On Saturday, Kristofferson, whose songs were sung by music legends such as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Joan Baez, Willie Nelson, Janis Joplin and Ray Charles, died at home in Maui, Hawaii, at the age of 88, according to his family . There was initially no information on the cause of death.
Student in Oxford, helicopter pilot in Rhineland-Palatinate
The grandson of Swedish immigrants was born in 1936 in Brownsville in the very south of Texas. He studied at Oxford, UK, on a scholarship for gifted students and initially wanted to become a writer. When he was unsuccessful, he became a helicopter pilot in the US military and was stationed in Bad Kreuznach (Rhineland-Palatinate) from 1962 to 1965.
He was then supposed to teach literature at the famous West Point military academy near New York, but he followed his heart and went to the stronghold of country music, Nashville. “The whole thing still baffles me,” Kristofferson told Rolling Stone. «I was on the way to a completely different life. And suddenly I subordinated my entire future, my family and everything else to that. That was pretty scary.”
Disappointed mother didn’t speak to Kristofferson for years
His mother was horrified and didn’t speak to her son for years. “She said I was a disgrace to the family. I gave them proud moments, like with my scholarship, but she said, “That will never make up for the huge disappointment you’ve always been.” Why would you say something like that to your child?” Kristofferson’s first marriage also fell apart because of Nashville.
There he initially scrubbed the floors in the studio while Bob Dylan was recording. To convince Johnny Cash of his talent, Kristofferson landed a helicopter in his garden. «For a long time I didn’t know if I would ever sell songs. I then told myself that I was doing it for myself and for all the satisfaction I could get from it. But at some point I was able to make a living from it.” Soon Kristofferson was on stage alongside Dylan, writing hit after hit, including “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” «After all, I was on stage with all my heroes. It was incredible.” He also became a celebrated film star.
Large family with a third wife
In 1983, three years after divorcing his second wife Rita Coolidge, Kristofferson married the lawyer Lisa Meyers, with whom he lived in Hawaii until the end. Together they had five children and foster children. “He can’t be managed,” his wife once said of him. «Even when someone tells him to have a good day, he replies, “Don’t tell me what to do.”»
Until recently, Kristofferson always began his concerts with the song “Shipwrecked in the 80’s”. Out of superstition. The song was supposed to bring him luck. The fact that he toured as a singer with his songs and filled halls probably surprised him the most. “Every artist who has sung my songs has done it better than me,” Kristofferson once said. “I sing like a frog.” The New York Times saw it similarly: “Mr. Kristofferson never got past three chords.” Nevertheless, the fans loved him, for whom the singing poet embodied the broken attitude to life of the Vietnam generation with his social criticism and melancholy.
Kristofferson had prepared for his farewell and chose a line from Leonard Cohen’s song for his gravestone: “Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free.”
