Freedom’s Not Just Another Word

By 1969, Kris Kristofferson had nothing left to lose. Four years earlier, the son of a two-star general had built a life that personified the American dream. Kristofferson was an army captain and a veteran of the elite Airborne Rangers who had trained as a parachute jumper and helicopter pilot. He was a Rhodes scholar, a graduate of Oxford University and an authority on the English romantic poets, especially William Blake. He was a Golden Gloves boxer who had lettered in football and soccer in college. He’d married his beautiful high-school sweetheart. He had two healthy, bright kids. And, just after turning 29 years old, he’d been appointed the esteemed post of literature professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Then he threw all of it away. The week he was to assume his new job, he informed the military and his family that he had decided to move to Nashville to become a country songwriter. He might as well have said he was moving to Russia.

His mother wrote him to say no one over the age of 14 listened to the kind of music he wrote, “and, if they did, they weren’t the kind of people we would want to know.”

As the ’60s wore on, Kristofferson’s decision looked even more foolish to those he’d left behind. His only cut as a songwriter had been “Talkin’ Vietnam Blues,” a recitation by Ralph Emery that failed to break into the Top 100 of the Billboard country singles chart. It wasn’t much of a calling card. His wife left him, and his family all but disowned him.

Moving through a succession of jobs, including working as a janitor at Columbia Studios and as a bartender on Music Row, Kristofferson made ends meet by spending one week a month flying a chopper that delivered oil workers to offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. He got fired for falling asleep in the pilot’s seat with the copter blades still whirling violently overhead. The next day, he abandoned his beat-up car at the airport in Lafayette, La., and flew back to Nashville. His brother traveled to Nashville to confront him, pleading, “When are you going to do something you can do?”

Meanwhile, Kristofferson took faith in a line from William Blake: “If a fool persists in his folly, he becomes wise.” He took even greater faith in the fact that he, and the rowdy ring of Nashville writers he’d befriended, believed that his talent, always evident, was beginning to grow in startling leaps.

When Kristofferson began playing “Me and Bobby McGee” for his songwriting friends in 1969, he noticed people reacted differently. He could feel, rather viscerally at times, how the song connected with others.

As usual, his friends made suggestions. That’s how songwriters worked in those days, playing new tunes for each other in bars and apartments until the beer ran out or the sun came up.

One of his friends, a well-established songwriter Kristofferson worshipped, listened over and over, then offered his advice. He told Kristofferson to cut the line, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” He thought it took away from the concise, colorful narrative of the verses.

“He told me, 'God, you’ve got all these concrete images and then all of a sudden you come out with this abstract philosophy,’ ” Kristofferson recalls. “But I decided to keep it. I thought it worked. And, looking back on it, that was the moment I really began to trust myself. In my mind, I had become good enough, and I decided I could go my own way.”

His way, it turned out, would forever alter the possibilities of what country songs could say. In quick succession, the songs he wrote—Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” Ray Price’s “For the Good Times,” Sammi Smith’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” Waylon Jennings’ “The Taker”—had a bigger impact on the content of country songs than any single artist since the death of Hank Williams.

By 1970, Kristofferson started recording his own albums and further smashed all conventions. With songs like “Pilgrim No. 33,” “To Beat the Devil,” “Just the Other Side of Nowhere,” “Why Me (Lord),” and “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again),” he revolutionized country songwriting in the same way Bob Dylan had expanded and transformed rock ’n’ roll.

“He started a completely different form of American music,” says songwriter Marijohn Wilkin, Kristofferson’s first champion in Nashville. “He took country music into the bedroom. It wasn’t in the car anymore. It was not out under the moon anymore. It was very private, and it was raw, and it was full of pain and passion. It frightened people. It could be embarrassing to listen to, because I knew it was all true. I knew it was based on his own experiences. He’d come in and play me a song, and I’d say, 'My God, Kris, were you out again last night?’ He’d ask me how I knew, and I’d say, 'You just told me in your song. You even told me her name.’ ”