NEED TO KNOW
- Gunnar and Ricky Nelson are opening up about life because the sons of pop icon Ricky Nelson — and because the grandsons of Ozzie and Harriet
- The similar twins have a brand new e-book, What Occurred To Your Hair?
- In an unique interview with ipromiseyoumedia, they open up about their father’s legacy — and their very own
Social media discourse round “nepo infants” could also be considerably latest, however for Gunnar and Matthew Nelson, the dialog is nothing new.
The 58-year-old similar twins are the sons of Ricky Nelson — a teen idol of the Fifties and 60s who died in a tragic airplane crash at age 45 — and the grandsons of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, the celebrities of the eponymous tv present.
Born to an extended line of musicians and entertainers (their great-grandparents had been vaudevillians), Gunnar and Matt began writing music at age 6, taking pictures to fame in their very own proper after launching arduous rock duo Nelson within the early Nineteen Eighties.
At this time, the Nelsons are listed within the Guinness Ebook of World Information as the one household to succeed in primary file standing in three successive generations.
However as Gunnar and Matthew — who additionally carry out below the title of Ricky Nelson Remembered, as a tribute to their father — inform ipromiseyoumedia in a latest unique interview, they nonetheless have one thing to show.
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“It has been a lifetime of misperception, however … it is actually been a Nelson’s job, all through the final 100 years of leisure, to make folks overlook about actuality,” Gunnar muses. “Our complete household was about making folks overlook concerning the payments they needed to pay, or the connection that they had that was taking place in flames and all that.”
However the tradition, they word, has shifted — and the 2 at the moment are able to open up about their household, their dad’s airplane crash, and their very own journeys within the music business, in a brand new e-book, What Occurred to Your Hair?, out Dec. 16, 2025.
“That is actually the primary alternative to set the file straight, not simply on what occurred with our dad’s airplane crash but in addition the attention-grabbing information behind our grandpa Ozzie — writing, producing, enhancing, directing and starring in all 435 episodes of the longest-running sitcom in tv historical past [The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet], and never getting a single Emmy nod,” Gunnar says. “Or our father promoting half a billion singles and pioneering not solely early rock and roll in its childhood, however reinventing himself as one of many first true nation rockers — and never one single Grammy.”
As for the “nepo child” stuff, the brothers are fast to notice that they had been born into music — however discovered success themselves, writing and producing their very own music since their early days.
Their very own life and childhood, they add, was “not Ozzie and Harriet.”
“[The book] is our first actual alternative to inform our personal story with our personal voices and never have some file firm particular person put a spin on it, to attempt to promote posters,” Matt tells ipromiseyoumedia.
Ricky and his spouse Kristin (who married in 1963 and divorced in 1982) had 4 kids: Gunnar and Matthew, in addition to son Sam and daughter Tracy.
The brothers had been simply 18 when their dad and 6 others died in the course of the crash-landing of his band’s plane on Dec. 31, 1985. The airplane, a Douglas DC-3, caught hearth mid-flight close to De Kalb, Texas. Each pilots survived the crash.
As they element within the e-book, they had been initially meant to be on the flight, too — till their dad had a change of coronary heart on the final minute, asking them to fly business to fulfill he and his band relatively than fly aboard the personal flight. Additionally they describe — every in their very own phrases — studying concerning the airplane crash in actual time, and the extraordinary media scrutiny that ensued.
One of the poignant chapters of the e-book, although, particulars their ultimate dialog with their father, after he secretly attended one in all their live shows, hiding at the back of the venue with a hat pulled over his head.
“You understand, the solar was developing over the valley, and we talked all night time and he mentioned, ‘I need you to know that I like you, however I like you as my friends,'” Matt remembers. “You type of rewind that week — the household was again collectively, we had been all residing collectively, he informed that to us after which informed us simply as shortly, ‘I do not need you going [on the plane], meet me there.’ He had a sense, you understand … I imagine that God had a bit phrase with him.”
The 2 additionally contact on different private subjects — their mom’s alcoholism and their mother and father’ messy divorce — however the via line, they are saying, is gratitude.
“It was that love of music and escaping into that and in addition our relationship with one another that obtained us via a fairly crappy childhood, to be trustworthy with you,” Gunnar says. “And we had been type of born with the angle of like, ‘Hey, what good can we discover from this?’ And I do know it sounds trite, however I believe gratitude is every little thing. It would not matter how darkish issues get and the way broke you might be — and we have been dealer than broke, hundreds of thousands within the gap earlier than — however we have by no means given up.”
And thru all of it, they add, they’ve had one another — and have all the time been desirous to step out on their very own phrases.
“In Ozzie and Harriet’s case… it was all about being a surrogate household for hundreds of thousands of youngsters on the market that maybe did not have a terrific household of their very own,” Matthew says. “And our dad, you understand, he liked rock and roll and we have all the time liked it too, we had that in frequent with one another. However the e-book was nearly referred to as The Boys Have Every Different as a result of that was type of like the thrill phrase across the household.”
What Occurred to Your Hair? was launched Dec. 16, 2025.