The fateful first meeting between Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash
Harbingers of outlaw country, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson were a pretty tightly-knit pairing back in the day, but it took a monumental effort for a young Kristofferson to finally capture the attention of a slightly worse-for-wear Cash back in his 1960s heyday.
Much like Cash, Kristofferson spent his younger years serving in the armed forces, but when that period came to an end in 1965 he only had one thing on his mind: musical greatness. Upping sticks and heading for Nashville, Kristofferson threw himself into the heart of the country music world. Surrounded by its rich musical pulse, he tried anything and everything to get noticed – chasing the dream and following the trail blazed by his outlaw idol, Johnny Cash.
Breaking into the music industry has never been an easy task, particularly in surroundings as saturated as Nashville. In other words, Kristofferson was never going to be an overnight success story. While hammering away at his music career, the songwriter took on a number of different dead-end and odd jobs in order to make ends meet for his family. One such job got him through the doors of Columbia Records, but, unfortunately, not as a recording artist. Still, his time working as a janitor at one of the world’s biggest record labels did have its perks.
In between sweeping floors and cleaning the bogs, for instance, the future country star crossed paths with a variety of the label’s musical roster, including Mr Cash himself. Although you might hope, or even assume, that the first time Kristofferson and Cash met, an instant and unbreakable rapport was forged, you forget that this was the mid-1960s, and everybody was off their heads. Cash, in particular, was deeply entrenched in the depths of drug addiction, so he wasn’t exactly of sound mind when floating through the corridors of Columbia.
Even still, Kristofferson never forgot the monumental occasion of meeting Cash for the first time. “I met him bouncing off the hallways one time in Columbia back when I was working like a janitor there,” he recalled during an interview in 1971. “He was lucid, in spite of the fact that he was completely wasted,” he added. “He started reciting me some poetry, religious poetry, that was really beautiful.”
Not only did the experience provide the young janitor-come-songwriter with some artistic inspiration, but Cash’s state at that time acted as a foreboding message of warning to Kristofferson. “I got to thinking, ‘Look at this cat, man. He comes from pulling cotton back in Dyas, Arkansas, uneducated, and he’s writing some really moving religious poetry that I just wish that somebody knew that he did it, you know.”
Kristofferson added, “But I just figured he was going to be dead signing for all these people before anybody heard it, and I thought, ‘Who’s going to give a damn? You’re killing yourself for these people, and they ain’t gonna care.’”
Luckily, Cash was eventually able to clean up his act for long enough to recognise the brilliance of Kris Kristofferson as a songwriter and performer. After a few jam sessions, the pair even performed together at the Newport Folk Festival in 1969, launching a long and illustrious series of collaborations between the two country icons, which peaked during the 1980s with their incredible work as The Highwaymen, alongside fellow country stars Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.
