American pop culture, and the literary world in general, lost a giant on Sunday with the passing of acclaimed songwriter Kris Kristofferson.
Kristofferson was a transformative figure in Nashville and the town. He emerged there in the late 1960s.
Bob Dylan said it best, “You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything.”
Kristofferson wrote songs about lovers and losers and boozers. He wrote loneliness and sorrow and the human condition. He made you feel like you were in the song with the characters as it played out.
His road to Nashville was an unlikely one. It was paved by perseverance and an innate stubbornness that was his chief appeal.
Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and studied at Oxford and later served in the United States Army where he became a decorated helicopter pilot. He turned down an Army career and went to Nashville to write songs.
He took a job at Columbia Studios as a janitor. This is where he first met Johnny Cash.
Texas native Janis Joplin put Kristofferson on the map when she recorded his epic, “Me and Bobby McGee.”
Kristofferson said that, after hearing Joplin sing the song, he never considered it his again. He said she made it her own.
In 1970, there was a song that Kristofferson knew could be a hit for Johnny Cash, but he could not get Cash’s attention. He couldn’t get a meeting. He couldn’t get him a demo, so he did what he had to do. He rented a helicopter and landed it on Johnny Cash’s front yard just outside of Nashville. He hand-delivered what later became the CMA Song of the Year.
It was “Sunday Morning Coming Down.”
Such tenacity and perseverance are what it takes sometimes.
Kristofferson reminds us that we must assert ourselves. We must kick down the door as needed.
He did write songs about lovers and losers and boozers, but he also wrote songs that play well in churches.
Whether it’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night” or “Why Me Lord,” Kristofferson’s words of love and faith and passion will resound through the ages.
He was an accomplished actor and a champion for progressive causes. He wrote some of the truest words in the American Songbook. When I read of his passing, I could not help but remember his lines:
“I was born a lonely singer, and I’m bound to die the same,
But I’ve got to feed the hunger in my soul.
And if I never have a nickel, I won’t ever die ashamed.
‘Cause I don’t believe that no-one wants to know.”
That comes from his song, “To Beat the Devil,” in which he says:
“And you still can hear me singin’ to the people who don’t listen,
To the things that I am sayin’, prayin’ someone’s gonna hear.
And I guess I’ll die explaining how the things that they complain about,
Are things they could be changin’, hopin’ someone’s gonna care.”
Most artists can relate with this notion. And journalists, for that matter.
I’m with Kris, “I don’t believe that no-one wants to know.”
“Beating the devil” means beating “your” devil. Your devil is whatever holds you back. Your devil is rejection and loneliness. We beat the devil by perseverance.
In the same song, Kristofferson wrote,
“I ain’t saying I beat the devil, but I drank his beer for nothing and then I stole his song.”
I can’t imagine any cooler words ever being written. But, for him and his story, no truer words have ever been written.
Kristofferson’s life and work serve as a reminder that words matter, life is short and passion is essential.
We are all better for the art that the lonely singer leaves behind, and his example of perseverance should serve as an example for us all.
Source: Freepik.com