| ||||
|
Arts & Entertainment Books Comics Health & Body Media Mothers Who Think News  PeoplePolitics2000 Technology - Free Software Project Travel & Food  Columnists
Current Click here to read the latest stories from the wires. - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Also Today For a full list of today's Salon People stories, go to the
People home page. - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon - - - - - - - - - - - - Recently in Salon People Nothing Personal Rogues' Gallery People Feature Nothing Personal Column - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Kris Kristofferson | page 1, 2, 3
"It was wonderful," he says and eats more lobster salad. "I was just makin' up for lost time. I had had a pretty orthodox upbringing in the 1950s up until I got into the army. Then I started gettin' kind of crazy. Jesus, when I was makin' films with beautiful actresses -- it was burning it at both ends. It was an exciting time. I was either on the road with my band or making a movie from 1970 until into the 1990s. It hasn't really stopped." "I have this sense that now you're living like a Gauguin patriarch out in the South Pacific," I say. Kristofferson laughs. "I love where I live out in Maui. I'm a little more torn now than I used to be. I used to love the road." He eats. I eat. "I've got five new kids now," he continues. "Young kids. It's harder to get away. I really have mixed emotions about going back out on the road." "I really relate to something on that A&E biography," I tell him. "I haven't spoken to my mother in 25 years. Your mother disowned you when you first went to Nashville, right?" He smiles. "Yeah. But before she died she was coming backstage and hugging Johnny Cash and things like that. She definitely got used to the fact that I was who I was. But while I was unsuccessful I was disowned. I was told, 'Don't visit any of our relatives. You're a disgrace to us.'" "Did that only change when you became a success?" I ask. "Probably to my father," Kristofferson answers in almost a mutter. "My father told me that he would never understand me, but he understood that I had to do what I had to do, because nobody could have stopped him from being a pilot because he loved flying. He was glad I had the guts to stand up for what I wanted to do." Kristofferson pauses. "He was a hard person to please. I doubt that if I hadn't been successful there would have been any reconciliation. But hell, by the time my mother died, she was calling up radio station and giving them hell if they didn't play my songs." Then he adds, "Being disowned was a real blessing at the time. I had a lot of guilt on my shoulders for not living up to what everybody expected me to be. For not being Bill Bradley -- being responsible, going into government, being a senator. And when my mother reacted so strongly to me it was very liberating." We're both done eating. We look at each other again. Since he brought up politics, I mention his 1990 pro-Sandinista album, "Third World Warrior." "Had you been down to Nicaragua much?" "I'd been down there half a dozen times. The first time I was down there I got to meet Daniel Ortega and all the members of the Nine Man Directorate. I got to go talk to Eugene Hasenfus, the prisoner, you know, that had been shot down trying to resupply the Contras. Remember?" "Yes." "In fact, I was the only American who was talking to him." "What was he like?" "He felt very abandoned and betrayed. He was an ex-Marine who thought he was doing something the White House authorized." "And Reagan just dumped him, right?" "Dumped him," Kristofferson says. "They didn't even acknowledge that he worked for the Americans. The last day I was down there, the Sandinistas asked me if I would like to go talk to him. I really didn't know what I would have to say to the guy because he was on the other side as far as I was concerned. But then I got to thinkin' that he hadn't been able to talk to anybody. And we were both ex-soldiers. I'd been recruited by the same people he was working for, Air America. They had come through flight school asking for volunteers back in the '60s. I figured but for a couple of changes I could have been in his position, so I went to see him." Kristofferson pauses as the waiter uses a butter knife to scrape the crumbs off the table. My partner and I both order coffee again, without ice. Kristofferson continues speaking so softly I'm almost leaning on his shoulder to hear him. "He was so pissed off at the government. I thought he could be a voice tellin' what they had done. But all he wanted was to get out. He lived in Michigan or Minnesota or someplace. He wanted to be in the woods with his kids. He just wanted out. But I had talked the night before with Daniel Ortega. Hasenfus was going to get the maximum sentence -- 30 years. So I told Hasenfus this story about a friend of mine, Bobby Neuwirth [Bob Dylan's old sidekick in the mid-'60s]. I was over in London one time at this party and Bobby said, 'If you don't believe there is a God, ask for something impossible. And stand back.' Bobby had been very active in AA ..." As Kristofferson talks, I'm wondering where his story is going. "The next day, I got a call that my daughter had been hit on a motorcycle back in California and was still unconscious. I flew back [from London] thinking about what Bobby said. And I'm asking for no paralysis and no brain damage. And when I got to the hospital, I walked in and saw her all tied up on this table. In a matter of minutes, one of the doctors said, 'Her foot just moved.' And I told this whole story to Eugene and while I'm telling it, I think, I'm really screwing with him. Because I know what he's going to ask for. He's going to ask that he get out. And they're not going to let him out." Our coffee comes. I move away from Kristofferson. We both take it black. "Anyway," Kristofferson continues, his voice a little louder (but not much), "Hasenfus asked me if I would go by and see his wife who was staying at the old American embassy -- which was completely empty except for her. So I did. And I found myself telling the same story -- 'If you ask for something impossible ...' I'm thinking at the same time, I'm dangling this false hope in front of them." He pauses. "Before I left the country I told this woman in charge of the prisons about the one time I was in Saudi Arabia visiting an American in a Saudi jail who was suffering a nervous breakdown. He was a guy who worked for the company that my father worked for. I said that Hasenfus looked to me to maybe be suffering the same type of thing. 'It would really be a shame if he had a nervous breakdown in your prison,' I said. You see, the Sandinistas prided themselves on their prison reform since they had won the revolution -- people were coming from all over Europe to study their jails." Kristofferson pauses. Here comes the punchline: "Anyway, I left and by the time I got home there was a thing on my answering service. It was a woman who said, 'Thanks for your help. He's out.'" Ha! I should have seen this coming. "I tracked him down," Kristofferson continues, "and told him, 'I don't know if this did anything for your faith, but it's done something for mine.' But I never heard from Hasenfus again after that. He didn't become part of the anti-war movement or anything. The CIA got hold of him right away and shut him up." "But still," I say, "the Lord does work in so-called mysterious ways." Please be picking all this up on tape, I silently pray. "Mysterious ways," he repeats. "Do you demonize Ronald Reagan?" I ask. "Do I 'demonize' him?" Kristofferson asks incredulously. "I do," I confess. He thinks a moment and says louder now, "Ronald Reagan to me was just a hood ornament on the Mercedes. He had no creative input. He was just a mouthpiece." "Who were the evil ones?" I ask. Kristofferson thinks a moment and says, "Kissinger." Then laughs. "I think all the people who were responsible for our policy down there, like Elliott Abrams. I don't know who everyone was. I don't know who all the people were who killed Kennedy. Who killed Bobby Kennedy. King. Malcolm X. Until government responsibility is accounted for [in] those killings, people are going to be cynical about the government, as they've been since then." Kristofferson goes on in a surprisingly paranoid vein about assassinations. I'm surprised (but then not really) that he is such a political animal -- this side of his personality is seldom seen publicly. Then the publicist from his record company joins our table to shepherd him into a waiting van. Before he goes, I ask him if he votes (I don't), and he says, "Yeah." I ask if he gave money to Clinton, and he says, "No. I view Clinton a lot like Yeltsin -- guys who are better than the alternative. God knows the other side is worse." He thinks a moment and says, "The thing that is depressing to me is that there really is no 'other side.' There is no 'our side' anymore." This man in black leaves the table. I immediately rewind the tape and flick the Play button. Kristofferson's voice has been recorded. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer Sound off - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon | |||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
