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A hard-drinking singer-songwriter with an outlaw spirit, Kris Kristofferson brought sophisticated lyrics and a “rarely heard frankness and depth” to the 1970s country music scene. , the Irish Times reported, revolutionizing the genre.
His songs were “soaked in neoromantic sensibilities” and explored “freedom and devotion, alienation and desire, darkness and light.” He recorded them all himself. However, his vocals were raspy, and many of his songs were covered and became big hits by other artists, from Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, and Gladys Knight to the Grateful Dead and Michael Bublé. Ta. Notably, he wrote “Me and Bobby McGee,” whose resonant refrain is “Freedom is just another word for nothing to lose/Nothing No, if it’s not free, it’s meaningless.” This song became the second most popular song after his death. One hit for Janis Joplin (with whom he dated briefly).
Charismatic and muscular, Kristofferson later turned to acting. He played Billy the Kid in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and played a washed-up musician opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 version of A Star Is Born. But his hopes of becoming a leading man were dashed by his involvement in the career-staining blockbuster Heaven’s Gate (1980).
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With his unkempt beard and habit of sticking a bottle of whiskey in his boots, he lived the life of a musical nomad, the Daily Telegraph reported. However, there was little in his history to suggest such a career.
empty the ashtrayBorn in Texas in 1936, he was the son of a U.S. Air Force major general and was expected to succeed him. In high school, I excelled in both academics and sports. He played rugby and American football at university and then won a Rhodes Scholarship to Merton College, Oxford, where he won the Boxing Blue, wrote a dissertation on William Blake, and was a member of Pop’s I made a futile attempt to jump-start my career.
He returned to the United States, married his first wife Frances Beer in 1961, and joined the United States Air Force, becoming a helicopter pilot. But in 1965, he turned down a post at West Point Academy to try his luck as a songwriter in Nashville. This was a huge blow to his wife and led to their divorce. And it was the last straw for the disowned parents. “Few cats I knew ever ran away like I did,” he recalled in 1970. He was surprised by his parents’ reaction. They knew he wanted to be a writer. There too, he said, “I think they thought a writer was a guy in tweed with a pipe.” Struggling to sell his songs, he found work as a janitor at Columbia Recording Studios, where he worked in ashtrays and waste paper baskets while Bob Dylan was recording “Blonde on Blonde.” I remember emptying it.
From pilot to star
When his second child required expensive medical treatment, he began flying helicopters again for the oil industry. Legend has it that in desperation he picked one up in Johnny Cash’s backyard and handed him a tape of his music. Cash was impressed and invited him to record one of his songs and perform with him and his wife June Carter Cash at the 1969 Newport Folk Festival, and this was the beginning of his career. It became. Returning to Nashville, he married singer Rita Coolidge, recorded three duet albums, and teamed up with other songwriters, including Willie Nelson. It was an exciting and creative time, “it was like Paris in the 1920s,” he said. He and Coolidge divorced in 1980. She said he was a wonderful man, but a rotten husband. Around that time, he stopped drinking, fearing he would follow the same path as the whiskey-soaked musician he played in A Star Is Born.
Starting in the 1980s, he used his music to promote left-wing movements. And in 1992, he famously defended Sinead O’Connor, who caused an uproar by tearing up a photo of the Pope to protest sexual abuse by the clergy. “Maybe she’s crazy, maybe she’s not crazy,” he writes in the song “Sister Sinead.” “But so was Picasso, so were the Saints.” By then, he had formed a country supergroup, The・He was active in the Highwaymen. He leaves behind his third wife, Lisa, with whom he spent the last 40 years of his life, and eight children.
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