Why Kris Kristofferson Had “Nothing Left to Lose” Writing “Me and Bobby McGee”

When Kris Kristofferson wrote the iconic lyrics, Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose, in “Me and Bobby McGee,” that’s exactly how he felt: free. But as he came to find during that volatile time in his life, that freedom came at a cost.

Kristofferson’s classic song captures melancholy remembrance at its most poignant. After all, freedom might mean you have nothing left to lose, but what kind of existence is a life with nothing?

Kris Kristofferson’s Life During “Me and Bobby McGee”

Kris Kristofferson might have written “Me and Bobby McGee” and even performed it himself, but Janis Joplin’s rendition is arguably the most well-known. Her tragic death in the fall of 1970 makes the opening lines of the chorus all the more heartbreaking, but Kristofferson wasn’t in much better shape when he wrote it.

In a 2006 interview with Esquire, Kristofferson revealed he wrote the chorus to “Me and Bobby McGee” while he was working as a helicopter pilot. “I was working the Gulf of Mexico on oil rigs,” he explained. “I’d lost my family to my years of failing as a songwriter. All I had were bills, child support, and grief.”

He added, “I was about to get fired for not letting 24 hours go between the throttle and the bottle. It looked like I’d trashed my act. But there was something liberating about it. By not having to live up to people’s expectations, I was somehow free.”

How A Film Helped Hammer His Point Home

As is often the case with great songwriters, Kris Kristofferson blended elements of fact and fiction to create “Me and Bobby McGee.” While his personal experiences of loss, hardship, and substance abuse certainly informed the overall feeling of the song, an Italian film from 1954 helped seal the deal.

Kristofferson explained the connection in a 2015 interview with Performing Songwriter. “I thought of La Strada, this Fellini film, and a scene where Anthony Quinn is going around on this motorcycle, and Giulietta Masina is the feeble-minded girl with him, playing the trombone. He couldn’t put up with her anymore and left her by the side of the road while she was sleeping. Later in the film, he sees this woman hanging out the wash and singing the melody that the girl used to play on the trombone.”

“He asks, ‘Where did you hear that song?’ She tells him it was this little girl who had showed up in town, and nobody knew where she was from, and later, she died. That night, Quinn goes to a bar and gets in a fight. He’s drunk and ends up howling at the stars on the beach. To me, that was the feeling at the end of “Bobby McGee.” The two-edged sword that freedom is. He was free when he left the girl, but it destroyed him.”

After Janis Joplin’s death at 27, her version of “Me and Bobby McGee” seemed to take on a new light. In Joplin’s case, perhaps the freedom she sang about was the dissonance between achieving her dreams and her ongoing substance abuse issues that would ultimately take her life. Kristofferson told PS that the first time he heard Joplin’s version, he walked around Los Angeles for hours in tears.

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