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RELATED LINKS

• Mr. Kristofferson's official site
• "NASHVILLE SKYLINE: A Conversation With Kris Kristofferson"
• Mr. Kristofferson on New West Records
• Mr. Kristofferson's bio

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Three-time Grammy winner reflects on having more than 500 musicians sing his songs. (1:24)
 

Full Interview (23:41)
 

Tavis: Pleased, delighted and honored to welcome to this program Kris Kristofferson, the legendary singer, songwriter and actor has enjoyed so much success in music and film, including, of course, his Golden Globe-winning performance in "A Star is Born." He was also a member of the legendary group The Highwaymen, which featured Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash.

This fall he's out with a much-talked-about new CD called "Closer to the Bone." From the project, here is some of the video for the title track, "Closer to the Bone."

[Clip]

Tavis: I want to ask you in just a second about "Closer to the Bone," what this song is about, after I tell you what an honor it is to have you on this program.

Kris Kristofferson: Well, I appreciate it.

Tavis: And after I tell the audience what you leaned over and whispered to me when that video started playing.

Kristofferson: What - I've forgotten already. (Laughter)

Tavis: So Kristofferson leans over to me and says, "Talk about musically challenged." (Laughter)

Kristofferson: Well -

Tavis: What'd you mean by that?

Kristofferson: Well, I heard you talking about it with Tim.

Tavis: Tim McGraw, yeah.

Kristofferson: And if you think Tim was challenging, my voice is a step down from there.

Tavis: What do you make of the fact - and I hear the sense of modesty in there but I also hear some honesty in there. I think that you don't think that yours is the best voice, so what do you make of all the success you've had over the years with this voice that isn't the greatest out there?

Kristofferson: I think it's the fact that I was the writer of the songs. If I weren't a writer, I'm sure they wouldn't allow me to stand up there. When I first went to Nashville they didn't even have me singing my own demo records.

They would hire somebody with a better voice (laughter) to try and sell them, and eventually I got to do it just because the record company - I mean the publishing house was going broke so they couldn't buy somebody to sing my songs. (Laughter) But I'm very grateful for the -

Tavis: Were you ever offended, insulted, and if so, how did you get past that feeling when they wouldn't let you sing your own stuff?

Kristofferson: Well, I think probably the same audacity that had me go there in the first place when I was programmed at the time to go in a different direction. I was still in the Army and supposed to be a teacher up at West Point in my next assignment.

But I decided instead to go to Nashville, and I was never really offended by the fact that they didn't want me to sing my own songs because I just loved being a songwriter so much.

Tavis: I'm going to move around here because you have lived such a rich and full life, so forgive me for bouncing around from piece to piece. I'm going to try to make this make sense of the life that you have lived over these 70-some years.

Kristofferson: You got your work cut out for you. (Laughter)

Tavis: Well, let's see how good I am - see if I can earn my money tonight. To your songwriting, first of all, I was astounded in the research for our conversation to learn that over, now, 500 artists and counting have sung your lyrics. What do you make of that? That's an astounding number to me, that 500 artists have recorded stuff that you wrote.

Kristofferson: I'll take their word for it, I couldn't prove it. (Laughter) But no, that is - it's one of the blessings of being a songwriter is that you get to hear your work interpreted by so many different people. A guy who writes short stories or novels doesn't get to do that, and so you have somebody like George Jones or Merle Haggard or Willie Nelson getting out there and making something that's partially you, but it's definitely got another artist's fingerprints on it there.

Tavis: How did you know - how, when did you know that this was your gift, that you had this gift, that you had to use it, this gift of songwriting? How did that come to you?

Kristofferson: I had been making up songs since I was a little kid. The first one I can think of is on this record.

Tavis: The bonus track.

Kristofferson: Yeah.

Tavis: I saw that, that you wrote when you were 11.

Kristofferson: Eleven years old, yeah. But I never really thought that was a way to make a living or to have a distinguished career until it got to be kind of desperate, I think, when I was - I had been in the Army for five years and through more schooling than I thought people were supposed to do, and I finally just figured it was the way to - that my heart was leaning, anyway, for - it was when I went to Nashville and started hanging around with some of those singer-songwriters and it was just such an exciting, creative atmosphere. I loved it.

Tavis: It was exciting and creative for you. Your parents didn't quite see it that way.

Kristofferson: (Laughs) No.

Tavis: You were, as your fans know - and again, because you've been around for so long doing such great work it's hard to remember all this stuff until you start reading about Kris Kristofferson. But before the world knew you as a great songwriter you were already a Rhodes Scholar, a Golden Glove boxer, captain of every sports team you ever played on, you have a West Point opportunity, and with all that you decide to get in your car and go to Nashville. Mama and Daddy weren't too happy about that, were they?

Kristofferson: No. (Laughter) In short.

Tavis: How unhappy were they?

Kristofferson: Well, I think my mother was embarrassed, said that "Don't communicate with our family anymore or our friends," and my father didn't feel as strongly but he added at the bottom of the letter, said, "That goes for me too" or something. They just thought that I was throwing away all the gifts that came with being a Rhodes Scholar and whatever, that it was embarrassing to them.

Tavis: You later, by your own admission - I'll let you tell the story - but you later reconciled with your parents.

Kristofferson: Oh, yeah.

Tavis: But 25 years, a quarter of a century, goes by without communicating with your mother. When they wrote that letter, they meant that - don't communicate with us. They were embarrassed. Twenty-five years go by and you don't talk to your mom. Tell me about how you navigated through those 25 years. Here you are, struggling, trying to pursue your dream, and your mama says, "I don't want to talk to you."

Kristofferson: Well, in a way it made it easy because I didn't have to worry about trying to please anybody else. I had nothing to lose. That's probably where I got the line, "Freedom is just another word" for it. But I was so involved and so in love with what I was doing that I never felt sorry for myself.

And I don't think it was a whole 25 years before we talked because I can remember them coming around to where they really - where my mother, anyway, really liked Johnny Cash and we all grew out of it.

Tavis: You mentioned Johnny Cash - great picture of him on the screen - Johnny Cash really is the one who made you realize this is what I want to do. Tell me how that happened. Tell me about Johnny Cash and you.

Kristofferson: Well, John was a hero up in the ranks of people like Hank Williams, and Johnny Cash was, to meet him in person was electrifying. And I did that when I was - I went to Nashville when I was still in the Army the first time, and I spent two weeks of a leave there. On nearly the last night I was there, I shook hands with Johnny Cash backstage at the Opry and it changed my life.

I just knew that I had to come back and even if I couldn't make it as a songwriter I thought I can write about being backstage with an artist like Johnny Cash. And John was somebody who I never lost my respect for him in my - he was somebody that was always larger than life. Willie and I are in a different place than that, but John was always - always seemed like he ought to be up on Mt. Rushmore or something. Of course, Willie should too, so there you go.

Tavis: When you're hanging out - and I think you'll understand this question - when you're hanging out with people of that caliber, people who are iconic in their own right, who you think are larger than life and belong up on Mt. Rushmore, in that rarified air, in that space, how do you find yourself? How do you find your own style?

Kristofferson: Well, I think it probably was those five years before anybody was recording my songs, after I had committed myself to that life, just the feedback that I was getting from other songwriters and from people like Willie and Johnny Cash, who I idolized. It was - for me right now it's pretty hard for me to understand how I could handle it, because these were my absolute heroes, and then the next thing you know I'm standing next to them every night on stage.

I'm amazed that I wasn't more amazed that I was up there, because I had been their janitor, every one of them. (Laughter) That's really probably, at this point in my life, I feel like it's the blessing that I've had of the people that I really respected and idolized, like Muhammad Ali. They had become my friends.

Tavis: It raises a philosophical question of what do you do when your heroes become your friends?

Kristofferson: Well fortunately they all live up to what I thought of them. Every one of them has been better than I could have ever expected them to be, and I'll always - like I'll always feel that way about Muhammad and John and Willie and everything. They're just - Roger Miller was another. He was - when your heroes turn out to be your friends, I think that's about as good as it gets.

Tavis: Why Ali? I get Johnny Carson - I mean Johnny -

Kristofferson: Cash.

Tavis: Johnny Cash. I get - that's my business, I want to be as good as he is, or was, one day - Freudian slip there. I get Johnny Cash, I get Willie Nelson, and from my perspective, at least, I get Muhammad Ali, but why do you, why does Kris Kristofferson put Ali in that category?

Kristofferson: Well, I had always admired - I saw him first in Rome when he was fighting as a light heavyweight for the Olympics there, and he had always - I've always been a boxing fan, but he was more, and he had so much integrity that he gave away a couple of the best years of his life that nobody could ever pay him back because of what he believed in, and that happened to be the same thing I did at the time.

But he just said we hadn't got anything against those Viet Cong, and he was willing to take a couple of years out of his best time and give it up. And then he came back and won again.

Tavis: A few times.

Kristofferson: Yeah, yeah.

Tavis: I'm always fascinated by people who over the course of their lives have discovered what it means to be in love with everyday people, to fall in love with humanity and to express that through whatever their work and calling is - in your case, your writing, your music. Where do you think that came from for you, this love, this reveling in humanity?

Kristofferson: Well, I don't know. My values were probably shaped by my parents and by the life that we lived going around a lot. I grew up in a lot of different places because my father was a pilot and they moved around a lot, but I never really heard it phrased quite like that.

Tavis: I raise that only because it's one thing to want to play music for people, but you're talking about - what made me think about this is your answer about Ali. As I'm listening to you talk about Ali - Ali's a courageous figure, don't get me wrong - but in your own lane, where your music is concerned, where your lyrical content is concerned, where your activism has been concerned, and you were taking positions on things that weren't very popular when you were taking these positions.

I'm just trying to figure out where that love of fighting for people, fighting against injustice of all kinds, where that came from.

Kristofferson: It probably came from what I'd learned from people like William Blake and different creative people who I respected, but like Muhammad Ali, I've always respected his stand. It was totally unselfish and for other people, and you try to live up to that.

What makes it hard for me to answer you right now is that everything I say sounds kind of self-serving, like saying well, I was that humble and self-sacrificing. But I've always felt like what I do carries an obligation with it because you have a chance to change people's minds by your craft or whatever it is you do.

Tavis: See, that's the answer. You got there.

Kristofferson: I did? (Laughter)

Tavis: I knew it was in there, I was just waiting for you to get it out. You had to push it out like a good lyric, but it came and thank you for indulging me on that. I was just the other day, the other week, when this CD dropped I couldn't wait to get it. I literally ran to the store myself and picked it up. I wanted to hear Barbra Streisand's new CD and I'm in love with it, which raises the obvious question.

All these years have passed now. When you look back now, with all this in the rear view, you look - I don't want to color the question too much. You look back on "A Star is Born," you think what now, all these years later about that project?

Kristofferson: God bless Barbra Streisand. She brought - it changed my life. I remember she - we had a lot of battles on that, both of us fighting for some form of integrity that we thought we had to represent as we were doing characters that did what we did in real life.

She gave me this little thing that somebody stole later, but it was written out on a - in etching, it said, "A star is born. Let it be an easy birth," talking to me, and that was very nice of her. But she definitely brought me to an audience that was much wider than mine before that.

Tavis: Tell me about this - I want to come back to this CD now and then I want to move to close our conversation where we started, back to the music. Tell me more in your own words about this CD, "Closer to the Bone."

Kristofferson: Well, this, again, is like the last one I did with Don was. Don's been trying to revive my career for 30 years. (Laughter) He's done a good job of it. But this in particular was like the album we did right before this, which was - I thought it was just a demo session because I was - it was just me and the guitar and the harmonica, and this is pretty much what it is here, plus a couple of guys on a couple of songs.

I was particularly glad that I got Stephen Bruton on this, this was his - I think the last album he worked on. But Stephen, who worked with me for - ever since he was a little boy, and 30 - over 30 years, and he died shortly after this was made. So I'm glad I got him on there, he's singing on a couple of them.

Tavis: I promised I was going to ask you to explain "Closer to the Bone" at the top of our conversation, so before my time runs out, tell me about that song specifically, the title track.

Kristofferson: Well, it's - God, I hate to dissect the songs and everything. If I thought -

Tavis: Let me stop you one second. I respect that. You don't have to answer that question. You don't have to answer that question, but you do have to answer this one - tell me why, even though you're a songwriter, to your point now, you hate dissecting songs. Tell me that.

Kristofferson: Well, because I feel like the songs are a gift, really, that came from someplace that I can't understand, and I can't really explain what came out creatively. I know there are songwriters that could answer this question a lot better than I can, but I've never taken a technical attitude toward songs, the mechanics of them. It's just the emotion to me, and it's just - it doesn't make sense to me to cut them apart any more than it would a baby, you know?

Tavis: Because I accept your answer, you do not have to explain "Closer to the Bone."

Kristofferson: Oh, okay. (Laughter)

Tavis: I'll just play it and listen to it, how about that?

Kristofferson: Well, that's fine. (Laughter) I would really appreciate that.

Tavis: Yeah, I don't want to ask Mr. Kristofferson to do nothing he don't feel like doing. You've earned the right to not have to answer questions you don't want to answer, but I'm glad you told me, though. I respect the answer for why you don't like cutting songs up, and I get that, I get that.

Kristofferson: Yeah.

Tavis: But I hope you will do me this favor. Since you brought your guitar, I hope you're going to pick it up and strum something for me.

Kristofferson: Well, I will.

Tavis: Will you do that for me?

Kristofferson: Sure.

Tavis: Whew. Okay. So I'm going to say goodnight to our audience here and after I say goodnight I'm just going to let you play us out here for the next 30 or 40 seconds.

Kristofferson: Wow.

Tavis: That's our show for tonight. Kris Kristofferson's new CD is called "Closer to the Bone." Just don't ask him to explain the lyrics, (laughter) but please go out and get the new CD. I'll talk to you this weekend on PRI, Public Radio International. You can access our radio podcast through our website at PBS.org and I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A., thanks for watching, keep the faith - Mr. Kristofferson.

Kristofferson: Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: Thank you.

[Kristofferson singing]