EVANSVILLE – As he stood on the stage in Evansville, Kris Kristofferson was near the peak of his popularity – and struggling more than he’d ever had.
His acting career was booming. He’d just hosted “Saturday Night Live” and starred in a juggernaut “A Star is Born” remake with Barbara Streisand.
But the same couldn’t be said for his real job. After spending the early part of the decade churning out some of the greatest country songs ever written, his music was in a rut. His 1976 album “Surreal Thing” contained some great tunes, but it was a couple miles from a classic. The same could be said for 1974’s “Spooky Lady’s Sideshow” and the forthcoming “Easter Island.”
That left the 8,000 people on hand at Roberts Stadium on Nov. 18, 1977 a little restless. They wanted the hits. And each time they screeched for one, Kristofferson would grin and dish a few out. He opened with “Lovin’ Her Was Easier,” before ripping into a one-two poetic punch of “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down” and “The Silver-Tongued Devil and I.”
But just when they thought they were settling in for a night of familiar favorites, Kristofferson issued a warning.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” he said, “’cause here comes another weird one.”
But they were the Cadillacs of weird ones, and each contained nuggets of poetry so plain-spoken you couldn’t believe no one had thought of them before – but also so deep and brain-realigning that you couldn’t believe anyone thought of them at all.
“ Something dark was singing in my veins,” he warbled in “The Sabre and the Rose.” “ Older than the voices in my brain. ”
That was just one of countless brilliant lines that fell out of Kristofferson’s heart and head during an unmatched decades-long career. The Texan native, former Army Ranger and Nashville janitor who went on to become one of the greatest songwriters in history after he landed a helicopter on Johnny Cash’s lawn and implored him to listen to his demos died Saturday surrounded by his family at his home in Maui . He was 88.
As a musician, he gave us “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down,” “Help Me Make Through the Night” and “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33,” among a slew of others. He dedicated the latter to everyone from Dennis Hopper to Johnny Cash, but its famous lines could have been about the author himself: “he’s a walking contradiction / partly truth and partly fiction.”
He also became an in-demand actor. Starting with Hopper’s “The Last Movie” in 1971, he starred in movies as varied as Martin Scorsese’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and the “Blade” trilogy.
All that brought him to Evansville multiple times. Sometimes he brought famous friends with him – and was never afraid to speak his mind. Kristofferson, Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings – better known as The Highwaymen”- stuffed Roberts again on Aug. 20, 1992: the same night George H.W. Bush accepted the Republican nomination in Houston.
“You’re better off here,” he told the crowd. “Trust me.”
There were few arguments from the people in attendance. Every Courier & Press writer who reviewed a Kristofferson show over the years noticed women hanging on the handsome singer’s every syllable. One reviewer straight-up called him a “hunk,” and in ’92, when he attended a meet-and-greet after the show, a group followed him around so much that the paper dubbed them the “Kristofferson Admiration Society.”
He enjoyed some of that, no doubt, but his focus was always the work. In a 1971 feature that took up two whole pages of a Sunday edition of the Courier, Washington Post writer Sally Quinn wrote about Kristofferson offering advice to a young man who wanted to become a songwriter. He quoted William Blake at length before simply saying, “in other words, kid, don’t sell out.”
Kristofferson never did, especially on that night in 1977. He played whatever he wanted. Sometimes it lined up with the public and sometimes it didn’t.
He closed the evening with perhaps his most famous song: “Me and Bobby McGee.”
“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,” he and the thousands sang together. “Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’, but it’s free.”
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Kris Kristofferson played 'weird ones' in Evansville and gave everyone what they wanted
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