Waylon Jennings on Kris Kristofferson – “He Was the Poet. He Wrote What We Lived.”
When Waylon Jennings talked about Kris Kristofferson, it was never just about music. It was about respect, brotherhood, and a kind of kinship forged in truth, grit, and hard roads.
Waylon once said:
“Kris was the poet. He wrote what we lived. And when I heard his songs, I felt like he had crawled inside of me and put it all into words.”
In a time when country music was polished and controlled, Kris Kristofferson came along with songs like “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” and changed the language of the genre. Waylon, the outlaw with a heart as wild as his voice, saw in Kris something different—not just a songwriter, but a philosopher with a guitar.
Waylon often talked about how Kristofferson was the first to speak plainly about pain, doubt, drinking, faith, loneliness, and not wrap it up in clichés. “He didn’t write to get on the radio,” Waylon once said. “He wrote because something in his soul had to come out.”
And Kris? He loved Waylon right back. He gave him songs. He stood beside him in the Outlaw Movement. Along with Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, they weren’t just playing music — they were fighting for the right to tell the truth.
Waylon admired Kris not just for the words, but for the man behind them — the former Rhodes Scholar, Army captain, janitor, and rebel who gave everything to the music and never once chased fame.
“If I ever wrote something half as honest as what Kris did,” Waylon once said with a smile, “I’d hang up my hat and say I’d done alright.”
To hear Waylon Jennings speak of Kristofferson was to hear one legend bow to another — not out of obligation, but out of deep, unshakable reverence. And in the eyes of one outlaw, Kris Kristofferson was — and still is — the soul of country music.