Opinion: Rest in peace, Kris Kristofferson

Every now and then, someone comes along who makes a unique contribution to the world in which he live. Kris Kristofferson, who died recently at age 88, was that sort of man.

Kristofferson hit Nashville and the country music scene in the 1970s, first as a broom-pushing songwriter on Music Row, then as a gravel-voiced singer/songwriter on the Nashville scene, and finally as a movie star in Hollywood.

But before all that, he was a standout athlete in rugby, football and boxing, a Rhodes Scholar and an Army officer. He was even offered a teaching assignment at West Point, but he turned it down, opting instead to leave the Army in pursuit of a career as a songwriter.

Having been born and raised in a military family (his father rose to the rank of major general in the Air Force), his departure from military service for a pie-in-the-sky dream in Nashville got him disowned by his parents. Maybe that’s why the younger Kristofferson turned left in his political leanings, starting with the Vietnam War. You can see it in his lyrics.

Kristofferson wasn’t overly political, but he did stick out in county music as a “damn liberal” in an “Okie From Muskogee” industry. His lyrics could be on the “bleeding heart” side of Americana, but that’s not really what stood out. He was a poet, with lyrics to songs that stirred up intense emotions about life, love and freedom.

That last feeling — of freedom — really hit a cord for me when I first “discovered” Kristofferson’s work. I was in my 20s when I landed in Nashville, not as a musician but as a restless young man.

Kristofferson sang often about both sides of the freedom I was experiencing:

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” he said in “Me and Bobby McGee,” a song made famous by Janis Joplin. “And nothing ain’t worth nothing, but it’s free.” 

For a dirt-poor Southerner searching for meaning during that time, I understood exactly what he meant.

Back then, I also canonized Kristofferson’s “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33” into my personal life experience — for better or worse:

“He’s a poet, he’s a picker / He’s a prophet, he’s a pusher /

“He’s a pilgrim and a preacher and a problem when he’s stoned. / He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction, /

“Takin’ ever wrong direction on his lonely way back home.”

I felt that was me back then. And it was Kristofferson, too. We had those “contradictions” in common, and I turned to his songs, and his lyrics, more than once to make sense of life in general and love in particular.

I guess that’s what great songwriters do — they give us a sliver of life and love, in a way we can relate to.

But I wonder: Do we connect with certain songs because of our life experiences, or do certain songs nudge us toward new experiences?

With Kristofferson, I’d say it was both. His songs reflected what we felt back then, but it also pushed us toward something deeper. 

Rest in peace, Kris Kristofferson. You helped us see this country through a poet’s eyes.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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