Kris Kristofferson - Partly truth and partly fiction

[Editor's note: Writer and musician Roxy Gordon published a monthly newspaper called Picking Up The Tempo in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the 1970s that covered outlaw-country music. Nowadays he lives in the small West Texas town of Talpa and writes a weekly column for the Coleman County newspaper. His most recent musical release was the 1997 CD Smaller Circles on the English label Road Goes On Forever Records.]

1969, Judy and I were living in a one-room log cabin on the Fort Belknap Reservation in far northern Montana. Our community, Lodgepole, was ten miles from the highway. A single, ill-supplied little grocery store over the hill furnished some needs of the 70 or so Assiniboine who lived scattered along the creek. Community ponies roamed. Endless west wind waved sweetgrass. We got our mail in Hays, other side of the Little Rocky Mountains, went to collect it maybe three times a week. Sometimes came a letter from Texas and Rolling Stone magazine, The Village Voice and The New Yorker. I can understand Rolling Stone; I'd found one of the first in Denver. I'd read the Voice back in Texas, in college at UT. After all these years, I still can't explain The New Yorker.

The Village Voice told me about coming summer's doings at a college in San Diego, a writers conference featuring counterculture hero writers: Richard Brautigan, Michael McClure, Robert Creeley and others. The paper didn't mention Jim Morrison, but he came, bringing friends and his awful movie, A Feast Of Friends.

Judy and I drifted down the west side of America, camped the first night on the Missouri not far from the rez. We slept in the car at Yellowstone, our pup tied outside to be driven to yelping fits by a visiting bear cub. We camped in the mountains above Salt Lake. Then it was Zion National Park and then driving down a terribly congested Vegas strip, scorching heat in a car with no air conditioning. The desert and a night with friends in L.A. -- first time we had been there. We set up camp at the Chula Vista KOA campground the following afternoon.

I quickly fell in with Richard Brautigan at the college. He liked a short story I'd written. Besides, I had a car and he didn't. He had no driver's license, said he wouldn't want to share roadways with anyone who drive as badly as he did. Hanging out late one night with writer heroes and Jim Morrison, I watched a drunken Morrison try to pick a fight with Creeley.

As the conference concluded, Richard asked where we were going. We had no idea. He said come to San Francisco. We went on back to L.A. where we awoke one morning to the news of the Sharon Tate murders. We watched one Buck Owens TV show. My friend Jack Steele played harmonica sitting in his bath. I junked my mother's old high school typewriter in the alley and Judy and I decided to drive north for San Francisco. We ended up in a Berkeley motel, rented a house in Oakland and ran into Richard at a North Beach restaurant. I took to driving him for errands and reading gigs.

Judy and I took him to do a reading at some college in Marin County. Avant garde teachers and students fed us in an apartment. Someone passed around a semiautomatic pistol. Richard said he preferred Berettas. One of the teachers was a young woman named Diane. She wore opaque green hose and heavy, colored eye makeup. After the reading, we went to her fancy, one-room redwood house. In a bed not far from the head of ours, they made noise doing what one might guess given the people and place and time. Then she and Richard wandered around the house naked.

When morning came, I put on a record album I'd just bought, The Band's second, the album that included "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". Richard, who sometimes affected a Confederate uniform and had written a book called A Confederate General From Big Sur, hated it, said it was about people cheering when the South fell. I explained it was about a train. He listened again and decided it was his favorite song.

Diane came to our house a few days later to take us to the Berkeley Folk Festival. We parked beside a eucalyptus grove where people wearing animal skins danced amongst the trees. We ran into a girl we'd known in Colorado and there came upon the stage some guy announced as Kris Kristofferson. He did something like "Blame It On The Stones" about blaming the Rolling Stones for all perceived excess of the '60s. Of course it was satire and I knew it. But for some reason, I think I thought it too topical. Or maybe he did "The Law Is For Protection Of The People" which proves it ain't. Either song, I wasn't so sure. He must have done "Me And Bobby McGee" because when Roger Miller hit America with that song, I realized it was a song by that Kristofferson guy. I liked it a lot, liked it more the more I heard it. Most of America felt the same way.

I went back to Texas in 1970, and Kris Kristofferson spent 1970 getting famous. Or he, at least, laid the groundwork for it. I found his album, Kristofferson, in an Austin record store. I lived at the time in the hills west of Austin, in a rock ranch hand house. Kristofferson was one of the records I damn near wore out that year. "Sunday Morning Coming Down" was on it. And the song was all over the radio, Johnny Cash doing it. In another ranch hand house -- this one a little, mostly unpainted white house south of a west Texas town, Benoit, that no longer existed, the house where Judy grew up -- the ranch hand, Judy's father, sat at a plastic kitchen table and told us "Sunday Morning Coming Down" was real religion.

I guess Nashville powers thought it pretty good because they gave Kristofferson their Song Of The Year award. We watched the CMA ceremony on a little black-and-white TV in the rock house kitchen. When they called his name, he stood up looking a bit confused and wearing a coat he seemed to wear everywhere in photographs that year. His Berkeley shortish hair had made it to his shoulders. Presenter Roy Clark was gracious but Tennessee Ernie Ford made some comment that he liked country music because you could tell the boys from the girls. He should have seen country music haircuts already coming down the road.

Then Sammi Smith was all over country and pop radio with "Help Me Make It Through The Night". I was driving myself down to Austin one afternoon when I picked up a kid hitchhiking. He was cowboyed up and smelled to high heaven of some cologne, said he was going to meet his girlfriend. Sammi Smith came on the radio and the kid sang along. Miracles occur in the strangest of places. Here is a goat roper, cedar chopper pilgrim cowboy kid hitchhiking in the midst of what was soon to be Willie Nelson country and he was singing Kris Kristofferson.

Come '71, I read Kris was in a Dennis Hopper film, The Last Movie. That summer Judy and I went back north to the reservation. I found the Kristofferson songbook in a Havre record store. I thought it was the best book I'd read in awhile. Judy and I camped in the Little Rocky Mountains and fooled around with guitars trying to play the stuff.

I met Kris Kristofferson like ten years ago at a show at the Austin Opry House, a benefit for the Wounded Knee school on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation. I did my militant Indian poetry with music attack. I don't remember who put that show together. Somebody must have dropped a lot of money on it, kids from the school bussed all the way to Austin. John Trudell performed and Bill Miller. Rumors flew that Saint Willie would show and maybe Waylon Jennings, whom Sammi Smith said on the back of an album is Comanche. Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan might appear. Willie, Waylon and Kris were said to be making a movie out in Willie Nelson country. I wouldn't guess what Bob Dylan might have been doing that night, nor even Willie and Waylon. I know what they didn't do.

But Kris did. He showed in a van with his wife. After he did his set, he disappeared to the backstage of backstage with Bobby Bridger. I was backstage talking with Bill Miller when Kris escaped from backstage backstage and came directly to me to talk. I don't know why.

A few weeks ago I interviewed Kristofferson by phone from New York; he professed he didn't remember any of the whole scene. The phone call was short and continuously interrupted by some Atlantic Records PR person saying Kris had to get off the phone to talk with another failed musician turned critic who wanted to interview him.

This piece I'm writing seems to have been precipitated by the Atlantic release of The Austin Sessions, new versions -- and maybe better -- of most of Kristofferson's best-known songs. Kris said he recorded it in three days. He said Stephen Bruton played guitar and the vocalists were people he had been in jail with, apparently a reference to Jackson Browne, who sings harmony on "Me And Bobby McGee". Steve Earle sings on "Sunday Morning Coming Down"; Vince Gill sings on "Help Me Make It Through The Night"; Gill and Alison Krauss harmonize on "Why Me?"; Mark Knopfler sings and plays lead guitar on "Please Don't Tell Me How The Story Ends".

The Silver Tongued Devil And I, which came out in 1971, is still my favorite Kris Kristofferson record. "The Pilgrim: Chapter 33", which is on that album, is not only my favorite Kristofferson song, but likely the story of my life and the story of most people I know. How about 68-year-old poet and songwriter Kell Robertson living in New Mexico in a house built of bales of hay between Cerrillos and Santa Fe?

When I was playing in an unnamed kitchen band in Albuquerque, I knocked out wives and other hangers-on with "The Pilgrim". I changed the words. Instead of the Pilgrim being partly fact and partly fiction, I said partly fact and mostly fiction. Kris does the same change on The Austin Sessions. It's too bad he doesn't list the Pilgrims like he did on The Silver Tongued Devil And I. But hell, that record is over a generation old. I expect Kris has met many a pilgrim since then; it would take a whole box set of records just to name them.

Judy hit the internet and found some more articles about Kristofferson. Some strange stuff. One piece purported to be Johnny Cash talking about how Kris plied him tapes via June. Johnny said he threw the tapes into his lake, wouldn't listen, but then dragged the lake to find the tapes. Cash may have written the thing as some kind of joke, but Kris told me Marijohn Wilkin introduced him backstage at the Opry early on. Another web page told us Kris had a beard when he accepted the CMA award for "Sunday Morning Coming Down". He didn't have a beard. Partly fact and mostly fiction.

I talked with C.J. Berkman on the phone awhile ago. He told me the magazine Texas Monthly had Kris teaching English at Harvard. Turning into gold may not be hazardous, but it sure can wreck the part that is partly truth.

Kris told me he lived in Brownsville, Texas, until he was eleven years old. His father, a pilot for Pan Am and the military, was sent to Brownsville. Then his family went to California. His father, he said, flew in the Korean War. Kris went to Pomona College in Southern California. One of those articles on the internet, written by John Morthland, says Kris did his first record in 1958 in a garage in Los Angeles: "Blue Melody" on one side, "Ramblin' Man" on the other. Morthland says they sent copies to DJs. Kris may have been doing more than a little right. In '59 he won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. Morthland says Kris cut four records there. They were not released.

Kris told me he was in ROTC at Pomona when he graduated; the Feds let him off active duty because he was gone to be a Rhodes Scholar. He had already won Atlantic Monthly contests for short stories: "Gone Are The Days' won third, and "A Rock" won first.

He found William Blake at Oxford, maybe found Shakespeare. I ain't no admirer of Shakespeare but Blake dictated my life in the early '80s. Shakespeare wrote historical romance soap operas. Blake wrote messages from the angels, and painted the messages. Kris said he found a book road map to Blake. After several years at Oxford, he went to active duty in Germany, started a band, wrote satirical songs about the army.

Some guy in his outfit was kin to Marijohn Wilkin. Marijohn was of Texas roots and a Nashville songwriter and mover. Kris sent songs to Marijohn. He said they were pretty bad, but Marijohn told him if he were ever in Nashville, come visit. Kris said he had a couple of weeks leave before the Army was to send him to West Point. He took to Nashville and Marijohn. She introduced him around. He met Cowboy Jack Clement, Tom T. Hall, Johnny Cash. Mel Tillis. Kris decided he did not want to teach English at West Point. I told him William Faulkner once was a writer-in-residence at West Point. That line was met with silence.

I asked him about the Mel Tillis wreck. My mama went to Branson, Missouri, on a tour bus organized by her bank. She brought back a book by Mel Tillis. The book talked about the wreck. Kris said he thought Mel Tillis reminded him of Hank Williams. He said he and Mel were roaring that day, roaring a term he had to explain to me. He didn't. Various musicians used to stay up all night at my house in New Mexico. They drank a whole lot and did substances that are illegal. Junior Brown, then J.B. Brown, roared one night and we took the hippy kid home to Cerrillos the next morning.

Kris said that day in Nashville his old army outfit was headed for Nam. Their plane had a layover in Tennessee. He and Mel Tillis, who Kris said couldn't talk, decided to go see them. Mel went home to tell his wife where they were going. He dropped a bottle of whiskey on the front porch, busted it. His wife said no deal Lucille and made Mel go into the house.

Kris said he knew he was too drunk to drive, but he went anyway. He made it to the army base and rolled the car something like three times. MPs got him out and uprighted the car. They were just moving the stairs away from the plane when he got there. Kris told them they would be sorry if they didn't let him on. He found the soldiers had saved him a seat. After awhile, the officer in charge came on board and told him he'd best get off or end up in Viet Nam. He slept it off in an MP guard shack.

And yeah, he did have the fist fight with Faron Young, said it was at Marijohn's house.

That night at the Austin Opry House, Kris and his wife went to split. She brought back to backstage a big green parrot, said it was under their van. The parrot grabbed her forearm as she tried to give it to anybody. That parrot bit everyone she offered it to. I figured the parrot wanted to go home with a movie star instead of with backstage trash.

I once asked Rip Torn why he wanted to be a movie star. I met Rip in the San Francisco airport when he had flown in to go fishing with Richard Brautigan and Bruce Dunn, Bruce being the younger brother of Price Dunn, who was A Confederate General From Big Sur. Rip lost his aluminum fishing rod case to the airline. He was much disturbed. I always suspected there was something beyond a rod and reel in that case.

Months later, Rip came to Albuquerque to be in the David Bowie film The Man Who Fell To Earth. Rip spent a lot of time in the warehouse where Judy and I lived. When I asked him that question. Rip gave me his patented movie star frown and glare and said to the fool asking: "Everybody wants to be a movie star."

Whether Kris knew it or not, he was starting to turn gold. He said Dennis Hopper heard Roger Miller doing "Me And Bobby McGee" and had someone call him for a movie, The Last Movie. Hopper still had power from Easy Rider. Kris went to Peru. At least one time the critics were right: The Last Movie was a horrible movie.

I don't know what Kris did the next year. But in '72, Harry Dean Stanton brought him a script Bill Norton, a film student, had written. It was called Dealer. The story was about a slick L.A. dope dealer. Kris read it and did whatever soon-to-be-movie-stars do. He was cast in the movie, which was gradually rewritten to be about Kristofferson walking his walk and talking his talk. He was a Texas musician forced to sell marijuana because music powers did not think he and his partner, Harry Dean, could sell records anymore. Harry Dean overdosed in the bathroom. Gene Hackman, who should have had nothing to do with such a movie, being already a Hollywood megastar, played a corrupt cop trying to get Kris to sell a load of dope. Hackman needed the money because his medical problems would get him fired and his retirement money was in question. Cisco Pike was, I think, the best movie ever made of that culture. Hell, I know. I lived there.

I have no idea how Sam Peckinpah got to Kris, but in '73 the movie director made Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, perhaps the best movie about Billy The Kid. Kris was at least ten years too old to play Billy; James Coburn was way to old to play Pat Garrett. A year later, Kris surprised me in a totally useless scene as a biker in Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, probably Peckinpah's best movie. Kris acted for the first time in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore; he still played Kris Kristofferson, but as a southwestern rancher. In '76, he and Barbra Streisand were a fashion show in A Star Is Born; that's about all. Kris wore a clip-on earring.

I was asleep in the backseat of Jack Steele's car, headed home from L.A., when somebody bought a new copy of Playboy. I woke up enough to see a spread of Kris and Sarah Miles naked. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea had fallen into Playboy. I thought the world is too strange for me and went back to sleep. I read someplace later that Sarah Miles got Kris drunk to do the shoot.

He led a convoy of truckers in Convoy, based on the old C.W. McCall pop song "Convoy". They filmed the first scene at a bar called Ralphael's Silvercloud north of Albuquerque. Ralph was a good friend of mine. He saved an old lady from a robber south of downtown Albuquerque. Somebody suggested he get an award from the cops. A cop said no deal; you don't give awards to dope smugglers. Pilgrim's pilgrim.

Heaven's Gate (1981, directed by Michael Cimino) was the worst possible movie, not to mention most expensive, that could have been made about the Johnson County War in Wyoming. In 1984 came Flashpoint. I saw it at a dollar theater in the Pleasant Grove area of Dallas. Kris and Treat Williams were border patrolmen in South Texas. They found a jeep with a skeleton, a sniper rifle and a lot of money. Kris went to San Antonio after the Feds had closed off the area with helicopters and a SWAT team. He discovered on microfilm in a San Antonio library that the skeleton was the man who killed John F. Kennedy. FLASHPOINT! It was the Feds who did it. They wasted Treat Williams and Kris headed for the border with the money. After the Feds tried to kill him, that old movie star, Rip Torn, the local law, told Kris how to get to Mexico with the money. When the movie ended in Dallas, a beautiful young woman approached me in the lobby and asked if the thing meant the Feds killed Kennedy. I said yeah.

The political activist did not always do political movies. Maybe he needed the money, or maybe he just wanted to be a movie star. He actually did one with Pee Wee Herman. The series of movies with Willie, Waylon and the boys could be laughable. But I'm too old to laugh at bad art.

The political activist also told me I should mention Leonard. I'll mention Leonard. Leonard Peltier has spent a lifetime in federal penitentiaries. Leonard Peltier is an Indian activist who was charged for killing two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I wasn't there, but I don't believe he did it. The Feds just wanted somebody to fall. Kris said he had talked with Leonard on the phone. I've been to Leavenworth twice to visit Leonard. He reminds me of Freddy Fender. An article on the internet says Kris did a show wearing a sleeveless FREE LEONARD PELTIER T-shirt.

Neither Kris Kristofferson nor I can get Leonard Peltier out of jail. But the political activist has a lot more power than I do. Maybe if he goes to full-court press, he could have some affect. Get an Indian pilgrim out of jail.

In 1971, Kristofferson did an interview with Seventeen magazine. He told them he had called his parents, wanted to visit. His mama asked him how long his hair was. He said it's longer than it was than when I was in the Army. She said don't bother to come. Kris went. He said his parents wouldn't look at him. After fifteen minutes, they said they had to go to a cocktail party, said make yourself at home. Kris said that's a bucket full of laughs.

I asked him if he remembered the end of that interview. He had said he wanted Leonard Cohen on his tombstone. Like that bird on the wire he had tried in his way to be free. I've got another Leonard Cohen song I think is applicable. Watch out for turning into gold.

Pilgrims come, but I expect they don't go till the music press forgets them. Faulkner says time starts when the clock stops.