The outlaw at 82, rides on, undefeated
One of the greatest songwriters of all time, Kris Kristofferson, has defied age and categorisation, writes Barry Egan
AT Glastonbury in 2017, Bradley Cooper introduced the outlaw himself Kris Kristofferson. Cooper was, of course, being filmed playing a guitar in front of the giant Glasto festival crowd for his then forthcoming movie with Lady Gaga, A Star Is Born, an earlier version of which Kris Kristofferson had co-starred with Barbra Streisand in 1976.
Another movie star Johnny Depp then joined Kristofferson for Sunday Morning Coming Down and Silver Tongued Devil. The hirsute and almost ageless devil from Brownsville, Texas, gave away a hint of mortality when he changed the lyrics to his 1970 masterpiece Help Me Make It Through The Night — a plea for intimacy, both physical and spiritual, captured best by Gladys Knight in her 1972 cover — thus: “Help me make it through tonight.”
It’s Kristofferson’s 83rd birthday on June 22. On the following night, he will play with Merle Haggard’s band The Strangers in Cork and in Dublin the next night.
Evidently, he doesn’t believe in taking it easy, still very much The Outlaw at his age, or any age. This is the man, a former captain in the army and a helicopter pilot, who landed a chopper on Johnny Cash’s lawn in Tennessee to personally hand him his demo tape of some songs in 1969.
The man in black wasn’t home. His wife June, whom Kris had become friends with, was. She later played Johnny the demo.
“The lights were being turned out and I was just listening to all the songs of the night in my mind and June kept the tape recorder running,” Cash once wrote. “When the last song was over, we went into bed. ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down is a good song’, I said.”
When Cash recorded the song in 1970, it went to No 1 in the country charts. Another Kris Kristofferson track that Cash recorded in 1983, Here Comes That Rainbow Again, Cash said “might be my favourite song by any writer”. They became firm friends. They performed together for years with Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson as The Highwaymen.
When another hero of Kristofferson’s, Bob Dylan recorded Kristofferson’s They Killed Him — about Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Christ — for his 1986 album Knocked Out Loaded, Kristofferson responded by saying that “having Dylan cover one of your songs is like being a playwright and having Shakespeare act in your play”.
For many of us Kris Kristofferson — the flawed bard of country and soulful music, the country troubadour with the outlaw spirit — has the same effect.
He has written some the finest songs of his or any era: the late great Janis Joplin’s version of Me and Bobby McGee, from her 1971 Pearl album, her last, was her only No 1 song. Kris also wrote For The Good Times, a heartbreaking country classic covered by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Chet Atkins, Dolly Parton, Crystal Gale, Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, and Perry Como. It was Elvis Presley’s version, however, that appeared to touch Kris the most.
‘Help me make it through tonight, Kris joked in 2017’
“I was an Elvis fan growing up. Elvis was a force of nature. He was the first white guy who could sing black songs and sing them right. I think it just blew everybody away.
“When I was first dreaming of becoming a songwriter I never would have dreamed that Elvis would sing not just one of my songs but three of them [for the record, they are For The Good Times, Help Me Make It Through The Night and Why Me Lord] and with so much soul. I feel a lot of gratitude for that.”
As do, I imagine, many of us when we listen to Sunday Morning Coming Down, Me And Bobby McGee, Lovin’ Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again), Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends, The Pilgrim and many others that Kris treated the world to. He has defied age and categorisation. Long may he reign.