Listening to and thinking about Kris Kristofferson, and other country legends I hope to see live one day, before it’s too late 🎸🎵💬🎨
No matter what mood I’m in on a particular day, or in a particular period of my life — happiness, sadness, anxiety, contentment, fury, passion, indifference, love, hate, quiet reflection or a need for a pick-me-up — Kris Kristofferson has written something for me. The master songwriter is my all-time favourite, and I love his music, I love the poetry of his lyrics and how he takes the most profound of life’s loves, challenges and turmoils and makes them simple; he takes simple motifs and makes them profound. You can listen to his songs and hear a simple story and a simple tune. Or you can hear something deep, something perhaps not even intended but you see it there anyway and that’s why his work is true art. For he is that: a true artist. A Kristofferson song can mean whatever you want it to mean to you; a slow, hung-over retelling of a drunken Sunday morning for an addict can reflect your own struggles with depression (sans the addiction), the monotony of life and the world itself — its funny little ways that make it both wonderful and irritating at the same time. Or, again, just a bloke bemoaning a hang-over and the life he lost to addiction. We’ve all felt that same loss of something, whatever the cause. I appreciated Merle in the same way.
Continue reading after the quoteCasey joins the hollow sound of silent people walking down The stairway to the subway in the shadows down below Following their footsteps through the neon-darkened corridors Of silent desperation, never speakin’ to a soul
The poison air he’s breathin’ has the dirty smell of dyin' ‘Cause it’s never seen the sunshine and it’s never felt the rain But Casey minds the arrows and ignores the fatal echoes Of the clickin’ of the turnstiles and the rattle of his chains
Oh,
she said, Casey it’s been so long since I’ve seen you
Here,
she said, just a kiss to make a body smile
See,
she said, I’ve put on new stockings just to please you
Lord,
she said, Casey can you only stay a while?
Casey leaves the underground and stops inside the Golden Crown For something wet to wipe away the chill that’s on his bone Seeing his reflection in the lives of all the lonely men Who reach for anything they can to keep from goin’ home
Standin’ in the corner, Casey drinks his pint of bitter Never glancing in the mirror at the people passing by Then he stumbles as he’s leaving and he wonders if the reason Is the beer that’s in his belly or the tear that’s in his eye
Oh,
she said, I suppose you seldom think about me
Now,
she said, Now that you’ve a family of your own
Still,
she said, it’s so blessed good to feel your body
Lord,
she said, Casey, it’s a shame to be alone
I was lucky enough to see Kristofferson perform in Ballarat one night in September 2019. Coincidentally, it was a one-night-only kinda gig and I was on my first day of a solo long distance charity bike ride from Melbourne to Adelaide. I had just ridden 120 gruelling kilometres, only to quickly throw off the school dress — read the story to answer your sudden WTF?
— to change into my western shirt, jeans and cowboy boots and head down to the Ballarat Civic Hall.
I was enraptured. Some in the audience bemoaned his diminishing performance compared to shows of yesteryear: his vocals struggled and he lost the words to a song at one point (he has Lyme disease which causes memory loss). But not me. I quietly raged inside at their judgment: He’s in his 80s you bastards, with Lyme disease
, and just revelled in seeing him live, in listening to him sing his beautiful lyrics and marvel in the true artistry of his work1. It was one of those days I’ll remember forever, and it ticked off one of my Bucket List Artists, those I want to see live before I, or they, leave this world. I was lucky enough to see Bowie in 2003. Alice Cooper not long after. Pat Benatar in 2010, opened by The Bangles, a nice little two-for-one.
I guess the reason I’m thinking of all this now, tonight, it has struck me that with COVID-19 still raging and international travel still a long way off, especially for us Australians, I stand in great danger of missing my other Bucket List Country Legend.
You hang in there Willie!
Update, 29 September 2024: Vale Kris 😭
Kris Kristofferson died today (28th in the US). He was 88 — a good innings
that most of us would be happy with — but still sad to know the world has one less artist like Kris in it. It makes me all the more glad I got to see him. If you have never listened to Kris, now is the time.
He did ultimately retire later that year. ↩︎