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Bruce Springsteen says — and he ought to know, having built his career on this idea — “All the hype in the world doesn’t matter as much as one kid saying to another, ‘Man you should have been there.’”
Well, I was there, and you should have been: John Prine, in his sold-out debut at Radio City Music Hall, 54 years after he sat in the mezzanine and watched Bette Midler perform his breakthrough song, Hello in There. That had to be sweet. Or, more likely, given Prine, bittersweet.
John Prine is now 72. “The Tree of Forgiveness” — the title is the name of a bar he’d like to open in Heaven — is 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. He’s 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.”
Prine is touring relentlessly this year — Milwaukee. Chicago. Beaver Dam, Kentucky. Indianapolis. Los Angeles. San Diego. Folsom. San Francisco. Wolf Trap/Vienna, Virginia. Norfolk. Louisville, Cincinnati. Burlington, Vermont. Boston. Concord, New Hampshire. Dallas. Austin. Pittsburgh. Huntsville. Memphis, Eugene, Oregon. Portland. Seattle. Columbus. Knoxville. Nashville. Breckenridge. Grand Junction. Denver. Kansas City. Omaha. Las Vegas. Phoenix. Tucson; for dates, click here — and if you are half as clever as your loved ones like to think you are, you should travel many miles to see him. For one thing, he works slow and you may not get another chance. (“I look busy for a living. I leave the house so it appears I did something. Fiona knows to never ask me what I did today. She knows it’s absolutely nothing.”) A better reason: These are great songs, and this is a great show; the music isn’t rock, it isn’t country, it’s a category all its own.
Prine is an exalted talent. He’s beyond legend now — he’s an American institution, and as more of them get tarnished and disgraced, his light burns brighter and purer. We were freshly convinced of this after the concert. We thought we’d have the drink that is, ironically (of course), named in his honor — it’s called a “Handsome John,” and it’s simple: vodka and ginger ale, preferably diet ginger ale — and listen to some music, and it quickly became clear that after hearing Prine we couldn’t listen to anything with words.
The songs on this CD? 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.]
Like this one… 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
And this love song, which gets to emotion (“Surround me with your boundless love/ Confound me with your boundless love/ I was drowning in the sea/ lost as I could be”), but 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.”
Prine jokes that “Caravan of Fools” has “more verses than there are original members of Trump’s Cabinet.”
Finally, you’ll get the full flavor of his sensibility in “When I Get to Heaven,” which presents you, matter-of-factly, with these lyrics:
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 can 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 is totally in the service of his heart, and his heart feels 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.
If you buy just one CD this year….
BONUS VIDEO
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Previously published on The Head Butler.
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