“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” Aside from the national anthem, perhaps no other lyrics are as broadly known as those ten words. That hook paralleled a subtle change in popular songs that no one mastered better than Kris Kristofferson. He certainly wasn’t the first writer to make the protagonist of a tune someone who’s down and out, but in his stories the hero doesn’t win or die tragically. He just keeps pushing on against the odds, same as the rest of us. Loneliness and rejection aren’t one-time events, they’re the fabric of life. Like the chorus of Sunday Morning Coming Down, “there’s nothin’ short of dyin’, that’s half as lonesome as the sound…Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.”
It’s kind of ironic that Kristofferson was so adept at creating an atmosphere of failure and despair. He was anything but that. Early in life he was a Rhodes Scholar, graduating from Oxford University before becoming an Army Airborne Ranger and helicopter pilot. He was a champion boxer and, in the form younger generations would discover him, a Golden Globe winning actor. That’s not to say he didn’t have down times in his life, whether his unsuccessful marriages or his family disowning him for leaving the Army. But you would never have guessed his character and story-telling talent from his resume.
A decade plus ago I had the good fortune of seeing Kristofferson live on a double bill with Merle Haggard. Kristofferson opened the show, just him, his guitar and harmonica. His songs were simply arranged and his voice, never satiny or smooth, was a little rougher around the edges. That plaintive delivery, though, just highlighted the power of his songs. Like watching Monet paint or Michelangelo sculpt, it was watching a master craftsman at work. When you add all the victories he had in life to all the woe in the lyrics of his songs, maybe his own words described him best, “he’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.” RIP Kris Kristofferson
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.