Kris Kristofferson is alone onstage here at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and the ladies in the house could not be happier. They call out encouragement between songs, some of it mildly ribald, even though for the most part they are respectable women whose knicker-flinging days are deep in the past. But they still remember the bare-chested man who smooched with Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born, back in 1977. They remember Jesus Was a Capricorn, and Loving Her Was Easier, and Help Me Make It Through the Night; they remember Kristofferson's medallion-man physique, his sexy growl, his silver-flecked beard and come-hither eyes. Apparently, it's still an intoxicating brew. My own date - who has campaigned, shall we say, aggressively for my plus-one ticket - is here to see one man and one man only. And it isn't me.
On stage, Kristofferson sings plaintively in his untutored baritone before clamping his mouth around his harmonica and - yikes! - emitting an ear-splitting off-key note, followed by a splutter, a laugh and the meek excuse, "Wrong goddamn harmonica!" It's the kind of moment that gets people yanked off stage at amateur night, but this audience is more forgiving.
Pepperdine, a conservative university, isn't a place one associates with a left-winger like Kristofferson, who is on first-name terms with Daniel Ortega. For a start, the dean of its law school is a former nemesis of Bill Clinton's - hence my question when Kristofferson and I meet before the show: "So, have you and Ken Starr had your summit yet?" Kristofferson laughs. "Oh God, every time I'm here I think they're gonna get me! But, no, I have a son here, and my wife went here, too - though, man, I do sometimes feel out of place."
Like a lot of famous people, Kristofferson seems smaller in real life (he is about 174cm), and the neatly trimmed beard and hair are making the transition from silver to white. He is 71 and looking good on it, despite having had heart-bypass surgery a few years ago. He is smart, poetic and witty in a dry, southern way, and seems to have absolutely no pretensions about himself.
Kristofferson always saw himself first and foremost as a songwriter. "None of the other stuff would ever have happened if it wasn't for the songwriting. I've come to appreciate how special a song is compared to other art forms, because you can carry it around in your head and your heart and it remains part of you. It just comes as natural as a bird to me, always did. It's the way singer-songwriters make sense of our lives."
Kristofferson moved to Nashville after leaving the army in 1965, and started pitching songs up and down Music Row. "I gotta tell you, I really didn't know if I was ever gonna sell any songs for a long time. I figured I was in it for me and whatever satisfaction I could get out of it. But eventually it got so I could make a living."
It took a long time - five years - but by the time his material caught on, he was selling songs to the biggest names in town. Sunday Morning Coming Down went to Johnny Cash after Kristofferson landed a helicopter on Cash's lawn to catch his attention. Waylon Jennings recorded The Taker. Me and Bobby McGee went to Roger Miller, whose version then fell into the hands of Janis Joplin, for whom it was a hit, her biggest ever, in the immediate aftermath of her death in 1971.
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