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Master songwriter-singer Kris Kristofferson recently visited CMT to perform during a taping of Studio 330 Sessions and to sit around and talk about some of his songs and where they came from. Here's part one of our visit.

CMT: Other than the one song you wrote with Stephen Bruton and getting the song title for "Me and Bobby McGee" from Fred Foster, have you ever co-written any songs?

Kristofferson: The ones I've really co-written were with Shel Silverstein. We had "The Taker" that Waylon Jennings cut, "Once More With Feeling" that Jerry Lee [Lewis] cut and transformed into something better than it was. Faron Young put "Your Time's Comin'" on the charts. I didn't really co-write "Bobby McGee," although I got the title and the idea from Fred, and most of the stuff that I've written with other guys in the band, we started out together and then I ended up finishing it up. I did co-write "Moment of Forever" with Danny Timms. He wrote the melody, and I just did the words.

Other than that, it's just been you over the years pretty much.

I've never really felt comfortable co-writing. I usually go at my own speed, you know. It takes a lot longer these days than it used to, but it's generally the idea and then it just grows itself.

In Nashville today, songwriting is done by a committee of two, three or four writers, which is a huge change from when you came here.

I've noticed that there are a lot of committee writers. When I came here it was mostly guys like Tom T. Hall and Harlan Howard that just wrote by themselves. Harlan and I were going to write toward the end there but never did get around to doing it.

Kurt Vonnegut once said, "Let your language be the slave of your idea." Does that apply to your songwriting? The idea comes first, and the language is tailored for the idea?

Well, if you don't have the idea in the beginning, I don't think you have anything to keep you going. Kurt liked "Sunday Morning Coming Down." I like Kurt more than any other writer, I think. I once had an idea to make a whole government with novelists. Kurt was the president because of his passion. I think J.D. Salinger was the secretary of state because he'd never go anywhere and never talk to anybody, and we wouldn't get in trouble.

What was the genesis of "Sunday Morning Coming Down"?

"Sunday Morning Coming Down" is probably the most directly autobiographical thing I'd written. In those days, I was living in a slum tenement that was torn down afterwards, but it was $25 a month in a condemned building, and "Sunday Morning Coming Down" was more or less looking around me and writing about what I was doing. One time, some people broke into that place, and I had to call the police station to answer some questions about it, and the guy said, "Yeah, they really trashed the place when they went in there." But I hadn't noticed that it was any different. There were holes in the wall bigger than I was. It was quite a place, so "Sunday Morning Coming Down" is kind of more or less what I was living in at the time. I guess it was depressing, I don't know, but the chorus was kind of uplifting.

Did that come from a real walk that you made on a Sunday morning?

I'm not sure whether I really walked. What I was really trying to do was to keep the feeling of loss and of sadness. For me at the time, it was the loss of my family and looking at a little kid swinging on a swing and his daddy pushing him. That was the feeling I wanted to get for the whole song. I think Sunday was the choice because the bars were closed in the morning and nobody was at work, so if you were alone, it was the most alone time. Ray Stevens cut it first, and he cut a great version of it. I remember I just wept when I first heard it. He had spent more time in the studio on it than anyone has spent with a song of mine, and he just sang it very soulfully, but they didn't know how to market him that way because that was when he was doing sort of the novelty records like "The Streak" and those funny records that he used to do. They didn't want him to sing something really serious. I felt really bad about it because he really put in a lot of work in it.

It's sort of the continuing saga of "The Pilgrim" narrating your life.

Well, there were a lot of people that the pilgrim stood for or that I felt fit into that category, and most of them were people who were serious about songwriting, but an awful lot of us just looked like we were out of work.

How did Johnny Cash get "Sunday Morning Coming Down"?

John said that I landed in a helicopter and gave it to him. I don't believe that was the one that I gave him that day. I don't think he ever cut that one, but I'm sure that John heard me singing it to him out at his house because ... there were three or four of us that could call up John when we really felt needy, and we could show him what we were doing and he would raise our spirits. He never let us down, and every time that I can remember, I wouldn't overdo it to bother him or invade his privacy, but it was one of the great experiences for us at the time because we weren't getting any songs recorded, but just to have him listen and give us encouragement was the great thing. I went out there and saw the ruins [of the former Cash house], and it just seemed like the end of a novel or something.

How did you first meet Johnny Cash?

First time I ever met him face to face was backstage at the Ryman. I was here on leave from the Army, and [songwriter] Marijohn Wilkin was showing me around and took me backstage and introduced me to the policeman back there. From then on, he always let me in back. John was pacing around backstage, and I said I've got to meet him, and she went up and introduced me to him. He shook my hand and it just electrified me, and I'm sure that's when I decided that I was going to come back here and try to be another songwriter. After that, the next time I saw him was after Cowboy Jack Clement had showed him a letter I got from home where my mother had basically disowned me and said don't come and visit my relatives, you're an embarrassment to us, you know. And this tickled John to death, I guess, because when I was working over at Columbia as a studio setup guy, he came up to me and said, "It's always nice to get a letter from home, isn't it?" I gave him every song I ever wrote after that.

When he was going to do "Sunday Morning" on his TV show, the network tried to make him take the word "stoned" out of it. You were at the Ryman Auditorium when that happened.

Right. They were filming the Johnny Cash show at the Ryman, and he was going to sing it. The people from the network didn't want him to say, "Lord, I'm wishing I was stoned," and there was a bunch of them standing around and they suggested "wishing, Lord, that I was home." And I said that's not the same thing, you know, and John never said a word. He just stood there looking at us, so I didn't know what he was going to do. I would have gone with whatever he wanted to do, but in the show, I was in the balcony up there, and he got to that line and looked up and he said, "wishing, Lord, that I was stoned," and I just loved him for that. He saved the song. It would not have been the same thing.

What do you think his eternal legacy is going to be?

Johnny Cash's legacy, I think if it was one word, it would be integrity. He was the original wild man and grew from that guy that was doing all the crazy things that you read that rock 'n' rollers do to being someone who was like the father of our country, you know. He was a guest at the White House. He was Billy Graham's friend. He was respected and really idolized by Bob Dylan, and that was such an important thing for country music. It gave it legitimacy, but I don't think anyone was like John. I think he was always larger than life. Everyone remembers him being about 8 feet tall. His championing underdogs was something that a lot of us ought to emulate. He left a big hole. I don't think there will ever be someone who's got quite the character and the presence of John. His face was on the cover of Time magazine when he died, and I can't think of any other entertainer that they'd be doing that with. I sure hated to see his house burn down, but he might have done it himself. He didn't want anyone else living in it, you know.

The second part of the Kris Kristofferson interview will run Wednesday (July 11).
from
http://www.cmt.com/news/articles/1564469/20070710/kristofferson_kris.jhtml

Thank you for sharing this interview.

A great read - thanks, Ande...

Scott

Cool! I agree with him on the writing solo part.

Thanks so much for posting this. I loved reading it!

Emily

Thanks for posting this. One of my faves. Also, in case anyone doesn't know, CMT has a 330 sessions link where you can watch Kris sing several of his songs and sections of interviews. They have a great archive of songwriters and artists in the 330 sessions that I've been enjoying.

http://www.cmt.com/music/studio_330...tofferson_kris/1563766/performance.jhtml

Kris was also the lead in the movie "CONVOY" which really kicked butt. Thank you for Sharing, I didn't know he knew Johnny Cash. I guess you learn new things all the time.
I like to write alone also, but it leaves me without a reality check. my feet could leave the ground and i would never know where i went.


-steve

I write solo all the time,tried writing with others,didn't work.

y'all are welcome

here's part 2 of the interview

Kris Kristofferson Talks More About His Songs
He Recalls "Good Times" and "Bobby McGee" in Second Part of CMT Interview

Chet Flippo


Master songwriter-singer Kris Kristofferson recently visited CMT to perform during a taping of Studio 330 Sessions and to talk about some of his most famous songs and where they came from. Here's the second segment of our two-part interview.

Did the song "Why Me" come from Connie Smith taking you to church?

We had done a benefit the night before. I can't even remember the name of the town, but at any rate, she asked me if I would go to church with her the next day. I hadn't been to church, I guess, since I had been married years before that. But Connie was really sweet, and I'd go anywhere she asked me to go, so I went to church with her. It was Jimmy Snow's church in Hendersonville [a Nashville suburb], and Larry Gatlin sang "Help Me" and it really moved me. Then everybody was kneeling down and praying, and Jimmy Snow said something about is anybody lost or something like that, and I remember thinking why would anybody raise their hand. And then my hand went up almost involuntarily, and then he said if you want to be saved, come down front. I can't remember his exact words, but I remember that I thought at the time, you know, there is no way in the world that I would get up in front of a bunch of strangers. And then I found myself doing it, and I walked down to where he was. He asked me, "Are you ready to accept Jesus Christ as your savior?" And I said, "I don't know," and he looked at me, and I guess he knew that I didn't know, and he said get down on your knees. I can't remember all he was saying, but I remember I was weeping uncontrollably and felt this tremendous relief like some big burden had been lifted off my shoulders. I was too lost in what was happening to even be embarrassed by it. I was, a little later on, embarrassed because I had never done anything like that before or since. I can remember coming out of it. It was almost like coming out of some acid experience or something. That led me to writing "Why Me," and I really felt like I was just holding a pen. I wasn't thinking up the words of it, you know.

Where did "For the Good Times" come from?

That was a break up of a relationship, a real relationship that was over. It was probably one of the first ones that was a big hit. I remember somebody told me that Ray Price had cut it at the time. I knew that it would be the A side. He cut it in Studio A in Columbia with a big orchestra behind him, and it was record of the year, I think.

That song changed his career for the better, but it also changed his singing style forever. What was it like for you to know that something you had written had that much power over someone else's career?

Well, I felt more like he had made it a hit than the song had, because Ray Price was one of the most respected singers among the serious musicians and serious songwriters in town. Willie Nelson you know, idolized him. And the people, musicians like Jimmy Day and people like that, thought more of Ray Price than the rest of the world did yet, but he had some big hits, one of them was Willie's.

Tell me about "Shipwrecked in the '80s." I always thought of that as an anthem for the Reagan era.

It started out from a personal place where I was. I had just come out of [the film] Heaven's Gate, the biggest bomb of all time. My manager died, my agent died, and the company I was recording for, Monument, went under. I was feeling kind of adrift -- and my marriage was over and my little girl was gone, and I felt pretty shipwrecked. It was partially the Reagan years. The second half, it was really inspired by an old veteran out in Hawaii who came up to me, and it looked like he had been standing too close to the flame. He had been in Vietnam, and he was showing me this old Bible which he had underlined. He was telling me about how disappointing the government had been, and he was a picture of disillusionment to me. That's where I got the lines for the second verse -- "like an old Holy Bible you clung to" -- that written word that you can still understand. I'm so superstitious that I have opened every show with that song for as long as I can remember now. Still do.

Where did "Me and Bobby McGee" come from?

That was really kind of a funny story. It wasn't really kind of a personal experience. I had just started writing for Combine [Music], and [record producer and Monument Records chief] Fred Foster called me up. Every other week, I was going back to the Gulf of Mexico and flying helicopters back and forth for oil companies. Fred called up and said, "I have a song title for you." I guess it was sort of in the tradition like the guys did with Hank Williams, you know, the way Fred Rose did, but he said it's "Me and Bobby McKee," and I thought he said "Me and Bobby McGee." He said, "Here's the hook: Bobby McGee is a she." And that sounded to me like the worst idea for a song and he said they'll be traveling around or something, and he said, "Try to write it."

So I hid from him for a couple of months and started thinking of it. There was a film that really affected me, La Strada by Fellini, where Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina travel around on his little motorcycle thing. They did a traveling circus act, and he had gone all over the world with her -- or all over his world -- and he left her one time. He just couldn't take it anymore and left her sleeping by the road. Later on in the film, he hears the song that she used to play at the circus. He hears it while this woman who was hanging up the wash on the line was doing the melody, and he went up to her and said, "Where did you hear this song?" And she told him it was this little girl who had showed up in town and nobody knew where she was from or anything, and she had later died. That night, you see Anthony Quinn in a bar, and he gets in a fight. He's drunk, and then he goes out to the beach and is looking up at the stars and just howling in misery. It's where I got the idea that "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" because he had his freedom from this girl, but it was a two-edged sword. Anyway, that's a long involved story, but that's where it came from.

What's the story behind "Help Me Make It Through the Night"?

"Help Me Make It Through the Night" was just what I was feeling. I was actually sitting in a helicopter tied down on top of an oil rig 50 miles south of New Orleans out in the Gulf and just thinking about asking someone to just help me through the night.

Where did "This Old Road" come from? It seems like it's the life and appraisal of your life it seems in a way.

"This Old Road" somehow seems to get better the older you get. I actually wrote it many years ago, maybe 20. My daughter had just been hit by a car on the back of a motorcycle with her boyfriend. She was hospitalized, and I was waiting for her to come out of that. I had left my band over in Europe and had flown back to be with her in the hospital. I would go out running every day in the desert, and I guess I was feeling just about as old as I am now because the song fits just as well today as it did then -- probably better today. I remember [band member] Donnie Fritts telling me when I sang it at a benefit for him in Muscle Shoals, "Man, I haven't heard that song in forever, but I never realized how good it was." And I said, "Well, we probably were too young."

That was your first music video. While you were shooting it, I heard you were almost killed by a train in the Mojave Desert shooting it?

I think it's kind of odd that "This Old Road" was the first video I ever did. Because of all of the work I had done in films and everything, you'd think I would have done a video before that. But we were out in the Mojave Desert in a tunnel, of all things, and almost got hit by a train. When we went into the tunnel, they said there were no trains out there and nothing coming. Sure enough, here one came, and we all end up running madly out of the tunnel. But the funny thing was at the end of the day, [United Farm Workers of America founder] Cesar Chavez's son showed up. We hadn't planned to meet or anything, and here's the guy that I've been working for -- for 30 years, you know. [Dedicated to social and political causes, Kristofferson is a longtime supporter of the UFW.]

I think you cut "Moment of Forever" in the early '90s on an album, and it's coming up again. Willie has cut that, hasn't he?

Willie nailed "Moment of Forever." The funny thing is, I pitched him that song back when I wrote it. We were on one of those live songwriter things in Austin on TV, and I sang the song for him. Willie acted like I was singing the love song to him, and he said, "I don't know, Kris. I'm not ready for that." It turned into a big joke, and I knew he would sing it great because he's got the perfect voice for it. It's just like an archetype. I knew that either he or Julio [Iglesias] or one of those guys should sing it, and sure enough, he sang it, just destroyed me. I hope he puts it out as a single or something.

from: http://www.cmt.com/artists/news/1564564/20070711/kristofferson_kris.jhtml

Wow, what a great interview. He mentioned an old friend Jimmy Day, one of the great steel guitar players of all time, and not that many people even knew who he was. Jimmy played for a long time with Clay Blaker and the Texas Honky Tonk Band, who were friends of mine back in the 1970s. Clay was a pretty good songwriter himself and had a few hits by George Strait and maybe a few others.

Ande,

thanks for sharing. sometimes the stories are better than the songs.. He certainly put out a lot of great music.

-steve

Kris has always been an influence. I don't care much for his acting. I hope that his family has accepted him back by now. Maybe he didn't turn into the Airforce officer that they wanted but his career has touched more lives than any military man could. Ben

Ande:

It's great that you took the time to share this great interview with us. As a clueless kid, I enjoyed so many of his songs but never knew he was the writer. Remarkable man. Unforgettable songwriter.

All my best,

Dave Rice

I have always identified with Kristofferson as much as any writer and I love reading anything he says. I also have wondered about his estrangement with his family. If they ever took him back in or if he even wanted to. A friend's twin brother died recently and they were estranged for years and my friend will never get over it... the way he was treated by his twin's evil wife.