Within about two or three years, I’d gone about 180 degrees, thinking that the war was wrong.” But he never regretted having written a hit song that protested protesters. “It was pretty well-written, I have to say!” he noted. “And I remember how Harlan Howard [one of his country songwriting heroes] liked the song so much.”
Kristofferson added, “Everything is political. It just sounds worse if you call it political. I mean, we’re talking about life and death and the things that matter.”
He had a sense of humor about being better known from the movies among younger audiences. “I was doing a show in Sweden,” he told Willman, “and somebody backstage said, ‘There’s all these kids out there saying, ‘Geez, Whistler sings?’” — referring to his role in the “Blade” movies.
In later years, Kristofferson suffered from memory loss, although it was misdiagnosed for many years, he and his family said. He was told he either had dementia from Alzheimer’s disease or was suffering from blows to the head suffered as a football and rugby player and boxer as a young man. But in 2016, a doctor diagnosed him as testing positive from Lyme disease.
“He was taking all these medications for things he doesn’t have, and they all have side effects,” his wife, Lisa, told Rolling Stone, adding that his condition improved once he stopped taking the drugs for other conditions. She said that he still suffered from memory lapses, but “some days he’s perfectly normal and it’s easy to forget that he is even battling anything.” His friend Chris Gantry told Closer Weekly, “It’s like Lazarus coming out of the grave and being born again.”
