Obituary for Kris Kristofferson | Kris Kristofferson

“Songwriter” may be the first term that comes to mind to describe Kris Kristofferson, who has died aged 88, but he could also claim to have been a singer, film star, soldier and academic. Kristofferson was extremely intellectual, but also a rugged man of action. He came from the same fine tradition of robust American individualists as his friends Johnny Cash and Sam Peckinpah.

Kristofferson's greatest successes as a singer-songwriter came in the 1970s, particularly with the albums “The Silver Tongued Devil and I” (1971), “Border Lord” (1972) and “Jesus Was a Capricorn” (1972), all of them big country hits that also led to “The Silver Tongued Devil and I” (1971), “Border Lord” (1972) and “Jesus Was a Capricorn” (1972) on the pop album charts. But before he made a name for himself as an artist, Kristofferson was already known as a purveyor of hits for other artists.

His first hit was Vietnam Blues, recorded by Dave Dudley in 1966, but the ball really started rolling when Roger Miller recorded three Kristofferson songs for his album Roger Miller (1969). One of them was “Me and Bobby McGee,” the bittersweet story of lovers and their life on the road, and Miller made it into the top 20 in country music. Partially inspired by the Federico Fellini film “La Strada” (1954). became one of Kristofferson's most covered songs.

Then Ray Stevens hit the charts with “Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down,” the desolate alcoholic's lament that would become a hit for Cash the following year, Faron Young took “Your Time's Comin'” into the top five in the country and Jerry Lee Lewis followed with “Once More With.” Feeling.

The Kristofferson magic also worked for Ray Price, who took “For the Good Times” to No. 1 on the country charts and into the top 20 on the pop charts in 1970, while Sammi Smith had one with “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” Landed a pop top 10 hit. By the time Janis Joplin's cover of “Me and Bobby McGee” topped the pop charts in March 1971, a few months after Joplin's death, Kristofferson (who had had a brief affair with the troubled singer) had become one of the hottest songwriter names in Became Nashville.

His debut album, Kristofferson, had done nothing after its release in April 1970, despite containing songs that had been made into hits by other singers, and despite Kristofferson's appearance at the major Isle of Wight festival that year. But after he turned things around commercially with Silver Tongued Devil, the first album was reissued as Me and Bobby McGee – and earned him a gold record. In 1972, several of his songs were nominated for Grammys and he won Best Country Song for “Help Me Make It Through the Night.”

When “Jesus Was a Capricorn” topped the country charts in 1973, supported by the crossover hit single “Why Me,” Kristofferson's attention turned to acting. He had already appeared in Dennis Hopper's chaotic “The Last Movie” (1971) and played a down-and-out musician in “Cisco Pike” (1972), and now it was his association with Peckinpah that sent his film career into overdrive.

Peckinpah cast him as Billy the Kid in “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” (1973), in which Bob Dylan had an acting role and provided songs for the soundtrack, and he worked with Peckinpah again on “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” (1974) together. and Convoy (1978).

In 1973, Kristofferson married singer Rita Coolidge (his second wife) and the couple scored a major pop and country hit with their first duet album, Full Moon, which spawned a number of hit singles, including the Grammy-winning From the Bottle to the Bottom . They celebrated further success with the albums Breakaway (1974) and Natural Act (1978).

Meanwhile, Kristofferson had starred in Martin Scorsese's first Hollywood studio production, the romantic comedy Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), opposite Ellen Burstyn. Two years later, he ascended to blockbuster heaven when he teamed with Barbra Streisand in the remake of A Star Is Born (their on-screen relationship continued off-screen). The film was slammed by critics but grossed $150 million at the box office and earned Kristofferson a Golden Globe for Best Actor.

Coolidge and Kristofferson divorced in 1980. Coolidge commented caustically: “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 person with all his drinking and womanizing.”

When Kristofferson spoke about how he idolized country singer Hank Williams, he remarked, “Most heroes like that were pretty self-destructive, and I was myself for a while.” I drank a lot just to get on stage come. I didn't have much self-confidence at first.” He stopped drinking alcohol in 1980 after his doctor warned him he would kill himself.

His starring role as Jim Averill in Heaven's Gate (1980) should have been a crowning triumph for Kristofferson, but Michael Cimino's momentous Western became synonymous with waste and excess and bankrupted the United Artists studios. He had only moderate success with Flashpoint (1984), and in the same year starred opposite Willie Nelson in Songwriter, for which he wrote several songs and for which he won an Oscar nomination for original score. He and Nelson released the successful duo album Music from Songwriter.

He enjoyed a revival in the '90s after appearing as a corrupt sheriff in John Sayles' Lone Star (1996). This led to roles in a number of successful big-budget films, including Payback (1999), Planet of the Apes (2001) and the Blade trilogy (1998, 2002 and 2004).

Kristofferson was born in the city of Brownsville, Texas. He was the eldest of three children of Mary Ann Ashbrook and Lars Kristofferson, an Air Force pilot who rose to the rank of major general. Military life took the family to California, where Kris graduated from San Mateo High School in 1954 and then studied creative writing at Pomona College.

He won first prize in a short story contest sponsored by the literary magazine Atlantic Monthly and was also recognized by Sports Illustrated for his many accomplishments in football and track during his college years.

He later won a Rhodes Scholarship to Merton College, Oxford University, and began performing his own songs in Britain. He fell under the spell of “Beat Svengali” Larry Parnes, who secured him some recording sessions (under the name Kris Carson) at Top Rank Records and producer Tony Hatch.

Fortunately, Parnes perhaps failed to turn him into the next Tommy Steele, and after receiving his master's degree in English literature in 1960 – he also won a boxing blues at Oxford – Kristofferson returned to the US.

It wasn't long before he was back in Europe. After marrying Fran Beer in 1960, he joined the U.S. Army, became a helicopter pilot and was posted to West Germany. He continued to write and play music and formed a band with some comrades. One of his comrades was a cousin of Nashville songwriter Marijohn Wilkin, who positively reviewed Kristofferson's work when he sent her some of his songs. After completing his service with the rank of captain in 1965, he was offered a position teaching English at West Point Military Academy.

However, he took a trip to the city of Nashville to visit Wilkin, which convinced him to get out of the Army and pursue a career as a country songwriter. He received a small stipend through a contract with Wilkins music publisher Bighorn and worked various jobs, including flying helicopters to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and taking a job as a studio janitor.

He was working at Columbia Records' Nashville studios when Dylan came to town to record his album Blonde on Blonde (1966), and it was here that Kristofferson met Cash, who would become a loyal friend and supporter.

“John told everyone in town that Mickey Newbury and I were the best songwriters,” Kristofferson remembers. “For me, being supported by someone like Cash was really something, like being supported by Dylan.”

Kristofferson's increasingly left-wing political sympathies were expressed in his album Repossessed (1987), which gave him a hit single, They Killed Him (a tribute to Gandhi, Christ and Martin Luther King), and he appeared in the television miniseries America (1987) , which depicted the United States under communist rule. Another politically oriented album, Third World Warrior (1990), failed to chart.

In 1985, Kristofferson and Nelson teamed up with Cash and Waylon Jennings to record “Highwayman,” and both the album and the title track were popular country chart-toppers. This group of charismatic and popular country greats became known as the Highwaymen and enjoyed further success both as a touring act and with the albums Highwaymen 2 (1990) and The Road Goes on Forever (1995).

Kristofferson completed a hat trick of albums with producer Don Was: This Old Road (2006), Closer to the Bone (2009) and Feeling Mortal (2013). His most recent studio album was The Cedar Creek Sessions (2016), which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Americana Album.

After suffering from memory loss for several years, which doctors said was due to Alzheimer's disease, Kristofferson finally received a diagnosis of Lyme disease in February 2016. After appropriate treatment, his condition improved significantly. “It's like Lazarus comes out of the grave and is reborn,” commented his friend, Nashville singer-songwriter Chris Gantry.

In November 2018, he performed Joni Mitchell's A Case of You at Both Sides Now – Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration, marking Mitchell's 75th birthday. He gave his last major live performance in 2020 at the Sunrise Theater in the city of Fort Pierce, Florida.

Having previously been inducted into the Nashville songwriters hall of fame (1977) and the songwriters hall of fame (1985), he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004 and won the songwriters hall of fame's Johnny Mercer Award in 2006 .

He once said that he wanted the first three lines of Leonard Cohen's Bird on the Wire on his tombstone:

Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I tried to be free in my own way

He is survived by his third wife, Lisa Meyers, whom he married in 1983, and their daughter Kelly Marie and sons Jesse, Jody, Johnny and Blake; by a daughter, Casey, from his second marriage; and a daughter, Tracy, and a son, Kris, from his first marriage, which ended in divorce.