Fact #116877
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Kris Kristofferson (composer, Me And Bobby McGee) : Felice and Boudleaux were awfully nice to me and their secretary gave me the title for the breakthrough song. They had a secretary named Bobbie McFee, and Fred Foster who owned the building where they had an office called me.
At the time I was flying helicopters on the off-shore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico every other week and trying to be a songwriter the rest of the time. He said, ‘I’ve got a song title for you’ and it was Me And Bobbie McFee. Since he owned the publishing company that I was writing for, I felt obliged to try and write it. I have never written a song on assignment before or since. But it worked, after about three months of hiding from him.
Some of my songwriting friends wanted me to take the line ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’ out of the song. They said, ‘You got these great concrete images and then you change to this philosophical statement in the chorus.’
I was looking for the feeling that Fellini got in the end of La Strada, and I love that film. Anthony Quinn has let that little Giulietta Masina slip away from him. He left her on the road when she was asleep. He had killed the fool in the travelling circus and she couldn’t handle that and he couldn’t handle her grief. He let her slip away and later he heard a woman who was hanging washing on the line humming the tune that this little girl used to play in the circus. He asked her about it and she said it was sung that by this little strange girl who passed through here and she died. Nobody knew where she came from and Anthony Quinn goes off and gets drunk and gets in a fight and he ends up on a beach howling at the stars in his grief. That was the rough edge of the freedom. He was free from her but he was miserable.
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At the time I was flying helicopters on the off-shore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico every other week and trying to be a songwriter the rest of the time. He said, ‘I’ve got a song title for you’ and it was Me And Bobbie McFee. Since he owned the publishing company that I was writing for, I felt obliged to try and write it. I have never written a song on assignment before or since. But it worked, after about three months of hiding from him.
Some of my songwriting friends wanted me to take the line ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’ out of the song. They said, ‘You got these great concrete images and then you change to this philosophical statement in the chorus.’
I was looking for the feeling that Fellini got in the end of La Strada, and I love that film. Anthony Quinn has let that little Giulietta Masina slip away from him. He left her on the road when she was asleep. He had killed the fool in the travelling circus and she couldn’t handle that and he couldn’t handle her grief. He let her slip away and later he heard a woman who was hanging washing on the line humming the tune that this little girl used to play in the circus. He asked her about it and she said it was sung that by this little strange girl who passed through here and she died. Nobody knew where she came from and Anthony Quinn goes off and gets drunk and gets in a fight and he ends up on a beach howling at the stars in his grief. That was the rough edge of the freedom. He was free from her but he was miserable.