Up from the basement came one of country music’s brightest stars (who shall remain nameless). At that moment in time, the Star had a monster radio hit about bombing America’s enemies back into the Stone Age.
“Happy birthday,” the Star said to Willie, breezing by us. As he passed Kristofferson in one long, confident stride, out of the corner of his mouth came “None of that lefty shit out there tonight, Kris.”
“Oh, no,” groaned Willie under his breath. “Don’t get Kris all riled up.”
“You heard me,” the Star said, walking away in the darkness.
“Don’t turn your back to me, boy,” Kristofferson shouted, not giving a shit that basically the entire music industry seemed to be flanking him.
The Star turned around: “I don’t want any problems, Kris – I just want you to tone it down.”
“You ever worn your country’s uniform?” Kris asked rhetorically.
“What?”
“Don’t ‘What?’ me, boy! You heard the question. You just don’t like the answer.” He paused just long enough to get a full chest of air. “I asked, ‘Have you ever served your country?’ The answer is, no, you have not. Have you ever killed another man? Huh? Have you ever taken another man’s life and then cashed the check your country gave you for doing it? No, you have not. So shut the fuck up!” I could feel his body pulsing with anger next to me. “You don’t know what the hell you are talking about!”
“Whatever,” the young Star muttered.
Ray Charles stood motionless. Willie Nelson looked at me and shrugged mischievously like a kid in the back of the classroom.
Kristofferson took a deep inhale and leaned against the wall, still vibrating with adrenaline. He looked over at Willie as if to say, “Don’t say a word.” Then his eyes found me.
“You know what Waylon Jennings said about guys like him?” he whispered.
I shook my head.
“They’re doin’ to country music what pantyhose did to finger-fuckin’.”
Am I young enough to believe in revolution? Am I strong enough to get down on my knees and pray? Am I high enough on the chain of evolution To respect myself and my brother and my sister And perfect myself in my own peculiar way?
—“Pilgrim’s Progress”
***
Kris Kristofferson is cut from a thicker, more intricate cloth than most celebrities today: Imagine if Brad Pitt had also written a Number One single for someone like Amy Winehouse, was considered among the finest songwriters of his generation, had been a Rhodes scholar, a U.S. Army Airborne Ranger, a boxer, a professional helicopter pilot — and was as politically outspoken as Sean Penn. That’s what a motherfuckin’ badass Kris Kristofferson was in 1979. And now if you go online and watch the video for his 2006 song “In the News,” it’s obvious he is still very much that man.
The son of an Air Force general, Kris walked to grade school barefoot in Brownsville, Texas. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Pomona College, studied William Blake and Shakespeare at Oxford, became a U.S. Army captain, was assigned to teach literature at West Point and then abruptly dropped out of the Army to become a songwriter.
Forty years later, Kristofferson is a “unique figure in the history of American music and cinema. The late Sixties and the Seventies saw a creative explosion for American artists. Cinema and rock & roll were in a full-blown renaissance, and Kristofferson stood dead center in both revolutions. He wrote a Number One hit single for Janis Joplin, played at Jimi Hendrix’s last concert, appeared on The Johnny Cash Show with other “new discoveries” like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, won three Grammy Awards, starred in films directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Paul Mazursky and Sam Peekinpah, and became one of the hottest male actors in the U.S. after appearing in A Star Is Born.
Then he played the lead in one of the largest commercial failures in film history, Heaven’s Gate. Kris took the bullet and was shunned from the mainstream, disappearing back into the counterculture.
Today, Kris’ songs have been recorded by more than 500 artists, and he has acted in more than 70 films. In 2006, at the age of 69, he released what is perhaps his finest album, This Old Road. I had been at Willie Nelson’s 70th birthday concert to introduce Kristofferson, whom I had directed in the movie Chelsea Walls in 1999. After both of those experiences, I was enthralled by this man who had lived through so much success and so much failure, both personal and professional, and who had survived with his dignity intact, if not actually heightened. This Old Road motivated me to pitch Kris the idea of my making a documentary about him.
“With all that’s happening in the world today, why would you want to make a film about me?” he asked over the phone. “Let me take you around to a few places I know, and we’ll find some real subject matter.”
I told him that I was aware the world was full of suffering but that I had just seen an old documentary about Woody Guthrie and I was damn glad someone made it.
“Yeah, I’d like to see that,” he said, grudgingly. “It’s just that whole hero-worship thing that bugs me. The cult of personality, you know?” (...)
The son of an Air Force general, Kris walked to grade school barefoot in Brownsville, Texas. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Pomona College, studied William Blake and Shakespeare at Oxford, became a U.S. Army captain, was assigned to teach literature at West Point and then abruptly dropped out of the Army to become a songwriter.
Forty years later, Kristofferson is a “unique figure in the history of American music and cinema. The late Sixties and the Seventies saw a creative explosion for American artists. Cinema and rock & roll were in a full-blown renaissance, and Kristofferson stood dead center in both revolutions. He wrote a Number One hit single for Janis Joplin, played at Jimi Hendrix’s last concert, appeared on The Johnny Cash Show with other “new discoveries” like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, won three Grammy Awards, starred in films directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Paul Mazursky and Sam Peekinpah, and became one of the hottest male actors in the U.S. after appearing in A Star Is Born.
Then he played the lead in one of the largest commercial failures in film history, Heaven’s Gate. Kris took the bullet and was shunned from the mainstream, disappearing back into the counterculture.
Today, Kris’ songs have been recorded by more than 500 artists, and he has acted in more than 70 films. In 2006, at the age of 69, he released what is perhaps his finest album, This Old Road. I had been at Willie Nelson’s 70th birthday concert to introduce Kristofferson, whom I had directed in the movie Chelsea Walls in 1999. After both of those experiences, I was enthralled by this man who had lived through so much success and so much failure, both personal and professional, and who had survived with his dignity intact, if not actually heightened. This Old Road motivated me to pitch Kris the idea of my making a documentary about him.
“With all that’s happening in the world today, why would you want to make a film about me?” he asked over the phone. “Let me take you around to a few places I know, and we’ll find some real subject matter.”
I told him that I was aware the world was full of suffering but that I had just seen an old documentary about Woody Guthrie and I was damn glad someone made it.
“Yeah, I’d like to see that,” he said, grudgingly. “It’s just that whole hero-worship thing that bugs me. The cult of personality, you know?” (...)
***
It's an awkward thing to invite your hero to your house. Early in September 2008, Kris, 72, is seated on my red couch in his black jeans, gray T-shirt and a pair of ancient cowboy boots. As a music fan, I had dreamed of the encounter, but the unforeseen interloper is my own need to express myself, asking questions quickly and then just as rapidly answering them. Periodically, I let him speak.“What does it feel like to survive a lifetime in the arts with your integrity intact? Why does masculine energy so often manifest itself as idiocy? Why is male sensitivity so often linked with perceived weakness?” I continue, “How do I talk about my beliefs about the war to my brother who just returned home from his second tour in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, when in truth I admire him so much and am actually envious of the courage of his convictions? How do you enjoy your life and at the same time stay responsible to all those who don’t have enough to eat? Who are your heroes?” For a moment, I wait for an answer, then decide to plow forward. “I mean, what happened to the great Southern-progressive Democrat? My grandfather helped kick the Ku Klux Klan out of West Texas.” I tell him this as if he’s interviewing me. “What did LBJ mean when he signed the Civil Rights Act saying, ‘I just lost the South for the Democratic Party for the next 50 years?’ Where are the voices like his? How does one be, as Johnny Cash said; ‘a dove with claws?'”
Kris just kind of laughs. I expect him to say, “I agreed to be interviewed, not to be your goddamn guru!” But he doesn’t. He takes a long beat, then says, “Yeah, that used to piss Shel Silverstein off.”
“What did?” I ask.
“That whole ‘dove with claws’ thing. He just thought, ‘What the hell is that?'” Kris smiles: He has an easy way about him, slow to speak and gentle in his movements.
“Why do you think Cash said it?”
“I think he was feeling the very thing that you’re talking about – that if people think you are against the war, that in some way you’re a pussy.”
“Your first recorded song was a pro-Vietnam War song, right?”
“Yeah, I wrote it when I was in the Army on my way to Nashville, and I came upon a protest march. I had a lot of friends over there; and I was thinking we were fighting for freedom. And I wasn’t thinking very deeply.”
“Why did you end up changing your mind about that war?”
“I was flying helicopters in the Gulf of Mexico on one of those offshore oil rigs, and I Was talking to some guys coming home. The stories they were telling me were so horrible that I think it just shocked me enough to change my thinking 180 degrees. I’m talking about things like this young vet telling me about taking people up in a helicopter and interrogating them and if they didn’t say what they were supposed to, they’d throw them out, stomping on the fingers of the prisoner holding on to the skids, you know? The guy telling me this particular story was still just a green kid when he returned from the war. The notion that you could make a young person do something so inhuman to another soldier – or even worse, a civilian – convinced me that we were in the wrong. I hadn’t been thinking in human terms of what that military action was.” He pauses, stroking my dog. “I agree with you totally about all the conditioning that makes us want to feel masculine and tough. I mean, I’m sure that’s why I went to Ranger School and Jump School. And I’m proud of that Ranger tab – still am. But the notion of bombing a defenseless country that’s never threatened us and the fact we all accepted it and said, That’s politics!’ Damn. I’m not really interested in polities. We’ve come to a place that I never dreamed and I know my father never dreamed that America would get to.
“That’s why Shel didn’t like that ‘dove with claws’ thing,” Kris goes on.
“He should have just said he was a dove and proud of it?”
“Exactly. ‘Cause people would have accepted anything from John,” says Kris. “We knew he was a man. I don’t really think anybody would have called Johnny Cash a pussy. But John was conditioned, just like you and me. You really have to get past all of that — where you have enough feeling about what’s right and wrong in the world to not give a shit about what kind of names anybody throws at you.
“Also, I had the benefit of an education,” Kris adds. “After college I got to go to Oxford. Given that, I should’ve been a lot smarter than I was, but even still I volunteered for Vietnam. Christ, I should have known better, so I can’t really be critical of individuals. Ultimately, I was really lucky I didn’t go over there.”
I dig Bobby Dylan
and I dig Johnny Cash
and I think Waylon Jennings
is a table-thumping smash
And hearing Joni Mitchell
feels as good as smoking grass
And if you don't like
Hank Williams, honey
You can kiss my ass.
—“If You Don’t Like Hank Williams”
—“If You Don’t Like Hank Williams”
by Ethan Hawke, Rolling Stone | Read more:
Image: Geoffrey Robinson/Shutterstock
[ed. Kris Kristofferson has passed away. I'm surprised this old essay is still available since there was some dispute as to the veracity of certain details and I thought RS might have pulled the online version. Nevertheless, it's still here and still a good read. See also: Kris Kristofferson: the soldier turned star made a tough life into tender poetry (The Guardian).]
