Kris Kristofferson: Singer-songwriter and actor whose compositions made him a country legend

As a heartbreakingly handsome actor he worked with Martin Scorcese, Dennis Hopper and Sam Peckinpah and inhabited film roles as waster musicians, teen killers and vampire hunters, but it was in music that he made his name and secured his legacy. Before his death, aged 88, his old buddy Willie Nelson reckoned that “there’s no better songwriter alive… and we’re all just going to have to live with that”.

His evocative storytelling songs such as Me and Bobby McGee, Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down and Help Me Make It Through the Night (a particular favourite to mangle in Scottish karaoke sessions) certainly live on.

One of his heroes, Bob Dylan, said Kristofferson “changed everything” in Nashville. It took several years of hustle, but when he landed a helicopter on Johnny Cash’s lawn circa 1970 to deliver a demo tape it was clear he was no regular country troubadour. Along with Cash, Nelson and Waylon Jennings, he became a key figure in the so-called outlaw country movement, a deal they sealed in 1985 when the four compadres formed The Highwaymen and rebooted somewhat moribund careers.

On film, he scored early star-making roles in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, while his Golden Globe-winning turn as a decadent rock star opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 version of A Star Is Born could have been ripped from the pages of his life as he barrelled through the Seventies fuelled by charisma and alcohol.

He may have been a hellraiser but Kristofferson was also a man of conscience. He famously stepped up to support Sinead O’Connor in the wake of her Saturday Night Live stand against child abuse in the Catholic Church, encouraging her to perform through the booing at a Bob Dylan tribute concert at Madison Square Garden. He spoke out against US foreign policy in Central America in the Eighties and countered those who criticised his support for Palestine, saying “if you support human rights, you gotta support them everywhere”. In 2003 he received the Free Speech Award from the Americana Music Association, the same year, he was awarded Veteran of the Year at the American Veterans Awards and he continued to rack up the accolades, with his 2004 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

He was born Kristoffer Kristofferson to Mary Ann and Lars Henry Kristofferson, who rose to become a major general in the US Air Force. His son was not minded to join the family business, choosing arts academia and college football, rugby and boxing instead. He won a Rhodes scholarship to Merton College, Oxford where his good looks and songwriting efforts caught the ear and eye of pop impresario Larry Parnes who promoted him (unsuccessfully) as Kris Carson, a “Yank at Oxford”.

On graduation, Kristofferson succumbed and joined the US Army. He was stationed in West Germany in the early Sixties but incurred the wrath of his family by choosing songwriting over the military, relocating to Nashville and shopping his songs while working as a barman and janitor at the Columbia Recording Studios.

When passing a tape of his songs to Johnny Cash failed to reap dividends, he landed a helicopter in his front garden. This time Cash took notice and his recording of hangover anthem Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down topped the Billboard country charts. Over the next years, established stars Faron Young, Roger Miller, Gladys Knight, Janis Joplin, Kenny Rogers and Jerry Lee Lewis all had hits with Kristofferson songs.

Although never a fan of his own singing voice (he reckoned “I sing like a ****ing frog”), the momentum allowed him to launch his own performing career and he won his first Grammy for Help Me Make It Through the Night and his second and third in collaboration with his second wife Rita Coolidge. Theirs was a musically, if not domestically harmonious, union but Kristofferson did not let his drinking and infidelity get in the way of his flourishing film career. He boosted his counter-culture credentials with early roles in Dennis Hopper’s frazzled folly The Last Movie and as a drug-pushing musician in Cisco Pike and worked steadily through the Seventies until Michael Cimino’s costly flop Heaven’s Gate.

He was Oscar-nominated with Willie Nelson for Music from Songwriter, the soundtrack to the semi-autobiographical 1984 film in which they co-starred. The pair teamed up with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings the following year as The Highwaymen, with two eponymous albums and the glorious Jimmy Webb-penned title track outperforming any of his solo efforts from the Eighties.

He also enjoyed a late movie career boost playing corrupt sheriff Charlie Wade in John Sayles’ 1996 neo-western Lone Star and the mentor figure in the Blade superhero series. Next he struck up a fruitful partnership with music producer Don Was, recording a trio of albums for New West Records. By 2013, he was Feeling Mortal. Years of progressive memory loss had been misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s when he was actually suffering from Lyme disease. His final Scottish shows in 2019 were bittersweet echoes of a once virile performer who could hold a room rapt with just voice, guitar, presence and indelible songs.

He is survived by third wife Lisa Meyers, eight children and seven grandchildren.

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