Waylon by Waylon Jennings & Lenny Kaye

Author:Waylon Jennings & Lenny Kaye [JENNINGS, WAYLON]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780446562379
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-06-27T04:00:00+00:00

Kris Kristofferson was hardly a hillbilly. A Rhodes Scholar and a helicopter pilot, he was like nothing Nashville had ever heard before. He brought a new maturity and sophistication to country lyrics, an explicitness to the verse-singalong chorus-verse-sing-along chorus-bridge-verse-two choruses-and-out that was the standard country fare. Spelled X-plicit, meaning Sex.

One time we counted up and Kris had used the word “body” a hundred and forty-four times in his various songs. Nasty nasty nasty. For a while Nashville was a little afraid of him; but his songs were undeniably poetry, and he taught us how to write great poems. He changed the way I thought about lyrics, and he said one time that I was the only one that really understood his songs.

They all had double meanings, something like Kris’s life. His father was a two-star general, which must have been slightly conflicting for a guy who went to Oxford and wrote an essay on the visions of William Blake. He wanted to pen great literature, but instead Kris joined the Army Rangers in the early sixties and learned to fly helicopters, which came in handy when he landed a chopper on Johnny Cash’s tennis court by way of introduction. Presumably the hours of KP experience he picked up in the service also proved useful. When he first arrived in Nashville, he started at the bottom as a night janitor at Columbia Records. By day, he worked the bar at the Tally-Ho Tavern. That’s kind of like putting the fox in charge of polishing glasses in a chicken coop.

I saw him a lot at Sue Brewer’s, and was one of the first to do songs of his, like “Sunday Morning Coming Down” (though it was John Cash who had the hit) and “Lovin’ Her Was Easier.” Roger Miller broke the Nashville ice with “Me and Bobby McGee,” and John especially encouraged Kris by having him on his television show in 1969. By 1970, with “Bobby McGee” a posthumous smash for Janis Joplin, and Sammi Smith scoring with “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” Kris was Nashville’s brightest—in more ways than one—hope. His debut album was eagerly awaited, especially by hungry artists looking to cover his songs.

Kris was a Texan, born in Brownsville, and in 1973 he brought chat Western heritage to good use by starring as William Bonney in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. He became a Dripping Springs regular, and though movies increasingly claimed his time as the seventies progressed, not surprising when you think how long Heaven’s Gate is, he had a lot to do with showing that country music wasn’t some Hee-Haw backwoods character with a bottle of sourmash likker and a corncob pipe, and that roots don’t have to trap you in the ground.

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