Remembering Kris Kristofferson

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I hate writing obituaries. Swore it off when Harry Dean Stanton died because I had just interviewed him for a profile and didn’t, still don’t, want to think about him in the past tense. Skipped it when Tom Petty died because I had just seen him a week ago in his capacity as an alive guy. Made an exception for Norm because I knew him and made an exception for Shane MacGowan because he was the first performer I ever saw in concert.

Now Kris Kristofferson is dead, but this is not an obituary. Just a reflection on the culture I grew up with, a culture I want to document and remember before the picture fades too much. It was a culture where it was always 1978 and Jimmy Carter was always president and the last hit on the radio was fucking Convoy. It was a culture where Kris Kristofferson was omnipresent, whether you liked him or not.

Was Kris Kristofferson CIA? A captain in the army and he was offered to teach English literature at West Point and he went to Oxford? What was he really doing in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas? Do your own research. That’s not why we’re here today, we’re not here to spread baseless rumors that Kris Kristofferson was a CIA asset. We’re here to reminisce about an American cultural icon.

Whenever all my family was gathered under the carport at my grandparents’ place, the conversation was always about two turns away from arguing about and subsequently ranking The Highwaymen. We usually landed on the following: Johnny was the coolest, Waylon was the real outlaw, Willie was the singer and the best guitar player, Merle was simply too talented to be there, and Kris was there to stand around and look pretty. Kris was Hollywood, always said with a bit of a sneer and an eyeroll. Nobody took him seriously as a vocalist and they made fun of his singing whenever possible.

I even did impressions of all the Highwaymen, and I was pretty good at it; I actually practiced. My impression of Kristofferson was just clearing my throat, making sure I held one note the whole time from as far back in my mouth as I could get. Because Kristofferson wasn’t a singer. He was a actor. Lived in Malibu. A actor. 

That’s how I always thought of the guy, and how I always talked about him when his name came up. He was a superhunk with annoyingly great taste in roles. A lot of this was sublimated jealousy. He went to the best university that exists, served in the 8th Infantry, lived in a better part of California, had any woman he wanted, played total badasses in any movie he wanted, and he was one of the greatest songwriters in American history. That’s part of why we all made fun of his voice. This guy had to be lousy at something. It was too unfair otherwise. He was the perfect 20th century man. 

In the wake of his death, everybody’s gonna talk about his songwriting but nobody needs to. He wrote Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down. The end. Don’t need to pad the CV on that one. I always knew him as an actor of surprising skill and subtlety. I almost want to use the word thespian, maybe because of that Oxford business. 

He’s wonderful, the definition of rugged American charisma, in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (maybe the most underrated Scorsese), A Star is Born, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (his songwriting always felt like it was in competition with Bob Dylan, but we know who wins in front of a camera). He’s a totally confident leading man in Heaven’s Gate, which would have otherwise gone down in history as a combination horse crime and cocaine explosion.

Cisco Pike is a perfect little movie, The Pilgrim Chapter 33 at feature length, that bottles an entire 1970s Los Angeles aesthetic: sweaty cowboy clothes, marijuana, being a dirtbag, Harry Dean Stanton, and driving a beater to the Troubadour. I’m partial to George Armitage’s bicentennial-themed vetsploitation flick Vigilante Force. My grandpa would probably tell you the best thing Kristofferson did with his life wasn’t Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down or Me and Bobby McGee, but Blade. 

Kris Kristofferson was a hell of a guy. I was always jealous of him. I still am, even though I’m probably a better singer. I’ll shut up after one quick memory. One of my very oldest:

When I was little, I had a kiddie tape player with a built-in speaker. Had some kiddie tapes to go with it, all of which I’ve forgotten. Probably Disney songs or collections of public domain stuff like Home on the Range. But sometimes my grandpa would give me a tape or two, probably stuff he wanted to get rid of because he didn’t have room. The tapes always smelled like 20 year old cigarette smoke and the smell would linger on the kiddie tape player even after I put them back in my closet. One night I put on a tape by an artist with a funny looking name, and the song made me cry and cry and cry, just endlessly, to the point where my mom had to come in and console me. For years afterward, decades afterward, just remembering that song or even that old tape smell would make me cry, make me terrified of being alone, make me bodily aware of loneliness and how thoroughly outrageously physically fucking painful it is. It was Help Me Make It Through The Night.