Still lean and handsome at 77, Kris Kristofferson rocks forward on his battered white cowboy boots, closes his eyes, lifts his lips toward the microphone and assures the hushed crowd in Islington's Union Chapel that: "There ain't nothin' sweeter than naked emotions." The first of a new, liberal generation of country singers to be as influenced by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen as he was by Hank Williams, he sounds like a man who's lit his share of joints from the campfire, and he injects the line with sorrow, warmth and a flicker of rebel sexiness. "You're feeling salty, I'm your tequila/ If you've got the freedom, I've got the time..."
You can read the fond memories of past lovers in the smile that ripples across his face; he's had more than his share of extraordinary women to recall. The nostalgic twinkle in his eye could be for Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Carly Simon or Barbra Streisand. He's written more songs about leaving and losing love than he has about finding it. Yet the songs find him striving for kindness and generosity as he closes the door. He never seeks to blame.
Tonight, even the bleak "Nobody Wins" is delivered with a gentle no-fault reassurance: "The lovin' was easy/ It's the livin' that's hard/ And there's no need to stay and see/ The way it ends/ It's over./ Nobody wins."
Watching him live — just the man and the guitar — you don't need a potted biography to know he's lived a remarkable life. But, for the record, he's been a Golden Gloves boxer, a Rhodes scholar, a college football player, a helicopter pilot, an acclaimed actor and a Grammy winner. He's been married three times (most famously to fellow country singer Rita Coolidge) and had eight children.
His keen appetite for adventure has always been balanced by a ability to reflect intelligently on it. So when you hear him sing today, you feel like you're soaking up the wisdom of a man who's pushed his existence to the limits and wrung every possible thought and emotion from the experience.
But the most the interesting thing is that he's always seemed an old soul. Songs he wrote in his youth — Me and Bobby McGee, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Help Me Make it Through the Night — fit fine on the weathered lips of a septuagenarian. But back in 1972, he was already singing, philosophically, about leaving his luck to the losers and laying down by the river to die on "Kiss the World Goodbye". The material from his new album, Feeling Mortal, is just as good. He looks death in the face and says: fair enough, I've had a great ride. In fact he's said in recent interviews that with age he's found himself more inclined to laughter than tears.
By the end of the set, he's become a kind of holy man and reaches down from the stage to shake every raised hand. He's fluffed notes at times, and used the wrong harmonica at others.But he's made us all feel very certain that "the heart is all that matters in the end."
Kris Kristofferson - Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again) on MUZU.TV
