For the Good Times

Three stories, in chronological order, about KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, the songwriter, singer, outlaw, actor, raconteur, etc., whose retirement from music, at age 84, was announced Wednesday.

There was no TIKTOK, no YOUTUBE, no internet when he was trying to hustle his way into the business as a Nashville songwriter in the late 1960s. You couldn't just DRIVERS LICENSE yourself onto the pop charts back then. But Kristofferson, an Army veteran, did have a helicopter license and he used it to hustle his songs the old-fashioned way: landing a chopper, uninvited, on JOHNNY CASH's lawn. This really happened. Kristofferson, who didn't know Johnny but had befriended JUNE CARTER CASH while working as a janitor at COLUMBIA RECORDS' Nashville office, was intending to hand him a demo tape of "SUNDAY MORNIN' COMIN' DOWN" in this most dramatic fashion. Whether he succeeded has long been a matter of dispute; Cash insisted that's how he got the tape, Kristofferson says Cash wasn't even there. (If this happened today, we'd know for sure because it would be on INSTAGRAM, obviously.) But the stunt worked either way, and "Sunday Mornin'" became a signature song for both of them. The music business has always been about the hustle, and always will be. The platforms and modes of transportation change. The stories and motivations do not. Be hungry. Learn to fly. Just remember to stick the landing.

This is a great thread about what happened after SINEAD O'CONNOR became a pariah for ripping up a photo of POPE JOHN PAUL II on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE in 1992. Her reasons were righteous, her method was provocative, and though history has validated her righteousness, it hasn't salvaged her reputation or her career because history, like people, can be cold and cruel. I can't think of any pop star who's been vilified like she was. People continued partying with PHIL SPECTOR for years after he murdered LANA CLARKSON. People still play R. KELLY on the radio today. But Sinead O'Connor, who dared to defile a photograph? Goodbye, lady. When a New York audience tried to boo her off stage during a BOB DYLAN tribute at MADISON SQUARE GARDEN 10 days later, no one, not even Dylan, spoke up for her, with one exception: Kris Kristofferson, who had been tasked to escort her off the stage. Instead Kristofferson walked out, sans helicopter, hugged O'Connor in front of all those boo birds, told her "Don't let the bastards get you down" and made sure she finished her performance. Moral: Believe in yourself, but believe in other people, too. (Full disclosure: Sinead O'Connor might have a different ending for this story than I was expecting.)

I've seen him in concert only once, at CARNEGIE HALL 15 years ago opening for GEORGE JONES. It was a charming disaster. Onstage alone with an acoustic guitar, he struggled to remember the words to his own songs, including "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down." He struggled with the guitar, too, as if he couldn't quite remember how to play. For one song, he sang the first verse, sang it again, stopped, sheepishly apologized and moved on to a different song and a different struggle. He wore a puppy dog smile the whole time. You had no choice but to root for him. You wanted to root for him. Was he drunk? An easy assumption to make. Was he a 70-ish year old man beginning to experience dementia? That assumption was so easy to make that his doctor eventually made it for him. Kristofferson took medication for Alzheimer's for years and his health kept getting worse. Because the diagnosis, it turned out, was wrong. He had Lyme disease. Which can also affect your memory. But which is curable. Don't make assumptions, kids, if you don't have to. And respect your elders. He was/is, his many accomplishments notwithstanding, a pure songwriter, with a pure songwriter's heart.

Movin' Way Too Fast

If you're driving in Brisbane, Australia—or anywhere in the state of Queensland—and if you're listening to SPOTIFY in your car and if you're within five kilometers of a school and if you don't have a premium subscription, Spotify will auto-play a song that literally slows down after a few seconds and tells *you* to slow down because you're in a school zone. I have no doubt this pilot program is being done with the best intentions and I also have little doubt it's one of the worst ideas Spotify, which is doing this in partnership with the Australian Road Safety Foundation, has ever had. There have to be better ways to persuade people to drive safely near children, and there also have to be better ways to get people to upgrade to premium subscriptions. Spotify is also, it would appear, looking into this.

Plus Also Too

A music doc and concert channel called the CODA COLLECTION is launching next month on AMAZON PRIME. The team behind it includes YOKO ONO and JANIE HENDRIX (JIMI's film producer sister). Ex-Chicago Tribune music critic GREG KOT will oversee editorial for an accompanying website... BIG HIT ENTERTAINMENT, the management company behind BTS, is investing $63 million in rival YG, whose clients include BLACKPINK... WAVELENGTHS, organized by the team behind GLOBALFEST, is a two-day conference on "urgent issues facing the international music ecosystem," of which there are a lot. It's happening Friday and Saturday via Zoom with a pay-what-you-can ($40 is suggested) entry fee... MADLIB, whose first-ever proper solo album (!), arranged, edited and mastered by FOUR TET, comes out Friday, doesn't own a cellphone because, the New York Times reports, "too many people kept trying to reach him." Hero.

Rest in Peace

Dallas club owner TIM DANIELS.