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Apr. 8th, 2020 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Inside the Life of John Prine - the Mark Twain of American Song Writing
Prine’s office feels like a clubhouse: There’s a pool table, black-and-white family photos, a pinball machine and Christmas lights all over. Prine loves Christmas; back when he was single, he kept a tree in his house year-round. It’s one in a long series of Prine’s endearingly eccentric qualities. He’ll also pack at least four bags of luggage for his weekend tours – everything from framed family photos to Heinz ketchup to Archie comic books. “I never gave up on Archie,” Prine tells me. “I started picking up Archie comics when I was in my thirties, and then I started subscribing to them. I like that they put your age on there: ‘To Johnny Prine, age 43.’ I like Jughead mainly. He had this persona that he was shifty and lazy, but he always kinda knew what was going on.”
“John’s mind don’t work like everybody else’s mind,” says Prine’s friend and engineer David “Fergie” Ferguson. “He really thinks outside the box, you know. And when he comes up with something, it might strike you as being really off-the-wall, but then after you think about it for a minute, it’s like, ‘OK, now it’s obvious.'”
In one corner of Prine’s office is a pristine 1942 Wurlitzer jukebox, stacked with old country 78s. It was a gift from his late friend and music partner Steve Goodman after they wrote “You Never Even Called Me by My Name,” a goofy satire of country music. “I thought it was a joke,” says Prine, explaining why he declined to list himself as a writer on the song. “Next thing I know, David Allan Coe does it, and it goes to Number One.” (The song actually went to Number Eight – Prine admits he tends to exaggerate.)
He likes the Wurlitzer because it reminds him of his dad. Bill Prine, a factory worker in Maywood, Illinois, a blue-collar suburb of Chicago, would take John and his brothers out to the honky-tonks and play the jukebox. “He was a big guy – six-two, 250 pounds,” Prine says. “He would more or less go into bars and announce that if anybody thought about doing anything like fighting, that they should get it over with, so he could have a good time.”
Though the Prine family grew up in Maywood, Bill Prine drilled into the kids that they were also from somewhere else: Paradise, Kentucky, a small coal-mining town where Bill grew up before moving north to find work. “One time I went to school and they asked us all to find out where our roots were,” Prine says. “It’s goin’ around the class, and the kids were going, ‘I’m Swedish-German’ or ‘I’m English-Irish.’ They got to me and I said, ‘Pure Kentuckian.’” (In 1971, Prine would release “Paradise,” a song that became a country classic, covered by everyone from Roy Acuff to the Everly Brothers.)
The family spent its summers in Paradise, where bluegrass was big, leading John to study Doc Watson–style fingerpicking with his older brother, Dave. It wasn’t until John heard Dylan that he saw a future for himself as a songwriter. “By the time Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash hooked up [for Nashville Skyline], that’s when I thought, ‘Man, there’s something there where their two paths crossed. My stuff belongs right in the middle.'”
Before he could pursue songwriting, Prine was drafted into the Army in January 1966. He lucked out when he was sent to West Germany instead of Vietnam, working as a mechanical engineer, “drinking beer and pretending to fix trucks.” He often reminds himself that other draftees weren’t so fortunate: On his office table he spreads out a stack of small black-and-white photos of various boot-camp buddies who went to Vietnam and came home in a box. “Look how many of them are African-Americans,” he says. “And they tell me that that’s the lottery system?”
After coming back from Germany, Prine returned to his job as a mailman in Maywood. On his postal route, he worked out songs like “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore” – a hilarious indictment of misguided patriotism – and “Sam Stone,” about a vet who gets hooked on morphine during his service and comes home a different person. The chorus: “There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes/Jesus Christ died for nothin’, I suppose.”
When Prine played “Sam Stone” at his first-ever performance, an open-mic night at Chicago’s Fifth Peg in 1969, he was greeted with icy silence. The “Jesus” line made many audiences angry. “They’d start to have an argument with me when I was onstage,” says Prine. (Johnny Cash had Prine rewrite the “Jesus” line when he covered “Sam Stone” in the Eighties, to “Daddy must have hurt a lot back then, I suppose.” “If it hadn’t have been Johnny Cash,” Prine says, “I would’ve said, ‘Are you nuts?'”)
Prine’s career took off fast: A couple of open-mic appearances got him a residency at the Fifth Peg, and then a $1,000-a-week regular gig at Earl of Old Town, the center of the Chicago folk scene. The club was across the street from the Second City theater, and Bill Murray and John Belushi (who later helped Prine secure a slot as a musical guest during the second season of Saturday Night Live) frequented his sets. Roger Ebert, then a young Chicago Sun-Times staff writer, stopped by one night and wrote an article titled “Singing Mailman Who Delivers a Powerful Message in Few Words.” On another occasion, Steve Goodman brought Kris Kristofferson to the Earl. “By the end of the first line, we knew we were hearing something else,” Kristofferson recalled later. “It must’ve been like stumbling onto Dylan when he first busted onto the Village scene.” Kristofferson soon invited Prine onstage in front of an industry-heavy audience at New York’s Bitter End. The next morning, Atlantic Records president Jerry Wexler offered Prine a $25,000 contract. “This is my first night in New York, so it was like Oz to me,” Prine says.
Everything is Cool by John Prine
In Spite of Ourselves - John Prine and Emmylou Harris
That's the Way the World Goes Round
Rest in peace, John Prine.
2. Why talking about our problems can help so much
I know it helps me. I'm a venter. I take after my mother in that way. My brother isn't - he considers it examining one's navel and doesn't like these kinds of conversations - and when things get uber emotional, he sidesteps into snark and teasing. My mother's older sister refused to talk about her problems, she'd shut down. And hated when my mother did.
I need to talk about them. More importantly, I need to write them out in print. See them flood across the page, and then send them out into the ether of the internet, anonymously under the protective guise of a pseudonyme.
It's why I keep writing about the corona virus. I need to chronicle it. If I can see it. I can have some semblance of control. If I see my anxiety on the page, it's less scary. And if I can share with others, a kind of hive mind, I can get past it.
I want the connection. Now if I could just stop compulsively checking the John Hopkins Site for the latest numbers. I do it with a morbid fascination, that makes no sense to even me. The numbers don't feel real somehow. There's no faces, no names, just numbers on a screen steadily rising like waves.
3. They say your supposed to keep your nails short in these times. I'm amused. My nails have never grown well. They tear off all the time and are often painfully down to quick. I don't bite them, they just tear off. Brittle with too much hand washing.
I washed my hands constantly prior to the virus outbreak. Now, I'm actually washing them less - because I'm in my apartment most of the time, by myself, and there's no one in here but me. Unless I can catch the virus from myself - I'm kind of safe.
When I go outside - I wash them about two or three times. I did spray with lysol once, and that was a bad idea. Kind of burned. Don't do that.
So ironically, my nails are actually kind of growing? Not by much. But they may be the healthiest I've seen. Also, I'm not coughing or sneezing as much and am less congested - which means I'm right I was allergic to my workplace.
Living alone is hard though. And outside of my mother - I don't really talk to anyone. Was getting a checkin from the church but that kind of stopped. My church is like that...it has these great plans, and whomp, they fall flat. I've gotten used to being disappointed.
I want good news. I'm not alone apparently... Some Good News with John Kraskinki. He's started his own youtube program from his home. It's quite sweet.
Prine’s office feels like a clubhouse: There’s a pool table, black-and-white family photos, a pinball machine and Christmas lights all over. Prine loves Christmas; back when he was single, he kept a tree in his house year-round. It’s one in a long series of Prine’s endearingly eccentric qualities. He’ll also pack at least four bags of luggage for his weekend tours – everything from framed family photos to Heinz ketchup to Archie comic books. “I never gave up on Archie,” Prine tells me. “I started picking up Archie comics when I was in my thirties, and then I started subscribing to them. I like that they put your age on there: ‘To Johnny Prine, age 43.’ I like Jughead mainly. He had this persona that he was shifty and lazy, but he always kinda knew what was going on.”
“John’s mind don’t work like everybody else’s mind,” says Prine’s friend and engineer David “Fergie” Ferguson. “He really thinks outside the box, you know. And when he comes up with something, it might strike you as being really off-the-wall, but then after you think about it for a minute, it’s like, ‘OK, now it’s obvious.'”
In one corner of Prine’s office is a pristine 1942 Wurlitzer jukebox, stacked with old country 78s. It was a gift from his late friend and music partner Steve Goodman after they wrote “You Never Even Called Me by My Name,” a goofy satire of country music. “I thought it was a joke,” says Prine, explaining why he declined to list himself as a writer on the song. “Next thing I know, David Allan Coe does it, and it goes to Number One.” (The song actually went to Number Eight – Prine admits he tends to exaggerate.)
He likes the Wurlitzer because it reminds him of his dad. Bill Prine, a factory worker in Maywood, Illinois, a blue-collar suburb of Chicago, would take John and his brothers out to the honky-tonks and play the jukebox. “He was a big guy – six-two, 250 pounds,” Prine says. “He would more or less go into bars and announce that if anybody thought about doing anything like fighting, that they should get it over with, so he could have a good time.”
Though the Prine family grew up in Maywood, Bill Prine drilled into the kids that they were also from somewhere else: Paradise, Kentucky, a small coal-mining town where Bill grew up before moving north to find work. “One time I went to school and they asked us all to find out where our roots were,” Prine says. “It’s goin’ around the class, and the kids were going, ‘I’m Swedish-German’ or ‘I’m English-Irish.’ They got to me and I said, ‘Pure Kentuckian.’” (In 1971, Prine would release “Paradise,” a song that became a country classic, covered by everyone from Roy Acuff to the Everly Brothers.)
The family spent its summers in Paradise, where bluegrass was big, leading John to study Doc Watson–style fingerpicking with his older brother, Dave. It wasn’t until John heard Dylan that he saw a future for himself as a songwriter. “By the time Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash hooked up [for Nashville Skyline], that’s when I thought, ‘Man, there’s something there where their two paths crossed. My stuff belongs right in the middle.'”
Before he could pursue songwriting, Prine was drafted into the Army in January 1966. He lucked out when he was sent to West Germany instead of Vietnam, working as a mechanical engineer, “drinking beer and pretending to fix trucks.” He often reminds himself that other draftees weren’t so fortunate: On his office table he spreads out a stack of small black-and-white photos of various boot-camp buddies who went to Vietnam and came home in a box. “Look how many of them are African-Americans,” he says. “And they tell me that that’s the lottery system?”
After coming back from Germany, Prine returned to his job as a mailman in Maywood. On his postal route, he worked out songs like “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore” – a hilarious indictment of misguided patriotism – and “Sam Stone,” about a vet who gets hooked on morphine during his service and comes home a different person. The chorus: “There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes/Jesus Christ died for nothin’, I suppose.”
When Prine played “Sam Stone” at his first-ever performance, an open-mic night at Chicago’s Fifth Peg in 1969, he was greeted with icy silence. The “Jesus” line made many audiences angry. “They’d start to have an argument with me when I was onstage,” says Prine. (Johnny Cash had Prine rewrite the “Jesus” line when he covered “Sam Stone” in the Eighties, to “Daddy must have hurt a lot back then, I suppose.” “If it hadn’t have been Johnny Cash,” Prine says, “I would’ve said, ‘Are you nuts?'”)
Prine’s career took off fast: A couple of open-mic appearances got him a residency at the Fifth Peg, and then a $1,000-a-week regular gig at Earl of Old Town, the center of the Chicago folk scene. The club was across the street from the Second City theater, and Bill Murray and John Belushi (who later helped Prine secure a slot as a musical guest during the second season of Saturday Night Live) frequented his sets. Roger Ebert, then a young Chicago Sun-Times staff writer, stopped by one night and wrote an article titled “Singing Mailman Who Delivers a Powerful Message in Few Words.” On another occasion, Steve Goodman brought Kris Kristofferson to the Earl. “By the end of the first line, we knew we were hearing something else,” Kristofferson recalled later. “It must’ve been like stumbling onto Dylan when he first busted onto the Village scene.” Kristofferson soon invited Prine onstage in front of an industry-heavy audience at New York’s Bitter End. The next morning, Atlantic Records president Jerry Wexler offered Prine a $25,000 contract. “This is my first night in New York, so it was like Oz to me,” Prine says.
Everything is Cool by John Prine
In Spite of Ourselves - John Prine and Emmylou Harris
That's the Way the World Goes Round
Rest in peace, John Prine.
2. Why talking about our problems can help so much
I know it helps me. I'm a venter. I take after my mother in that way. My brother isn't - he considers it examining one's navel and doesn't like these kinds of conversations - and when things get uber emotional, he sidesteps into snark and teasing. My mother's older sister refused to talk about her problems, she'd shut down. And hated when my mother did.
I need to talk about them. More importantly, I need to write them out in print. See them flood across the page, and then send them out into the ether of the internet, anonymously under the protective guise of a pseudonyme.
It's why I keep writing about the corona virus. I need to chronicle it. If I can see it. I can have some semblance of control. If I see my anxiety on the page, it's less scary. And if I can share with others, a kind of hive mind, I can get past it.
I want the connection. Now if I could just stop compulsively checking the John Hopkins Site for the latest numbers. I do it with a morbid fascination, that makes no sense to even me. The numbers don't feel real somehow. There's no faces, no names, just numbers on a screen steadily rising like waves.
3. They say your supposed to keep your nails short in these times. I'm amused. My nails have never grown well. They tear off all the time and are often painfully down to quick. I don't bite them, they just tear off. Brittle with too much hand washing.
I washed my hands constantly prior to the virus outbreak. Now, I'm actually washing them less - because I'm in my apartment most of the time, by myself, and there's no one in here but me. Unless I can catch the virus from myself - I'm kind of safe.
When I go outside - I wash them about two or three times. I did spray with lysol once, and that was a bad idea. Kind of burned. Don't do that.
So ironically, my nails are actually kind of growing? Not by much. But they may be the healthiest I've seen. Also, I'm not coughing or sneezing as much and am less congested - which means I'm right I was allergic to my workplace.
Living alone is hard though. And outside of my mother - I don't really talk to anyone. Was getting a checkin from the church but that kind of stopped. My church is like that...it has these great plans, and whomp, they fall flat. I've gotten used to being disappointed.
I want good news. I'm not alone apparently... Some Good News with John Kraskinki. He's started his own youtube program from his home. It's quite sweet.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-09 07:19 pm (UTC)My dad is the kind of person who announces that he is going to take a nap and then he falls asleep two minutes later.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-10 12:36 am (UTC)I envy people like your Dad. My mind is too busy. And naps? LOL!
no subject
Date: 2020-04-10 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-10 10:10 pm (UTC)