Kris Kristofferson

28/07/2010

Singer-songwriter and acting legend looks back on the long road to personal freedom

At 16 I was beginning to have dreams of being a writer. My big loves in life were football and boxing, mainly football. I had a driver’s licence and I think in the first six months I had six accidents. I was in California then. I had been there a couple of years. We moved around a lot. My father’s civilian job was flying for Pan American and he was also in the military. But I always came back to Brownsville in Texas which I felt was my real home. It was in my heart and it was very close to Mexico. I love Mexico.

Looking back I‘m kind of amazed at my audacity. I was too small and slow for football, but I was able make first string. I remember a coach told my parents in college that he plays by the will of Kristofferson not by the will of God.

I’d tell my 16 year old self that he’d be amazed that everything he really loved he’d get to do. By the time I was in college I wanted to be a writer and I won a prestigious short story writing competition in Atlantic Monthly. Things just started to go my way. My grades were better in college than in high school and the next thing I knew I had a Rhodes scholarship which took me to Oxford. When I got to Oxford I boxed on the university team. The difference between the education in Oxford and the US was that it was specifically literature and English, not a bunch of other courses. I loved it. I started really reading Blake and Shakespeare.

I’d tell him how much freedom would matter to him – personal freedom. Some friends of mine in Nashville said if you take the words freedom and sidewalks out of your songs you’d be speechless. It definitely was and continues to be about freedom for me. Freedom to do what I wanted to do not what was expected of me.

If I was to give my younger self one piece of advice it would be to follow your heart and your expression. The advice I was given by my family and professors was in a different direction. When I decided to go and be a songwriter it was regarded as a lightweight ambition for a guy with my academic background. My mother disowned me. I can remember when she wrote the letter telling me not to be an embarrassment to the family she said Johnny Cash was nothing but a drug addict. That was back in ‘65. That changed as well. I remember I was getting an honorary degree and John was there to give it me. I can remember seeing my mother hugging Johnny Cash and I thought how things had changed.

You know, that 16 year old should also believe in himself. I find it amazing that I went against everything my parents were telling me to do. Even my brother Craig who was my biggest champion at the time, after about two or three years when I hadn’t had any songs recorded he said you know you said you’d give this a year (I didn’t really try at it until I was about 29) and if it didn’t work out you’d go do something you can do. I remember thinking – God, you don’t realise I’m doing the right thing. I was so in love with the whole process I couldn’t understand that anybody would think I wasn’t doing the right thing.

At 16 Hank Williams was my hero. A little later came Johnny Cash. The notion that we’d ever get to be friends – I couldn’t have dreamed that. The notion that I’d be right up there on stage right next to him as I was many times before and during our time in the Highwaymen (supergroup with Cash, Kristoferson, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings) would be mind blowing.

Johnny Cash was never just lifesized – he was larger than life. Willie (Nelson) and I are best friends but John was something else. His face should be up there on Mount Rushmore. He was more like the father of our country.

When I was trying to make it as a songwriter in Nashville I worked as a janitor in the studio where Bob Dylan was recording Blonde On Blonde. Every songwriter in Nashville wanted to come to those sessions but nobody could get in – there were policemen at every door. Nobody could get in except me because I worked there. Dylan would go sit down at the piano behind these dark glasses and start writing. It was unheard of in Nashville not to do three songs in three hour sessions. But he went the whole night without recording anything. The band was off playing ping pong or cards and then in the morning he’d call them in and they’d cut a masterpiece. My memory is getting really crappy. When I try to think of the names of individual songs I can’t, but when I think of the whole thing it was like being allowed to watch Michelangelo work. I got to meet to his wife and kids and they were friendly but I never spoke to Bob. I was too scared. I met him later through Johnny Cash because he and Johnny were really close. That was a real meeting of the giants there.

I’d tell my younger self that someday Barack Obama would come. He’s the most hopeful thing in American politics since the Kennedys. He’s had nothing but one problem after another. The oil disaster is just one more thing that he has had to deal with. I used to work on a platform like that, flying helicopters to the rigs every other week – until John cut ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’ and I never had to work again. The oil company are to blame for the spill. They weren’t following regulations and were taking some shortcuts. I think it’s still spewing somewhere. Obama is well on the way of changing America’s policy to the rest of the world. There’s no way we’d be in Iraq or Afghanistan had he been in charge. I think he’s trying to get us to dialogue instead of military action.

Picking one song I’m most proud of is like asking me to pick between my children - I’ve got eight of them and they’re all beautiful. If I had to pick one it would be ‘Me And Bobby McGee’ because Janis’s version meant so much to me. As soon as I say that I’d think of another.

I’d tell him he’ll enjoy it all – the wild days and the way things are now. I look back with most affection on my time with The Highwaymen. It was so funny. They were my heroes before they were my friends.

Kris Kristofferson plays Cadogan Hall, London, July 28-29, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester July 31, Cambridge Folk Festival, August 1, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, August 2, and Edinburgh Festival Theatre, August 3