RIP Kris Kristofferson
Excellent songwriter, handsome guy, he lived to be 88.
Here he is with Johnny Cash performing a song Kristofferson wrote:
I especially like this short clip of an interview with Kristofferson in which he pays tribute to his friend Steve Goodman, who wrote “The City of New Orleans” and died young:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKh6ZqVKmN4
Wonderful love story with Rita Coolidge, she met him at the Los Angeles airport when they were both catching the same flight to Tennessee. Instead of continuing to his intended destination in Nashville, he got off in Memphis with her. The two married in 1973, had a child in 1974, and recorded several duet albums, which sold well.
He was an outspoken radical leftist.
And he was viciously abusive to Rita Coolidge.
But yeah, sure, he was an excellent songwriter and a handsome guy.
IrishOtter:
True, But if I’m not mistaken, he later got sober and gave up abuse as well. I think he and Coolidge ended up friendly in later life.
Yet he remained a big-mouth leftist.
There was only one (!) collaboration between fellow native Texans Kris Kristofferson and Roy Orbison (Kristofferson wrote, Orbison sang). I really like it, your mileage may vary. Have a listen, s’il vous plaît . . .
Something They Can’t Take Away, Roy Orbison
(1977, from Roy Orbison’s “Regeneration” LP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE4zNpIbk6Y
Talent is no guarantee of common sense much less political astuteness. In fact celebrity may well be a hindrance to developing those qualities.
In 1957, author Robert Heinlein astutely observed, “But there seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously — after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important … so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be both ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth. (Most of his fans were just as ignorant and unlettered; the disease was spreading.)” ” To Sail Beyond the Sunset”
I thought I remembered him with Jane Fonda in “Coming Home.” Actually that was Jon Voight, who’s since become very conservative. Kristofferson and Fonda did make a film together, but not many people saw it. I worked with a 40 year old woman who was besotted with Kristofferson. Twenty years later, I worked with someone who felt the same way about Bruce Springsteen. The names and faces change, but fandom never ends.
Kris Kristofferson was quite a talented guy, not just in music and film acting, but also academically and athletically. I don’t remember politics as a major part of the mix. I think he was two souled — not to say anything about gender identity. He was the English major and sensitive songwriter, also the rough, tough character he played in the movies. Was it easy for him to combine those two identities? Could he successfully combine them, or successfully separate them, or was one side always flowing into the other and making things uncomfortable for him?
His father was an Air Force general and Kris was destined for a military career by the family. General Kristofferson didn’t much like it when Kris turned down an opportunity to teach at West Point and left the military to be a struggling songwriter and janitor at a recording studio. Wikipedia says there was no word about whether they ever reconciled. I hope they did. R.I.P.
“Me and Bobby McGee” is a gorgeous song that has worn well over the years.
I like his version of Bobbie McGee much better than Joplin’s, which I think is a mess. Kris’ version sounds like country music.
He was also good in the movie Lone Star.
He started his songwriting career pushing a broom in a recording studio. Very talented guy!
Transferring my comments on Kristofferson in Open Thread to here.
___________________________________________
RIP Kris Kristofferson (1936-2024).
Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…
I’ll miss him. He was an interesting fellow, as well as a great singer/songwriter:
___________________________________________
He was born June 2, 1936, in Brownsville, Texas. His father was a career Army Air Corps and Air Force officer, and his family moved frequently. He attended high school in San Mateo, Calif., where he proved both a strong student and a gifted athlete. He graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English from Pomona College and attended Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar.
While in the U.K., Kristofferson cut his first records as Kris Carson. However, on returning to the U.S., he joined the army under pressure from his family. He ultimately attained the rank of captain, and was able to pilot a helicopter. However, on the eve of beginning an assignment to teach English at West Point, he left the army, and in 1965 he moved to Nashville to pursue music full-time. His family promptly cut ties with him.
https://variety.com/2024/film/obituaries-people-news/kris-kristofferson-dead-country-music-legend-actor-1236159472/
Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
–Leonard Cohen, “Bird on the Wire”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGvwvxA83Cs
__________________________
Kristofferson told Cohen he wanted these lines on his grave stone. Cohen said he would be insulted if Kristofferson didn’t.
Neither will be around to see it.
I hope so.
Dax,
I agree with your opinion of Joplin’s version of “Bobby McGee.”
Well, if one doesn’t like Joplin, one doesn’t like her covers.
Kristofferson, perhaps self-effacingly, is on record that he always liked the covers of his songs better than his own.
He was moved to tears by Janis’s “Bobby McGee.”
Here’s Kristofferson’s story of “Me and Bobby McGee”:
____________________________________
I was working the Gulf of Mexico on oil rigs, flying helicopters. I’d lost my family to my years of failing as a songwriter. All I had were bills, child support, and grief. And I was about to get fired for not letting 24 hours go between the throttle and the bottle. It looked like I’d trashed my act. But there was something liberating about it. By not having to live up to people’s expectations, I was somehow free.
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/janis-joplin/me-and-bobby-mcgee
I don’t and didn’t listen to much country, so I missed Kristofferson’s work pretty much.
The song “Sunday Morning Coming Down” always struck me, the title, as a gateway to some serious stuff. But the lyrics, which I have just read, aren’t as serious as I had thought the concept would be.
A hangover and being alone.. Yeah. Okay. Happens all the time, probably to most of us at one time or another.
Yeah, country music is hardly ever about the things that happen to all of us at one time of another. 🙂
–Kris Kristofferson, “Sunday morning coming down (1970)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbqGWTxwZEA
I thought it was about the next morning after tripping hard on LSD the Saturday night before… We’ve all been there!
IrishOtter49
He was an outspoken radical leftist….Yet he remained a big-mouth leftist.
Here is one of his songs. Kris Kristofferson Sandinista
The Sandinistas were fanboys of Soviet imperialism, well before Ronald Reagan became President. Unfortunately, very little of this got translated into English.
1. Carlos Fonseca one of the 3 founders of the FSLN, wrote a pamphlet in 1957, Un Nicaragüense en Moscú (A Nicaraguan in Moscow), about his time there at an international youth festival. Among other things he told us that there was freedom of religion in the USSR, and that in 1956 the Russians saved Hungary from Fascism. ( I knew a number of Iron Curtain refugees from Hungary who made it to Argentina, including two work mates.)
2. In March 1980, the Sandinistas signed a joint proclamation with the USSR supporting the “progressive transformations” in Afghanistan thanks to the recent Soviet invasion.
(These two examples are mentioned in varying detail in the Central American Crisis Reader- Leiken ed.)
3. In early 1982, the Nicaraguan government jailed a Polish national upon his land entry into Nicaragua with a valid visa, on suspicion of belonging to Solidarity. After 5 months in prison, he was released. Robert Czarkowski wrote a book about his experience: De Polonia a Nicaragua.
As far as I am concerned the Sandalistas, including Kris Kristofferson, were a bunch of ignorant fools.
Can’t say I have entirely approved of Willie’s forays into politics, but he is a great musician. I heard a funny story about Willie from the daughter of one of his former landlords. Kris Kristofferson- don’t know his music that well.
Interesting that he spent some time as a helicopter pilot for offshore rigs in the Gu’f of Mexico. One time on a sunny and windless day in the Gu’f, a helicopter pilot taking me out to a rig let me take the throttle for a minute or so. I was the only passenger, and weather was perfect.
huxley
Or perhaps, realistically.
It was Christmas and I came out of the Yukon. My friend told the future Mrs X to bring some Kris Kristofferson records as I liked him. I met Mrs X for the first time. In December we are married 50 years.
@ Xylourgos > Wishing you in advance a very happy Golden Anniversary!
Thanks AF and Kalo Mina to all.
@Gringo- “As far as I’m concerned, the Sandalista’s were a bunch of ignorant commies”. Thought I’d correct you, even if ignorant and commies is redundant. I knew many “sandalistas” up close and personal and they were not pretty and were commies. A couple of which admitted it privately. My guess is that KK was also. Having said all that, I did like some of his music during my youth when I had no idea who was what; and I enjoyed his acting in “A Star is Born” with Barbra Streisand.
huxley
Whatever the song is about is self-imposed. Whether it’s booze, drugs, or grossing out some girl you were interested in, or……self imposed.
The question of why you’d do that, whatever it is, doesn’t go away on Sunday morning. It just gets clearer.
Kristofferson assiduously and successfully cultivated a persona as the sensitive tough guy, the cowboy with a PhD. That’s catnip to a lot of women and, for that matter, to a lot men as well. But he remained a big-mouth leftist all his life.
P.S. “A Star is Born” is one of the worst movies in cinematic history, as was Kristofferson’s performance in it. “Laughably execrable” is a term that springs to mind in describing both. He was reportedly drunk and stoned his whole time on the set and a son-of-a-bitch to boot. His drunken/stoned dust-ups with Streisand and Jon Peters are legendary — and pathetic. But, hey, he advocated and spoke out (did he ever!) in support of leftist causes, and he wrote sensitive songs about being a loser-drunk, so I guess all can be forgiven.
@IrishOtter49–perhaps he did act poorly—dunno in retrospect, as I haven’t seen it as an adult. At the time, all of my silly friends and I liked him and liked the movie!
And another one bites the dust ……