A few months back, I stumbled on a profile of singer, songwriter, and actor Kris Kristofferson, written by actor, author, and film director Ethan Hawke. It dates from 2009, but it was a tremendous read 15 years later, and again on the occasion of Kristofferson’s recent passing at the age of 88.
At a minimum, please enjoy the piece’s incredible opening anecdote:
We were there for Willie Nelson’s 70th birthday concert in 2003.
Up from the basement came one of country music’s brightest stars (who shall remain nameless).1 At that moment in time, the Star had a monster radio hit about bombing America’s enemies back into the Stone Age.
“Happy birthday,” the Star said to Willie, breezing by us. As he passed Kristofferson in one long, confident stride, out of the corner of his mouth came “None of that lefty shit out there tonight, Kris.”
“What the fuck did you just say to me?” Kris growled, stepping forward.2
“Oh, no,” groaned Willie under his breath. “Don’t get Kris all riled up.”
“You heard me,” the Star said, walking away in the darkness.
“Don’t turn your back to me, boy,” Kristofferson shouted, not giving a shit that basically the entire music industry seemed to be flanking him.
The Star turned around: “I don’t want any problems, Kris – I just want you to tone it down.”
“You ever worn your country’s uniform?” Kris asked rhetorically.
“What?”
“Don’t ‘What?’ me, boy! You heard the question. You just don’t like the answer.” He paused just long enough to get a full chest of air. “I asked, ‘Have you ever served your country?’ The answer is, no, you have not. Have you ever killed another man? Huh? Have you ever taken another man’s life and then cashed the check your country gave you for doing it? No, you have not. So shut the fuck up!” I could feel his body pulsing with anger next to me. “You don’t know what the hell you are talking about!”
Kris Kristofferson was an amazing bad-ass.
Footnotes:
It was, apparently, Toby Keith. You were going to search the web anyway, right? ↩︎
Worth noting, this is (currently) mistranscribed in Rolling Stone’s online version of this article. Here’s a slightly askew PDF of the magazine:
When I had finished reading the profile, I was certain there was no way Kristofferson had said “What the luck…”, so I tracked down this PDF to prove it. ↩︎
