Photo by Henry Diltz
Kris Kristofferson: I never saw songwriting as having the potential to be a lifetime thing, or something that you would do for your life’s work. It didn’t seem to measure up to that. I didn’t think it was something worthy of devoting your life to until I went to Nashville after I’d been in the army. It was so exciting and creatively stimulating to me being around all of the serious songwriters there. Everybody was hanging out every night listening to each other’s stuff. It was like a rebirth for me after five years in the army.
To me, your first four records really exemplify that period when the singer/songwriter was king. And of course guys like John Prine came along during that time as well…
It was really cool for me to be a part of his success story. Steve Goodman had introduced us, and I remember Paul Anka was in town to see my show. Steve took us to a club to see Prine, and Paul offered to fly them both to New York where I was going to be playing at The Bitter End. He got the owner to let them play however long they wanted to. Jerry Wexler from Atlantic Records came to see one of the shows and signed Prine on the spot. We made some demos with Steve there and he got a record deal too.
Do you look back on that time now as a golden era?
Absolutely. It was pretty amazing because maybe five years before that I couldn’t even sing my own demos. They weren’t used to hearing a voice like mine. I think Bob Dylan helped a lot of us in that way. They couldn’t understand Dylan, but he was doing great, so I guess that gave us a chance to try to make a living at it.
J Williamson Interview 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment