All of these celebrity deaths in recent days are so depressing. Dame Maggie Smith passed last week, then Drake Hogestyn, a beloved Days of Our Lives star died on Saturday. Then we learned on Sunday that Kris Kristofferson passed as well. Kristofferson was truly the jack of all trades, a true Renaissance man who loved women and art and life. He wrote beautiful music, was friends with artists around the world, he was a lovely actor and supportive friend to all. He was also a veteran. I remember watching Ken Burns’ Country Music docuseries and realizing how many country music people believed that Kris and Emmylou Harris were basically the soul of country.
Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and an A-list Hollywood actor, has died. Kristofferson died at his home on Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday, family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said in an email. He was 88. McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully, surrounded by his family. No cause was given.
Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such country and rock ‘n’ roll standards as “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” “For the Good Times” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”
He starred opposite Ellen Burstyn in director Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” starred opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 “A Star Is Born,” and acted alongside Wesley Snipes in Marvel’s “Blade” in 1998.
Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake from memory, wove intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With his long hair and bell-bottomed slacks and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a new breed of country songwriters along with such peers as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.
“There’s no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said at a 2009 BMI award ceremony for Kristofferson. “Everything he writes is a standard and we’re all just going to have to live with that.”
Kristofferson retired from performing and recording in 2021, making only occasional guest appearances on stage, including a performance with Cash’s daughter Rosanne at Nelson’s 90th birthday celebration at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in 2023. The two sang “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again),” a song that was a hit for Kristofferson and a longtime live staple for Nelson, another great interpreter of his work.
Barbra Streisand has already paid tribute to her dear friend (they adored each other) and I imagine Nashville is in mourning. What a life he lived, what a legend. I’m including the Sinead O’Connor story too.
Here’s Kris Kristofferson talking about a Bob Dylan tribute concert at MSG in 1992 where Sinéad O’Connor was getting booed after ripping up a photo of the Pope on SNL and he was asked to get her off the stage.
He refused.
“Don’t let the bastards get you down.”
RIP to an icon pic.twitter.com/57hkHte6EM
— Mike Beauvais (@MikeBeauvais) September 29, 2024
Photos courtesy of UPPA . / Avalon, Joy Scheller / Avalon, Tina Paul / Wenn / Avalon and Avalon Red.