Remembering Kris Kristofferson: 1936–2024
Kristofferson was a kind soul with a courageous heart who sought justice. I first met Kris in the late 1980’s when I was asked to tour with him in Moscow. Kris’s wife was an attorney like my wife Jacqueline whom he called ‘Counselor’ after discovering that she was a Public Defender and lawyer for the American Indian Movement.
We all stayed at the Rossiya Hotel, only blocks from Red Square and traveled together in a bus to perform in venues large and small. Our last show was held in an arena with thousands of Muscovites in attendance. Besides us, there were several Soviet rock bands performing.
This was in the early days of Perestroika when President Mikhail Gorbachev was beginning to open up the Soviet Union to the world though Glasnost. There were rumblings of local bureaucrats being not happy with the fact that performers from the United States were participating. The entire front row of the arena was filled with police officers seated shoulder to shoulder. When the audience got too loud and enthusiastic the police stood up. And when they did everyone in the arena sat down and quieted. Then the excitement would peak again… This went on all evening like popcorn popping.
We were the last to perform and all of the bands were running overtime. The audience was excited and anticipating hearing Kris Kristofferson, But the local authorities did not allow us to perform. When this was announced from stage, the crowd went angry and wild. We were all waiting in the dressing room not far from the stage. We were very disappointed but also trapped backstage. The only way out was to walk through the crowd of several thousand angry people. There was a back door to the dressing room which led outside, but regretfully it was locked. Kris’s security said ‘to heck with it’. They found a screwdriver and unscrewed the glass off the door, so we could safely climb out and get safely to our bus.
Kristofferson had quit drinking, but members of his band had not. His lead guitarist happened to have a bottle of Vodka and began to passing it around. Kristofferson and I were close friends with the late American Indian Movement performer and songwriter, Floyd Red Crow Westerman. We began making up new verses to one of Red Crow’s songs, which we sang out through the open windows of bus while in route back to the Rossiya Hotel.
CIA, KGB won’t you tap my telephone
There’s something I want you to know
Hey-ya-hey-hey-ya-hey-ya-hey-hey-ya
We had a party going on and didn’t want it to end. Jacqueline and I talked Kris and his band into having the bus driver take us to historic Arbat Street and do some street singing. Jacqueline and I had had a wonderful time there a few months before visiting with the young people who invited us into their homes and talked all night long. It was the beginning of Perestroika. There was a sense of wonder and hope for the future. For us, it was like reliving the mood of the sixties in the United States all over again. We wanted to share that experience with Kris and his band. When the bus came to a stop at Arbat, we grabbed our instruments and marched down the street singing, but something was terribly wrong. Arbat Street was dead silent with nobody in sight. Unbeknownst to us, it was closed down in preparation for the October Revolution celebrations in the coming days.
“We are Glasnost! We are Perestroika!”
Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere hundreds of people descended upon us when Kris started singing Me & Bobby McGee. We were swept up by this sea of people onto the steps of a small building, which became our stage. More and more people crowded in. The eight women in our group who were wives of the band members linked arms and formed a semi-circle in front of the steps in the hopes of keeping the crowd back a few feet. But that effort began to seem futile as the excitement grew. The crowd began to chant, “We are Glasnost! We are Perestroika!”
While looking beyond the edge of the crowd, I saw that our translator, Sasha, who was also a local environmental activist, was being interrogated by the local police. He looked like he was in trouble. Kris and I worked our way through the crowd and over to him. We discovered that the police had taken Sasha’s internal passport. I told the police that it wasn’t Sasha’s fault that we were there. We simply didn’t know that Arbat Street was shut down in preparation for the October Revolution celebration. The police refused to give Sasha’s identification back and began to take him away. The crowd kept chanting, “We are Glasnost! We are Perestroika!”
Without hesitation, Kris and I locked arms with Sasha and pulled him away from the police. The crowd engulfed us and pushed us out the other side, not allowing the police through. We ran to a nearby street and caught a taxi back to the Rossiya Hotel. The entire band followed suit, diving into cabs.
We brought Sasha up to our room for safety and discussed what to do. Jacqueline made a legal suggestion and Kris turned to her and said: “Counselor, we aren’t in Kansas anymore!” Instead, he decided to use a political maneuver, He called the Russian event organizers and made clear that he was not going to leave the country until Sasha had his paperwork back and was out of trouble. KGB agents came to the hotel and we ended up negotiating with them in a bathroom to get the passport back. Since neither they nor we wanted an international incident, the KBG agreed. Sasha’s identification was returned at 3 in the morning.
Performing in Solidarity with Native Americans
Six months after returning to the United States I was invited to sing in the Quad Cities on the Mississippi River for the first Soviet American Peace Walk. As I began performing, whom did I see, but Sasha! He had been marching across the United States with the Walk. He was OK. The Cold War seemed to be coming to an end.
Kris brought me out to Orange County to perform with his band at a star-studded benefit for the the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. He asked me to play a ballad on my Native Flute. He stepped off stage during my performance and listened. Jacqueline says he just beamed during the song and said to her, “Now Counselor, ain’t that something?” He was always supportive of his band and other performers. And they were loyal to him.
That following summer through the leadership of Clyde Bellecourt (American Indian Movement), Mark Tilsen (Black Hills Alliance International Survival Gathering & Tanka Bar Foundation), the City of St. Paul, and myself (Mississippi River Revival) we organized the Two Rivers Cultural Explosion. This two-day gathering was held at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers to honor the Dakota Oyote who had been interned there at a concentration camp throughout the winter following the Dakota-United States War of 1862. Kris Kristofferson graciously donated his services to perform, as did John Trudell and others.
You can view a video of Kris singing Knocking on Heaven’s Door with Larry Kegan, Cousin Melvin James (Lead guitar), Gregory Traxler (Drums), Sid Gasner (Bass), and myself.
Kris Kristofferson was everything you would hope him to be. Simply, one of the best songwriters of our time and an incredible human being. May his songs be forever sung.
Larry Long is an American singer-songwriter who has made his life work the celebration of everyday heroes. Larry has written and performed hundreds of ballads celebrating community and history makers. His work has taken him from rural Alabama to the Lakota communities in South Dakota. He has given musical voice to struggling Midwest farmers, embattled workers, and veterans. He can be reached at larrylong@communitycelebration.org.
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