Kris Kristofferson
Interviews Esquire
May 1, 1999
What I've Learned: Kris Kristofferson
By Scott Carrier
You don't paddle against the current, you paddle with it. And if you get good at it, you throw away the oars.
Never give up, which is the lesson I learned from boxing. As soon as you learn to never give up, you have to learn the power and wisdom of unconditional surrender, and that one doesn't cancel out the other; they just exist as contradictions. The wisdom of it comes as you get older.
If you can't get out of something, get into it. If you can't fix it, fuck it.
Tell the truth. Sing with passion. Work with laughter. Love with heart. 'Cause that's all that matters in the end.
There are points in your life, especially if you have creative ambitions, where selfishness is necessary.
If God made anything better than women, I think he kept it for himself.
I believe in the herb, and if it were up to me, it would be legalized.
The number-one rule of the road is never go to bed with anyone crazier than yourself. You will break this rule, and you will be sorry.
I've been trying to think of things to tell my kids, something that I could pass down, and it's like, gee whiz, I maybe never learned anything that didn't contradict itself.
The closest I've come to knowing myself is in losing myself. That's why I loved football before I loved music. I could lose myself in it. Music and drugs and rock 'n' roll -- all of it is for you to lose yourself.
Kissinger had his reasons.
The older I get, the less conservative I become.
Dennis Hopper playing golf is one of the first signs of the apocalypse. It's true -- he's become a Republican.
It's hard to turn away when you feel like you are getting paid more than you deserve.
When I was thirty and a long time after that, I felt like I had to leave home to do what I had to do. Now, it's just the opposite.
The one thing I regret is missing the time with my older children when they were young. I think of it when I'm carrying my little four-year-old around. We'd already split up by the time my son was born, and I rarely got to hold him, but, fortunately, we are very close now. In fact, if I had to live with one person on an island, I'd probably live with him, 'cause he's the funniest son of a bitch I know.
I was a slow starter. I mean, I grew up in the fifties, and, jeez, I wasn't even laid in high school. Looking back on it, I didn't know anything, which was kind of unfortunate for my first couple of wives. When I found out that girls like sex as much as guys, I was, for many years, feeling like that was my function. I mean, I wasn't as bad as Clinton, but I was led by the pecker.
I'm sure you slow down a little bit, but I'm also sure that you'll probably be getting a hard-on until they throw dirt on you.
Being in love with a lot of people is incompatible with a stable family life.
The desire to be fucked-up probably leaves you, but the desire to be high never does.
I've tried to be more self-sufficient as I've gotten older. I'd like to not worry about whether they're going to sell my next album or book. Hell, William Blake wasn't even published in his lifetime.
When was the last time you looked at the stars with the wonder they deserve? That they're out there is totally a mystery.
Freedom is just another word: It seems to get truer the older I get. It makes me think about the time when my apartment got robbed and everything was gone and I was disowned by my family. I owed money to a hospital and I owed my wife five hundred a month for child support and I thought, "I'm losing my job." I hadn't any money, I hadn't anything going for me, but it was liberating. I was in this Evangeline Motel, like something out of Psycho, a filthy place, just sitting there with this neon Jesus outside the door, in the swamps outside of Lafayette, Louisiana, and I thought, "Fuck. I'm on the bottom, can't go any lower" -- and from then on, man, I drove my car to the airport, left it there, and never went back to get it. Went to Nashville and called this friend of mine, Mickey Newberry, and told him I'd just got fired, and he said, "Great. Johnny Cash is shooting a new TV show. Come up, and we can pitch him some songs." The next moment, they cut three of my songs, and they were hits. I never had to go back to work again.
__________________________________________________________________
The Guardian, Tuesday 4 March 2008
Kris Kristofferson is alone on stage here at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and the ladies in the house could not be happier. They call out encouragement between songs, some of it mildly ribald, even though for the most part they are respectable women whose knicker-flinging days are deep in the past. But they still remember the bare-chested man who smooched with Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born, back in 1977. They remember Jesus Was a Capricorn, and Loving Her Was Easier, and Help Me Make It Through the Night; they remember Kristofferson's medallion-man physique, his sexy growl, his silver-flecked beard and come-hither eyes. Apparently, it's still an intoxicating brew. My own date - who has campaigned, shall we say, aggressively for my plus-one ticket - is here to see one man and one man only. And it isn't me.
On stage, Kristofferson sings plaintively in his untutored baritone before clamping his mouth around his harmonica and - yikes! - emitting an ear-splitting off-key note, followed by a splutter, a laugh and the meek excuse, "Wrong goddamn harmonica!" It's the kind of moment that gets people yanked off stage at amateur night, but this audience is more forgiving.
Pepperdine, a conservative university, isn't a place one associates with a left-winger like Kristofferson, who is on first-name terms with Daniel Ortega. For a start, the dean of its law school is a former nemesis of Bill Clinton's - hence my question when Kristofferson and I meet before the show: "So, have you and Ken Starr had your summit yet?" Kristofferson laughs. "Oh God, every time I'm here I think they're gonna get me! But, no, I have a son here, and my wife went here, too - though, man, I do sometimes feel out of place."
Like a lot of famous people, Kristofferson seems smaller in real life (he is about 5ft 8in), and the neatly trimmed beard and hair are making the transition from silver to white. He is 71 and looking good on it, despite having had heart-bypass surgery a few years ago. He is smart, poetic and witty in a dry, southern way, and seems to have absolutely no pretensions about himself.
Kristofferson always saw himself first and foremost as a songwriter. "None of the other stuff would ever have happened if it wasn't for the songwriting. I've come to appreciate how special a song is compared to other art forms, because you can carry it around in your head and your heart and it remains part of you. It just comes as natural as a bird to me, always did. It's the way singer-songwriters make sense of our lives."
Kristofferson moved to Nashville after leaving the army in 1965, and started pitching songs up and down Music Row. "I gotta tell you, I really didn't know if I was ever gonna sell any songs for a long time. I figured I was in it for me and whatever satisfaction I could get out of it. But eventually it got so I could make a living."
It took a long time - five years - but by the time his material caught on, he was selling songs to the biggest names in town. Sunday Morning Coming Down went to Johnny Cash after Kristofferson landed a helicopter on Cash's lawn to catch his attention. Waylon Jennings recorded The Taker. Me and Bobby McGee went to Roger Miller, whose version then fell into the hands of Janis Joplin, for whom it was a hit, her biggest ever, in the immediate aftermath of her death in 1971.
In his heyday, Kristofferson wrote songs for so many people that by 1972 he almost single-handedly swept the Grammy songwriter awards. "I ended up being friends with all my heroes," he recalls wistfully. "Lefty Frizzell, George Jones, Johnny Cash - it was incredible." In the process he became a star in his own right.
They are dropping like flies these days, his old pals; Jennings and Cash in just the last couple of years. "And it's only gonna get worse!" he laughs. He and Willie Nelson are still standing, though.
"He was my hero when I came into town in 65, and he's probably my closest friend right now - saw him last night. You know, he didn't even have a beard back then. I had the very first beard in all of country music. And he used to give me a lot of shit for it!"
The beard was an accident, Kristofferson says. "I had pneumonia and I had to go into hospital for a week, didn't shave the whole time. And when I came out, some magazine took a picture of me and called it 'the new face of country music'. Ever since then Willie, too, has just looked as wild as heck."
Kristofferson was not to the Nashville manner born. Born in 1936, he grew up in a conservative Texas military family, the eldest son of an army pilot, and he excelled at the things soldiers' sons are expected to excel at before they, too, join up. He was a fine athlete, a college fratboy, and he won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, where he read English at Merton College.
The move to Nashville didn't please his parents: he had reached the rank of captain by then, with a pilot's licence and the prospect of a teaching post at West Point military academy. Turning all that down prompted a 25-year period in which he exchanged not a word with his mother. "The general [Kristofferson Sr] wasn't as shocked by it as the general's wife," he says. "Country music at that time was held in very low esteem outside of the south - 'shitkicker music' - but I bought every one of those old Hank Williams singles, old 78s, when they first came out. I'm old enough that his death was a real blow to me."
If becoming a sought-after Nashville songwriter was hard, becoming a movie star proved easy. Kristofferson's first experience was on Dennis Hopper's calamitous The Last Movie, in 1971. "We were down in Peru in this old Inca village, and Dennis was as crazy as he ever was. I mean, I see the guy he's mellowed into now, doing his retirement-fund commercials on TV, and I ove Dennis, but back then he was" - and here his voice assumes an awed tone - "the most self-destructive guy I had ever seen! He got a priest defrocked, because he got him involved in some kind of weird mass for James Dean. He antagonised the military and all the politicians. It was crazy."
Cisco Pike, a year later, was easier. Kristofferson played a paroled folk singer blackmailed by Gene Hackman's narcotics cop. Lost to posterity for 30 years, it's the best movie he ever made. The only acting lesson he ever took, Kristofferson says, came from his old friend Anthony Zerbe: "'Enjoy yourself. Ignore the camera.' That was it."
Movies, music, and marriage to Rita Coolidge in 1973 - they recorded four albums together - kept him busy for the rest of the decade. The apogee of his career came with the 1977 remake of A Star Is Born, in which Kristofferson is the only compelling figure.
By that time he was, like his character, a fully fledged boozehound. "I had a half-gallon of Jose Cuervo in my trailer and they never let it empty. They just kept coming back in and filling it up, same half-gallon bottle. I don't know how much I was drinking, but it was a lot, and I had to quit it soon after. Doctor said my liver was the size of a football and that if I didn't quit, I was gonna kill myself. I had a new little daughter, so I quit. I drink wine today, but at the time I just went cold turkey. It was probably harder on the people around me than on myself."
Talking of drinkers, Kristofferson took major roles in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and Convoy, two of the films that nearly killed Sam Peckinpah.
"I'll tell ya what - he was on the way out. When we were on Convoy, they tried to fire him, and I told them I'd walk, too, if they did. And I guess I was hot enough then that they gave a shit. But afterwards I'm walking out of there back to my truck and Peckinpah comes out and says, 'Goddamn you, ya stupid sonofabitch, I was almost outta here and you dropped me back in this shit!'"
Lisa, Kris's third wife and his manager, shows up just as we are broaching politics again. It's showtime, so we never get to talk about Janis Joplin (whom Kristofferson dated), or the Highwaymen (the band he formed with Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings), or John Sayles (who directed him in Lone Star in 1996). But Kristofferson gets in a parting shot about Iran-Contra and the war in Iraq. "Iran-Contra! We should have jailed all those guys for ever back then, and we wouldn't be where we are right now - because it's the same guys now, the same 20 guys!"
The next time I see him, he's singing Help Me Make It Through the Night. He doesn't need our help.
GAC News & Notes
Kris Kristofferson Gets Closer To The Bone
I recently got to hang out in the studio and watch as GAC host Suzanne Alexander sat down for an intimate interview with the legendary Kris Kristofferson. It was definitely a day that reminded me how cool my job is! Suzanne introduced Kris as “an icon, an outlaw, poet, actor, activist, a true artist.” Throw in former Rhodes Scholar, Grammy Award winner, Country Music Hall of Famer and you get a just a bit closer to fully describing one of the most respected artists to ever write and record music.
Earlier this week Kris released his latest and most personal collection of songs to date on Closer To The Bone. The album features 11 tracks plus a special hidden bonus track.
“I like the intimacy of the new album,” says Kris. “It has a general mood of reflecting on where we all are at this end of life.”
No track speaks to that description more than the title song, “Closer To The Bone.” Kris performed it acoustically during his visit to GAC, you can watch the clip online. Watching this performance will go down as one of the most memorable experiences in my career.
And much like the studio performance, the rest of the tracks on Closer To The Bone have a very stripped-down, acoustic feel. The songs are reflective and cover subjects including family and friends. “From Here To Forever” is a song Kris dedicates to his children, and “Good Morning John” was written for the late Johnny Cash, his friend and mentor.
Closer To The Bone features Kris on vocals, guitar and harmonica, Don Was on bass, Rami Jaffee on keyboards, Jim Keltner on drums and the late Stephen Bruton — a longtime friend to whom the album is dedicated – on guitar, mandolin and backing vocals. All lyrics and music were written solely by Kris except “From Here To Forever,” which was written with Stephen Bruton and Glen Clark.
In addition to performing “Closer to the Bone” during his visit to GAC, Kris also treated the crew to two additional songs — “From Here To Forever” and the rock and roll classic, “Me and Bobby McGee.” You can watch both performances, see highlights from Suzanne’s interview and listen to all the tracks on Closer To The Bone on GACTV.com.
Pharaoh's Army
Transcript of Interview With Actor Kris Kristofferson
and Writer/Director Robby Henson
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: Well, I'm Kris Kristofferson. And I, I had a small role in in "Pharaoh's Army," which was written and directed by Robby Benson (sic) here.
ROBBY HENSON: It's, it's Henson. It's not Benson.
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: Henson.
(Laughter)
ROBBY HENSON: Robby Benson is an actor that did a lot of stuff in the '70s.
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: I had a hard ride over here today.
(Laughter)
ROBBY HENSON: But we did this, this Civil War drama about a very private "civil war" during the American Civil War. And Kris, here, played sort of an Old Testament warrior/preacher.
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: Yeah, I think it,I think it helped me get, get a role in "Lone Star" with John Sayles. It's the first time that I'd played that kind of a role. But the film, "Pharaoh's Army," was a, a wonderful script and became, was filmed very closely to the script. So-
ROBBY HENSON: And it, it seemed to come about, we got some, some public funding, you know, from NEA and ITVS and CPB. And, I don't know, what do you think about this public funding for the arts stuff?
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: Well
(Laughter)
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: I, I'm, I'm, the only concerns I have about the funding for the arts today is that there's so much threat to the continuation of funding the arts. I think that a society lives or dies according to its respect for, for its art.
ROBBY HENSON: I think so, too. I think it's important. And I'm actually, you know, sort of pleased that they, they saw "Pharaoh's Army" as being worthy and they, they put some-
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: Well, I'm-
ROBBY HENSON: -funding
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: -tickled to see it's getting some exposure, because, because it's one of the best scripts that I've come across.
ROBBY HENSON: Well, that's really sweet. Well, the actors were so good you know, besides Kris, we have Chris Cooper, who's also with Kris and-
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: Yeah.
ROBBY HENSON: -was starred. And Richard Tyson, who's standing over there somewhere. And-
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: Yeah.
ROBBY HENSON: Robert Joy. And, you know, these actors really came together to this mud hole, in the middle of Kentucky.
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: The perfect mud hole.
ROBBY HENSON: (Laughter) And it rained and it rained. And the water, and the river rose up and washed the bridge out. But, did you complain too much? No, you didn't complain at all.
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: I wasn't there long enough-
ROBBY HENSON: (Laughter)
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: -to complain.
ROBBY HENSON: I remember one time you were sitting on a horse in a creek, and you were freezing to death. And-
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: That was, that was-
ROBBY HENSON: Yeah.
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: -that was, it was, it was just like the, the script, which was just like the country and the people, very severe.
ROBBY HENSON: Yeah
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: Just like-
ROBBY HENSON: -severe.
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: -the religious there, very, very severe religion.
ROBBY HENSON: Yeah.
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: They had, they didn't have any decorations on their house. They didn't have any musical instruments in their church. It was very severe.
ROBBY HENSON: Yeah. And we shot in the spring, when the, the leaves in the trees weren't quite budding out, so it was very-
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: Yeah.
ROBBY HENSON: The trees were austere and bare, and-
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: Yeah, it had a real black and white feel-
ROBBY HENSON: (Laughter)
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: -feel to it.
ROBBY HENSON: Yeah. But I, I hope people will turn out to see it, because we tried to do a very rooted, authentic, American drama. That's what we tried to do.
Well, "Pharaoh's Army" does have a web site. I think it's going to be on the "PBS ONLINE," whatever. But, yeah, visit the "Pharaoh's Army" web site. And I hope you guys will turn it on and watch this American drama.
The Journalistic Archives
of Dylan Behan
Kris Kristofferson Interview
BY DYLAN BEHAN
His songs have been played around the world, he's acted in countless movies, and now Kris Kristofferson is starring in Paul Cox's new film Molokai: The Story of Father Damien.
On the phone from Hawaii, my interview with Kris Kristofferson started on a confused note when the bearded one thought "Dylan on the line" meant Bob Dylan. Not wanting to disappoint, I considered doing a vivid impression of my folkie namesake before deciding it would simply be easier to ask Kriss what attracted him to a movie about a 19th century leper colony.
"Well, I was attracted to the script and working with Paul Cox. I had seen some of his films and thought he was a real interesting director. Plus, I live here. I just had to fly one island over."
Filmed on location in Hawaii three years ago, the production has been constantly plagued with difficulties. Australian director Cox was ousted in a coup halfway through shooting, only to be rehired at the insistance of the cast of lepers. Once shooting was completed, Cox was fired again, and has been fighting the Belgian producers ever since to try and save his version of the film. Fortunately for Australian audiences, we get to see Cox's directors cut, highlighted by David Wenhams's amazing performance in the title role.
"I think David Wenham is so perfect in a difficult, difficult role" Krisstofferson admits. "It's so hard to play a saint without making it sappy, and when the film didn't come out, I thought the saddest thing is that this guy is shot. It's like Jack Nicholson doing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and it not coming out. He was remarkable."
In Molokai, Krisstofferson plays the recurring character of Rudolph Meyer, the administrator to the island who becomes one of Damien's few friends and supporters. Based on a real person, I asked if the character posed any difficulties for the actor. "The hardest thing for me was to speak with a German accent" he concedes, "and if you want to make Paul Cox laugh today, just remind him of a couple of the lines I had to say."
Changing topics, I asked Kriss what he thought about current music stars like Britney Spears and N'Sync trying to cross over into the world of film acting. "Why not? You know, if they can do the job. To me, whether it's up on stage performing songs or acting out a part in a movie, they're one and the same. Frank Sinatra was one of the best actors of his time and today I think Mark Wahlburg is a really good actor."
Having had a show business career spanning five decades of music and movies, I asked the Grammy and Golden Globe winner what his personal highlight is. "Right now, my role as a father. I used to think my songs would be the best thing I leave behind. Now I think now it's these kids."
For the record, Kris was the nicest and most inspiring person I ever interview
Yahoo! Music
Kris Kristofferson Interview
The Highwayman Rides Again
12/01/1999 4:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Neal Weiss
Nowadays, think of Kris Kristofferson and most likely his film career comes to mind: the rustic, handsome actor who smooched Barbra Streisand in the 1976 blockbuster A Star Is Born, or the older, but no less rustic, handsome actor of the 1996 John Sayles film Lone Star. But Kristofferson the actor would maybe never have had his break if it wasn't for Kristofferson the songwriter: a Texas-born Rhodes Scholar who grew up in the 1950s with a love for Hank Williams and, a decade later, Bob Dylan. "I was making up songs and writing songs since I was 11," says Kristofferson. "I was doing it, trying to sell some back in the '50s, when songwriting was really--if you look at the songs back then--pretty lightweight compared to songs after Dylan. I give him credit for making poetry acceptable."
Three decades later, the list of artists who have covered Kristofferson's own songs is nearly on par with those of his own musical heroes. Among them: Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sammy Davis Jr., Kenny Rogers, Johnny Cash (who would later team up with Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings to form the Highwaymen), and even Dylan himself. Several of his songs are pop and country-folk classics, including "Help Me Make It Through The Night," "For The Good Times," and "Sunday Morning Coming Down," and at least one--"Me And Bobby McGee," as performed by Janis Joplin--is about as big a moment in classic rock history as there is.
Kristofferson revisits some of his classics on his latest, The Austin Sessions. Featuring backup vocals from a parade of talent like Jackson Browne, Steve Earle, Vince Gill, Mark Knopfler, and Alison Krauss, The Austin Sessions is a relaxed, stripped-down affair. The vocals--gruff and with the range of a Dakota plain--still serve as a bit of hindrance, but the songs remain huge and affecting, practically larger than life. LAUNCH caught up with Kristofferson from his home in Hana, on the Hawaiian island of Maui. It is here that the 63-year-old Renaissance man, father of eight, and recent survivor of triple-bypass surgery lives the good life writing songs, mulling over scripts, and, maybe most importantly, seeing his five youngest kids grow up--something he missed with the first three when he was out hustling his songs and acting skills.
LAUNCH:
So, what made you decide to do old songs again, instead of new?
KRISTOFFERSON:
Some people approached me about doing a songwriters' series. It think it was gonna be on Angel Records, they'd already done an album on Jim Webb and that sounded legitimate to me. Anyway, the producer, Fred Mollin, came down [to Austin] with some musicians and I was getting ready to do a film down there. I think three nights while we were rehearsing for the film, I'd come in at night and we'd cut the album, very fast. It was really, kind of stripped-down versions of the songs. Very basic. I like the way they turned out.
LAUNCH:
How did the guest stars come about?
KRISTOFFERSON:
Fred went and got some people to sing on it and they all turned out to be my friends and heroes. Jackson Browne and I have been to jail together, Steve Earle and I have been to jail apart. [laughs] I've always admired Steve a lot. And also Vince Gill--I've liked Vince since the first time I heard that "Nobody Answers When I Call Your Name." He's a classic singer-musician.
LAUNCH:
You're touring for these songs, including a closing date at L.A.'s Troubadour, which was one of the earliest places you played. What's that mean to you?
KRISTOFFERSON:
I opened for Linda Ronstadt my first gig ever. It was at the Troubadour. Yeah, that was a magic time...You could go there and every night in the bar you could find Harry Dean Stanton and Joni Mitchell and the guys that became the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, people like that. They just hung around. Jackson Browne was just a kid [in that scene] then.
LAUNCH:
Had your songs already been covered by others by then?
KRISTOFFERSON:
Yeah, but I had never performed them. Somebody from The Johnny Cash Show [TV] got me the gig opening for Linda. And [Los Angeles Times pop music critic] Robert Hilburn wrote a great review of the thing and they held us over for weekend. It started the movies and everything for me. It was a great magic time.
LAUNCH:
So that was the real sparkplug?
KRISTOFFERSON:
Absolutely. June 1970.
LAUNCH:
Nowadays, is the music as important to you as it was back then?
KRISTOFFERSON:
The last time I was on the road I think was '96 [with the Highwaymen]. I think I came back in '96 to see my daughter have a baby and never went back out. I started getting busier in the film world. I got so many little kids, it was really kinda hard to get out, to leave the house. But music, this Austin Sessions kinda reminded me how much I missed it. Just getting in the room with those musicians and everybody laughing at the same jokes, on the same page at the same time, I felt like an old dog returning home. It felt very comfortable and I remembered why I had dedicated my life to it, you know.
LAUNCH:
What's it like to revisit some of those old songs?
KRISTOFFERSON:
These songs are just like my children. I've sung them so many times that they pretty much exist on their own. I didn't worry or think about it a lot. In the old days I used to worry about how we produced things and whether it was the right production or not, and I figured the songs pretty much stand up for themselves now.
LAUNCH:
Any particular versions stand out?
KRISTOFFERSON:
Well yeah, I've been fortunate in the artists who have recorded some of these songs. One of the great things in life is seeing your songs transformed by somebody like Janis [Joplin] with "McGee" or Jerry Lee Lewis with anything he sings. Those stand out. These songs carry so much weight, because you can't sing "Bobby McGee" without thinking about Janis.
LAUNCH:
Interesting, even if it's your own song, you still attribute it as much to someone else?
KRISTOFFERSON:
It's almost like it's your kid, but it's not really part of you anymore, once that you give birth to it. And really one of the special joys of being a songwriter is that you can see your work transformed by somebody else. Maybe a playwright can too, but those are the only artists I can think of. You don't have a sculptor seeing his work done by somebody else.
LAUNCH:
You moved to Maui in 1990. What's life like there?
KRISTOFFERSON:
I came out here because I started having a bunch of little kids again; I have five young ones, and I didn't want to raise them in the city. And there's a place out here that's probably the closest to where I grew up down in Brownsville, Texas, in my memory anyway, as far as being a small town and mostly local population here. The kids can go to school barefooted if they want.
LAUNCH:
And you're able to live there and still be connected to Nashville and Hollywood?
KRISTOFFERSON:
As connected as I want to be. I'm sure that I'd be getting more songs cut and more films if I was out working myself harder, but at this point in my life I've got a pretty good balance now.
LAUNCH:
It must be a nice place to be, not having to work it so hard.
KRISTOFFERSON:
[Songwriting] doesn't mean the same to me [now]. There was a time when I was burning to have everybody hear every song that I wrote and that was the most important thing in my life. And now it's not. And I still, that's the work that's closest to my soul, is my songwriting, and probably performing it, and I hope I'll be doing it as long as I want to.
LAUNCH:
You think maybe your songs are too good for country radio?
KRISTOFFERSON:
[big laugh] I would never say that. Listen, the good songs are still good songs...It's hard for anybody to get on the radio. When I first started working, it wasn't in country, I had to leave Nashville to get a job, you know, and worked in the sort of folky rock 'n' roll clubs like the Troubadour, the Bitter End, the Gaslight, and places in Chicago. Then, later, when I was looking for new record companies, they really didn't know what slot to put me in. They couldn't market me country any more than you could probably market Bob Dylan as country. And they may still be trying, I don't know. It's always been a problem with me to be booked on country radio. I can remember one time when Willie Nelson and a bunch of us, Jackson Browne and some other people, did a benefit for [political prisoner] Leonard Peltier that just made the FBI go ballistic. It got me and Willie and maybe Joni Mitchell banned off of these two radio stations in California. I said, "Well, in my case it's not gonna cause the stock market crash because they haven't played anything of mine in 20 years!" [big laugh]
LAUNCH:
How do you know when you've written a good song?
KRISTOFFERSON:
Um, I've come to pretty much know when I've got a good one, although sometimes it takes a while for the world to catch up with me. [laughs] I think that "Moment Of Forever" [from 1995's Moment Of Forever] is one of the prettiest love songs I ever wrote, and "The Promise," on that same album, is one of the prettiest I've ever done, but nobody else has cut either one of them. But, I'm not out hustling songs like I was 30 years ago. 30 years ago, man you had to listen to me. There was no choice.
LAUNCH:
And acting, what are you working on right now?
KRISTOFFERSON:
Nothing at the moment. There's a film, Marty Scorsese sent me a script that he's gonna be producing, I don't think he's directing it. Nothing.
LAUNCH:
Doing nothing sounds pretty good.
KRISTOFFERSON:
Yeah. It's not bad. [laughs] I go out and I run six miles every morning now. Back in May I had a triple-bypass operation and hadn't been able to run for years and shoot, now I'm running six miles every morning and feeling good again. Better than I felt in like 20 years.
LAUNCH:
Did you have to change your lifestyle?
KRISTOFFERSON:
I'd done that a couple of years before anyway because I had an angiogram, and they said there's no smoking anymore and no meat and cholesterol lower and stuff. And I'm living pretty healthy. And then when I went and got the bypass and everything, for a while I thought I was gonna die, I felt like I was hit by a truck. Sh-t, I came out of it, I guess good. My heart's getting blood now. I feel better than I've felt in many years. A new lease.
The Boot
Kris Kristofferson Honors Fellow Outlaws on New Album
Posted Sep 24th 2009 6:00PM by Steve Baltin
At 73, Kris Kristofferson has lived a life that transcends Hollywood legend. A Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a serviceman, a movie star, a rebel, the songwriter of such classics as 'Me And Bobby McGee,' friend to the likes of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, lover to Janis Joplin, Rita Coolidge and Barbra Streisand, father, and member of both the Country Music and Songwriters' Hall of Fame, Kristofferson defines the term "icon."
All of that living is reflected in his brilliant new album, 'Closer to the Bone.' Once again produced by Don Was, as was 2006's 'This Old Road,' 'Closer' finds Kristofferson in masterful troubadour mode, singing from the heart about friends like Cash ('Good Morning, John') and Sinéad O'Connor ('Sister Sinéad') as well as for his kids on the touching 'From Here to Forever.'
The Boot spoke with Kristofferson about the new album, how Cash came to his defense when he was ostracized by Nashville and why he refuses to change his outlaw ways as he gets older.
This album includes a tribute to your late great friend, Johnny Cash, called 'Good Morning, John.' And that was actually written some time ago, correct?
KK Yes, it was. June [Carter Cash] was having a little dinner for a few friends like Waylon [Jennings] and Jesse [Colter] ... we were all at one table. And she asked me to write a song for it. I'm not very good at writing on assignment, but I thought this one came from the heart -- and it worked. I tried to record it one time when I had Willie [Nelson] and my band singing background chorus; they would echo me. When I would sing, "Good morning, John," they would sing, "Good morning, John." And I got to "I love you, John" and Willie sang, "He loves you, John." I said, "Can't you say 'I love you, John'?" And I think he's embarrassed, but I was laughing so hard I never finished recording.
So that answers the question of whether or not Johnny ever heard it.
KK Oh, yeah, he thanked me for it. It's always embarrassing when somebody does something praiseworthy of you. It felt kind of embarrassing, but I hope he liked it.
Did you ever ask Willie why he couldn't sing "I love you, John," or were you too busy laughing?
KK No, I was just laughing [laughs]. I think Willie thought that worked for me and not for him. I don't know. We all loved each other, in a way.
Another tribute on the album is 'From Here to Forever,' which begins with you saying, "This one's for my kids." I love the informality of that, which really runs throughout the album and makes it feel like a live show. Did you approach recording this album similar to a concert?
KK The last two that I've done, at Don Was' suggestion, I've done them pretty much just me and the guitar, and we put on some others. Stephen [Bruton] recorded with me, Jimmy Keltner played drums, and Don on bass and Rami Jaffee from the Wallflowers. His playing on that one that you mentioned, the one to the kids, just made me weep; he played a keyboard and an accordion extension. I felt like I did with the first one, the one that I did by myself, 'This Old Road.' I was afraid it sounded like a demo, just me on it and pretty stripped down, but I really like what Don did and the people he selected to play with us. I like it better the more I hear it. I start out insecure but I hope your reaction is typical.
Do you have a favorite track?
KK I think the one that works the best is the one to the kids, 'From Here to Forever.' I like 'Closer to The Bone' and particularly since this was Stephen Bruton's last album he worked on. I kind of dedicated it to him. Stephen played with me since he was a baby [laughs]. He was out on the road with us for almost 40 years and we were very close friends ... He had a couple of years fighting cancer and fought it long enough for me to call him up before he died.
Did he get to hear any of the new songs before he passed away?
KK He did, and I think he liked it.
Are there any songs on the album that you really learned from?
KK I've always used the songs to make sense of my experience, and these all fit roughly in that category. 'Love Don't Live Here Anymore' is personal, it's person to person, but I said the other night, "George Bush was singing the song to Dick Cheney in the shower." I used to do that with 'Nobody Wins.'
Another song sure to get a lot of people talking is 'Sister Sinead.' It doesn't forgive her for so infamously tearing up a photo of the Pope on 'Saturday Night Live,' but it does somewhat humanize her actions. But that incident happened 17 years ago, so is it safe to assume this was another song you wrote a while back?
KK Yeah, it was some time ago because I remember I sang it for Waylon. But I had never recorded it and I thought, "Why not?" I think it's a good song.
Have you played it for her yet?
KK Oh, yeah. She heard it and I think she liked it. I'm not sure.
And despite how long ago it happened, some of the ideals remain very relevant.
KK Absolutely. there's still a lot of controversy going on about what's going on in the world and our role in it ... I felt like doing it because it hadn't been out there and it was best expressed, it seemed to me, as relevant today as any day.
Is this also a case of paying it forward, defending another outlaw? I just read a story you told about Johnny Cash defending you.
KK Exactly. John did that repeatedly for me [laughs]. I can remember him writing a letter to the editor of 'Country Music' magazine. And they had been critical of all the songs I was writing about what was going on down in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and there were some people who thought I was a communist or worse [laughs]. And John wrote a long letter to them really defending me, and it was really heartwarming.
Not all rebels are as lucky as you -- take the Dixie Chicks, for instance, with all of the anger directed at them for veering away from the conservative country norm. Why do you think you've been able to stay successful and respected in Nashville when you've been so outspoken your whole career?
KK There's a time where people were out holding posters in protest outside shows I was doing, and thankfully we've moved past that. And a lot of country stations wouldn't play me. They were more conservative than I was.
There's a long-running stereotype of how Westerners don't respect their elders, but that is definitely not true in entertainment. It seems like if you can last long enough in popular culture, all is forgiven.
KK You're exactly right. They respect the fact that you lived that long. I'm sure that a lot of people have come around to my way, but I was thinking just the other day how it's kind of odd that they say, "The older you get, the more conservative you get" and I just haven't changed [laughs]. I haven't got any more respectful, but I feel very grateful. It used to be I can remember times when people asked for their money back. One time in Atlanta, there was, like, 300 of them. Nowadays, people don't even yell at me; they're all very respectful. And I think it's, like you say, it just has to do with the fact that you have lasted this long.
Do you listen to a lot of contemporary artists?
KK No, I don't, and I'm not bragging about that. I'm embarrassed that I haven't heard any more than I have. Every time I turn on the radio I must be on the wrong song or something. But, to be honest, since I went on the road back in 1970 I didn't listen to radio music, because I didn't want to subconsciously steal somebody's stuff. I was writing and working all the time and I just didn't listen to that music, and it got be a habit, which I'm not proud of. [But] I just did a show with Steve Earle, and there were so many good things he was doing it just inspired me, so I'm gonna get back into listening.
The reason I was asking is I was wondering if there were any songs off this record you'd like to see covered, and if there was someone in particular you were thinking of to do it.
KK I hardly ever think that way anymore; it's been so long since anybody cut one. I hope somebody likes one enough to sing it. I know they can do it better than I do. I loved it when Willie cut 'A Moment or Forever,' and I was surprised and pleased to hear how well he did it. I wasn't surprised at how well, but just the fact that he did it 'cause he didn't tell me he was gonna cut it.
Is there a favorite version of one of your songs by someone else?
KK You know, I think one of the things that's great about being a songwriter is you get to hear other people that you really like interpret your stuff, and I was thinking 'Bobby McGee,' how many people have done 'Bobby McGee' that I loved, like Janis [Joplin] and Jerry Lee [Lewis]. It's one of the advantages we have over other art forms -- we get to hear what we do interpreted by people we respect. I would have a hard time finding one thing that I didn't like.
DAVE'S DIARY - 19 MAY 2006 - KRIS KRISTOFFERSON INTERVIEW
KRISTOFFERSON, WILLIE, A CROWE AND MORE
"Well here you are, the final attraction/ awaiting direction from somewhere above." - Final Attraction - Kris Kristofferson.
Legendary Texan born singing actor Kris Kristofferson is flattered that he has been honoured with a tribute disc while he is still alive.
Kris celebrates his 70th birthday on June 22, 2006 - five days before release of The Pilgrim - The Songs Of Kris Kristofferson by American Roots Publishing.
And, equally importantly, the Rhodes Scholar is happy with the eclectic cast that are more reflective of another road - the Lost Highway.
They include fellow singing actors Shotgun Willie Nelson, Shooter Jennings and Russell Crowe and unsung heroes Todd Snider, Marshall Chapman and prolific writer Bruce Robison and his singing spouse and mother for four Kelly Willis.
Kristofferson revealed he has a spiritual debt to Academy Award winning actor-singer Russell Crowe.
"We went off and saw Russell's band when they did this great show at a local place."
Kristofferson told Nu Country TV in a call from his home on idyllic Hawaii Island Maui.
"When we came back to his home I went off and went to bed. They had this amazing jam session that I regret to this day that I wasn't there. It's one of the biggest regrets I have. I want to come back and tour. I owe him one."
The charismatic legend has made several Australian tours since debuting here in 1974 with former singing spouse Rita Coolidge and a teenage Graeme Connors as support act.
Kris has returned on separate tours in the nineties with The Highwaymen and the late Johnny Cash and a solo tour in 2005.
The father of eight and grandfather of three, who jogs four miles daily with third wife Lisa, has recovered from heart by-pass surgery and spoke at length of his acting and singing career early on a cold autumn morning after Geelong had beaten St Kilda at the Docklands.
Kristofferson also spoke of recent studio disc This Old Road (New West) on which he honours peers Willie, Merle Haggard and Steve Earle and late heroes Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, Mickey Newbury, Roger Miller, Janis Joplin, John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix.
The album is distributed in Australia by Shock who also released his 2003 Broken Freedom Song: Live from San Francisco on Oh Boy.
Another disc Kris Kristofferson Live from Austin, Texas on New West-Shock is also scheduled for release on May 30.
THE UNEDITED KRISTOFFERSON INTERVIEW
Here is the unedited text of our exclusive interview with the celebrated singer, actor and raconteur.
David Dawson: It must be flattering that Gretchen Wilson and Russell Crowe had an arm wrestle to record Sunday Morning Coming Down for your new tribute album?
Kris Kristofferson: "Yeah, what time is it down there?"
Dawson: "It's 6.45 a m on a beautiful, rainy autumn morning."
Kristofferson: "Good morning then. Oh man I don't even like tribute albums but I love this one. They nailed the soul of the songs. I don't like birthdays either."
Q: So how did Gretchen beat Russell Crowe to cut Sunday Morning Coming Down?
A: I don't know - it was probably the decision of producer Tamara Saviano who is also the publicist and coordinator. Man, Gretchen really she nailed it - it's not a song you think of a girl singing anyway. But she got the soul of it and when she got that repeated chorus at the end there it was just the perfect combination of pain and exhilarating joy you get with that music. She just sucked everything out of it."
Q: So Russell Crowe finished up with Darby's Castle.
A: Yes, Russell was great - he had the perfect voice for Darby's Castle. How have you heard all these songs - I didn't think it was coming out until June.
Q: I read about it in The Tennessean in my research. Why did he list Darby's Castle as his second choice?
A: "His voice is the perfect voice - he sounds like the legend. Tamiana probably gave him the choice. I don't why he sang that - might be because we did a television show together. I sang that although they didn't use that in the TV broadcast.
Q: Was that PBS Sound Stage?
A: Yeah, they cut that and In The News out of my program even though they both got a standing ovation - I think the people who can censor that shit did."
Q: Russell would only have been five years old when you sang on the Shel Silverstein written soundtrack of the 1969 Tony Richardson directed Ned Kelly movie made here with Mick Jagger as Ned.
A: Ha, ha, I did that because Shel asked me to. Waylon had got mad at the soundtrack director (Ron Haffkine) and quit.
Q: You and Waylon were still battling the system in Nashville back then.
A: Yeah and Shel was a friend of mine from the start - he just hung out with scruffy songwriters - me and my friends. All the establishment in Nashville were breaking their necks to get him to do things they were into. He was writing for Bobby Bare, Dr Hook and many others. He was still a cartoonist for Playboy then."
Q: You spent time on Russell Crowe's farm when you were down here last year.
A: Yeah, what a beautiful place. We went off on saw Russell's band when they did a show at a local place. When we came back I went off and went to bed. They went off and had this jam session that I regret to this day that I wasn't there. It's one of the biggest regrets.
Q: At least you had good sleep.
A: Yes, anyone can have a good sleep. It was quite a session, I was told, in his home.
FINAL ATTRACTION FOR WILLIE
"Well, here you are/ the final attraction/ awaiting direction/ from somewhere above"
Final Attraction - Kris Kristofferson
Q: Final Attraction on This Old Road was inspired by Willie, how long did it take you to write it?
A: I wrote part of it a long time ago when we were making a film called Songwriter and the second verse was very recently, inside the last year.
Q: So it dates back to 1984.
A: Yeah, we used the first verse in that film - at the very end of it. But I didn't have a second verse until recently.
Q: Back then U made the two Pair Of Aces movies and gave a start to Shelby Lynne.
A: Shelby Lynne doesn't need any help from us - she's a great artist and actor.
Q: She then turned up as Johnny Cash's mother in Walk The Line.
A: Can you believe it? She was playing his mother. She was great.
Q: You have both Shooter Jennings, who played his dad in Walk The Line, and his mum Jessi Colter on your tribute disc?
A: Well, Waylon and Jessi were there in the early days and I watched Shooter from when he was a little kid. It's great that Jessi has returned to recording with her own new album and Shooter is carrying on the family tradition with his songs.
Q: You also made the docco Be Here To Love Me on the late, great Texan - Townes Van Zandt.
A: Yeah, we were all seduced by glamour of being wasted people. Everybody would think about being Hank Williams. There was something very attractive about burning brightly and dying young. I feel very fortunate to have made it to the other side of that. But I was 10 years older than all my peers. I'd already done the army and Oxford. I was physically older, and I think it might have helped me in my battle to overcome the natural shyness and stage fright.
Q: You also appeared in the docco on the late Dottie West.
A: I had one scene in it - she was a dear friend. She was just like the old guys such as Willie. Yeah, and someone will do one on Mickey Newbury one day.
Q: Haven't you also appeared in a video on a tribute disc to Mickey Newbury that Kacey Jones is bringing out?
A: Oh yeah I forgot about that - I'm actually in the video they did of San Francisco Mabel Joy. I got to knock down what's his name - I've having a senior moment again with Sammi Smith's kid.
Q: Waylon Payne.
A: Yeah, he did a great job in the Johnny Cash movie - he's a sweet kid. I've known him since he was real little as he was Sammi and Jody Payne's kid. He's been there forever.
Q: In your first Australian tour in 1974 you had Billy Swan in your band.
A: Yeah, that was great band - Donnie Fritz, I don't know if Mike Utley was there yet but Stephen Bruton, who is on my new record, was.
Q: Billy Swan late came here with Harry Dean Stanton who recruited you for your first movie The Last Movie in 1971.
A: Absolutely, they did a tour did they.
Q: Yes, Billy was in Harry Dean Stanton's band and they were touring with Kinky Friedman.
A: Oh yeah that must have been fun - you ought to have a movie of that.
Q: You were born Brownsville, Texas, but can you vote for Governor in Texas.
A: No, you have to live there. I can't imagine they would want me voting in Texas anyway.
Q: Kinky's running for Governor - there's a spiritual link anyway.
A: My God that's right - very funny.
Kacey Jones also produced the Kinky Friedman tribute disc Pearls In The Snow on Kinkajou Records - a joint label with The Kinkster.
It was released in Australia.
Q: In your song In The News you were worried about what Eisenhower said about the growing power of the military-industrial complex power base.
A: Yeah that was an amazing thing to say for a 5 star Major General and Republican - he nailed it.
Q: All of what he has said has come true.
A: Christ they have spent billions of dollars on these wars. Who do they think is going to make those billions? Not the people who are making them. It's very depressing - not a shining moment in man's history.
Q: What sort of exposure are you getting for that song on Americana stations?
A: I don't know if they play anything of mine on there. Every now and then people say they hear a song.
MERLE HAGGARD
"Wild American, you're the one they never tamed/ cause you stood your ground/ and they could not make you change/ you're the warning they still don't understand/ watch your back, boy/ they'll kill you if they can." - Wild American - Kris Kristofferson
Q: Well, Merle Haggard has spoken his mind throughout his career in his songs on politics.
A: Yeah, I mention Merle on this record in the Wild American and other people like Steve Earle. Merle had a record out that was against the war too. Willie had his song called Whatever Happened To Peace on Earth? I'm just checking off the good guys - they're thinking for themselves.
Q: Back in the early days wasn't the first song of yours that was ever covered called Talking Vietnam Blues? Ralph Emery and Dave Dudley cut it.
A: Yeah, I got it cut immediately. There weren't any songs about Vietnam at the time - it was well written. I tried to write it as a talking blues type of thing - it sounded like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. It was probably 180 degrees from where I would be today but I meant it at the time. I had just volunteered for Vietnam myself. Thank God I wasn't sent - I would probably would have had a hard time doing some of the stuff I would have to do in the name of duty. That's why I feel really bad about the situation with the troops today. It's like the people sending them over there to kill and be killed are guys who never wore a uniform during combat. The only one who was ever in the military was Rumsfeld and he was there during the peacetime. Somehow they seem equally numb to feeling any kind of responsibility for the human suffering will bring down more than the Bush administration - it's a horrible place to think at this end of history that's the way we're choosing to communicate.
THE SHOW GOES ON
"We used to talk about the Rock And The Roll/ that made it matter not to sell your soul/ like a banner that we held so high, we weren't afraid to fall/ steady rolling through the warning signs/ that were hidden in between the lines/ that kept us rocking till the break of day/ or any break at all." - The Show Goes On - Kris Kristofferson
Q: In The Show Goes On you joke about commercial being a dirty word.
A: Yeah, that's what we like to tell ourselves when no-one was recording our songs - it was a holier than thou feeling. But the truth is we did believe the work we were doing is serious and should be soulful and should be honest. The guys we look to as examples were guys like Willie and John Cash. One of the blessings of my life was we ended up such close friends - we made movies and music together. I wish I had known at the time how precious that time was - those tours we did together were wonderful things. I wish I had cherished every moment I was standing up there with John, singing harmony with him with him whether we liked it or not. He laughed at me - no-one would have the gall to sing harmony with him on Folsom Prison Blues.
Q: You have kept yourself pretty fit over the years - you even walked back to the Hilton here across a railway bridge after one concert.
A: Well, you know I don't know if I would call myself fit years ago but I've got to do it for my head. I run with my wife very slowly every morning. You got to work harder at it every day.
Q: Whereabouts in Maui do you jog?
A: It's on a street that people don't drive on - it's got a huge hill, which by itself is an aerobic exercise. It's about four miles - we do it every morning after we take the kids to school. Hopefully we get back in time for my interviews.
Q: What other movies have you made lately - Disappearance this year was the last one I read about?
A: Yeah, unfortunately it's got no money behind it at all - it was really a great script and character to play. He was an old whiskey runner - I really enjoyed it. We made it in Vermont
Q: The character was Quebec Bill.
A: He was pretty outrageous but a positive spirit that I hoped would rub off on me.
Q: What other movies are in the pipeline?
A: You know, I haven't got a damn thing - somebody just sent me a western with a small part in it. The parts are few and far between that an old guy can play.
Q: What about tours?
A: I was just getting healthy here as I had some back spasms. I just finished a tour of the north with no problems.
Q: Well, you had better come back here.
A: It went so well last time I'm expecting an offer to play down there again.
Q: It would a good reunion with Russell Crowe.
A: Yeah, I just sent him a note about singing Darby's Castle. I really owe him one - I really love Russell and his band. They are doing it for the love - and that's just the best reason.
Q: Well, thanks your time again Kris, I'll look forward to seeing back on stage down here.
A: OK, thankyou.
From The Sunday Times
March 23, 2008
Kris Kristofferson proves he's still an outlaw with This Old Road
In the 1970s, Kris Kristofferson played Billy the Kid and romanced Barbra Streisand. He was the ultimate Mr Cool – a singer, actor and chopper pilot who once landed on Johnny Cash’s lawn. But his latest album shows the writer of Me and Bobby McGee remains an outlaw, down to his lucky boots
There’s a car park at the giant Tesco in West Kensington, and underneath there is a coach park. Not many people know that. In the coach park, there are two big black buses belonging to the “band and crew bussing” company Beat the Street. In one of these, clad in black but for his lucky, battered, beige cowboy boots, is Kris Kristofferson.
This may seem an odd place to find the writer of the country-music standards Me and Bobby McGee, Help Me Make It Through the Night and Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, one of the greatest movie stars of the 1970s, the lover of Barbra Streisand and Janis Joplin, and, with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash, a member of the magnificent rat pack known as the Highwaymen. Two of them are dead (Cash and Jennings), but Nelson and Kristofferson are still, triumphantly, on the road that goes on for ever. Which is why, when you think about it, there’s nothing remotely odd about meeting him in the coach park underneath the giant Tesco in West Kensington.
Many years ago, I went to see Sam Peckinpah’s movie Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid because it had a score - a fine one - by Bob Dylan. I went into the movie wanting to be Dylan, I came out wanting to be Kristofferson. He played the Kid with such languid, insolent, majestic cool that he even drew your eyes away from James Coburn, Chill Wills, Jason Robards, Harry Dean Stanton and Dylan himself, playing Alias, which really was the name of one of Billy’s sidekicks. As Billy, Kristofferson looked about 7ft tall, but here he is greeting me in his Beat the Street bus, and he’s only about 5ft 8in. He emits a low, growling chuckle when I point this out.
“Everybody thinks I am bigger than I am,” he says. “They used to think my father was taller than he really was.”
Kristofferson is 71. The waist is thickened and the cheeks are hollowed, but the grey hair is as full and wavy as it ever was. Above all, he still evokes the adjective “rangy”. Combined with his slow drawl and lucky boots, this makes him look and sound like the whole state of Texas. He was born there, in Brownsville, the son of Lars, who was to become a major-general in the US Air Force. His paternal grandfather was in the Swedish army. His mother was Scots-Irish, but I reckon the Swedish genes won out; the Scots-Irish are not known for ranginess. The kuttings tell me he had a brother, Kraigher, and a sister, Karen, which seems pretty krazy. He says all the ks are some kind of Swedish thing.
He was a sports star at college and he won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, as did Bill Clinton: “Yeah, we kinda dispelled the myth that there was anything brilliant about Rhodes scholars. And look at Clinton, he’s doing it again.”
He’d been writing songs, and even recorded a few for Top Rank, in London, but they were never released.
In 1960, he went into the army. He became a helicopter pilot and rose to the rank of captain, but in 1965 he decided he couldn’t take it any more: “There wasn’t anything I liked about the army except the people I met and flying. It was just like one big rule waiting to be broken.”
Kristofferson was being lined up to teach literature at West Point, but he left to become a writer of country music. His father understood, but his mother all but disowned him. In Brownsville, he’d grown up amid the sounds of Mexican and country music. “My first big hero was Hank Williams,” he says. “He was emotionally so strong. It wasn’t an intellectual thing, it was just something that moved your heart. I could never sing with the passion Hank Williams did, but I could be as honest as he was, and the people I came to respect and admire - listening to Willie Nelson, Roger Miller and Johnny Cash, and trying to be like them. Pop music then was very thin - How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?, that kind of thing. There was blues or soul, but I wasn’t equipped to do that. I can’t play the guitar that well, and I certainly can’t sing that well - but better than Willie Nelson says I can.”
His genuine and almost alarming modesty runs through our entire conversation. Everything he says about himself is footnoted with the name of somebody who does it better. He says it’s not modesty, it’s realism. But he underestimates what he can do, which is, as he puts it in his song Final Attraction, “pick up that guitar and go break a heart”. That’s what all the best country music is about. Listen to his album The Austin Sessions and you’ll see what I mean.
In the beginning, he didn’t see himself as a performer, just as a writer. He was advised not to sing his own demos; his guitar-playing and voice were regarded as just too mediocre. He was making a living as a commercial helicopter pilot and a kind of janitor at some studios in Nashville. The first led to his now heavily mythologised assault on Johnny Cash’s garden. He’d been trying to get Cash to sing his songs. Finally, he got his attention by landing a helicopter on his lawn. “John had a creative memory. He said I got out of the helicopter holding a beer in one hand and a tape in the other, and the song I was selling was Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down. Well, I drank a lot in those days, but never when I was flying, and it wasn’t Sunday Mornin’.”
He was janitoring around the studios when they were taken over by Dylan and his band. They were recording Blonde on Blonde, arguably the greatest rock album ever made. “I was the only songwriter in Nashville allowed in at the time. There were police round the building. Bob was doing a great thing for Nashville, giving it credibility. I never said a word to him - I didn’t dare - but I spoke to his wife and son. In Nashville at the time, if you didn’t cut three songs in three hours, you were being extravagant and wasteful. He just went in there and sat down at the piano, all by himself, and wrote all night long. The band were playing ping pong and waiting for him. I’d never seen anything like it. I respected him. To me, he lifted songwriting up to an art form that was worth committing your life to, like poetry... To me, it was like watching Van Gogh go through different stages of his painting and his inspiration. He’s working all the time now, Bob is.”
In the early 1970s, Kristofferson was doing a gig at the Troubadour, in Los Angeles, when Harry Dean Stanton gave him the script of a film called Cisco Pike. He passed the screen test and found himself starring with Gene Hackman, Karen Black and Stanton. The film wasn’t a big hit but, in the business, Kristofferson was. “It made an impression on some people,” he recalls. “I remember a journalist telling me Robert Duvall had said something praiseworthy about my charisma. Movies got me into the position where I could carry myself through the lean years musically.”
And so Karisma Kristofferson became a film star, a process that led to Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, then, in 1976, to A Star Is Born, with Barbra Streisand. It wasn’t a success, commonly being referred to as A Bore Is Starred, but it elevated Kristofferson into the movie stratosphere.
“I am eternally grateful to Barbra,” he says. “I don’t know why she put up with me, but it worked. More people have spoken to me about that film that any other.”
The real climax of his movie career, however, came in 1980, with Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate. One of Hollywood’s biggest turkeys, it went down with all hands, including Kristofferson. He still appears in a quite bewildering number of films, but Heaven’s Gate ended his era of superstardom. “It made me,” he admits, “unmarketable for a while.”
It had, though, started a new phase in his life. The film was about the Johnson County War, a dreadful episode that happened in the 1890s in Wyoming, when small farmers battled wealthy ranchers. It made Kristofferson focus on the “dark side of the American dream”. The point was that, up to 1980, his music had primarily celebrated the romance of America. On the road that ran for ever through the vast, empty spaces, you got wrecked, your heart got broken, but you could always move on with your memories. Life is hard, but, as he sang in Bobby McGee: “Feeling good was easy, Lord, when Bobby sang the blues.”
After Heaven’s Gate, this gave way, in the Reagan years, to a disgust with American foreign policy. Kristofferson became involved with the cause of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and sang in their favour. The vast body of the country-music audience being right-wing and intensely patriotic, he found himself ostracised by Nashville as well as Hollywood. He remembers one of his songs - They Killed Him, lamenting the fates of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jesus and the Kennedys - being rejected by a redneck disc jockey.
“He said the only thing wrong with what happened to King was that there weren’t enough bullets in the gun - you know Jesse Jackson was standing next to him when he was shot. I had people protesting at my shows. And Country Music magazine devoted a whole issue to criticisms of what I was doing. Johnny Cash wrote them a letter sticking up for me. There couldn’t have been a stronger endorsement. John had such respect, he saved my ass there for a while.”
Kristofferson’s politics are still out there - In the News, on his last album, This Old Road, is about Iraq - but he doesn’t feel quite so lonely. The country, he thinks, is moving in his direction. He supports Barack Obama as a continuation of what the Kennedys started: “It makes you think about what a different world it would have been if Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy hadn’t been killed. I don’t think we’d ever have had the Reagan years.”
In 1985 came the country supergroup the Highwaymen. Krisofferson, typically, thinks he was outclassed, other than as a songwriter, by Cash, Jennings and Nelson. “I can’t put myself in the same class as those guys, particularly in terms of singing,” he says. “Willie can play the guitar like Django Reinhardt, and his voice is absolutely unique. Waylon’s is another voice I could remember from the first time I heard it. It blew me away. Cash was a hero, larger than life and an inspiration. When I was working at the studio, I pitched him every song I ever did. But I could sing with honesty, and I think that’s what works today. God knows, there’s people I’d rather hear sing my songs than me.”
He has a point. The covers of his best songs have been spectacular. Most notably there was Janis Joplin’s spine-shivering country-rock-soul-blues version of Me and Bobby McGee, recorded a few days before her death in 1970. But Ol’ Karisma Kris has something more than mere talent.
His private life was, until 1983, more or less what you’d expect of a big star. As well as Streisand and Janis, there was a first, high-school-sweetheart marriage that produced two children. In 1973, he married the singer Rita Coolidge. They divorced in 1979 and, in 1983, it all ended in peace with his marriage to Lisa Meyers, a lawyer. They live in Hawaii. Lisa goes on tour with him, and so do any of his eight children who happen to be available. On this tour, he had Lisa, 13-year-old Blake, his youngest, and 17-year-old Kelly, another “K”.
“My relationship with my family is the best part of my life,” Kristofferson says. “The fact that all my kids love each other is a great joy to me, and the fact that we could still be a family and still be on the road . . . It’s very different from the days of the old romances, but every now and then they jump up and bite me.” His wife wants him to write his autobiography, so the children will know. He’s reluctant.
He has said he would like the first lines of Leonard Cohen’s Bird on a Wire for his epitaph - “Like a bird on a wire, / Like a drunken midnight choir, / I have tried in my way to be free”. In his own song, Pilgrim’s Progress, he wonders if he has it in him to “perfect myself in my own peculiar way”. It’s all about authenticity, but, in the end, you settle for what you can get - “I want justice, but I’ll settle for some mercy,” he sings. And the whole point of Help Me Make It Through the Night is the modesty of the request - “All I’m takin’ is your time. / Help me make it through the night.”
Not love - that would be asking too much - just company. The road is compromise, making do. Then you get old, then they throw dirt on you. But not yet. He’s pulling in bigger crowds than ever. Authenticity is back.
“I hope that I’ve got the energy and the memory to keep going, because there’s something going on now,” Kristofferson says. “Maybe it’s just because they have respect for you when you get older, but it’s really encouraging to see people very receptive to everything - not just Bobby McGee, but The Circle and In the News. It’s encouraging to me, so, anyway, it feels like there’s a good reason to keep going.”
On the way home from Tesco, I sing Bobby McGee and stretch out my legs in an attempt to be rangy. I still want to be Kris Kristofferson, to have that elemental power to “pick up that guitar and go break a heart”. But I guess it’s too late.
CMT News
Kris Kristofferson Talks Songwriting
He Explains the Background of His Classic Songs in the First of Two-Part Interview
July 10, 2007; Written by Chet Flippo
Master songwriter-singer Kris Kristofferson recently visited CMT to perform during a taping of Studio 330 Sessions and to sit around and talk about some of his songs and where they came from. Here's part one of our visit.
CMT: Other than the one song you wrote with Stephen Bruton and getting the song title for "Me and Bobby McGee" from Fred Foster, have you ever co-written any songs?
Kristofferson: The ones I've really co-written were with Shel Silverstein. We had "The Taker" that Waylon Jennings cut, "Once More With Feeling" that Jerry Lee [Lewis] cut and transformed into something better than it was. Faron Young put "Your Time's Comin'" on the charts. I didn't really co-write "Bobby McGee," although I got the title and the idea from Fred, and most of the stuff that I've written with other guys in the band, we started out together and then I ended up finishing it up. I did co-write "Moment of Forever" with Danny Timms. He wrote the melody, and I just did the words.
Other than that, it's just been you over the years pretty much.
I've never really felt comfortable co-writing. I usually go at my own speed, you know. It takes a lot longer these days than it used to, but it's generally the idea and then it just grows itself.
In Nashville today, songwriting is done by a committee of two, three or four writers, which is a huge change from when you came here.
I've noticed that there are a lot of committee writers. When I came here it was mostly guys like Tom T. Hall and Harlan Howard that just wrote by themselves. Harlan and I were going to write toward the end there but never did get around to doing it.
Kurt Vonnegut once said, "Let your language be the slave of your idea." Does that apply to your songwriting? The idea comes first, and the language is tailored for the idea?
Well, if you don't have the idea in the beginning, I don't think you have anything to keep you going. Kurt liked "Sunday Morning Coming Down." I like Kurt more than any other writer, I think. I once had an idea to make a whole government with novelists. Kurt was the president because of his passion. I think J.D. Salinger was the secretary of state because he'd never go anywhere and never talk to anybody, and we wouldn't get in trouble.
What was the genesis of "Sunday Morning Coming Down"?
"Sunday Morning Coming Down" is probably the most directly autobiographical thing I'd written. In those days, I was living in a slum tenement that was torn down afterwards, but it was $25 a month in a condemned building, and "Sunday Morning Coming Down" was more or less looking around me and writing about what I was doing. One time, some people broke into that place, and I had to call the police station to answer some questions about it, and the guy said, "Yeah, they really trashed the place when they went in there." But I hadn't noticed that it was any different. There were holes in the wall bigger than I was. It was quite a place, so "Sunday Morning Coming Down" is kind of more or less what I was living in at the time. I guess it was depressing, I don't know, but the chorus was kind of uplifting.
Did that come from a real walk that you made on a Sunday morning?
I'm not sure whether I really walked. What I was really trying to do was to keep the feeling of loss and of sadness. For me at the time, it was the loss of my family and looking at a little kid swinging on a swing and his daddy pushing him. That was the feeling I wanted to get for the whole song. I think Sunday was the choice because the bars were closed in the morning and nobody was at work, so if you were alone, it was the most alone time. Ray Stevens cut it first, and he cut a great version of it. I remember I just wept when I first heard it. He had spent more time in the studio on it than anyone has spent with a song of mine, and he just sang it very soulfully, but they didn't know how to market him that way because that was when he was doing sort of the novelty records like "The Streak" and those funny records that he used to do. They didn't want him to sing something really serious. I felt really bad about it because he really put in a lot of work in it.
It's sort of the continuing saga of "The Pilgrim" narrating your life.
Well, there were a lot of people that the pilgrim stood for or that I felt fit into that category, and most of them were people who were serious about songwriting, but an awful lot of us just looked like we were out of work.
How did Johnny Cash get "Sunday Morning Coming Down"?
John said that I landed in a helicopter and gave it to him. I don't believe that was the one that I gave him that day. I don't think he ever cut that one, but I'm sure that John heard me singing it to him out at his house because ... there were three or four of us that could call up John when we really felt needy, and we could show him what we were doing and he would raise our spirits. He never let us down, and every time that I can remember, I wouldn't overdo it to bother him or invade his privacy, but it was one of the great experiences for us at the time because we weren't getting any songs recorded, but just to have him listen and give us encouragement was the great thing. I went out there and saw the ruins [of the former Cash house], and it just seemed like the end of a novel or something.
How did you first meet Johnny Cash?
First time I ever met him face to face was backstage at the Ryman. I was here on leave from the Army, and [songwriter] Marijohn Wilkin was showing me around and took me backstage and introduced me to the policeman back there. From then on, he always let me in back. John was pacing around backstage, and I said I've got to meet him, and she went up and introduced me to him. He shook my hand and it just electrified me, and I'm sure that's when I decided that I was going to come back here and try to be another songwriter. After that, the next time I saw him was after Cowboy Jack Clement had showed him a letter I got from home where my mother had basically disowned me and said don't come and visit my relatives, you're an embarrassment to us, you know. And this tickled John to death, I guess, because when I was working over at Columbia as a studio setup guy, he came up to me and said, "It's always nice to get a letter from home, isn't it?" I gave him every song I ever wrote after that.
When he was going to do "Sunday Morning" on his TV show, the network tried to make him take the word "stoned" out of it. You were at the Ryman Auditorium when that happened.
Right. They were filming the Johnny Cash show at the Ryman, and he was going to sing it. The people from the network didn't want him to say, "Lord, I'm wishing I was stoned," and there was a bunch of them standing around and they suggested "wishing, Lord, that I was home." And I said that's not the same thing, you know, and John never said a word. He just stood there looking at us, so I didn't know what he was going to do. I would have gone with whatever he wanted to do, but in the show, I was in the balcony up there, and he got to that line and looked up and he said, "wishing, Lord, that I was stoned," and I just loved him for that. He saved the song. It would not have been the same thing.
What do you think his eternal legacy is going to be?
Johnny Cash's legacy, I think if it was one word, it would be integrity. He was the original wild man and grew from that guy that was doing all the crazy things that you read that rock 'n' rollers do to being someone who was like the father of our country, you know. He was a guest at the White House. He was Billy Graham's friend. He was respected and really idolized by Bob Dylan, and that was such an important thing for country music. It gave it legitimacy, but I don't think anyone was like John. I think he was always larger than life. Everyone remembers him being about 8 feet tall. His championing underdogs was something that a lot of us ought to emulate. He left a big hole. I don't think there will ever be someone who's got quite the character and the presence of John. His face was on the cover of Time magazine when he died, and I can't think of any other entertainer that they'd be doing that with. I sure hated to see his house burn down, but he might have done it himself. He didn't want anyone else living in it, you know.
Did the song "Why Me" come from Connie Smith taking you to church?
We had done a benefit the night before. I can't even remember the name of the town, but at any rate, she asked me if I would go to church with her the next day. I hadn't been to church, I guess, since I had been married years before that. But Connie was really sweet, and I'd go anywhere she asked me to go, so I went to church with her. It was Jimmy Snow's church in Hendersonville [a Nashville suburb], and Larry Gatlin sang "Help Me" and it really moved me. Then everybody was kneeling down and praying, and Jimmy Snow said something about is anybody lost or something like that, and I remember thinking why would anybody raise their hand. And then my hand went up almost involuntarily, and then he said if you want to be saved, come down front. I can't remember his exact words, but I remember that I thought at the time, you know, there is no way in the world that I would get up in front of a bunch of strangers. And then I found myself doing it, and I walked down to where he was. He asked me, "Are you ready to accept Jesus Christ as your savior?" And I said, "I don't know," and he looked at me, and I guess he knew that I didn't know, and he said get down on your knees. I can't remember all he was saying, but I remember I was weeping uncontrollably and felt this tremendous relief like some big burden had been lifted off my shoulders. I was too lost in what was happening to even be embarrassed by it. I was, a little later on, embarrassed because I had never done anything like that before or since. I can remember coming out of it. It was almost like coming out of some acid experience or something. That led me to writing "Why Me," and I really felt like I was just holding a pen. I wasn't thinking up the words of it, you know.
Where did "For the Good Times" come from?
That was a break up of a relationship, a real relationship that was over. It was probably one of the first ones that was a big hit. I remember somebody told me that Ray Price had cut it at the time. I knew that it would be the A side. He cut it in Studio A in Columbia with a big orchestra behind him, and it was record of the year, I think.
That song changed his career for the better, but it also changed his singing style forever. What was it like for you to know that something you had written had that much power over someone else's career?
Well, I felt more like he had made it a hit than the song had, because Ray Price was one of the most respected singers among the serious musicians and serious songwriters in town. Willie Nelson you know, idolized him. And the people, musicians like Jimmy Day and people like that, thought more of Ray Price than the rest of the world did yet, but he had some big hits, one of them was Willie's.
Tell me about "Shipwrecked in the '80s." I always thought of that as an anthem for the Reagan era.
It started out from a personal place where I was. I had just come out of [the film] Heaven's Gate, the biggest bomb of all time. My manager died, my agent died, and the company I was recording for, Monument, went under. I was feeling kind of adrift -- and my marriage was over and my little girl was gone, and I felt pretty shipwrecked. It was partially the Reagan years. The second half, it was really inspired by an old veteran out in Hawaii who came up to me, and it looked like he had been standing too close to the flame. He had been in Vietnam, and he was showing me this old Bible which he had underlined. He was telling me about how disappointing the government had been, and he was a picture of disillusionment to me. That's where I got the lines for the second verse -- "like an old Holy Bible you clung to" -- that written word that you can still understand. I'm so superstitious that I have opened every show with that song for as long as I can remember now. Still do.
Where did "Me and Bobby McGee" come from?
That was really kind of a funny story. It wasn't really kind of a personal experience. I had just started writing for Combine [Music], and [record producer and Monument Records chief] Fred Foster called me up. Every other week, I was going back to the Gulf of Mexico and flying helicopters back and forth for oil companies. Fred called up and said, "I have a song title for you." I guess it was sort of in the tradition like the guys did with Hank Williams, you know, the way Fred Rose did, but he said it's "Me and Bobby McKee," and I thought he said "Me and Bobby McGee." He said, "Here's the hook: Bobby McGee is a she." And that sounded to me like the worst idea for a song and he said they'll be traveling around or something, and he said, "Try to write it."
So I hid from him for a couple of months and started thinking of it. There was a film that really affected me, La Strada by Fellini, where Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina travel around on his little motorcycle thing. They did a traveling circus act, and he had gone all over the world with her -- or all over his world -- and he left her one time. He just couldn't take it anymore and left her sleeping by the road. Later on in the film, he hears the song that she used to play at the circus. He hears it while this woman who was hanging up the wash on the line was doing the melody, and he went up to her and said, "Where did you hear this song?" And she told him it was this little girl who had showed up in town and nobody knew where she was from or anything, and she had later died. That night, you see Anthony Quinn in a bar, and he gets in a fight. He's drunk, and then he goes out to the beach and is looking up at the stars and just howling in misery. It's where I got the idea that "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" because he had his freedom from this girl, but it was a two-edged sword. Anyway, that's a long involved story, but that's where it came from.
What's the story behind "Help Me Make It Through the Night"?
"Help Me Make It Through the Night" was just what I was feeling. I was actually sitting in a helicopter tied down on top of an oil rig 50 miles south of New Orleans out in the Gulf and just thinking about asking someone to just help me through the night.
Where did "This Old Road" come from? It seems like it's the life and appraisal of your life it seems in a way.
"This Old Road" somehow seems to get better the older you get. I actually wrote it many years ago, maybe 20. My daughter had just been hit by a car on the back of a motorcycle with her boyfriend. She was hospitalized, and I was waiting for her to come out of that. I had left my band over in Europe and had flown back to be with her in the hospital. I would go out running every day in the desert, and I guess I was feeling just about as old as I am now because the song fits just as well today as it did then -- probably better today. I remember [band member] Donnie Fritts telling me when I sang it at a benefit for him in Muscle Shoals, "Man, I haven't heard that song in forever, but I never realized how good it was." And I said, "Well, we probably were too young."
That was your first music video. While you were shooting it, I heard you were almost killed by a train in the Mojave Desert shooting it?
I think it's kind of odd that "This Old Road" was the first video I ever did. Because of all of the work I had done in films and everything, you'd think I would have done a video before that. But we were out in the Mojave Desert in a tunnel, of all things, and almost got hit by a train. When we went into the tunnel, they said there were no trains out there and nothing coming. Sure enough, here one came, and we all end up running madly out of the tunnel. But the funny thing was at the end of the day, [United Farm Workers of America founder] Cesar Chavez's son showed up. We hadn't planned to meet or anything, and here's the guy that I've been working for -- for 30 years, you know. [Dedicated to social and political causes, Kristofferson is a longtime supporter of the UFW.]
I think you cut "Moment of Forever" in the early '90s on an album, and it's coming up again. Willie has cut that, hasn't he?
Willie nailed "Moment of Forever." The funny thing is, I pitched him that song back when I wrote it. We were on one of those live songwriter things in Austin on TV, and I sang the song for him. Willie acted like I was singing the love song to him, and he said, "I don't know, Kris. I'm not ready for that." It turned into a big joke, and I knew he would sing it great because he's got the perfect voice for it. It's just like an archetype. I knew that either he or Julio [Iglesias] or one of those guys should sing it, and sure enough, he sang it, just destroyed me. I hope he puts it out as a single or something.
Heartbreak Trail
A Canadian Americana Journal
On The Line With… Kris Kristofferson
I did this interview just prior to the release of Kris’s new album, Closer To The Bone (New West), for a lengthy career retrospective in the October issue of Exclaim! Click here to read it. This is the full transcript of the interview.
The new album feels like a continuation of your previous release, This Old Road, or would you say they’re two pieces of a larger picture?
They feel like that to me. Don Was was really the guy that put it all together.
There’s another song you wrote in tribute to Johnny Cash (“Good Morning John”). Did his last recordings partly inspire you to start making your own records again?
Well, I was glad to see him make those last few records, and glad that Rick Rubin was so behind it. But Don Was was the guy who really suggested that I be recording like this.
Did his encouragement get you writing again, or have you been writing all along?
Both. Also, there were a lot of songs like “Good Morning John” that I hadn’t recorded that really meant something to me. I wanted to get as many of them as I could on this record. I wrote “Good Morning John” at June’s request after John had just gotten out of a rehab – I think it was the last one he was in. After that he straightened up for the rest of his life.
Speaking of songs you hadn’t recorded, I think most people will be surprised by the hidden track, considering you say it was the first song you ever wrote when you were 11. What prompted you to put that on?
I don’t know why I put it on there. Somebody suggested it. I’d made that up when I was only 11 years old, still living down in Brownsville, Texas. I think I made it up while I was raking manure. It was just an attempt to write the opposite of a love song, I think.
From what I’ve heard you say in the past, you always had greater ambitions to write prose rather than songs, true?
I never saw songwriting as having the potential to be a lifetime thing, or something that you would do for your life’s work. It didn’t seem to measure up to that. I didn’t think it was something worthy of devoting your life to until I went to Nashville after I’d been in the army. It was so exciting and creatively stimulating to me being around all of the serious songwriters there. Everybody was hanging out every night listening to each other’s stuff. It was like a rebirth for me after five years in the army.
I’m still fascinated by that period of your life. You accomplished so much even before you went to Nashville, and decided to leave that all behind. How do you view that now?
I’m glad that I had the nerve to do that. I think it was probably an act of desperation. I think I would have probably drunk myself to death if I hadn’t got into something creative. I always felt like it saved my life. It seemed at the time to my parents and my peers that I’d lost my mind. It was a long way from Oxford. But it was so exciting to me even though it was hard on my wife and kids and my family. It really did save my life.
Were you conscious of having songs that nobody else in Nashville was writing?
You know, I didn’t. I didn’t think I had great songs at the time. But for some reason I was immediately taken in as a serious songwriter by these guys who hung out all night at the jam sessions, and I never looked back once that happened. It took about four years before I actually started to get songs cut.
Would you say that the social climate had something to do with you being accepted so quickly?
Well, I can’t speak for anybody else. For me, it was an opportunity to be creative and excited by what I was doing. After five years in the army, the freedom of it, the excitement of it was exactly what I’d been looking for. I was lucky enough to run into a bunch of people who were in love with songwriting as much as I was – even as I knew at the same time that my ex-peers and my family thought I was insane.
Once people did start cutting your songs and having hits, were you tempted to start writing for other artists, or did you always write for yourself first?
I started performing around the same time as the songs started getting cut. Johnny Cash put me on his show at the Newport Folk Festival, that was the first thing I did, and I got offers to play at some other folk festivals after that and I never looked back. I remember, after about a year and a half, Ray Price and some others tried to convince me to stop going out on the road and just go back to writing songs. They said, ‘You were writing a lot more when you were working down in the Gulf of Mexico.’ I guess I was doing better than they thought I was. I never did have to work for a living after that.
That seemed like the time when Nashville was going through a big transition with so-called outsiders like Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell being accepted as well. You obviously have a lot in common with them in that your reputation was largely built upon people covering your songs at first too.
Guys like Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen were already heroes to us. I had a feeling at the time I started performing that Canada was the best audience I had. I think it was probably because of how much I looked up to Gordon and Leonard Cohen. Did Joni Mitchell come from there too?
Yeah, she was from Saskatoon.
Well, there you go. There was a whole bunch of great singer/songwriters.
To me, your first four records really exemplify that period when the singer/songwriter was king. And of course guys like John Prine came along during that time as well…
It was really cool for me to be a part of his success story. Steve Goodman had introduced us, and I remember Paul Anka was in town to see my show. Steve took us to a club to see Prine, and Paul offered to fly them both to New York where I was going to be playing at The Bitter End. He got the owner to let them play however long they wanted to. Jerry Wexler from Atlantic Records came to see one of the shows and signed Prine on the spot. We made some demos with Steve there and he got a record deal too.
Do you look back on that time now as a golden era?
Absolutely. It was pretty amazing because maybe five years before that I couldn’t even sing my own demos. They weren’t used to hearing a voice like mine. I think Bob Dylan helped a lot of us in that way. They couldn’t understand Dylan, but he was doing great, so I guess that gave us a chance to try to make a living at it.
You made the transition to acting fairly early in your recording career.
They both started at about the same time. My first gig in L.A. was at the Troubadour, and I started getting offers to do films just from that. Robert Hilburn wrote a rave review, and it was the club that everybody went to anyway. I got offered a starring role in Cisco Pike right off the top with some good actors, and I didn’t have any experience, or any real desire to get into that.
It must have been a big shock.
Well, I was surprised that I wasn’t more surprised. Everything was happening so fast that I’m surprised that it didn’t completely knock me off. I think I was lucky that I was so old when I made it. I mean, I wasn’t old, but I was ten years older than my peers in Nashville. And I think that time in the army and my education saved me from some of the pitfalls that such sudden fame could have posed for me. Suddenly all of these people that I’d idolized from afar, like Janis, were now mates.
I guess naturally a lot your early roles were outlaws, which coincided with the outlaw country movement. Did the line between reality and art start getting a little blurry around that time?
That’s why I say I’m glad I was older and I’d had the experience I’d had, because I’d had none in the spotlight like that. It did get a little blurry – you can’t drink as much as I drank and not have things get blurry. Fortunately, I think I had enough survival skills by that time to not fall under the train.
By the late ‘70s though, your acting career seemed to be peaking just as your music career seemed to be fading.
Yeah, it wasn’t getting as much attention because the record company I was with was sort of sinking in the west. I made several albums that nobody heard.
Was it tough to balance music and acting?
Yeah, it was, but so much was happening that I wasn’t too worried. Then life crashed in at the end. Rita and I got divorced, and at the same time Heaven’s Gate was the greatest bomb of all time.
Unjustified, I think.
Unjustified. I’m sure to this day that it was political assassination. The Attorney General at the time [William French Smith], who was an ex-Navy guy, had a meeting in Hollywood where he said there would be no more pictures that gave a negative portrayal of American history, which is what Heaven’s Gate is about. That just did it in. There wasn’t one favourable review, and I used to read them all. I’d never heard of any film that was treated like that.
I think at least in Canada it’s always been given a fair shake, maybe because Ronnie Hawkins is in it.
Ronnie nearly got blown off a horse and killed! But having the film get such a negative reception was a shock because it put me out of work for a while. Poor Cimino hasn’t done anything since then. The year before he won all those Oscars for The Deer Hunter.
You made a nice return with The Highwaymen though a few years later.
Listen, I feel very fortunate with how my life has turned out in this field. I can make an occasional film and go out on the road any time I want.
Still, you went through a period during the ‘80s and ‘90s when you were making a lot of politically charged music that seemed to fall on deaf ears.
That’s true, but that was time when that information wasn’t generally known everywhere. We were undermining these countries in Central America, blowing up schools, and training the Contras to mine roads and overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and kill people in El Salvador. It used to piss people off when I would sing those songs, and it doesn’t anymore because they’ve been exposed to the same information. They get more tolerant of you as you get older.
I would think too that people are getting tired of how secretive the government has been over the past decade.
I hope to God they are. And I hope that Obama gets a shot at dealing with people diplomatically rather than militarily.
 |
|
