Kris Kristofferson had the outlaw spirit America needs right now

The late country singer-songwriter represented the best tradition of US idealism and humanity – he was one of the last of a vanishing era

The death of Kris Kristofferson at 88 seems to signify the end of an era of American music history, perhaps the end of an idea of America itself. Kristofferson was a country star who embodied the very best of that genre’s ties to a deeply honourable sense of American idealism, proud of the nation’s complex heritage and history yet deeply caring and humanist, on the side of the outlaw and outsider, evoking a spirit of compassionate righteousness in music full of mischief, love and hard earned wisdom. With Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings having long since left us, only 91-year-old Willie Nelson now survives from country supergroup The Highwaymen, and Nelson himself has been in poor health. I feel like America could use some of that beautiful outlaw spirit in these troubled times.
Kristofferson had a shaky voice and rudimentary guitar skills, but he wrote some extraordinarily truthful, moving songs and put them over with real personality. There is a perfect blend of simplicity and depth in such Kristofferson classics, such as Me And Bobby McGee, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Help Me Make It Through The Night and For The Good Times. Better singers than Kristofferson have sung them (from Janis Joplin to Elvis Presley and Gladys Knight) and will continue to sing them down the ages. These are songs for all time. But Kristofferson’s voice and presence imbued them with their deepest sense of truth.
He brought that same authenticity, humanity and conviction to his acting, in films good and bad, whether as a rockily handsome leading man in his superstar days, or a stoic supporting character in later years. Kristofferson had such presence it is hard to believe he is gone. But he will surely linger in silver screen dreams, in his great roles in Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and A Star is Born.
What is less well known about Kristofferson is that he was a scholar of the great English poet, artist and mystic William Blake, having studied the Romantic poets as a Rhodes scholar Oxford university. He sometimes quoted Blake’s famous line “the Road of Excess leads to the palace of wisdom” as excuse for his own wild behaviour in his drinking days. “If the fool persists in his folly, he will become wise,” was another favoured quote. 
But more touchingly, Kristofferson would discuss Blake’s singular devotion to his art. There was a passage he mentioned in several interviews: “If he who is organized by the divine for spiritual communion, refuse and bury his talent in the earth, even though he should want natural bread, shame and confusion of face will pursue him throughout life to eternity.” 
It is an advocation to follow your dreams, and honour your talent, and it inspired the young Kristofferson to turn his back on his military career and take a job as a janitor in Nashville to be closer to country music. That was around the same time the trained pilot borrowed a helicopter to land on Johnny Cash’s lawn and try to sell him some songs. Kristofferson’s mother wrote him a letter disowning him for embarrassing the family. Johnny Cash read it and joked, “Isn’t it nice to get a letter from home?”
I saw Kristofferson play a couple of times in his old age, and they were utterly spellbinding concerts, in which he stood alone on stage, with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica. His voice was gravelly and missing a few notes by then, his playing rudimentary, but the expression of hard-earned wisdom in life was mesmerising. 
His belief in the power of music shone through his whole existence. It is there at the centre of The Heart, a touching Kristofferson song about his own late father, on which he sings “the heart is all that matters in the end”. That really was the underlying message. His talking country blues To Beat The Devil offers an eloquent protest against the defeatist notion that music cannot change anything. On stage in London 16 years ago, he introduced it by saying “I ain’t saying I beat the devil, but I drank his beer for nothin’ then I stole his song.”  There’s an epitaph to carve into his grave.
Kris Kristofferson helped many of us make it through many long nights. His songs will surely go on doing the same good work even now that the great man is not around to sing them. 
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