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Kris Kristofferson: the soldier turned star made a tough life into tender poetry
No other musician could have landed a helicopter in Johnny Cash’s yard to deliver a new tune, or renounced a debut in praise of the Vietnam war with decades of activist songs
Kristofferson’s life was quite remarkable: an Oxford-educated army captain who abandoned his military career to pursue music in Nashville, he would win four Grammys, sidestep into acting, work with Sam Peckinpah and Martin Scorsese and score a Golden Globe. Across his career, he atoned for the misstep in any number of activist songs, including Bobby Bare’s 1969’s recording, The Law is for the Protection of the People, 1986’s What About Me, which questioned the rightwing military hostility in Central America, and 2006’s anti-war anthem In the News. As much as his firm political positions spurred Kristofferson’s outlaw reputation, they also fed his songwriting, establishing his presiding themes of fairness and freedom and desire, and setting something at their core that was steady and unflinching and that in one light might look like hardness, and in another could seem something like hope.
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