The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page 101

ft li.i;:,.v.,;.v uu.Jfew, uw rso ft i Kristofferson, right, and Patron 'Cash was pushin' hell out of my songs' By JACK HURST Busted flat in Baton Rouge, headin' for the trains, Feelin' nearly faded as my jeans. Bobby thumbed a diesel down, just before it rained. Took us all the way to New Orleans. Kris Kristofferson in 'Me and Bobby McGee' THE BOOTS, suede and dusty, were crossed at the ankles on the desk top, and he was squinting through Bull Durham cigarette smoke remembering Bobby McGee. He had hardly known her.

"Her name was Bobby McKee, really, and she worked in one of these offices on Music Row," he said, gesturing vaguely with his head, making the neck-length hair toss a little. "I was always hanging around on the Row and her boss knew me, and one day he told me he bet I couldn't write a song about Bobby McKee." That was a couple of years or so ago, back in the not-too-distant days when Kris Kristofferson was not one of the best-known songwriters in Nashville. In those old lean days such exercises of skill were commonplace. "You know," he said in a quiet, gravelly voice that sounds as if his tonsils were wrapped in sandpaper, "somebody would give you a title and then bet you couldn't write a song to fit it." Cut Out on His Ex-Life Kris Kristofferson, former Rhodes Scholar and former Army officer who cut out on his ex-life one day when he realized who he was and who he wanted to be were two utterly different people, wrote a hell of a song to fit the title given him by the boss of Bobby McKee. Did he fantasize that whole trip with Bobby then, that all-too-brief and beautiful ride from Baton Rouge to New Orleans and finally to Salinas where Bobby slipped away? "No," he "but it didn't happen in Baton Rouge or New Orleans or anywhere like that.

It happened in Europe, with a girl I hitched around with over there." If there was a particular way the Great Nashville Songwriter is supposed to look, which there is not, Kris Kristofferson surely would not look like it. It has nothing to do with the long hair and the half-hippie pacifist look (only somewhat tempered by the small, jagged, vertical-running scar at the left side of the forehead, just above the brow). It has been a while since Nashville's greatest songwriters wore white Stetsons. What it does have to do with is an unchanging brightness of the eyes, a quiet and complete candor and what seems to be a bursting desire to express his opinions and see how they mix with others. Perhaps he will change when he grows more accustomed to fame, but right now Kristofferson seems hung up on life and ideas, rather than Kristofferson.

"Me And Bobby McGee" was a hit for Roger Miller early in 1969, and it made some of Kristofferson 's reputation, although it" was by no means a smash. 'Comin' Down' But the song which established him as one of the most powerful writers on the Nashville scene was "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down," which was initially recorded by Ray Stevens late last year and, like "Bobby McGee," did not sell anywhere near as well as Music Row believed it would. But "Sunday Mornin'," which now is the current single recording for Johnny Cash, was an unquestioned masterpiece. It was an unforgettably lonely anthem about a musician's hangover. "I wrote it right next door, in this roomin' house over here," Kristofferson said, gesturing vaguely with his head again.

"I had a room over there in fact, I still have it and I was sittin' there one Sunday mornin' feelin' bad. There's not much you can do with Sunday. The Row's just completely closed down. "You want to go see some people about your songs, impatient you know, and all the offices are closed up and you've got no bread to speak of, and about all you can do is wander around, feelin' bad, wishin' Monday would hurry up and come." On a Sunday mornin sidewalk, wishin' Lord that I was stoned 'Cause there's somethin in a Sunday makes a body feel alone. Surely one reason for Kristofferson's success is the unsensational and compelling way he deals with situations which are at least mildly shocking at least in non-Underground music.

"Sunday Mornin' bristles with matter-of-fact hints of marijuana smoking on Saturday night. "Bobby McGee" was more than just a hand-holding chum. And in another great Kristofferson song, a recording of which by Ray Price is now quickly climbing in the national popularity charts, there is yet another sensitive portrait: Lay your head upon my pillow. Hold your warm and tender body close to mine. Hear the whisper of the raindrops blowing soft against the window.

And make believe you love me one more time. For the good times. "For The Good Times" is but one of several Kristofferson songs which have hit the national market since "Sunday Mornin'." Others included Jerry Lee Lewis'. "Once More With Feeling," ron Young's "Your Time's Comin'," and two others "To Beat The Devil" and "The Devil To Pay" that were included in a top-selling Cash album. Heady Triumphs Kristofferson had been away from Nashville several weeks when he came back to town in late summer, fresh from a couple of heady triumphs.

First, he had worked on a production called "The Last Movie" with "Easy Rider" star Dennis Hopper in Peru and then he had played an engagement at The Troubador on the West Coast and Johnny Cnsh had come by and walked up on-stae to sing with him. Back in Nashville, Kristofferson walked into Monument Studios under a long-slanting, late-day, summer sun with his guitar, a wine bottle and a few sheets of new-written poetry. Now, two days later, he was sitting behind Bob Beckham's desk at Combine Music on 17th Avenue, South, listening to the recordings he had cut and getting ready to practice some duets with a little songstress named Sammi Smith. "This'n's called 'The Pilgrim: Chapter 33' you know, alluding to Christ," Kristofferson said off-handedly as he. pushed down the play button on the Wol-lensak tape machine.

"I guess I'll have to change the title if I do anything with it," he added. Across the room, watching his face across his boots, sat Miss Smith, a little Miss Big Voice who up to now had written good songs and sung them well, having a lot of talent and not much luck. Her eyes started welling tears as she listened to the old night-riot nostalgia of The Pilgrim, a song about a much-traveled guitar-picker as honest and lost as Kristofferson. "That's great," she blubbered in a murmur. "Aw, that's just great." Kristofferson grinned his thanks.

Kristofferson's music could make Cam-elet out of a Tijuana house of ill fame. He switched off the tape recorder and was rambling on now, jerkily and a little hard to follow, about Peru and Dennis Hopper and the good times of "The Last Movie." "Yeah, we nad a hell of a time down there, but that guy who wrote that story in Life, man, it was bad. He didn't like Dennis, but he came around acting like he did around Dennis's friends, and then he went back and wrote that story that Found a Change When he came briefly back to Nashville from Peru to get together the band that would play with him in the nightclub date on the West Coast, he found his reputation had changed drastically from what it had been before he left for South America. "I was suddenly the hottest thing here," he said, shaking his head wonder-ingly and grinning. "While I'd been gone, it turned out, Cash had just been pushin' hell out of my songs.

"Can you have a better guy out pitch-in' your songs than Johnny Cash? Man! he's been good to me! He came out there on the Coast and brought June and the kids down there to the club that night I mean, Cash never takes his kids to a place like that and he got up there on the stage and sang with me. "Knocked everybody out especially me." While on the West Coast, Kristofferson was almost inundated by offers. He had to go see people about songs they wanted him to write, about television shows they wanted him to sing on, about movies they wanted him to act in. He said he was taken aback and gratified. But, as he told about it, he looked somewhat as if he wanted to run away.

"I don't know," he said, scowl'ng and shrugging. "I think I maybe just want to be a songwriter. Don't get me wrong. I don't know about it all yet. But you get too busy with all these other commitments and, I don't know, I'm afraid it would drain you.

You wouldn't have enough time to spend writing anymore. 'Like, Roger Miller' "Like Roger Miller," he continued. "Roger Miller is one of the finest songwriters country music has ever had, and he hasn't written anything in years because he's been all mixed up with TV shows and motels and things like that." Only in the past six months has Kristofferson begun making money in the tough business of songwriting. He is certainly no rich man. The royalties from his biggest songs have only begun to come in.

But Kristofferson seoms not to worry about wealth particularly. His success is something he sacrificed much for. Gone now are the wife and children who came with him to Nashville many months ago with Kristofferson promising them he would "make it" in a year. "Somebody recorded one of my songs a week after I got here, and I told myself the whole business was a downhill slide," he recalled. "Then I went another whole year before I got somebody else to record another one." TP 4 A.

"1 Vi didn really reflect the way it was at The. Through A. Hard-Walled i- (Continued on Page 8) 3-S 'I think I maybe just want to be a songwriter.