Among the many regrets I have in this life is passing up more than one opportunity to see Kris Kristofferson in concert.
By the time I discovered the country and movie star’s catalogue, he was well past his commercial prime as a singer/songwriter, but like many of the old guys that I idolize, he kept putting out great poetry well into his seventies.
Kristofferson died last weekend at the age of 88.
Many of Kristofferson’s lyrics came to mind as I watched the vice-presidential debate this week.
By the time Kristofferson had arrived in Nashville in the mid-1960s, he had already studied abroad at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He had also served his country as a chopper pilot in Vietnam, and he shunned a West Point appointment to risk it all on becoming a songwriter.
He ended up writing dozens of classics, including Help Me Make It Through the Night, Me and Bobby McGee, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Why Me? and more.
Had he not chased the music, and eventually Hollywood dreams, Kristofferson might have risen to the rank of general in the Army and may have even become a vice presidential or presidential candidate himself.
That never happened, and as it stands today, the American people have the choice between Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Walz.
Both might have easily quoted Kristofferson ahead of Tuesday night’s debate, singing, “Help me make it through the night.”
“Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free” isn’t a stated policy, but it sounds like a Harris economic theory.
The American people who watched this week may have appreciated Kristofferson’s mid-’90s quip:
And it's harder to matter at all when it's all comin' down
You've still got your duty to choose how you live or you die
So many warnings to turn this old rascal around
We better heed 'em while we got the freedom to try
Kristofferson didn’t pull any punches when it came to his politics. A professing Christian, he had a well-defined left bent, but it was different than most of his like-minded contemporaries.
I always thought that was at least in part due to the fact that he approached politics from the perspective of someone who had seen significant action in Vietnam.
Both of our vice-presidential candidates are proudly former military, which can’t be said for the presidential nominees.
Kristofferson’s lyrics could be jaded and harsh, but true.
We've seen the ones who killed the ones with vision
Cold-blooded murder right before your eyes
Today they hold the power and the money and the guns
It's getting hard to listen to their lies
Vance and Walz were probably the two most agreeable debaters we’ve seen in recent memory. For the most part, they were cordial. The same could not be said for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during their debate last month.
This past Tuesday night brought some hope for redemption for the political process, but many will still relate to this Kristofferson stanza:
And there's no need to stay and see
The way it ends
It's over
Nobody wins
As for myself, I probably relate most to Kristofferson’s song, To Beat the Devil, which he wrote about Johnny Cash, a song that ends with some lines that I often have to repeat to myself when I’m writing these columns of mine.
And you still can hear me singin' to the people who don't listen to the things that I am sayin' prayin' someone's gonna hear
And I guess I'll die explainin' how the things that they complain about are things they could be changin' hopin' someone's gonna care
I was born a lonely singer and I'm bound to die the same but I've gotta feed the hunger in my soul
And if I never have a nickel, I won't ever die ashamed 'cause I don't believe that no one wants to know.
