My first introduction to the music of Kris Kristofferson – who passed away last Saturday at the age of 88 – came via The Old Grey Whistle Test. The year was 1972 and he appeared on the British TV music show alongside his fellow American recording artist Rita Coolidge. Together they performed ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’, a song written and composed by Kristofferson and originally released on his self-titled debut album two years beforehand. The steamy sensuality of their performance and the crackling sexual tension between the pair was palpable. The couple were to marry the following year.
Coolidge and Kristofferson divorced in 1980. Coolidge was to later comment: “I can’t say enough about what a great man he was. It’s just that he was a shitty husband … He was a very toxic human being with all his drinking and his womanising.”
Kristofferson stopped drinking alcohol in 1980, married his third wife Lisa Meyers three years later and the couple remained together until his death.
By the 1970s Kristofferson had already forged a strong reputation for himself by supplying a string of notable hit songs for other artists. These included ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ (Janis Joplin), ‘For The Good Times’ (Ray Price), and ‘Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down’ (Johnny Cash).
Running in tandem with the music, Kristofferson was also establishing a highly respectable career in acting. Memorable film roles throughout the 1970s included his being cast in three terrific Sam Peckinpah movies, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, and Convoy. He would also appear alongside Barbra Streisand in the 1976 remake of A Star is Born for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.
Whilst Kristofferson’s acting career did tail off thereafter – due in part to the overarching negative impact of Michael Cimino’s notorious 1980 big-budget flop, Heaven’s Gate – he still went on to produce some compelling performances, perhaps most notably in the brilliant 1996 neo-Western Lone Star and the subsequent trilogy of Blade films.
The ‘70s, perhaps, also marked the creative peak of Kris Kristofferson’s output as a singer and songwriter though he did continue to release a string of well-received solo albums right up until The Cedar Creek Sessions in 2016. He also collaborated with his fellow so-called “outlaw” country musicians Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings who together formed The Highwaymen. They released three commercially successful albums between 1985-95.
Kris Kristofferson was also a strong social activist, speaking out on a wide range of issues from the American government’s involvement in the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua during the 1980s to his more recent championing of sustainable agriculture, regardless of any adverse impact his anti-right stance might have had upon his career paths. He famously stood firmly by Sinéad O’Connor’s side shortly after she had received widespread opprobrium for her protest against the Catholic Church on the American TV programme Saturday Night Live when she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II.
Kristofferson’s was always a voice of fairness and reason in his continual support for freedom, personal or otherwise. As he indicated on ‘Me and Bobby McGee’, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
Kris Kristofferson also holds a special place in my heart as his concert at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall in March 2007 marks the only time I went to a live music show with my late father on the occasion of his 80th birthday. In fact, it was the only such event he ever attended in his lifetime. I think he enjoyed it. I know I did.
Almost exactly a year later I took the above photograph of Kris Kristofferson signing autographs at the Manchester Apollo stage door after his show that night. On the opened page of the tour programme the words “singer, songwriter, father (he had eight children), actor, political activist, legend” are writ large. A fitting tribute to a great man.
Photo: Simon Godley
