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The man is in Manhattan to promote "The Austin Sessions" CD, a fine rerecording of Kristofferson chestnuts like "Me and Bobby McGee" and "Sunday Morning Coming Down" with help from guests such as Jackson Browne and Steve Earle. I will lunch with him at a posh neo-sushi joint in midtown called the Red Eye Saloon. Yes, I know this sounds like a rib joint. But they serve really wonderful spicy sushi, Southwestern style -- as if that dish were a culinary invention of New Mexico.

Kristofferson shows up dressed in dark grays and black. His face is craggy but not as craggy as it looks in recent photographs. We're seated at a prominent half-shell booth by some windows. Kristofferson slides in. I follow. I try to keep the proper masculine distance, but then move closer so I can monitor the tape recorder. He seems unfazed by being interviewed. He is neither friendly nor aloof. I break the ice by presenting him with a New York souvenir -- a T-shirt imprinted with a photograph of a handgun and the slogan, "Welcome to New York -- now duck motherfucker!"

I assume this citizen of Hawaii will appreciate the humor. He does. With a quiet laugh he says that one of his kids will love it. Oh shit, I think. Kristofferson's voice is so soft. Will it pick up on tape? I'm aware of a waiter beside me. I absent-mindedly order iced coffee, black. "I'll have the same," Kristofferson says.

"I thought I knew everything there was to know about you," I say to my lunch partner. "But I just saw an A&E special and learned that when you were a Rhodes scholar in England in the late '50s studying William Blake, you were also writing songs."

"The first song I ever wrote, I was 11," he says quietly. "I've been makin' up songs for as long as I remember. I was tryin' to sell 'em in England." Kristofferson occasionally lapses into a drawl, droppin' his g's. "I had a manager over there," he continues. "I answered an ad in the newspaper that said 'Just dial F-A-M-E.' And it was this guy named Paul Lincoln who ran a club in SoHo where rock 'n' rollers used to play."

His voice is so goddamn soft! Suddenly big band music starts playing on the sound system (Benny Goodman or something). I move the tape recorder smack next to Kristofferson's silverware and say a quick prayer to the God of Interview Technology.

"I didn't know anything about the music business or anything," Kristofferson is saying. "I think because I was a Yank at Oxford he thought I would be commercially possible. They got me a record deal with Top Rank records. That's J. Arthur Rank's company -- Rank Movies. Tony Hatch, who later worked with Petula Clark and wrote 'Downtown,' produced the first sessions." The iced coffee comes. He and I both take hits. "We recorded four songs that were never released," Kristofferson continues, his voice a little louder. "An article came out in Time magazine talking about this Rhodes scholar singer ... I had signed a contract with a guy back in Los Angeles before I went to England. I never thought anything about it because nothin' had ever happened, but the man [in L.A.] read about me and threatened to sue. So Rank never released the record."

The conversation pauses while he scans the menu. Kristofferson is such an icon of the 1970s, I'm thinking. I can't imagine him recording in the late '50s. "You were singing on the records?" I ask.

He looks up. "Yeah. They changed my named to Chris Carson. I have no idea what my life might have been like had the songs been a hit." He gives a soft chuckle. I ask him what the music was like. "I don't know what you'd call it," he answers. "It was more like songs that the Kingston Trio and people were doing then. They were not good. I thought they were at the time, I guess, or I wouldn't have tried to sell 'em. Anyway, the deal fell through and I abandoned musical ambition for a while."

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