a hippie when he first stated singing in dance halls and honky-tonks in and around the small town of Abbott, Texas, where he was raised by loving grandparents after his own mother and father separated six months into their marriage

Willie got out of Texas Hill County and was drafted at age eighteen in 1951 with the Korean War raging. He got through basic training, signed up for the Air Force with the fantasy of becoming a jet pilot. He was classified 1- A but it was all over nine months later when he was given a medical discharge after refusing back surgery.

Back in Waco, he and a buddy, Zeke decided to stop at a drive-in for a cheeseburger.

And there was sixteen-year old Martha Jewel Matthews – the carhop waitress wearing a halter top and shorts.

'She was gorgeous – slim tall, sexy. Beautiful black hair. Beautiful dark eyes. Beautiful olive skin.

'I couldn't keep my eyes off of her'.

The following night she agreed to let him take her home.

'She let me. And then she let me some more. And the more she let me, the happier we both became.

'It was love – my first full blast of love, the kind of love where you lose your mind and let your heart lead the way'.

'The sex was superhot, but even hotter was the deep love that swept over us.' And in a fever, they got married. She was sixteen, he was nineteen.

Willie worked odd jobs while Martha always found a waitress gig. Both accused the other of flirting. They were always 'brawling and balling'.

After Martha had their first child, she suspected Willie was catting around when he didn't come home. He admits he couldn't resist the call of the nightlife.

'While I was asleep, she tied me up in ropes and beat me with a broom'. She also once bit his index finger down 'to the bone'.

Playing in clubs and deejaying his radio show kept Willie out for days.

'I thought I was hot s***' evident in his on-air deejay riff at KCNC in Fort Worth: 'This is your ol' cotton-pickin', snuff-dippin, tobacco-chewin' stump-jumpin', gravy-soppin', coffeepot-dodgin', dumplin'-eatin', frog-giggin' hillbilly from Hill County, Texas'.

Lucky break: Mae Axton, who worked for Elvis's manager, Colonel Parker and was  the co-writer of 'Heartbreak Hotel', came to the station to promote another singer's tour. Willie knew who she was and asked her to listen to one of the songs he wrote. She was moved. She told him he needed to be in Texas or Nashville, bigger markets for songwriters. And she offered to help him with the money needed to get there

His two gigs 'meant meeting some mighty pretty ladies who didn't require any wooing. They were more than willing'.

'It meant facing a fact that as a young man, became more and more apparent to me: A hard d*** has no conscience'.

Martha and Willie hit the road for the West Coast where Willie hoped to play in clubs only to learn he needed to be in the musicians union. One hundred bucks.

He had no money for dues, so he just left Martha and baby Lana in the car in San Diego, and hitchhiked up to Los Angeles to look for work.

With the help of a couple of 'sweet women' who showed him around the music scene, he auditioned, but no one said yes, so he was back on the highway hitchhiking up to his mother's house in Portland, Oregon where Martha and the baby were waiting.

No rides picked him up so he 'slipped into a ditch to catch some sleep'. He made a little fire with newspapers to keep warm and was nearly asphyxiated by the smoke.

He got out of the ditch just in time and hopped a freight train heading north.

In Portland, he confesses he discovered himself: 'I went from being a vagrant in a box-car to an on-the air personality on KVAN, serving Portland/Vancouver'.

Mae Axton, who worked for Elvis's manager, Colonel Parker and the co-writer of 'Heartbreak Hotel', came to the station to promote another singer's tour. She was also singer Hoyt Axton's mother.

Willie knew who she was and asked her to listen to one of the songs he wrote. She was moved. She told him he needed to be in Texas or Nashville, bigger markets for songwriters. And she offered to help him with the money needed to get there.

Willie had to head South.

Asking himself if he could commit himself to songs, 'The answer was in the stars… and the stars were just winking and blinking and setting my restless soul on fire'.

Willie's marriage to Martha was over after ten years in 1962 and he quickly moved on to Shirley Collie, a lead and harmony singer as well as the wife of a deejay friend.

Remaking the old classic film, Western Stagecoach as a made-for TV movie in 1986, Willie met the 'great love affair in my life' in the makeup trailer, Ann Marie D'Angelo, 'Annie.' They've married in September 1991

Shirley became Willie's wife number two. That marriage abruptly ended when Shirley found a hospital bill for the birth of a baby girl to a Mrs. Connie Nelson who was Willie's girlfriend on the road.

So in 1969, Shirley moved out, Connie and baby Paul moved in – along with Willie's three other children.

It was the summer of Woodstock, the last year of the Sixties that saw the inauguration of President Richard Nixon.

The Hippie Nation was in full bloom and opened Willie's eyes to being bold and creative when he saw singer Leon Russell wearing a stovepipe hat and dark aviator glasses.

'The new world represented by the Grateful Dead or the Jefferson Airplane was new only in appearance', and it appealed to Willie in its statement: 'To hell with what you think. I'll dress any way I please'.

Willie was on the road to enlightenment – with the help of the work of writer/mystic/healer Edgar Cayce and moving to marijuana and quitting tobacco and booze.

He took his first acid trip and entered the psychedelic theatre of pure sunshine and purple Jesus he saw while tripping and performing at a concert. When it was over, he never tried LSD again but it did confirm for him that pot was his first love.

'My love affair with pot became a long-term marriage. It was by far, the smoothest of all my marriages. Pot never brought me down, never busted my balls. Pot chased my blues away.

When it came to calming my energy and exciting my imagination, pot did the trick damn near every time I toked'.

'And when it came to two of life's greatest pleasures – making music and making love – liquor made me sloppy while marijuana made those experiences rapturous. It kept my head filled with poetry. I owe marijuana a lot'.

By 1975, Willie was on top of the country charts with his own outlaw pot smoking, trademark long hair and bandana wearing country style.

Remaking the old classic film, Western Stagecoach as a made-for TV movie in 1986, Willie met the 'great love affair in my life' in the makeup trailer, Ann Marie D'Angelo, 'Annie.'

'It's love that brought Annie and me together, and it's love that, nearly thirty years later, has kept us together. When it comes to romantic relationships, that's a record for me. Took me damn near a lifetime to get it right'.

They were married in September 1991.

Just turning 82 on 29 April, Willie announced he plans to launch his own brand of marijuana for discerning smokers who demand 'the best on the market'. Willie's Reserve will be available in store along with branded bongs.

Willie, himself, now smokes from a vaporizer.

It's A Long Story, My Life, by Willie Nelson and David Ritz, published by Little, Brown and Company.is available on Amazon