Music |
John Prine
By
Published: Jan 01, 2023
Category:
Country
On January 1, 2005, Head Butler was an infant — less than a year old. And yet, thanks to Holly Gleason, I had scored an interview with John Prine, who had recently released a terrific CD, “Fair and Square.” [To read Prine’s witty and wise responses to my questions, read my review: click here. To hear “Long Monday,” the song on the CD that obsessed me for weeks, click here.]
I saw John Prine as often as I could. I believe I was at his final performance at Radio City, which ended with a delighted Prine skipping off the stage. He died in 2020. Covid. A bittersweet Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammys followed. If you knew his songs, you’d have given him that years earlier.
“The Tree of Forgiveness” — the title is the name of a bar Prine said he wanted to open in Heaven — was released in 2018. It was his first CD of new material since 2005. He had surgery in 1998 to remove a squamous cell carcinoma in his neck, and another surgery to treat lung cancer in 2013. Then he had two knee replacements, a hip replacement and some kind of hardware in his elbow. As he told the Nashville Tennessean, “All the TSA guys know me.”
In 2018, this was the CD of the year for me. And not just me. Read this, from the Times.
“Summer’s End” was the song and the video of the year for me. Something I didn’t know about it: “The song is dedicated to Max Barry, the son of Nashville’s former mayor, who died in the summer of 2017 of a drug overdose.” If you don’t know why people weep over this, read the comments on YouTube. Here’s the official video. And here’s a gorgeous live performance with Brandi Carlile and Sturgill Simpson.
Just to hammer it home, the lyrics of “Summer’s End.” So simple… so loving… so full of longing I mist up every time I hear it.
Summer’s end’s around the bend just flying
The swimming suits are on the line just drying
I’ll meet you there per our conversation
I hope I didn’t ruin your whole vacation
Well you never know how far from home you’re feeling
Until you watch the shadows cross the ceiling
Well I don’t know but I can see it snowing
In your car the windows are wide open
Valentines break hearts and minds at random
That ol’ Easter egg ain’t got a leg to stand on
Well I can see that you can’t win for trying
And New Year’s Eve is bound to leave you crying
The moon and stars hang out in bars just talking
I still love that picture of us walking
Just like that ol’ house we thought was haunted
Summer’s end came faster than we wanted
Come on home
Come on home
No you don’t have to be alone
Just come on home
The songs on this CD are snapshots of American lives, love songs candid as late-night texts, whimsical observations, and, at the deepest level, truths that come from blood-and-bone. In almost every case, if you look at the words, you could say, “Wait, this is… doggerel.” But pair those lyrics with a voice as old as dirt and a band that plays with singular intelligence and taste, and you get a John Prine record — that is, an instant classic. [To buy the CD from Amazon and get a free MP3 download, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.
Cheerier love songs? Here’s one: (“Surround me with your boundless love/ Confound me with your boundless love/ I was drowning in the sea/ lost as I could be”), but it doesn’t go there without blending it with the mundane (“If I came home, would you let me in/ Fry me some pork chops and forgive my sin”).
And what can you say about a song so bravely unadorned it announces itself in the title: “I Have Met My Love Today.” Here’s the video.
Prine joked that “Caravan of Fools” has “more verses than there are original members of Trump’s Cabinet.” Here’s the video.
Finally, you’ll get the full flavor of his sensibility in “When I Get to Heaven.” Click for the video. The lyrics are quintessential Prine:
When I get to heaven, I’m gonna shake God’s hand
Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand
Then I’m gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band
Check into a swell hotel, ain’t the afterlife grand?
And then I’m gonna get a cocktail: vodka and ginger ale
Yeah, I’m gonna smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long
I’m gonna kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl
‘Cause this old man is goin’ to town
Then as God as my witness, I’m gettin’ back into show business
I’m gonna open up a nightclub called “The Tree of Forgiveness”
And forgive everybody ever done me any harm
Well, I might even invite a few choice critics, those syph’litic parasitics
Buy ’em a pint of Smithwick’s and smother ’em with my charm
Yeah when I get to heaven, I’m gonna take that wristwatch off my arm
What are you gonna do with time after you’ve bought the farm?
And then I’m gonna go find my mom and dad, and good old brother Doug
Well I bet him and cousin Jackie are still cuttin’ up a rug
I wanna see all my mama’s sisters, ’cause that’s where all the love starts
I miss ’em all like crazy, bless their little hearts
And I always will remember these words my daddy said
He said, “Buddy, when you’re dead, you’re a dead pecker-head”
I hope to prove him wrong… that is, when I get to heaven.
What to make of these songs? The best Prine could suggest: “You get to be 72, I guess you run out of other things to write about. You don’t see as good as you used to, you don’t hear as good, so maybe it’s time to write about yourself.”
Not very sentimental. But not true, either. Prine’s mind was totally in the service of his heart, and his heart felt everything.
Sometimes my old heart is like a washing machine
It bounces around until my soul comes clean
And when I’m clean and hung out to dry
I’m gonna make you laugh until you cry
