As well he knew, Kris Kristofferson could have been describing himself when he wrote the lyrics for Pilgrim, Chapter 33: “A walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction, taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home.”
He wrote hits for other artists but was ignored when he tried to record them himself; his brief spells of critical acclaim were generally followed by condemnation; he had a knack for acting in poor films with bad scripts and then defending them to the hilt anyway.
In the 1990s he dismissed what remained of his musical following by embracing left-leaning causes. Too intellectual to be a cowboy and too self-conscious to be a proper star, the only country and western cliché he might truly have