Kris Kristofferson: C/D?

that rules!

best part was kris telling me about being a helicopter pilot in the gulf of mexico

i may or may not have offered to help him write his memoirs. he said he hasn't done it yet because he sits down to start writing, but then decides he would rather be watching a football game.

Kris otm

Kris Kristofferson...pilot...Gulf of Mexico...what was he transporting?

i think he was flying people back and forth out to oil rigs. he was also a pilot in the air force for a while. and was a rhodes scholar. dude had kind of an interesting life even before he became famous, really.

yeah that helicopter pilot/military stuff has cropped up in interviews I've read with him

amazing pic btw!!

also got to talk to him a bit about mickey newbury!

oooh, what he say about mickey?

"lyle seems like mayyyybe the nicest dude in the world"

lyle love it

(Kristofferson) achieved some success as a performer himself, following Johnny Cash's introduction of Kristofferson at the Newport Folk Festival. Kristofferson had previously grabbed Cash's attention when he landed his helicopter in Cash's yard without prior arrangement and gave him some tapes

oooh, what he say about mickey?
he seemed super excited -- said that he was his best friend, mentor and pretty much "the guy I wanted to be." when kris got fired from his pilot job, mickey was like "great! come back to nashville and pitch songs to the johnny cash show." so they hung out in one of the local hotels where guests for the show stayed and just played songs for whoever. kris also said he thought mickey could've been huge if he just went out and played live but for whatever reason he never liked it. said that his favorite thing was to "play a song and then pass the guitar to someone else." i mentioned "she even woke me up to say goodbye" as one of my favorites and KK pretty much shouted "SHE EVEN WOKE ME UP TO SAY GOODBYE! Can you believe that title!?"

ha! awesome.

she even woke me up to say goodbye, the bitch

If I could have been anybody during the '70s, I think I might have chosen him. (I mean, except for myself, of course.) He was definitively a 1970-71 guy, and he got to stay a 1970-71 guy for the whole decade and become more successful and more famous along the way.

I just noticed his RS cover with Rita Coolidge has an American version (with beard) and a British version without:

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/kris-1_zpsa65a2de1.jpg http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/kris-2_zps41ca728c.jpg

The headline changes on the Sex Pistols, too.

my first association with him will always be:

http://www.moviespad.com/photos/kris-kristofferson-convoy-0cef0.jpg

well that's pretty amazin'

it's unbelievable

Awesome

Sad, but he seems to be taking it in stride, and can still perform:

http://www.showbiz411.com/2014/01/26/kris-kristoffersons-memory-loss-worsens-but-his-sense-of-humor-is-great

Sorry to hear.

He frequently pops up in bios of the prior generation of musicians- Arthur Alexander, Charlie Louvin, Johnny Cash- and I am always touched by the respect he accorded these guys. The epitome of a gentleman and a scholar.

Also, wow at those RS covers.

Jerrod Niemann sings on his newest album that he, himself, is “no Shakespeare or Kris Kristofferson.”

The half assed hanging on to the words on the exhalations on "nobody wins" my god

<3

yea he's a pro

deserves more

like most dorks I fuck w those first two albums but these two from the notably less impressive Border Lord are so good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exDp_PxLcCI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI0sfsunaL4

I went to see Dwight Yoakam Friday night and sat by a very intoxicated older lady who was telling me all about this Outlaw Country cruise she went on and how great it was. She said "Kris Kristofferson was there too! He died shortly after the cruise so I feel so blessed to have seen him." I looked at my wife and was like, should I tell her?

lol

He did legit retire shortly after a cruise, so she's probably just conflating/inflating. I saw him at Bonnaroo in 2010, and he was pretty ragged and rugged but he always was to some degree. It was a weird set, like 1 p.m. on a hot day, so we were all crowded in under the tent out of the sun, and the sound wasn't great because it was mostly just him and his guitar and it didn't carry well. Still! It was great. Found this clip from it, it has "Nobody Wins" and "From the Bottle to the Bottom."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_XJs50oc3M

There's this whole odd mid-90s concert of Kris Kristofferson and Lou Reed swapping songs (with Victoria Williams showing up for "Strawman" too):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxpTBYMG1-M

dying's just another word for nothin' left to lose

rip legend

sunday morning comin' down

I’ll get along

sure was handsome when he was high

Sounding a bit like Leonard Cohen to me right now, another guy whose distinctive vocal charms I was mostly resisting until very recently

I'm no pusher, I never have pushed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYAHBGApQTU

A genuinely cool dude. What a life

I was just thinking about the funny parallels with him and Leonard Cohen — Janis Joplin supposedly running into LC at the Chelsea Hotel while she was looking for Kristofferson, the way both of them as songwriters were first made famous by women singing their songs. And yeah, that their vocal delivery takes some adjustments and/or forgiveness.

closer to the bone hit me hard only last week, for all his tendency to folksy mythologism (?) of whatever politics or outlook or cause he was espousing at any given time i think he was also usually wryly unsparing of himself too

Pour one out, RIP.

for me when he could sing, hes a great singer. just not a guy interested in living in a way that lent itself to looking after his singing capabilities.

but when his voice was full and craggy and hangover-deep, when he can hit that last line of pilgrim or the verses of to beat the devil, thats a *great* voice, a voice to play a technicolor movie god or moses. lovin her was easier demonstrates his actual singing ability, that warmth and character that seeps into the best of his stuff like the barrel seeps into whiskey but very softly applied around the song.

covers might have helped his profile but jesus the cash version of sunday mornin, the janis version of bobby mcgee? theyre vanilla altogether vs the man himself doing it imo. startling clarity, strikingly unphoney delivery, im buying it every time, missed notes sore throats and all.

otm

Jesus was a Capricorn

And he defended Sinead when his crew of boomer cowards let an audience booed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2dEwY0xzcI

Spectral cover imo

I love Willie’s cover of Help Me Make Through the Night. Then someone posted Kristofferson doing a duet with Miss Piggy and I dunno maybe Kris takes it back