Inside Kris Kristofferson’s incredible life from Army pilot & star athlete to country music legend and Hollywood royalty
THE trappings of fame never sat comfortably with Kris Kristofferson.
The country singer and Hollywood actor, who died at the weekend aged 88, preferred a simple, free-spirited existence.
Despite coming from a military family and once flying helicopters for the US Army, he was a natural-born outsider.
This perhaps explained my encounter with him one wintry early evening some years ago in a dimly lit underground coach park on London’s Cromwell Road.
Having taken the lift at a big Tesco superstore, I descended several levels to where Kristofferson’s tour bus was stationed.
I was greeted by the man himself — tall, barefooted and dressed down in jeans and a black T-shirt.
Not for him the cut-crystal chandeliers of a five-star Park Lane hotel, this was where he chose to stay the night before his show at the Royal Albert Hall.
As we sat at a tiny table bearing a half-filled bottle of Jack Daniel’s — and a pile of crumpled clothes on the floor beside us — the dad of eight spent the next couple of hours regaling me with anecdotes from his life less ordinary.
To many, Kristofferson is best known as the chiselled, bearded hunk with piercing, deep-set blue eyes who appeared opposite Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born.
Or maybe you remember him as trucker “Rubber Duck” in Convoy, hurtling across Arizona being chased by cops with girlfriend Melissa (Ali MacGraw) in tow.
But to me, his death at home in Hawaii marks the passing of a truly great American songwriter whose story is more unusual than any Hollywood movie script.
‘I was hooked’
His songs included Me And Bobby McGee, which became a posthumous No1 in the States for former girlfriend, Janis Joplin — the wild singer who burned bright as a shooting star and then left us aged 27.
Kristofferson wrote the sensual Help Me Make It Through The Night, recorded by Elvis Presley among many others, and the ultimate hangover song, Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, brought into the spotlight by his hero and (subsequently) friend, Johnny Cash.
When we talked, I found Kristofferson to be humble, self-deprecating but with a discernible sense of pride about him.
This, I sensed, came from the fact that he had followed his dream rather than the path his strict parents would have chosen for him.
He was born on June 22, 1936, the son of Lars, a US Air Force Major General of Swedish descent.
From an early age, Kristofferson was pushed into following his father’s footsteps but his passion for music never dimmed.
I got a letter from my family disowning me. My mother said it was cute when I idolised Hank Williams as a kid but she was disappointed ‘to find this grown man idolising Johnny Cash, who everyone knows is a drug addict.
“I know the first songs I made up were when I was 11 and still living in Texas,” he told me.
“I continued to write after we moved out to California. By then, Hank Williams was my hero. From the time I first heard him sing Love Sick Blues, I was hooked.”
With his muscular physique, Kristofferson excelled in the sporting arena at the private Pomona College, representing it in rugby union, American football and athletics.
Though his prowess won him a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University (just like ex-President Bill Clinton), where he won a blue for boxing, songwriting was never far from his thoughts.
While in England, he answered an ad which simply read, “DIAL FAME”.
It put him in touch with a promoter “who got me a deal with Top Rank Records and I did a session with Tony Hatch. [Remembered for the Crossroads theme tune.]
“It wasn’t good enough and never released. I was made aware that my voice wasn’t commercial enough.”
Next came marriage to childhood sweetheart Fran Beer and a stint in the US Army, flying helicopters out of Germany.
Kristofferson would later put the skill to good use when, as a cash-strapped songwriter, he took crews to oil rigs in the Gulf Of Mexico.
He picked up his story again: “I finished my time in Germany and was on my way to teach English literature at West Point military academy when I got an invitation to Nashville.
“I had two weeks’ leave so I went. I fell in love with the place.” He met country stars such as Bobby Bare, Dave Dudley and Cowboy Jack Clement. One night, he got to shake hands with Johnny Cash backstage.
“That moment was electric,” said Kristofferson. “He was everything I expected. Of course, he was pretty dangerous in those days, skinny and looking like death.
“He was my hero, my inspiration. He went on to become my champion. He always encouraged me. Later I got to work with him on the same stage.”
With his destiny clear, Kris turned his back on Westpoint and got a job as a janitor at Columbia studios in Music Row, living in what he described as a “slum”.
His decision and his admiration for Cash came at a price.
“I got a letter from my family disowning me. My mother said it was cute when I idolised Hank Williams as a kid but she was disappointed ‘to find this grown man idolising Johnny Cash, who everyone knows is a drug addict’.
“To think that John was on the cover of Time magazine when he died, like the father of the country. He should be on Mount Rushmore.”
Not long afterwards, Bob Dylan arrived in town to record his seminal double album Blonde On Blonde.
“I supplied the tapes, emptied the ashtrays, swept the floors — and I was at the sessions which were closed to everyone else. Police were outside.
“Being there exposed me to music, to songwriting and to performance, making up for the years I hadn’t paid my dues.”
Kristofferson said Jody And The Kid was “probably the first really good song I wrote.
“I remember [country singer] Danny Dill telling me he heard it on his car radio. He pulled over to the side of the road and cried — and this guy was a real gruff, big, mean old son of a bitch!”
‘It tore me up’
With his songwriting career showing signs of taking off, Kristofferson’s marriage crumbled.
“My wife left and my family had fallen apart. They didn’t see the glory of this awful place I was living in.”
Then, in 1969, when Kristofferson was alone, depressed and drinking too much, the great songs began flowing — among them Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down and Me And Bobby McGee. Kris explained: “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down would have died if John [Johnny Cash] hadn’t done it on his TV show.
“They wanted him to change the line, ‘Wishing Lord that I was stoned’. I remember arguing after someone had suggested, ‘Wishing Lord that I was home’.
“John just stood there watching us. I would have accepted whatever he did — he was Johnny Cash.
“Then, when I was watching on the balcony, he looked up and sang, ‘Wishing Lord that I was stoned’. That saved the song. It got to be song of the year because of that.”
When Roger Miller turned Me And Bobby McGee into a hit on the country charts in 1970, Kristofferson knew he “never had to go to work again”.
But he accepted that Janis Joplin, for a short while his girlfriend, delivered the definitive version. “I didn’t know she’d cut it even though we lived together for a couple of months,” he told me. “I had just started performing and she was singing somewhere else so we’d gone in different directions.
“I was up at Joan Baez’s house in Monterey and she came to tell me Janis had died.
“I went down to LA and we were all at the motel where she died and her producer Paul Rothchild [also The Doors] said, ‘Come by my office, I want to play you something’.
“He played me Janis singing Me And Bobby McGee and I couldn’t even stay in the room till the end. It tore me up.
“Janis was sad but very funny, very smart. One of the most soulful singers I’ve ever heard. She felt that if she wasn’t having hit songs, nobody would give a s**t.
“I guess they’d been kinda mean to her back in high school at Port Arthur.”
Back when I was a janitor, if I’d ever dreamed I‘d be standing up on stage with those guys and be close friends with all of them, I would have thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
At that time, Kristofferson was making the transition from songwriter to performer. A gig in Los Angeles opening for Linda Ronstadt at the Troubadour gave him the exposure he needed.
Kristofferson never thought he had a great singing voice but he certainly had the songs and the looks, and his audience was captivated.
“Barbra Streisand and film director Sam Peckinpah came along,” he recalled, affirming that the Troubadour show sowed the seeds of his film career.
He appeared in three contrasting Peckinpah films: Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, also starring James Coburn and Bob Dylan, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia and Convoy.
“Sam was in love with Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down. It was a favourite song with many alcoholics! And I was already blown away with his other films like The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs,” said Kristofferson.
As a singer, he faced his biggest crowd at the 1970 Isle Of Wight Festival. “They hated me! They hated everyone,” he exclaimed.
“I remember Jimi Hendrix trying his best for a couple of hours but the only guy they liked was Leonard Cohen. I stood there with Zal Yanovsky from my band. He said, ‘Boss, Leonard is an angst poet, you’re an alcoholic’. Cruel but fair!”
Kristofferson accepted he had more than his fair share of the hard stuff but insisted it never got in his way.
“I don’t think I could’ve gotten up on stage without it. It gave me Dutch courage,” he said.
By 1973, he had married singer Rita Coolidge, getting divorced six years later. He also became a superstar, recognised the world over, mostly for his Hollywood roles in westerns.
Love story
He says of his appearance in the 1976 version of weepie A Star Is Born with Streisand: “I have always been proud of that one. I give most of the credit to Barbra.
“The music part was unfortunate because I couldn’t sing my own stuff. It was depressing singing songs I couldn’t identify with. I thought the love story part worked, though.”
As for the daft but fun Convoy, he added: “It wasn’t Sam’s best film but it was popular around the world. They loved it in places like China and South America just because of the big trucks.
“When I told my band, ‘Well, it looks like I’m going to spend the next few months stuck in a truck with Ali MacGraw’, my guitar player said, ‘Well, that beats whatever I had planned!’”
In the early Eighties, Kristofferson became a member of country supergroup The Highwaymen with Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.
“I didn’t think I was in their class as a performer,” he said. “My songwriting got me in there. I guess it gave me enough audacity to think I belonged. Willie phrases like a jazz singer, almost like Sinatra.
“Back when I was a janitor, if I’d ever dreamed I’d be standing up on stage with those guys and be close friends with all of them, I would have thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”
At the time of our car park encounter, Kristofferson was still performing and writing, living in either Malibu or Maui with third wife Lisa Meyers.
I asked him if he thought that music was the most important aspect of his life.
“It’s closest to the soul,” he answered.
He later said he would like the first three lines of Leonard Cohen’s Bird On The Wire inscribed on his gravestone.
Like a bird on the wire. Like a drunk in a midnight choir. I have tried in my way to be free.
I have tried in my way to be free.