LOS ANGELES – Kris Kristofferson, the Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rugged charisma who became a country music superstar and Hollywood A-list actor, has died.
Kristofferson died Saturday at his home in Maui, Hawaii, family spokeswoman Evie McFarland said in an email. He was 88 years old.
McFarland said Kristofferson passed away peacefully surrounded by his family. No cause was given. He was 88 years old.
Beginning in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas, native began recording country and rock ‘n’ roll songs such as “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” “For the Good Times,” and “Me.” Composed a standard. And Bobby McGee. Although Kristofferson himself was a singer, his songs include Ray Price singing “For the Good Times” and Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.” Many of the are best known for having been performed by others.
He starred opposite Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and opposite Barbra Streisand in 1976’s A Star Is Born. In 1998, he co-starred with Wesley Snipes in the Marvel film Blade.
Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake, weaved intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With his long hair, bell-bottom slacks, and Bob Dylan-influenced counterculture songs, he represented a new breed of country songwriters, along with Willie Nelson, John Prine, and Tom T. Hall.
“There is no better songwriter than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said at BMI’s Kristofferson awards ceremony in November 2009. “Everything he writes is a standard and we all have to live with it.”
Kristofferson will retire from performing and recording in 2021 and will continue to make guest appearances on stage, including performing with Cash’s daughter Roseanne at Nelson’s 90th birthday celebration at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in 2023. was only occasionally. The two sang “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything).” I’ll Ever Do Again) was a hit for Kristofferson and a longtime live staple for Nelson, another great interpreter of his work.
Nelson and Kristofferson would go on to form the country supergroup The Highwaymen in the mid-1980s, working with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.
Kristofferson was a Golden Glove-winning boxer, rugby star, and college football player. She holds a master’s degree in English from Merton College, Oxford University, UK. As a captain in the U.S. Army, he flew helicopters, but turned down an offer to teach at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, to pursue composition in Nashville.
Wanting to break into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio in 1966, when Dylan recorded songs for his seminal double album, Blonde on Blonde. Ta.
At times, Kristofferson’s legend was larger than reality. Cash liked to tell an almost exaggerated story about how Kristofferson, a former U.S. Army pilot, landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn and handed him a tape of “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down” with a beer in hand. Ta.
In interviews over the years, Kristofferson has said that while he did indeed land a helicopter at Cash’s house as a tribute to Cash, the Man in Black wasn’t even home at the time, and no one actually cut the demo tape. He said it was a song he had never done before. You certainly couldn’t fly a helicopter while holding a beer.
In a 2006 interview with The Associated Press, he said he might not have had his career without Cash.
“When I was still in the Army, shaking his hand backstage at the Grand Ole Opry was the moment I decided to come back,” Kristofferson said. “It was electric. He protected me before he cut my song. He broke my first record, the record of the year. He put me on stage for the first time. He was the one who gave it to me.”
One of his most recorded songs, “Me and Bobby McGee,” was written on the recommendation of Monument Records founder Fred Foster. Foster had in mind the title of the song, “Me and Bobby McKee,” after a female secretary in his building. In an interview with Performing Songwriter magazine, Kristofferson said that watching Frederico Fellini’s film La Strada inspired him to write lyrics about a man and a woman traveling together.
Joplin, who had a close relationship with Kristofferson, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a man and cut her version days before she died of a drug overdose in 1970. This recording became a No. 1 hit after Joplin’s death.
Hit songs recorded by Kristofferson include “Why Me,” “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do),” “Watch Closely Now,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” and “A Song I’ d Like to Sing.” and “Jesus was a Capricorn.”
In 1973, he married fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge, and they had a successful duet career, winning two Grammy Awards. They divorced in 1980.
The formation of the Highwaymen with Nelson, Cash and Jennings was another important point in his career as a performer.
“What was different for me was that I came in as a fan of all of them,” Kristofferson told The Associated Press in 2005. When I went to Nashville, they were like big heroes to me because they were people who took music seriously. It was a little surreal to not only be recorded by them, but also to be friends with them and work with them. It was like seeing your face on Mount Rushmore. ”
The group released just three albums between 1985 and 1995, before the singers returned to solo careers. Jennings died in 2002, and Cash passed away a year later. Kristofferson said in 2005 that there was talk of reuniting the group with other artists such as George Jones and Hank Williams Jr., but that it would never have happened.
“Looking back now, I can hear Willie saying it was the best time of my life,” Kristofferson said in 2005. It’s been a few years, but it still went by in a blink of an eye. I wish I had cherished every moment. ”
Of the four, only Nelson is currently alive.
Kristofferson’s virulent and political lyrics sometimes hurt his popularity, especially in the late 1980s. His 1989 album “Third World Warrior” focused on Central America and the consequences of U.S. policy there, but critics and fans were not thrilled with the overtly political songs.
He said in a 1995 interview with The Associated Press that he remembered a woman who complained about one song that began with killing a baby in the name of freedom.
“And I said, ‘So what made you angry? The fact that I said it, or the fact that we’re doing it?’ For me, they were angry with me because I told them what was going on.”
The son of an Air Force general, he joined the Army in the 1960s because of expectations.
“I was in ROTC in college, and in my family it was taken for granted that I should serve,” he said in a 2006 interview with The Associated Press. “Given my upbringing and generation, honor and service to the country was considered a natural thing to do, so later in life I questioned some of the things that were being done in my name. It was especially painful when I started holding her.”
Hollywood may have saved his music career. Even when he couldn’t afford to tour with a full band, he gained exposure through film and television appearances.
Kristofferson’s first role was in Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie in 1971.
He loved Western movies and used his gravelly voice to play charming, stoic protagonists. He played Burstyn’s tough, handsome lover in Alice No Longer Lives Here, a tragic rock star in a troubled relationship with Streisand in A Star Is Born, and in 2018 Bradley Cooper also played the role in the remake.
He played a young outlaw in Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, a truck driver in Sam Peckinpah’s 1978 film Convoy, and John Sayles’ 1996 film The Kid. He played a corrupt sheriff in “Lone Star.” He also starred in “Heaven’s Gate,” a 1980 Western that went tens of millions of dollars over budget and was one of Hollywood’s biggest financial flops.
And in a rare appearance in a superhero movie, he played Snipes’ vampire hunter mentor in Blade.
He spoke in a 2006 Associated Press interview about how he got his first acting job while acting in Los Angeles.
“It just so happened that my first professional job was at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, where I opened for Linda Ronstadt,” Kristofferson said. “Robert Hilburn (Los Angeles Times music critic) wrote a great review, so the concert was postponed for a week,” Kristofferson said. “A lot of people from the film industry were there, and even though I had no experience, I started getting film offers.Of course, I had no experience in acting either.”
