The dementia has turned out to be Lyme disease; such a relief for his family and friends. Kris is coming back to his old self. It would've been a cruel sentence for someone renowned for his intelligence, to wander about in a mental fog, struggling to put the ends together and make sense of daily life, day after day.
Lyme disease is a plague, the medical community by and large still don't believe it exists, but fortunately more and more of them have become enlightened. The treatment is antibiotics, and is found to be successful in the majority of cases. Kris Kristofferson Lyme disease misdiagnosed.
I met Kris in 1969 in Los Angeles. We were roommates for a few weeks. A friend of mine who worked for the Mamas and the Papas, went to Pomona College with Kris. Kris went off to Oxford on his Rhodes Scholarship, got a Masters in English Literature, stumbled into an odd and unsuccessful music career in the UK, managed by the notorious Larry Parnes ("Parnes Shillings and Pence," as he was waggishly known), then returned to the US, joined up, became a Captain, became a Ranger, flew choppers. But though he was pretty gung ho, he chucked it in 1965 and moved to Nashville to be a songwriter. His family disowned him.
So, my friend accompanied Cass Elliot to Nashville on a business trip in 1969, and while there encountered Kris. He ended up in LA by July that year, and was staying with my friend. I showed up from London at the same time, and moved in to the little back house of an address on Holly Drive in the Hollywood Hills.
I was already an aspiring singer/songwriter, hacking about on an acoustic, trying to learn as much as I could from all the musicians I encountered. I was also working as a cocktail waitress at the notorious Thee Experience on Sunset, so I'd be home in the wee small hours, and Kris would be sitting up, writing. I first heard Kris's work version of Sunday Morning Coming Down around 3 am on a work night.
In the morning, he'd come through my bedroom, where I slumbered on a mattress on the floor, on his way from the bathroom to the kitchen. He'd shake my foot and ask me to make coffee.
Not long after, he moved to the Montecito Hotel on Franklin.
We kept up, and I remember about a year or so later - after Cash recorded Sunday Morning, and Janis Me and Bobby McGee - he was a luminary and man about town, moving to the notorious Tropicana, where he celebrated his 35th birthday with a big bash around the pool. We were invitees. In those days he was imbibing a-plenty, enjoying the success. As the party grew more hectic, we decided to take off - still daylight - and were looking for Kris to say goodbye. He was dressed in black, so not too hard to spot in the bright California light. I scanned the colorful crowd of well-wishers. No sign.
I don't know what made me look down into the pool; he was lying on the bottom, not moving. Easy to spot, the black against the turquoise pool paint. I yelled for help, friends standing near by jumped in and got him out. We took off once it was obvious he was okay.
More reminiscences to come.
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