The Pilgrim: Chapter 33 (Hang In, Hopper)

@Runnin <br /> <br /> Funky Donnie Fritts and Billy Swan have been with Kris from his early days in Nashville. Billy wrote the huge 1960s Clyde McPhatter hit "Lover Please" when he was still in High School and had a huge 2nd hit that he sang himself, "I Can Help", about a dozen years later.<br /> <br /> Donnie and Kris who have been together forever and were drunk when they first cut "Me and Bobbi McGee" to tape after they left a bar {Tally Ho Tavern? Yes, the Tally Ho was a real place.} and went to a studio that one of them either had the key for or permission to use.’I’m thinking it was Donnie b/c Kris wrote that song on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico when he was working as a helicopter pilot shuttling people/things back and forth from the mainland. So, by then had given up the janitor job that gave him access to the studio. They sang the song over and over again until past the time the sun came up 'cause they couldn't believe how good the song turned out. You forgot to mention Ramblin Jack Elliot.<br /> <br /> The reason “Chapter 33” is incorporated into the name of the song is b/c when it was recorded in 1969, Kris and Dennis Hopper who he ended up mostly writing the song about were both born in 1936 along with several of Kris' friends. So they all turned 33 that year. As I recall the story told, Hopper had just come back from making a movie in Mexico where he seriously fried his brain on heavy drugging/drinking and was never of the same sound mind again. He was writing about Hopper and to an extent Cash who may have had reached bottom by then in real time and a composite of the rest who he either had known or admired - Norman Norbert, Donnie Fritts, Billy Swan, Bobby Neuwirth, Jerry Jeff Walker, "Uncle" Paul Siebel {who I believe was a Marxist, done in by McCarthyism} over the years. He also throws in Ramblin’ Jack Elliot b/c if memory serves correctly, Jack Elliot never grew up and spent most of his life being irresponsible and in many people’s eyes that irresponsibility was equivalent to throwing his life away.<br /> That's why the song starts out in narrative “I started writing this song about Chris Gantry, ended up writing about Dennis Hopper and Johnny Cash, ... Norman Norbert, Funky Donnie Fritts, Billy Swan, Bobby Neuwirth, Jerry Jeff Walker, "Uncle" Paul Siebel … Ramblin’ Jack Elliot had a lot to do with it.”<br /> The one person Kris doesn’t mention the song being partly about is Kris himself. In the eyes of Kris’ mother he had thrown his life away when he gave up the military, the teaching English job at West Point and the essentially the wife/kids to move to Nashville to become a songwriter. Upon learning of this, Kris’ mom disowned him and according to Johnny cash told him never to let his shadow darken her doorstep again. <br />