MOMENTS OF FOREVER: Kris Kristofferson's Love for ALL Defines His Llife

Willie and Kris were playing the Miami Marine Stadium, basically covered bleachers on a small inlet that ran along Key Biscayne. It was a scrubby situation, designed for South Florida rednecks to watch speed boats race and take jumps, just metal bleachers with an overhang to keep their hangovers from baking them out of their mortal coil in the scorching Saturday high noon sun.

The stage set on pontoons. The backstage was a couple of low rent yachts.

When the call from the promoter came – “Would you like to interview Kris Kristofferson?” – I couldn’t say “Yes” fast enough. He seemed surprised. Kristofferson had become an actor and an activist, far more than a songwriter or rock star. I was the cred freelancer covering country, black and rock of a certain stripe.

How do you tell a middle-aged white guy you and one of your friends once cut out of school one afternoon, took two Rapid Transit trains to Van Aken Center to watch the afternoon showing of “A Star Is Born”? Explaining that his swagger, shirtless or in a poet’s blouse was dangerous, bravado forward, but poetically elegant would be moot. He was a pirate, a rock star, a gypsy and a man who took great risks, reached deeper into the human condition and offered up the pivot points of pain, dignity and courage without furrowing his brow.

Heck, my father started telling me about Kris Kristofferson when I was a kid, propped between my parents watching “The Johnny Cash Show.” Landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn to give him a tape. Janis Joplin’s last hit – the one after she died – was a Kristofferson song. He understood addicts, alcoholics and washed out losers in a way that meant they weren’t actually born to lose.

Oh, and he’d gone to Oxford.

Yeah, I wanted to interview Kristofferson, whose music career was sagging, but whose mark on American songwriting was already indelible. Rushing to the morgue to pull the clip file, I blessed the Miami Herald’s Fred Burger, who’d covered so many of the Outlaws and other progressive country acts with a matching eloquence. He not only had several pieces, he’d seen to it that the artists he thought were important had clips from other sources in there as well.

Reading, reading, reading. Boxing, the Air Force, a Rhodes scholarship, William Blake, a teaching appointment, flying out to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for extra money, parents hated the idea he would give up his legacy to write songs. Janitor at CBS Studios, where Bob Dylan was recording; dreamer who kept handing out demos, making friends with Willie, Cash, Waylon, Roger Miller, all the other travelers seeking to make a more elevated, sophisticated kind of lyricism with an even simpler melodic zone.

When the call came through, I was ready.

Scrawling my own kind of shorthand, the voice was ruddy, rich, warm, like a savory biscuit slathered in  something delicious, something like apple butter. He was laughing a bit, telling his stories, thinking about some of my questions, really honoring my curiosity. And that’s when I shot my shot.

“So what was it like, studying with William Blake?”
“Excuse me,” he said, tone twisting around itself a bit.

“William Blake, you studied with him…” pause, then adding helpfully, “at Oxford.”
“I’m sorry…” the voice on the other end was puzzled, then a giant laugh rolled down the phone.

“No, no, you studied with William Blake,” I protested. “It’s in the morgue.”
“Honey,” he said, tamping down his chuckle, “William Blake is DEAD.”
“I, uh, uhm,” the mortification was immediate. “Can you give me one second?”

“Sure, honey,” he graciously responded. “Take your time.”

Head down on the classical writer James Roos’ desk, I silent screamed like I was auditioning for a slasher film. And then I did it again, and again, and a fourth time. Exhaling, knowing I needed to pull it together because my 20 or 30 minutes was evaporating, I closed my eyes and reminded myself I might be 19, but I am a professional.

“I am so sorry,” I began picking up the phone. Kristofferson kept laughing. “I am so embarrassed. I was reading all the clips, and I swear, it was there… I didn’t just make it up.”
“Holly,” he said, cutting me off at the pass, “can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” At this point, he could end the interview. It would’ve been deserved.

“When was the last time – do you think – someone asked me about William Blake?”
I was silent. I had no idea. I didn’t want to make it worse.

“You there?”

“Yes, I’m here.”
The voice was kind, not chiding. He obviously recognized how stupid I felt. It appeared he felt for me: a young writer at a good paper who made a gaffe of Olympic measure. “Holly, I’ll make this simple: no one ever asks me about William Blake. I’m not sure most of the journalists I speak with even realize I know classic English poetry.

“The fact you did? You get all kinds of points for that.”

We talked for another 30 minutes; far longer than was booked, so he could answer all my questions. The story was good enough, it made the cover of the Weekend section, I believe left well and above the fold; though it might’ve been the entire bottom third all the way across.

Before he hung up, he asked another question. “You coming to the show?,” which I was.

“Okay, then do me a favor. I’m going to leave you a couple passes. I want you to come back and say, ‘hi.’ Can you do that?”

“Uh, sure,” I said, knowing full well rock stars never remember. They don’t. Ever.

Until I got to the box office. Not only were the seats the first row that rose up so you could see over the four or five rows on the flat, but there were the two backstage passes. My second fiancee, twice my age and never one to come to shows, looked at me with a cockeyed grin.

“Well, Gleason, look at that. Passes! You must’ve made an impression.”
I’d not told Jason about making an ass of myself, played it off as the promoter being grateful. My fiancée, who loved Willie and Kris, said, “Well, you need to go back there, say ‘hello.’ I think it’s important. Those are really serious artists…”
“Are you going to come?” That might’ve been even more embarrassing.

“No, I’m not going to come. Some things in this world, you need to do on your own. You need to walk back there and be Holly Gleason, the writer from the Miami Herald.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll think about it.”
I was definitely not going back there. Sitting quietly, wondering when the show – a good 15, 20 yards away from us – was going to start. John Valentino, the dark, lion-haired promoter rep, was suddenly squatting down by my seat. He was smiling. “Hey, somebody backstage wants to meet you. I’m supposed to bring you back to say ‘Hi.’”

“Gosh, it’s awful close to showtime.”
“Yeah, I don’t think the show’s starting ‘til you get back there.”
Slowly I rose, grabbed my purse and fell in behind the nicest man in South Florida concert promotion, who told me how much he loved my story. He remarked that everyone attached to the show really loved it, so he was glad they sent him out to get me.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, clearly out of sorts. Pontoons on a choppy bay are no fun to walk on. Holding the ropes, feeling like my knees were buckling, I would lurch forward, hoping I didn’t fall straight into JV. When we finally climbed up on the stage, he took my hand, guided me around to the back and waved towards a gang plank down onto a boat. “Go ahead.”
Standing right where you’d step off, in a black tshirt and jeans, sinewy, slightly salt in his pepper and oozing charisma, Kris Kristofferson went, “Well, you must be Holly! And you look even younger than you sound.”

“I’m 19,” I said, used to people assuming a Herald writer must be in their 30s. “Hello…”
I put my hand out, he pulled into a hug. A big, friendly, warm and loving favorite uncle hug.

“That’s more like it,” he said. “And I wanna look you in the eye, and tell you that’s one damned fine piece of writing. I can’t believe you got all that from the scraps of conversation we had.”
He was smart: get me talking about the art of writing. Suddenly, we were writers, not a kid and an icon-in-the-making.  By leveling up, he made the awkward disappear.

“Are you kidding? Those answers were great. Your story’s amazing. And I got to write about all your songs, the way you use words. How could it not be great?” I asked.

“You’d be surprised,” he said a little too knowingly. I was young enough to not realize how cynical and crummy journalists could be once the white-hot moment had passed.
“I guess, but I still think if the songs are good, the conversation is excellent, the writing should lift itself.”
“You might think, but I promise: it doesn’t. You write like this at 19, I don’t know what you’re majoring in, but you should think about being a writer. You can write, and I know that’s not even what you’re studying.”
Holy crap! He remembered. He remembered me telling him my Dad wouldn’t let me study journalism or English, because I was a published writer from the time I was 14. Whoa.

The tour manager stuck his head over the side. “You ready?”
“I guess so,” he said. Then he looked at me. “Wanna watch from the side?”

“Hell yes,” I thought, but wanted to act cool. I said, “That would be nice.”
It was an open stage. I figured my boyfriend would see me. If he got mad and left, I’d figure out how to get home. Right now, I was going to stand a few feet away from Kris Kristofferson, so lean and cool, and watch him sing “Help Me Make It Through The Night,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” “The Silver Tongued Devil and I,” even “Jesus Was A Capricorn.”

Tasting the salt in the air, a tropical breeze blew across the stage and pushed his shaggy hair off his face. He really was beautiful, even more beautiful than in the movies. But his passion when he sang those songs, the vulnerability and willingness to show the broken places was mind-blowing. And talking about going to church with a lady named Connie Smith, walking to the altar and falling to his knees inspiring “Why Me, Lord?,” it opened a portal into blessings where it's all falling apart.

He and the band tromped offstage. They swept me up with them, then Kristofferson cut me from the pack. “C’mon,” he said, and walked me over to the other boat.

“Willie, this is the writer I was telling you about.”
Nelson was sitting with the writer from the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. He smiled and nodded. “Come sit,” he said. “Visit for a few minutes.”
Kristofferson bounced off the boat, probably to towel off from the swelter. Willie Nelson, his braids shorn into a flat top, looked exactly like my grandfather who’d just died. I was dumb struck, literally unable to speak.
“That was a fine piece you wrote,” he said. “Kris said he thought you were young. I don’t think anyone thought you were…”
“This young?” I managed. “Weird, ‘cause we talked about school.”
“Sometimes the details don’t register.”
“I get that.”
“It’s really about the work.”
“I get that, too.” Never have I struggled so hard to stay in a conversation.

When the promoter came to take us away, he was buoyant. “I am so proud of you,” JV said. “I am so proud you wrote a piece that made them want to meet you.”
“Yeah, wow,” was all I could say.
My boyfriend was so impressed. He actually told me, “If Willie would’ve let you stand on the side of the stage, you should’ve…”
“No, they definitely showed me out.”
Clang! Clang! Clang! “Whiskey River” kicked into gear, bottles – and a few drunks – started raining into the water between seats and stage. It was raucous. Lots of bikers, as well as kickers and redbecks. They came to dance, throw down and get lit.

By the time Kristofferson returned to the stage for a bawdy “How Do You Feel About Fooling Around” and “Circle Be Unbroken,” the place was unraveling. This was the power of unadorned music thrown to the crowd like gold coins and roses; people scrambled to grab what they could of the moment, to pull those emotions towards them.

Imagining this must’ve been what the Allmans were like in their prime, I held the back of the seat in front of me, a little dizzy. One man had a hand in getting President Carter elected, the other made landmark films like “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” Both of them had talked to me; I would be in a daze for days.

 

“Here Comes That Rainbow Again,” to drop one song in among all the others, speaks so much to the way those men saw the world. Set in a café, dust bowl nowhere kind of town, a waitress took mercy on two hungry-eyed kids, telling them the candy they coveted was two-for-a-penny; it was exactly the money the children had.

A truck driver asks the waitress about why she did it. She asks, “What’s it to you?” believing in kindness over the straight bottom line. To her surprise, when the two truckers leave, there’s a small windfall at the table. Chastened by her kindness, they raised her ante and left a tip to say that kindness is the way.
An O. Henry short story over a classic folkie kind of melody, Kristofferson suggested what doesn’t kill you is worth indulging if it gives someone a little magic or breaks their melancholy. In the brightness and innocence that washed away the cynicism and world weary, the Songwriters Hall of Famer who received their Johnny Mercer Prize transformed anyone who listened.

 

When The Highwaymen, produced by Chips Moman, turned Waylon, Willie, Kris and Cash into the first true supergroup, the buzz was deafening. Tower Records’ PULSE assigned a cover story to me; all I had to do was juggle classes, superstar availabilities and not choke. At the time, this was the Mount Rushmore of the genre, and I understood even more now than when I’d done the Marine Stadium preview three semesters before.

First thing out of Kristofferson’s mouth, even before “Hello,” was “I just want to alert you: William Blake is still dead!” He laughed. I laughed, It was a riff on a “Saturday Night Live” bit, but it was also a small private joke, shared between the star and the humble scribe.

From being a total dodo to having a private joke? That was what made Kristofferson so lovely. He wanted to take the beat-up kid, find a way to usher her into the club. He wanted to connect some of the dots on the songs; they had Woody Guthrie and Cindy Walker, Ed Bruce’s “The Last Cowboy Song,” Guy Clark and Jimmy Webb, Bob Seger, two Johnny Cash classics, a Steve Goodman/John Prine co-write. We talked songwriters like people swap baseball cards; he spoke of what was inside the ten selections that made the album
It was strength without bullying, manly, not machismo. There were themes of social conscience, of passing time and tough places. These weren’t party songs, but things to make you think about the state of the world, how people treat other, who we throw away. It was smart and sobering as a work, and rich in terms of what we talked about.

He thanked me when he hung up, told me it was always a pleasure. I thought, that’s because you’re so good to talk to. Anyone not enjoying talking to you? They’re not doing it right.

Of course, Kristofferson was getting ready to get back into the water as an artist. He had a film with Nelson called “Songwriter,” a madcap sticking it to the Boss Hog music industry guy that looked like fun to make – and gave you a sense of how Nashville was when the creatives really were their own class of people. Independent, figuring out how to work between the lines, ready to hit the road, willing to go to any length for a practical joke and looking for a hit without selling out.

But Repossessed, a decidedly political album of social reckoning, was coming. It pulled no punches, threw down and drew lines. “Mean Old Man” and “Anthem ‘84” set the tone for a cruel, consumed by consumerism world and “They Killed Him” called out a culture that killed its visionary leaders, slaying them to never have to consider the truths Ghandi, Martin Luther King and the Kennedys put forward.

It was bold, and it struck a nerve if you listened. Most people chose to tune the radicalism out, marginalize the movie star who’d not had a hit album in a long time. When the phone rang at my desk at the Palm Beach Post, Kristofferson asked me what I thought. I told him I had hippie babysitters, this stuff is critical – if we can’t come together in peace, we would perish in the divisiveness.

With a band that had Billy Swan and Donnie Fritts, there was plenty of funky grit to go around. An outdoor show, it was a motley audience who showed up. Women swooning, because he was so fine. Vets and bikers who respected his courage for speaking up. Some country music fans who believed in the catalogue of many of their favorite artists. Native Americans who honored the way Kristofferson spoke to and for their heritage.

A melange of humanity, coming together in the songs. We didn’t speak that day. No backstage passes, though I was sure he saw me in the crowd, winked and nodded. That was plenty. Why crowd a legend when you can interview them for the paper?

By 1990, the politics had sharpened. Songs like “Jesse Jackson,” “Third World Warrior” and “Sandinista” left little to the imagination. He didn’t care; wasn’t going to pull his punches. He’d rather make music he believed in, cut live in the studio with his guys, that spoke the truth no one wanted to discuss. He wasn’t desperate, but was raging against a machine that wanted to use pop culture to distract America from what really mattered.

Like Jackson Browne, he spent his time talking to thinkers, leaders, the people on the front lines. He used his platforms – he was still an in-demand actor – to spread what he knew, and he knew plenty. He put his career and his life into the causes he believed in. And he just kept coming.

Somewhere in all of that, he fell in love with an ashy blond who was as fresh-faced and smart as they came. He and Lisa built a life, a family, kids who went in varied directions, saw the world and raised people’s consciousness. Mostly, they were love in action – and they served as an example of what can be if you truly commit and support another human being.

Just the way he looked at Lisa and smiled, you understood why he was the thinking woman’s heart-throb. That is how every woman deserves to be seen, but also respected.

He may’ve been an international superstar, touring the world with the Highwaymen or making any number of films. But mostly, he was a family man and the lover of Lisa. That was his joy, his grounding. In Hawaii, where they moved, all the local children adored him, too, called him Papa Kris – and followed him around, laughing and loving him as their own.

He stood up for the underdog, the little guy, the bullied and the overlooked. When Sinead O’Connor appeared at the all-star Bob Dylan Tribute Concert, held at Madison Square Garden, the air was charged. She had recently torn up a picture of the Pope on “Saturday Night Live,” igniting death threats, boycotts and being denounced by every Catholic organization in the world.

Brave, she took the stage, eyes piercing and seeking. She had come to sing for arguably the greatest songwriter who’d ever lived. Before she could get the first note out, an avalanche of boos hit that stage like a mountain collapse. Unable to withstand the velocity, the Irish songwriter/vocalist collapsed into a cloud of tears — and Kris ran from the wings to shepherd her off, cloaked in his arms.

As soon as he reached the shuddering musician, she proceeded to vomit. The vitrol she’d absorbed had to go somewhere. Kristofferson held her for a moment, assuring her the artists were with her; offering strength and comfort in a dark place, a pummeling moment.

If he didn’t suffer fools, he was generous with his praise. When an Oxford American think piece for his meditation on aging Feeling Mortal crossed the family’s horizon, he marveled that “Holly wrote that?,” no doubt picturing the kid from decades prior. When he saw me, he laughed and told me I’d clearly grown up.

And when “Better As A Memory,” a two-week No. 1, received it’s BMI Award for Most Played Songs of 2008, it was chaos as I teetered up to the stage in my 5” stiletto ballet slippers.

“Can you walk in those things?” BMI Nashville head Jody Williams inquired. “If you can, close your eyes and open them when I say…”
Like a good dancer, his hand slipped to the small of my back. Turning me 80 degrees, I heard now, and opened my eye lids to see Kris with his fingers in his mouth leading a standing ovation with Don Was. Surreal doesn’t begin to cover it, but my feet hurt, my heart was in my throat and tears were in my eyes.

“Can you believe it?” Jody asked. I shook my head no, because, well, it was hard to take in.

Pictures taken, someone escorted me off the stage. Before I could make my way across the room to say “thank you,” they were gone. The CMA Awards were the next day, so most likely they had an early call for rehearsal, or meeting because they were actually in town.

Walking out of our own rehearsal, I was talking to Clint Higham, Kenny Chesney’s longtime manager, about how the runthrough had gone. Coming in and cutting against the grain of rushing talent support teams, Kris was making his way towards us.

“I was so proud of you last night,” he said, taking my hands and looking into my eyes. “That is a damned fine song, Holly. A damned fine song, and you wrote it.”
I just looked at him. Cry? Laugh? Whoop? Busting a smile that was as wide as my face, I said “Thank you, and thank you. When I saw you and Don, I almost lost it.”
“We almost lost it, too,” he said. “Lisa had to tell me it was you…”
“Because you’ve never seen me in a dress.”
“Yes,” he admitted, laughing.

“Well, now you have.”
The talent wrangler came and got him, but we hugged. He told me I’d done good as he walked away, and I felt a little bit taller. If people had scoffed about me writing a song, they forgot I did it under another name so the song could have a life… and it did. If people acted like anyone could do it, like it was my proximity to Kenny that got the song cut, I didn’t care in that moment. Kris Kristofferson told me I’d written a damned fine song.

And when Kenny Chesney went on to co-produce Willie Nelson’s A Moment of Forever with Buddy Cannon, that Kristofferson title track wrecked me. A quiet performance, contemplative, yearning and yet thrilled with what has been shared, Kristofferson’s song was about the hope and wonder that even a transitory connection can yield. It’s not what was lost, it was what was felt.

Listening to Nelson in the studio, a witness to so much living, loss and adventure, the song felt like the wisdom of time. It also felt like a leavening exhale in a realm of shrinking connections, devastation and people lost not to fights or other lovers, but leaving this world.

When Kris began to fade several years ago, a bad diagnosis that Lisa refused to accept, they both hung in, seeking answers that would refute the diagnosis. One came, Lyme disease, and health returned, though the fragility of aging crept up in small degrees.

Still, there was Kris out playing with Merle Haggard’s kids, showing up at Farm Aid, being honored on the Outlaw Country Cruise. There was a tribute album. There was picking up Jerry Lee Lewis’ Country Music Hall of Fame medallion and delivering it to the Killer in Memphis.

Always something, always love.

Always love.

 

The last time I saw Kris, it was from eighteen rows back at the Hollywood. Rosanne Cash, beaming, walked across the stage as her rich, coppery alto followed the gorgeous imagery upwards. “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)” may be Kristofferson’s most gorgeous song, and Cash grew up knowing poet laureate of the Outlaw movement long before she was herself a formidable songwriter and artist in her own right.

As the first verse  concluded, she reached her arm to the wings – and Kristofferson, eyes the purest blue of early morning, walked towards her in a parsons coat. Hair white, but flowing over his collar, he beamed right back at her, clearly knowing this was a moment to transcend all of our mortal realities. Rosanne continued to sing, Kris leaned into her and the mic, found his way.
They tangled voices, words, emotions on a song about letting go of someone you loved so they can find something better. Triumph in the sadness, a light that shines from doing the right thing. They both sang from a place of intimacy, a knowing that few can share. Though they had never been lovers, they had been life companions since Rosanne was still a girl – and when he looked into her eyes, you could see the pride he felt for the woman she’d become.
“Dreaming is as easy as believing it was never gonna end…” the song extols. Looking at the legend, Rosanne almost melted with her heart on her sleeve. Kris was savoring all that was, looking at her in pure delight. It was perfect, so perfect Cash dropped out, and let Kris have that final “do again…,” collapsing into his arms in an embrace that spoke to how precious their connection remains.

Turning away from my editor at POLLSTAR, I could feel the tears on my skin. Here was a man who’d seen so much, who should be eternal and always. Here was a man who wrote about hangovers (“Sunday Morning Coming Down”), needing human congress to survive the ache of living (“Help Me Make It Through The Night”), who knew that even when it’s over there’s a place for one last time (“For The Good Times”) and who understood the life-saving grace of surrender (“Why Me Lord”).
He was robust, tender, willing to let go. He spoke to the ‘70s zeitgeist when he wrote, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…” on “Me & Bobbie McGee.” There was no room for anything but being wholly present, leading with love and standing on the convictions of right and wrong.

For all that he was, he was a distiller of hearts. He offered generations of people seeking to understand a better way to express their longing, frustration and truth. He was fearless, joyous and willing – and as he wrote, “Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down.”
I promise I won’t. But I can’t say that I won’t cry all night. I can’t say that I won’t stare into space on a plane to the West Coast tomorrow, wondering about losing another beacon of light to the stars above. Too many precious ones are leaving, and I imagine them all sitting around a poker table, laughing and raising the stakes: John Prine, whom he helped launch, and Steve Goodman, Cowboy Jack Clement, his dear Johnny Cash, Ray Price, Sammi Smith, Bobbie Nelson, Waylon, Donnie Fritts, known to all as “the leaning man from Alabam” and so many more rogues, characters and dreamers.

It was inevitable, of course. People age, people fade. But the ones who write such truth, they seem as if they’re immortal.
After suggesting that you were young enough to dream, and I was old enough to learn something new, Kristofferson summed up the seekers condition adroitly. With a demi-chorus, he explained,

“And come whatever happens now
Ain't it nice to know that dreams still come true
I'm so glad that I was close to you
For a moment of forever”

www.hollygleason.com

Leon Russell: Song for You... and Me... and Gone

I was wearing brand new Prada velvet maryjanes, with saddle leather straps, and a big velvet men’s cut shirt from back in the late ‘80s when I was first in LA, trying to be a baby rock critic of merit. The shirt was one of the few nice things I owned, and Icherished it; sliding into it with banged up jeans and forest green cowboy boots, a little bit of luxe boheme splendor for a girl living on a lotta ramen.

Seems somehow right to be dressed like that to get a text that read, “Is Leon Russell someone you can write one of your passionate tributes to?” Reading it, figuring this was a pro-active editor, looking to stay ahead of the bodystack the last couple years has turned into, I replied, “Yes, why? He hasn’t died?”

But, of course, he had. Hand in the air, I asked for and paid the check, purse flying to my shoulder, soles to the sidewalk. Leon Russell, always sort of fragile, always incandescent like a candle flame. He was never quite a hippie, nor a gypsy, nor a field preacher, yet somehow he embodied all, and so much more. 

Men like Leon don’t really die, maybe shimmer a bit and fade a touch. But dead? C’est impossible. Except the Google Seach confirms – even Fox News says so. And once again, here I am, dizzy from the loss, torn from the moments and music surrendered to the sky.

 

I can’t even remember the first time I saw him, probably on the great equalizer of humanity, music and social consciousness – and my father’s favorite – “The Johnny Cash Show.” All I know is my mother snarled, as only she could, “He looks high…” at the tv set in their bedroom – and I truly thought Santa Claus had truly made good on that summer of love promise to “Tune in, Turn On & Drop Out.” 

There he was at a shiny black grand piano, silvery cascades of hair pouring down like white waters, eyes behind mirrored aviator shades as his hands kept rolling and pumping over the keys like some kind of baker making kolaches or other kneaded and twisted delight. He had a voice like an old dog lifted in protest, though there was a zestiness to it, too: you wanted to taste what he knew. And I was far too young to even imagine.

But I wanted; oh yes, I wanted to know.

 

Leon Russell invaded my school car, too. The disembodied voice, wrung out and twisting, floated over the vinyl bench seats. The jaunty “Tight Rope,” all carny and “hey, y’all, watch this” and the arpeggiated “For You,” which pledged of loving someone “beyond this space and time” – and because it was Cleveland, the rock & roll capitol of the world, yes, Russell’s version spun on the rock station in defense of the man who wrote the Carpenters’ inescapable rendition on every pop, ac and elevator music station on the dial.

 

There was “This Masquerade” for George Benson, “Delta Lady” for Joe Cocker, “Superstar” for the Carpenters. And there were the conversations my hippie babies would have about Mad Dogs & Englishmen, miscegenation (I couldn’t spell it, so I couldn’t look it up back then) and Mary Russell, about Concerts for Bangladesh, records with Willie Nelson and being a genius.

 

I still thought he looked like Naughty Santa, too much fun and treats and music. I didn’t know about the years in Los Angeles, working with Phil Spector or producing Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece.” Nor was I aware that it was Russell’s Shelter Records, partnered with the producer Denny Cordell, that was soon to toss the terse raw rock/punk Tom Petty and the fist-in-your-face “Refugee” into my world. And I didn’t care. Just knowing someone like him existed was plenty.

 

It was during my tenure as a freelancer in the mid-80s working the country and black music beats for The Miami Herald that the competitive paper’s Jon Marlowe called me to meet him in the stairwell. Stringy white hair, motocross jacket when no one wore such things, The Miami News’ sole critic’d cackle and tell me what I was missing; treating me like a colleague, though I was mostly starry-eyed kid.

 

“You have to pay attention to Leon Russell,” he advised. “As important as Dr. John for mainstreaming that New Orleans shuffle, but a much wider hoop – he’s gospel, and rock and roll, and soul. And he doesn’t flinch or pander. They can’t make him commit to a box, so they act like he’s some bit of fringe of an Indian jacket. You dig in, you’ll see.”

So out to the Hialeah swapmeet I went. Nickels and quarters and dimes. A few bucks could fill in the gaps back then, bad cassettes and slightly blemished vinyl. But the content was there, and man, “Stranger In A Strange Land” was an existential question that suited my own no-man’s-land existence; “Roll Away The Stone” took the metaphysical promises of my Catholic Easter and sowed them with a fiery promise, the spongy striphouse piano “Roller Derby” rubbed the undercarriage of the seemingly innocent enough – all of them bolstered by a peacock feather fan of brash female background singers, equal parts streetwalking working girl and street smart seraph. Divine and dirty, glorious and porous all at once.

If I got The Band – and the power of “Cripple Creek” and Music From Big Pink… If I thought I was figuring out C&W’s bastard Byrds/Burrito’s children Sweetheart of the Rodeo and The Gilded Palace of Sin… If I believed in the mellifluous tone of the steel guitar rising off those Poco records… Then this was the grittier, funk on the roots cornerstone to whatever those other acts were scratching away it.

 

It’s the reason Eric Clapton, the Stones, Dylan embraced his musical touch – and Jerry Lee Lewis took a young Russell and his pals out as his back-up band on a two month tour. To have the kinetic charge to serve as the Killer’s band, you gotta know the inside out from the ground up.

And so, I had my own kinda sphinx: behind mirror’ed shades, in crisp white suits, playing hillbilly music under the nom du chanson Hank Thompson and wearing a top hat or Stetson like some kind of real world crown. When I felt down, his records were like tapping a vein; Leon Russell & the Shelter People offered a soundtrack for a dreamer’s diaspora. Promises of home and redemption, songs of raw ache and utter brio, guitar notes twisting and piano thump-thumping like a strong heart taking pleasure, it wrung out my own young angst and hung it on the line to dry in the bright light of the sun.

 

But Leon Russell, like so many of the ones who came before, seemed elusive. Like the scent of Nag Champa, it is in the air, but impossible to touch: sweet, spicy, sense-piquing, yet ever ephemeral. Leon Russell always in the back hallways and fire escapes of my life and times in LA, when FAX machines were super-high tech and Tower Records was almost a city block of sheer heaven.


You don’t meet men like Leon Russell. Tulsa-born and Tulsa-tied, visionaries don’t exist among mere mortals, so just the notion is plenty as life whips by – and stacks up at your door like so much chord wood for the winter.

Until ex-fiancee #4 said “Let’s go to dinner, let’s go to 12th & Porter…”

He had that naughty twinkle in his eyes, the one that always promised too much fun and plain adventure. I probably put on something velvet with my banged up Levis, probably pulled on cowboy boots of some sort, wiping my mouth with whatever bright pink lipstick I was favoring then.

At a table on the black and white squared linoleum floor, with a perfect view through the giant fishbowl front window, I saw the biggest old school Cadillac pull up. It took up the whole view, the rumble of the Detroit muscle almost rattling the glass… It was obviously old school hillbilly royalty pulling up, but here?

 From out of nowhere Sherman Halsey, the scion of the country booking Halsey Co. dynasty, whirled from out of nowhere, silky caramel hair tumbling down his shoulders like some sharp dressed Jesus. Opening the car door, he reached in and helped a gorgeous black clad arm emerge…

 My jaw was by now slack, not even completely knowing what was happening. But by now I understood, it was something – and my thrilled at the secret boyfriend looked like he’d swallowed a 100 watt bulb.

 

Blinking twice, I saw a large, sturdy yet frail man emerge. Sherman helping, taking his weight, the gentleman moved slowly, his fingers circling Halsey’s elbow. There was a halo of serious and a cloud of “holy shit” all around him.

Looking at Little Steve, as Stephen Charles Hurst was known at our house, I couldn’t find the words. Finally, an “OH… MY… God…” sorta tumbled out, knowing my ability to talk like a cloud of syllables was evaporating. “That’s, that’s…”

“Yup, Toots! It sure is,” said my very-satisfied beau. “I thought you’d get a kick out of this…”

 And then they were upon us, and my face flushed, and I felt my hand being held by a papery set of fingers, the sinews and pads very apparent. His face was so carved, so lined by life – it felt like a gypsy reading your palm in reverse. You could see the world’s wisdom in the crags and watch its best parts sparkle in his sharp as a hawk’s pupils. 


It is rare that I lose conversation, especially when it’s important. I remember the oxygen leaving the room, the temperature feeling hot, myself perhaps a little dizzy. I smiled, perhaps beamed – and I think I spoke a little bit, but am not sure. I just remember how warm and welcoming, kind and familial the elegant gentleman was. He was happy to be out, even on a cane – or was it a walker? – and knew he’d have to get his hips replaced sooner than later.

 He was recording some, trying to figure out the next moves for a creative man who might have been passed by by lesser musical beings. He spoke of Bruce Hornsby, who I knew from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Vol. 2 and I believe I spoke the Virginia-based keyboardist ability to smear genres without losing the musicality. Russell seemed heartened. Men like him, you see, are meant to play.

 

Working with Sherman Halsey, my fiancée saw Russell quite a bit. He’d come with reports that the rock legend none of my friends would’ve cared about had asked about me. I’d see stardust for days; far more impressed by that than many of the more famous people I worked with. Because those who practice magic get inside you in deeper ways.

 Russell didn’t have the comeback with Hornsby that he deserved. Didn’t get the flex that found Levon Helm or Bonnie Raitt, but he just kept moving forward. No doubt a good musicians union pension – for recording with Sinatra on “Strangers In the Night,” Bing Crosby, Johnny Mathis, the Ronnettes, Delaney + Bonnie, Joe Cocker, the Beach Boys and beyond had added – and songwriting royalties kept his bills paid, but there was more fire to him than that.

 The Hank Thompson country albums were staunch Texas/Oklahoma honky tonk issue. The genuflecting Willie Nelson offering up a partner in crime for one slice of who he was. It didn’t matter; he kept playing. Got the hip operation, kept playing. Had other health issues, would take a break – and keep playing.

 

Yes, there was a high profile reclamation of the man who knew no other way by Elton John. For a duet record, produced by T-Bone Burnett, called The Union. A debt for the flamboyant Brit rocker/pianist, John intended to see his exalted influence into the Rock & Roll of Fame – and to have Russell’s contributions to the genre recognized. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT5aYRgmgyM)

 And so it came to pass. Inducted in 2011, Russell spoke of John rescuing him from a ditch along the side of life’s highway. But he also had bought a new tour bus, and was about to embark on making a new album with Tommy LiPuma. As I said, music men keep on playing always.

Little Steve and I drifted apart. He found an incredible woman named Shaye, and they’re so much in love, I was glad I could be a way station on his journey to her. We still talk, for what it’s worth, sharing news of Leon or Sherman, ‘til Sherman died somewhere in the blur of the last several years. Love that “exists beyond place and time,” you see, isn’t bound by things like rings or marriages – or even death.

 Lately, between the election and Leonard Cohen and the death of my own uncle, it feels like life is coming faster and faster, sadder and darker, too. I’ve not had time to pause and reflect, collect and consider – all that has been lost, all that I’ve been blessed to know, to touch, to embrace as part of my life.

Leonard Cohen, truly the ultimate ladies man. Dapper suits, hat cocked just so – and songs redolent of musk and evocation, enough to make a kid’s knees quiver. Like Russell, his gifts transcend the basics of language: he holds much in a few words, scrapes away the sludgy build-up and finds the essential emotion in melodies and imagery.

 Walking around a corner too fast, returning after lunch with Don Was, I bounced into a recording studio just a bit too fast and slightly off balance. The crease in the pewter sharkskin pants could’ve slashed my jugular – only the hand that extended, steadied me and dark cocoa irises bore into my own.

 Set right, the steadying hand extended and a low voice announced, “I’m Leonard.” I gulped. And stared. “And you are?” Again, stammering, I managed to get my name out, as Was laughed and Sweet Pea Atkinson took it in with a guttural chuckle.

 

That’s the thing about the Towers of Song, they don’t have to flex. They just need to be. The poetry of who they are permeates everything, ignites songs with the right amounts of reserve and tension or raw desire and hell-raising. For each, the way they walked or looked into your eyes was as profound as the songs they wrote.

And whether people realize who these non-attention seekers were, their songs live on. “Hallelujah” has been recorded – like Russell’s “Song for You” – well over a hundred times. Each has their cannon, each has their own special stew; but both created an image, a sonic template, even a place within the times that solidly maintained their reality.

 

“Shoot Out On The Plantation” is playing as I type this. As the nation is torn in half by what they think is unthinkable, it’s all here in this song. With the chunky funky beat, the sticks moving across the high hats and clanging on cymbals with the pace that says, “We mean business,” Russell suggests the upside down reality of it all --
“Yeah, the last one to kiss is the first to shoot/ And stabbing your friends is such a drag to boot…”

 That’s the thing about these lives, whether spotlight or not, they’re often long gone. Chasing the dream, the song, the money to pay the rent or the rush to keep on going, there is a restlessness inside creative that never truly goes out.

 If Ray Charles won a Grammy in 1993 for his version of “Song for You,” this could be anyone’s refrain who plays the game of plying music for other people to find their truth.

            I've been so many places in my life and time
            I've sung a lot of songs, I've made some bad rhymes
            I've acted out my life in stages, with ten thousand people watching
            But we're alone now and I'm singing this song for you

 

As a woman who’s chased the road and gently blown on the kindling fire of dreams built on stages and studios, the fragility and need is something I’ve witnessed and felt my own damn self. When it’s late and lonely, you wonder about the cost… and you hum a song, and hope that the price is worth what you’ve paid.

You know, you never know. You really can’t. The rush of when it’s working is so intense, and the emptiness of doubt and all alone can’t truly be measured. Somewhere in between, there’s a lot of boredom and the baseball cards of dreams. You flip’em over and remember how sweet it was, waiting on the next song to come up on random rotation that takes you back

 

The editor told me Russell, who’s already survived a massive cardiac event and major brain surgery, went in his sleep. He was 74, at home in Nashville. A man who loved and kept it funky, whose humanity was pervasive and reached far beyond those who knew about the Tulsa Scene, who warmed their haunted places with Carney or Americana or Leon Live.

 Somewhere, Leon’s looking down, fingers spread like sunrays as he surveys all he left behind. The grisgris and the juju is our’s to keep alive, and the songs, well, the songs are here for all to love and live inside. Funny, too, how a man who can find the magic in “He Stopped Lovin’ Her Today” and “Rollin’ In My Sweet Baby’s Arms,” as well as “I Put A Spell on You” and the live combust of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” merged with “Youngblood,” would write his own elegy almost half a century ago.

 For all its need and ache, the larger truth in “Song for You” comes now. As the piano rises and falls, the lyrics open wide to hold us in their embrace now that he’s gone. Gentle catch and benediction, it seems Russell had already spelled it out… it’s just we were all too pinwheel-eye’d to believe this moment would ever come.

            I love you in a place where there's no space or time
            I love you for my life, because you're a friend of mine
            And when my life is over, remember when we were together
            We were alone and I was singing my song for you

Like all the real hippies, he didn’t fear death – or heaven. He shook his songs, plied his guitars and piano, mined the chutes of Dixie, swamp, Appalachia, Tulsa and tumbleweeds to conjure that sound that shook its tail and balmed the wild night. When America stood at a crossroad, Russell emerged saying “Why not merge it all?”

Uptopian. Idyllic. Hopeful. Impossible. It was who he was, and all that existed in his music from the very beginning. For a young man who started out Claude Russell Bridges and morphed into Leon Russell by virtue of a fake ID to play in LA clubs, it doesn’t matter… only the music, and how it lifts us up.

 For me, trying to make sense of everything, I’m gonna try to let it do that. And it’s funny, I’ve not been around Mr. Russell – except random airport gates on flights in and out of 6-1-5 – in years, but the idea that he’s gone still guts me somehow, lays me open wide. Maybe it’s for those days when I was young, and he was some kind of earthy paternal presence of us all; or maybe just like Leonard Cohen and David Gleason, there are some who seem as if their inextinguishable no matter what.

With the candles lit and day still blazing, I think I need to walk it off. Find a park or trail, touch the bark and hum just a little bit. He ain’t coming back, but perhaps in the songs, I can hold that smile and white-white hand with the knuckles protruding just a little in my soul again.

www.HollyGleason.com