What was it about John Prine that we loved so much? How did such a humble man, of such modest beginnings, evolve into one of the most celebrated American songwriters in history?
(Rolling Stone)
John Prine seemed to be a simple person. And therein lay his genius.
One has to search for songs that aren’t basically just I-IV-V (with the occasional minor second or sixth tossed in), the most common chord progression in popular music and no complication for even a beginning player. His picking was capable, but hardly noteworthy among guitarists, a necessity of accompaniment rather than a virtuosity.
If the appeal of Dylan, and Leonard Cohen, and more recently Josh Ritter, lies in the brilliance of their phrasing, their lyrics soaring on eagles’ wings, Prine’s characters flew coach on paper airplanes, remarkable for their craft, humble in their simplicity and their accessibility. His songs contained so few words that they reminded me of a quotation about sculpting I’ve seen attributed to Michelangelo: You look at a block of marble, and you chip away everything that doesn’t belong. Prine chipped and carved his songs, until his lyrics evoked vivid images and told universal truths, seldom with any syllables to spare.
In the America of today, fucked up beyond recognition, I can’t help thinking that Prine’s economy of simplicity is the exact opposite of our President’s voluble horseshit. Prine knew that fewer words were more. And don’t you dare tell me this shouldn’t be political. I’m not the wordsmith Prine was, but he damn sure was political, and those who believe otherwise suffer delusion or stupidity or both.
Mid-career he was taking shots at faceless corporations in “Paradise,” the Kentucky town whence his parents hailed:
Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.
Later, in the dourly amusing “Some Humans Ain’t Human,” Prine wrote,
Have you ever noticed
When you're feeling really good
There's always a pigeon
That'll come shit on your hood
Or you're feeling your freedom
And the world's off your back
Some cowboy from Texas
Starts his own war in Iraq
Lest there remain any question about his intentions, he was quoted in Rolling Stone: “Jeez, if I get hit by a bus I would sure like the world to know that I was not a Republican.”
Prine’s politics were current; they didn’t start in the Middle East or the Trump era. His first album back in 1971 contained the classic, “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore” (“They’re already overcrowded from your dirty little war”). Before he got older and a little more jaded, that kind of lyric exemplified most of his political statements: He had a way of winking at us while telling hard truths, of telling stories where the frauds and blowhards were exposed and regular folks, those he knew best, were sometimes the champions. Most of us don’t trust the motives of the powerful, but it took us whole paragraphs and newspaper editorials to say what Prine said in just the “Flag Decal” song title. Sure, it was long for a song title, but it’s a pretty heady achievement to tell a whole story in nine words.
Similar concision is found throughout Prine’s work. Two of his best loved songs are desperately sad, in part because of his ability to sketch the bones of an emotion and then let listeners fill in the blanks. In “Hello in There,” he painted the loneliness of older folks, ending plaintively:
So if you're walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes,
Please don't just pass 'em by and stare
As if you didn't care. Say, "Hello in there. Hello.”
Darker still was “Sam Stone,” about the Vietnam vet who came home to what we now know was depression and probably some PTSD too. But in 1971 Sam was just a desperate man who didn’t know where he had gone or how he had arrived where he did.
It’s a breathtaking line — almost literally: “There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes.” If there has ever been a more direct, skeletal statement about one of humanity’s most fraught propositions — that despite our best efforts there are lives that simply cannot be healed — I’ve never heard it.
On his last album, The Tree of Forgiveness, there is a song, “Summer’s End,” which seems to rue how quickly life passes — another sentiment anybody can understand — but the arrestingly sad video jars our sensibilities: It makes clear that the sentiment does not apply only to old people. I suspect it was not intentional, but “Sam Stone” and “Summer’s End” seem almost like bookends to Prine’s young characters, regular people, ravaged by drugs and despair and life’s bad breaks. Go find the video on YouTube, and bring the tissues.
While sadness plays a role in any songwriter’s harvest, it was hardly the sum total of Prine’s life’s work. How could it be for a man who wrote a tune called “It’s a Mean Ol’ Goofy World,” or a chorus that begins “Fish and whistle, whistle and fish. Eat everything that they put on your dish”? He wasn’t immune to sentiment, either, but few others could pull off a song about their child called “Daddy’s Little Pumpkin” without sentiment curdling into sentimentality.
If you write stories you’re inevitably going to trade in sadness, but Prine always conveyed something beyond the stories. His most profound gift was to express feelings in compact, universal phrases. The title girl in “Donald and Lydia” “felt just like Sunday on Saturday afternoon” — a feeling that just about every person not only understands but actually feels, viscerally. Even those of us in strong relationships can feel the isolation in “Angel From Montgomery,” when the narrator realizes she “ain’t done nothin’ since I woke up today,” and then looks at her husband, wondering, “How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, and come in the evening, and have nothing to say?”
Prine wasn’t all about feeling what was just beyond our grasp, of course. He wrote about situations from the gently amusing to the ludicrous, as in “Dear Abby,” who answers every plea from a reader with the same message: “Bewildered, Bewildered, you have no complaint, You are what you are, and you ain't what you ain't. So listen up, Buster, and listen up good, Stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood. (Signed, Dear Abby).”
His ability to turn a clever phrase was certainly among his most endearing qualities. As he once noted, the best songs let listeners in on the joke, as he did in “Spanish Pipedream”:
Well, I sat there at the table and I acted real naive
For I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve
Prine was often funny, but the glimmer we could almost hear in his eye implied that if he was capable of offense, meanness was beyond him. Of the former, perhaps not everyone appreciated Prine’s whimsical, Dylanesque speculation on what Jesus did in his 18 so-called missing years:
Jesus was a good guy he didn't need this shit
So he took a pill with a bag of peanuts and
A Coca-Cola and he swallowed it.
He discovered the Beatles
And he recorded with the Stones
Once he even opened up a three-way package
In Southern California for old George Jones
Of all of Prine’s remarkable qualities as a songwriter, though, I think I appreciate most of all his ability to convey depth and emotion without losing a sense of sweetness and humanity. Nowhere is this more vivid for me than in “All the Best,” a lovely lullaby written upon his second divorce. The song has a lot of typical Prine wordplay — “Say you drive a Chevy, Say you drive a Ford, Say you drive around the town ’til you just get bored.” — and it’s clear that he still feels fondly toward his ex-wife. But the shot upside the head is the inclusion of “I guess,” in the chorus: “I guess I wish you all the best.” In just two words he conveys not only an entire lifetime of emotion, but a universal one as well — who doesn’t understand the ambivalence in wishing happiness to a former love?
There are people who feel lukewarm about Bob Dylan, or who just don’t like him. But I’ve never heard a single person say, “Nah, I don’t care much for John Prine.” I think that’s because, in addition to Prine’s raw skill, he was a genuinely humble and likable person. He co-wrote dozens of songs; he mentored younger songwriters; his presentation was unfailingly amused and affable, even after cancer treatments left him compromised both physically and vocally. His songs offered advice and led listeners to conclusions, but he didn’t take pity on his characters or on his fans, and he didn’t preach. He treated others, both fictional and nonfictional, with respect.
Prine gave few interviews, preferring to let his songs speak for him. I could quote three dozen more, but in the end there is nothing to do for his devotees, and those new to his music, but listen, to marvel at the inspiring humility that wrapped his outsized talents.
John Prine’s life was not without trials, but it was warm and thoughtful and well lived. His songs are deceptively simple, and they are filled with an unmistakable humanity. What gifts he has left us.
Go, and listen.