Paul Hopkins: Kris and I both made it through that night

It is 1995 and America's Country Music Association (CMA) for the first time holds its AGM – shindig, more likely – outside the US, in Dublin. The attraction is obvious. Ireland has always been a big fan of country music but the Garth Brooks phenomenon took it to a new level. Garth played 11 nights at The Point in 1993. I was there with my daughter, then just 13, in the good company of the late Albert and Kathleen Reynolds.

Dublin that five days in 1995 was awash with stetsons and cowboy boots and Country music in the background of almost every pub and eatery – twangy tunes about losing the farm, losing the pickup, losing the wife. Then Taoiseach John Bruton sported a stetson for the duration and held a welcoming party for CMA board members and a myriad country stars at City Hall.

It is night and I’m in the Phoenix Park residence of Jean Kennedy Smith, US Ambassador to Ireland. I'm in the company of the vivacious Ms Kennedy Smith and also some of country music's greatest luminaries – Deana Carter, George Ducas, Marty Stuart and others, and the legendary Kris Kristofferson. My so-this-just-happened moment.

We chat over a glass or two of a Californian Mourvèdre. Kristofferson is a country star who embodies the very best of that genre's ties to a deeply honourable sense of American idealism, as it was then – or seen by the world as such. He tells me he is proud of his nation's complex heritage and history. He comes across as deeply caring. "I'm on the side of the outlaw and outsider," he laughs, evoking a spirit of compassionate righteousness that's evident in his music full of mischief, love and hard-earned wisdom.

Kristofferson had that shaky voice and rudimentary guitar skills, but he wrote some extraordinarily truthful, moving songs. There is a perfect blend of simplicity and depth in such classics as Me And Bobby McGee, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Help Me Make It Through The Night and For The Good Times. Artists other than Kristofferson have sung them (from Janis Joplin to Elvis Presley and Gladys Knight) and will continue to. His are songs for all time, but Kristofferson's voice and presence imbued them with their deepest sense of truth.

He brought conviction to his acting, whether as a ruggedly handsome leading man in his superstar days, or a stoic supporting character in later years.

What I learn that night is that Kristofferson is a scholar of the English poet, artist and mystic William Blake, having studied the Romantic poets as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. He quotes me Blake's famous line "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" while referring to his own wild behaviour in his drinking days.

"If the fool persists in his folly, he will become wise," he tells me.

He recalls how, as a young man, he turned his back on his military career and took a job as a janitor in Nashville to be closer to Country music.

"That was around the same time I borrowed a helicopter to land on Johnny Cash's lawn and try to sell him some songs. My mother wrote me a letter disowning me for embarrassing the family. Cash read it and joked, 'Isn't it nice to get a letter from home'."

We digress. I look around the room. On the grand piano are framed photos of John F Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Rose. Family photos. The ambassadorial residence could be any home, with its family photos. Jean Kennedy Smith played no small part in the coming together of The Good Friday Agreement, under the tenure of Bill Clinton. She died in June, 2020 aged 92.

Kristofferson and I talk about his talking country blues To Beat The Devil which, I suggest, offers an eloquent protest against the defeatist notion that music cannot change anything. At the Olympia that week in 1995, the legendary singer introduced it by saying: "I ain't saying I beat the devil, but I drank his beer for nothin' and then I stole his song."

An appropriate epitaph, I suggest. Music has always been an intricate part of my life. Perhaps, even changed me in some good ways. (Me And Bobby McGee has always been my party piece. Ask anyone. Even sang it on stage at Ashford Castle).

Kris Kristofferson helped me, many of us, back in the day, make it through the nights.