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" ESQ: You&amp;#039;ve said that the older you get, the less conservative you become. Still true? KK: I was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. I&amp;#039;ve argued for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the United Farm Workers. I&amp;#039;ve been a radical for a long time. I guess it&amp;#039;s too bad. I&amp;#039;d be more marketable as a right-wing redneck. But I got into this to tell the truth as I saw it.  ESQ: On your new album, &amp;quot;In the News&amp;quot; ties together Iraq and the Scott Peterson case.  KK: There seemed to be a connection in the cold-bloodedness. Bombing people for economic reasons is as horrible as killing a pregnant woman. There are a lot of Iraqi people we can never pay back for what we&amp;#039;ve done. Being against this war is a pretty easy stand to take. ESQ: Where were you when you wrote the line &amp;quot;Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose&amp;quot; on &amp;quot;Me and Bobby McGee&amp;quot;? KK: I was working the Gulf of Mexico on oil rigs, flying helicopters. I&amp;#039;d lost my family to my years of failing as a songwriter. All I had were bills, child support, and grief. And I was about to get fired for not letting 24 hours go between the throttle and the bottle. It looked like I&amp;#039;d trashed my act. But there was something liberating about it. By not having to live up to people&amp;#039;s expectations, I was somehow free. ESQ: You were also a drunken mess onstage and off, right? KK: I had to get plastered to go out there. There were decades I didn&amp;#039;t play sober. I thought, Who would want to? But at some point, I decided that if it was important enough to me to keep doing it as art, I should do it with all my tools.  ESQ: What&amp;#039;s the weirdest gig you&amp;#039;ve been offered recently? KK: A zombie movie. But there wasn&amp;#039;t a lot for me to do in it. ESQ: Because you were going to play the undead or the guy running from them? KK: I&amp;#039;m not sure. But either way you&amp;#039;re screwed. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a1409/esq0306music-84-1/>