Never Gonna End

Kris Kristofferson wrote and recorded ‘Loving Her Was Easier’ in 1971 and released it as a single from his second studio album The Silver Tongued Devil and I.  The single peaked at #26 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart.  Kris was a Golden Gloves boxer, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa summa cum laude with a degree in creative writing from Pomona College (a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California that was his mother’s alma mater) where he was also an accomplished athlete.  He won a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oxford University which is considered among the world’s most prestigious international scholarship programs.  He earned a master’s degree in English literature at Oxford, and was awarded a “Blue” (i.e., a varsity letter) in boxing, and also played rugby.  He was greatly influenced by the poet William Blake, and he wanted to become a novelist, but he began performing music which provided him with some financial support.  In 1960, Kristofferson graduated with a master’s degree in English literature and returned to California, then married his high school sweetheart, Fran Beer.

Kris’s father was a United States Air Force Major General and his family pressured him into joining the military.  By 1965, Kris was a captain in the army, serving as an Airborne Ranger helicopter pilot stationed in West Germany.  The Army assigned Kristofferson to teach English literature at West Point military academy, but before he accepted the commission, he took two-weeks off to go to Nashville, where he decided to visit Marijohn Wilkin, the songwriter of ‘Long Black Veil’ and a relation of his Army platoon leader.  Marijohn was a publisher for Buckhorn Music who was referred to as the “Den Mother of Music Row” and she helped Kristofferson meet some like-minded artists.  On his first night in Nashville, he met Cowboy Jack Clement, who was inducted into the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame in 1973 and became a lifelong friend.  Soon after that, Wilkin helped Kristofferson get a backstage pass to the Grand Ole Opry, where he met Johnny Cash.

Kris became a bartender at a bar frequented by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, but his main job was as a janitor/gofer emptying trash cans and making coffee at Columbia Studios in Nashville while making less than $60 a week.  His first three days at Columbia happened to coincide with the final three days of Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde sessions, where he remembered police being stationed around the building to keep out unwanted intruders and he didn’t dare to talk to him, thinking he would be fired.  Kristofferson hung around Nashville for more than four years into his 30s riding around on a well-bruised Honda motorcycle, but he finally got a break when his song ‘From the Bottle to the Bottom’ was recorded by Billy Walker & the Tennessee Walkers in 1969.  Things began to pick up for Kristofferson, as Ray Stevens recorded his ‘Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down’, Jerry Lee Lewis recorded his ‘Once More with Feeling’, Faron Young ‘Your Time’s Comin’’, and Roger Miller was the first to record his song ‘Me and Bobby McGee.  Roger Miller had a #1 hit with his 1964 song ‘King of the Road’, but by 1970 he began covering songs from other writers.

William Blake believed that his poetry could be read and understood by common people and Kristofferson shows the influence of his favorite poet here in his song ‘Lovin’ Her Was Easier (than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)’ as he uses simple everyday language to describe convey complex emotions so vividly about the feeling of a short-lived, once in a lifetime kind of love.  This song is about a guy who is down on his luck, when he meets a girl that changes everything for him.  She takes away his pain and teaches him new things, which makes him feel like he still has a future as long as he is with her.  She is different from others, as she is not ashamed to be a woman so she asserts herself and tells the world that she could not care less about their judgements and that is how they became friends.  She enlightened him, but something happened to end their romance, and maybe it was because he was living in a dream believing that it was never gonna end.  He starts to question if everything in this relationship came too easy, and that is when people become complacent and unmotivated, hence struggling through life is unavoidable more than anything he will ever do again.  Roger Miller recorded this a month later after Kris’s single and that cover reached #28 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart.

I have seen the morning burning golden
On the mountain in the skies
Aching with the feeling
And the freedom of an eagle when she flies

Turning all my world away
She smiled upon my soul as I lay dying
Healing as the colors in the sunshine
And the shadows of her eyes

Waking in the morning to the feeling
Of her fingers on my skin
Wiping out the traces of the people
And the places that I’ve been

Teaching me that yesterday was something
That I never thought of trying
Talking of tomorrow and the money
Love and time we had to spend

Loving her was easier
Than anything I’ll ever do again

I was close together with a feeling
That I’ve never known, before in my time
You’re not ashamed to be a woman
She’s not afraid to be a friend

I don’t know the answers to the easy way
She’s opened every door in my mind
And dreaming is as easy
As believing that it’s never gonna end

Loving her was easier
Than anything I’ll ever do again

Coming close together with a feeling
That I’ve never known, before in my time
She’s not ashamed to be a woman
She’s not afraid to be a friend

I don’t know the answers to the easy way
She’s opened every door in my mind
Dreaming is as easy
As believing that it’s never gonna end

Loving her was easier
Than anything I’ll ever do again
Loving her was easier
Than anything I’ll ever do again

Written for Glyn’s Mixed Music Bag #24, May Monthly Challenge Week 24 where we need to find a song by any group or solo singer beginning with the letter K or L.