LOS ANGELES – If Kris Kristofferson’s life were fiction, it would seem a little unbelievable.
He was a Texas-born Golden Gloves boxer, star football player, Rhodes Scholar, and helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army before leaving his teaching job at West Point to briefly become a janitor and become an American. He was on his way to becoming one of the greatest singers of all time. -20th century songwriter.
And, as if for inspiration in the process, he became a devilishly handsome big-movie star who could play both rugged outlaws and romantic protagonists.
Christopherson, who was married to his third wife Lisa Myers for the last 40 years of his life and was the father of eight children, died Saturday at age 88 at his home in Maui, Hawaii, surrounded by his family.
He had a master’s degree in English from Oxford and could memorize and quote William Blake’s poems. One of his best songs, “The Pilgrim,” was probably performed in “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” by an even older English writer, John Bunyan. Kristofferson’s title character could be his own description.
“He walks with the contradictions of part truth and part fiction, taking every wrong turn on his lonely journey home.”
Although the “lonely” part certainly didn’t apply to me. Kristofferson had no shortage of friends, including heroes like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, who became mentors and close allies.
While away from the military, he swept floors and emptied ashtrays at Columbia Records in Nashville to gain access to stars including Cash.
He told the Associated Press in 2006 that his career would not have happened without the Man in Black recording the most famous version of Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down.”
“He protected me before he cut my songs,” Kristofferson said. “He broke my first record, which was my best record that year. He put me on stage for the first time.”
Although Kristofferson was a major performer and hitmaker in his own right, he didn’t have the golden voice of his friends.
Nelson demonstrated his vocal mastery with an entire album of Kristofferson songs, and several songs, including “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again),” became lifelong live staples.
“There is no better songwriter than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said in a 2009 award ceremony tribute. “Everything he writes is standard.”
Kristofferson straddled the worlds of classic country music and baby boomer hippie culture more comfortably than anyone else. Janis Joplin was another close friend, and her howling rendition of Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee” would become a hit soon after her death in 1970. It is probably Kristofferson’s best known version of the song, as he used her arrangement. When he played that song live.
Kristofferson also embraced young kindred spirits like Sinead O’Connor.
O’Connor, a critic of the Roman Catholic Church long before the sexual abuse allegations became widely publicized, was loudly booed at the Bob Dylan memorial service at Madison Square Garden in 1992. Two weeks later, while appearing on a TV show, he tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II. “Saturday Night Live.”
Kristofferson came out and escorted her off the stage in solidarity and consolation. A few years later, he recorded “Sister Sinead,” in which he wrote:
His left-wing politics may have been his biggest “contradiction,” coming from a country-singing veteran from Brownsville, Texas. He was an ardent supporter of the Palestinian people and passionately criticized many military actions in Central America and the Middle East from the stage, sometimes to the chagrin of his audiences. Although he sometimes clashed with hawkish stars like Toby Keith, he counted many conservative country stars as friends and supporters.
In a 1995 interview with The Associated Press, Kristofferson said he recalled a woman who complained about his song about killing babies in the name of freedom.
“I said, ‘So what made you angry? The fact that I said it or the fact that we’re doing it?'” Kristofferson said. what was happening? ”
For him there was no contradiction; his political thinking took into account his military past.
“It was especially painful when I started questioning some of the things that were being done in my name,” he told The Associated Press in 2006.
But no one was fazed by the blue-eyed gaze of the man on the screen. Legendary western director Sam Peckinpah saw him as the perfect young outlaw to play alongside James Coburn in 1973’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
However, he is best known for playing handsome lovers in movies centered around strong women. Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Barbra Streisand in the 1976 film A Star. Bradley Cooper also played this role in the 2018 remake of “The Birth of a Child.”
Streisand said on Instagram that she was developing “A Star Is Born” when she saw Kristofferson on stage at the Troubadour in Los Angeles.
“I knew he was special,” she wrote.
Scorsese said Monday that Kristofferson was “a wonderful actor and a remarkable presence on screen. The time I spent with Kristofferson when we made ‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,’ It was one of the highlights of my life.”
The director said in a statement that he was listening to “Me and Bobby McGee” “like half the world away.”
Kristofferson was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004, but by the time he became a member of the supergroup Highwaymen along with Cash, Waylon Jennings and Nelson in the mid-1980s, he was already more than happy to canonize. It had been. Only one member remains currently. For Kristofferson, it meant that the people he most respected considered him an equal.
“It was kind of surreal to not only be recorded by them, but to be friends with them and work with them,” Kristofferson told The Associated Press in 2005. “I felt like I saw my face on Mount Rushmore.”
Nelson and Cash’s daughter Roseanne was one of the many artists who attended the 2016 Kristofferson memorial concert, joining the group on stage for a rendition of Kristofferson’s song “Why Me.”
Kristofferson has long wanted to be remembered.
Another friend, Leonard Cohen, wrote in the liner notes of his greatest hits collection that Kristofferson once said he wanted the opening lines of Cohen’s “Bird on the Wire” to be engraved on his tombstone. I’m writing. Midnight Choir, I have been trying to be free in my own way. ”
That’s appropriate enough, but another line from Kristofferson from “Pilgrim” might be just as helpful.
“The up was worth the down.”
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