Country music outlaw and movie star Kris Kristofferson dies at 88

His songs were like stories

Rodney Crowell was one of many young songwriters drawn to Nashville by Kristofferson’s beacon of success. “Thanks to Kris Kristofferson, a lot of songwriters came to Nashville in droves. I was part of that wave,” he tells NPR.

Crowell says what made Kristofferson’s music stand out was the way he weaved a story and carried it through his songs. Take “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” for example, a vivid portrait of bleak, hungover loneliness. Crowell calls the song “a beautifully written story.”

Well, I woke up Sunday morning and couldn’t keep my head from hurting
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad, so I had another one for dessert

Then I searched my closet for clothes and found the cleanest, dirty shirt

I shaved my face, combed my hair, and ran down the stairs to meet the day

Musician Steve Earle recalls that when he first heard “Sunday Morning Coming Down” as a teenager in Texas, it made such an impression on him that he rushed to buy Kristofferson’s first two albums.

“The imagery and the use of language just went to a level beyond anything that had ever come before in country music,” Earle says.

Kristofferson, he says, “single-handedly raised the bar in country music lyrically to a level that writers still aspire to and that I still aspire to to this day.”.“

He was a master of seduction, both in song and on screen

For Nashville, Kristofferson’s 1970 song of naked, unapologetic desire, “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” was nothing short of revolutionary. “It was earth-shattering and a paradigm shifter,” Crowell says. “It’s literally a form of seduction. It’s seduction with a silver tongue.

Remove the ribbon from your hair
Shake it and let it fall

It lies soft on my skin

Like the shadows on the wall

Come and lie down next to me

Until dawn

I’m just taking up your time

Help me get through this night

Both in person and on screen, Kristofferson was magnetic: a gorgeous movie star, with a mischievous smile and electric blue eyes.

“Women loved him, you know? I mean, I completely flipped,” Crowell says. “He was a sex symbol and a rock star.”

For a young, enthusiastic musician like Crowell, Kristofferson was an intoxicating role model.

“It was like, ‘Hmm, I want to be like that,'” Crowell says. “I thought to myself, ‘How do you do it? Where does your pride come from?”

Kristofferson has brought the same sensual boldness to his film roles throughout his decades-long career. He played in films including: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Alice doesn’t live here anymore, A Star Is Born, Semi Hard, Heaven’s Gate AND Lone Starworking with directors Sam Peckinpah, Martin Scorsese, Alan Rudolph and John Sayles, among others.

For a time in the 1980s and 1990s, Kristofferson was part of the occasional outlaw country supergroup, joining with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson to form the Highwaymen. I recall this time in an interview for a British magazine Classic rock years later he said, “I wish I had been more aware of how lucky I was to share the stage with these people. I had no idea that two of them (Cash and Jennings) would retire so quickly. Hell, I was up there and I had all my heroes with me – these were the guys whose ashtrays I cleaned. I’m kind of surprised I wasn’t more surprised.”

During the 1980s and 1990s, Kristofferson also became involved in a number of left-wing political causes. He protested against nuclear tests in Nevada and was vocal in his opposition to U.S. policy in Central America, making several trips to Nicaragua in support of the Sandinista government and sharply criticizing U.S. support for the Salvadoran military-led junta in that country’s brutal civil war. “I’m a songwriter,” he said in 1988 Fresh air interview, “but I also worry about my neighbors. “I’m really worried about the soul of my country.” His 1990 album Third World Warrioris filled with songs expressing his political views:

Broken rules and dirty warriors spreading lies and secret funds
You can’t beat Campesino with their money and weapons

Because he is fighting for his future, his freedom and his sons

In the third world war

Music connected him with memory

In his later years, Kristofferson suffered from profound memory loss, but performed until 2020. Among the people he shared the stage with was Margo Price. “Without a doubt,” he says, “he had the same charisma and all the sex appeal every time.”

On stage, Price says Kristofferson was able to connect with his musical memories and “feel like himself…. There were times when I walked off stage with Kris and said, “Great performance, Kris!” He said, “Oh, thanks. You know, I wish I was there! I mean, that was the most powerful thing about seeing him perform his songs, that he remembered the songs he wrote so long ago, but he couldn’t remember anything from five minutes ago.

In a 2013 interview with NPR, Kristofferson reflected on his life and career. At the age of 76, he has just released an album titled A sense of mortality.

“To my surprise,” he told Rachel Martin, “I feel nothing but gratitude for being so old and yet still afloat and alive with the people I love. I have had various experiences in my life, most of them were good. I have eight children and a wife who puts up with everything I do and keeps me out of trouble.