Legendary actor and musician Kris Kristofferson dies
Known for his poetic lyrics and rugged good looks, Kris Kristofferson passed away at his home in Hawaii.
It was the largest audience that Kris Kristofferson would ever face in Arizona.
A sea of more than 40,000 music fans filled Arizona State University’s Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe on March 20, 1976, for a concert organized specifically to capture Barbra Streisand and Kristofferson onstage for a crucial scene in their hit remake of “A Star Is Born.”
Peter Frampton was called in to headline the concert, which also featured Santana, Montrose, Graham Central Station and L.A. Jets, promoted as a Mammoth Day of Live Entertainment and …. Live Filming.
Kristofferson, who died Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024, at his home in Maui, Hawaii, at 88, won Best Actor at the Golden Globe Awards for his portrayal of John Norman Howard, a rock star in a downward spiral whose excessive drinking and drug use has taken its toll on his career.
Streisand plays his love interest, whose star is on the rise as he is fading.
Kristofferson himself had quite the reputation as a heavy drinker at the time. In 2006, the acclaimed singer-songwriter spoke to The Arizona Republic’s Randy Cordova.
“If I continued to live like that,” Kristofferson said of his alcohol use, “I’d be underground now. It was a different time for me.”
‘A Star Is Born’ was a huge pop-cultural phenomenon
This was the third “A Star Is Born” to hit the big screen, following the 1937 original with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March and a 1954 musical adaptation with Judy Garland and James Mason. A fourth version appeared in 2018 with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.
The Streisand-Kristofferson remake was a huge hit, grossing $80 million in North America on a $6 million budget to become the second highest-grossing movie of the year behind “Rocky.”
The soundtrack spent six weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart and sold more than 8 million copies worldwide. Kristofferson sings lead on three songs (“Watch Closely Now,” “Hellacious Acres” and “Crippled Crow”). The soundtrack also features two duets between the co-stars (“Lost Inside of You” and “Reprise: ‘Evergreen: Love Theme From a Star Is Born’”).
Getting Peter Frampton to play Sun Devil Stadium for ‘A Star Is Born’
The film was produced by Jon Peters, Streisand’s boyfriend at the time. It was Peters’ idea to stage an actual concert to attract the kind of crowd he felt the scene required.
Arizona concert promoter Danny Zelisko was just getting started in the business when legendary concert promoter Bill Graham’s people called to ask if he’d like to help out with the concert.
“They were gonna do this giant stadium concert and they needed to draw enough people for Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson’s big musical scenes,” Zelisko told the Republic in 2019.
“So they got Peter Frampton, Santana, Graham Central Station, Montrose and the L.A. Jets, whoever they were. I was Bill Graham and Kris Kristofferson’s guy for a week and a half, got paid great, ate great. Everything was great, trust me. It was the ’70s. So everything was happening. It was an eye-opening experience for me.”
It was Zelisko who suggested Frampton. Three weeks after playing Tempe, Frampton topped the Billboard album charts with “Frampton Comes Alive.”
The Sun Devil Stadium concert broke an Arizona attendance record
The Arizona Republic and The Tucson Daily Star put the crowd size at 43,329, an Arizona record. The previous record was 24,002 for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young at Tempe Stadium.
Admission to the concert was $3.50.
Doors were scheduled to open at 6 a.m. but the Arizona Daily Star reported that admission began at 4:30 a.m. for a crowd of “mostly young people including many nubile teeny-boppers who, as the sun-seared day drew on, remained blithely oblivious of their grotesquely barbecued legs.”
The L.A. Jets started at 7 a.m.
Doors closed at 9 a.m. to guarantee a crowded stadium before they started filming.
Barbra Streisand dropped F-bombs, sang ‘Evergreen’ and ‘People’
Streisand made her first appearance after Graham Central Station, greeting the crowd with “Hey you (expletive)! Are you having a good time?”
It was the first of two f-bombs the singer reportedly dropped onstage that day, according to press reports.
There was a point in her set where she had to coach the audience to react to a scene of Kristofferson riding a motorcycle onstage and eventually crashing, which had been filmed a day before the concert.
“I want you all to look left,” she instructed. “What? You want to look at me? (Expletive) you!”
Streisand sang five songs at Sun Devil Stadium, including the “The Way We Were,” “People” and the live premiere of “Evergreen (Love Theme from a Star Is Born),” which spent three weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, won Streisand an Oscar and remains one of her biggest hits.
‘The people are going to be asked to boo Kristofferson’
Kristofferson took the stage for a ramshackle version of “Watch Closer Now” in character as something of a train wreck.
“During Saturday’s mammoth rock concert staged at ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium, Kristofferson had to film a short scene where, as John Norman Howard, he had to falter and fail to complete a song in concert,” the Daily Star reported.
“Unfortunately, while the audience realized the scene was being filmed, they were never told that Kristofferson would be fouling it up intentionally.”
Vernon White of Warner Bros. spoke to The Republic prior to the concert, explaining Kristofferson’s performance.
“This scene is the beginning of the demise of Kris’ character,” White said. “The people in the audience are going to be asked to boo Kristofferson at some point during the filming.”
Kristofferson spoke to The Republic for an article that ran a day before the concert.
“I’ve got to show that at least Norman was a star and the songs meant something to him,” he said. “That’s hard.”
The Daily Star described the concert as “a weird amalgam of illusion and reality, of rock festival larkiness and Hollywood pragmatism,” adding “If nothing else, consider the paradox of a hard rock concert where the biggest hand went to Barbra Streisand singing ‘People.’”
Additional concert scenes were shot at Gammage Auditorium in Tempe and the Community Center Arena in Tucson (for a crowd of 2,000), with additional filming in downtown Tucson, Sonoita and Tempe.
‘This production will be one of the greatest in live concert history’
In 2019, The Arizona Republic’s Richard Ruelas discovered a document Bill Graham’s office sent to the bands involved that had been misfiled in a warehouse with materials related to the death of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, who died by a car bomb in 1976.
“We feel this production will be one of the greatest in live concert history, and with your knowledge of a few facts, and your cooperation with scheduling, it will operate flawlessly,” it reads.
“As this is the first major outdoor concert designed specifically for a major motion picture, there will be quite a few new and unfamiliar areas with which we’ll all have to deal.”
According to the document, Streisand’s production company, Barwood Films, had a cast and film crew totaling more than 120 people working in and around the backstage with one goal: “to have as much of a standard outdoor production as possible, to capture on film.”
There were two-time slots set aside during the concert for the filming of those scenes. The first was scheduled to take place from 8:45-10:45 a.m. following L.A. Jets and Graham Central Station.
Then, after a one-hour Montrose performance, a second block of time was set aside from 12:10-1:45 p.m. for additional filming.
The document also reveals that the Doobie Brothers were initially scheduled to headline the concert. Their typewritten name was crossed out and Frampton’s handwritten name is added in the soundcheck section. In the show-running order section, it just says Doobie Brothers in that slot.
Additional filming at Sun Devil Stadium was scheduled to take place from Tuesday, March 16, through Friday, March, 19.
Kristofferson’s motorcycle stunt was filmed on Friday, which required bands to have their backline set up in advance to make it look like an actual concert was happening on that stage.
“It would be very helpful to the film crew to have the stage set up during the week be as close as possible to the actual visual set up of the stage on the day of the show,” the document said.
Barbra Streisand made ‘a hell of a movie,’ Kris Kristofferson said
In 2006, when Kristofferson spoke to The Republic, he recalled the filming of “A Star Is Born” as turbulent but rewarding.
“I remember getting in a big hassle with Jon Peters,” he said. “We just didn’t see eye to eye on some things. But there’s a lot of pressure when you’re performing, and everybody’s fighting for their integrity.”
As for working with Streisand, Kristofferson told The Republic, “Between me and Barbra, it could get pretty hot. But we ended up with a lot of respect for each other, and affection. I know I felt grateful for what she did for me. I thought she made a hell of a movie.”
Ed has covered pop music for The Republic since 2007, reviewing festivals and concerts, interviewing legends, covering the local scene and more. He did the same in Pittsburgh for more than a decade. Follow him on X and Instagram @edmasley and on Facebook as Ed Masley. Email him at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com.
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Publish date : 2024-10-01 11:30:00
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