Summer 1974. I’m approaching my 14th birthday, and my hair is growing down over my ears, which is radical for our little Catholic school, even if I am about to be a freshman in high school. There are so many kids in our neighborhood, and rock music is a through line. Pioneer and Marantz receivers if you’re lucky. (Emerson or SoundDesign or Realistic brand from Radio Shack if you aren’t.) Dual and Garrard turntables. JBL speakers. Fuzzy guitar tones wafting from the garage across the street. Deep Purple. Pink Floyd. Uriah Heep. Alice Cooper. Jimi Hendrix (wah-wah). Janis Joplin. Led Zeppelin. Santana. The Eagles. The Allman Bros. The Doors. Dylan. The Band. CCR.
My sister, four years older, has a Woodstock poster hanging in her bedroom. “Three days of peace, love and music,” it reads, with a little bird perched on a guitar headstock. That’s how I remember it. She has a boyfriend from a couple blocks over. The boyfriend has an album with a blue cover called Sweet Revenge, by a scruffy guy named John Prine, who is sprawled across the front seat of a Porsche convertible in the cover photo, his cowboy boots cropped so only the tips show, merely hinting at the greatness embedded within. Some of the music reaching my ears at the time isn’t heavy. Joni Mitchell. Jim Croce. John Denver. Glen Campbell. My dad has a stack of Herb Alpert records, and the Monkees are still kinda fun. But this John Prine cat is altogether different. The rural allusions. The humor. The wordplay.
“I’d like to tell you that I’d see you more often/But often is a word I seldom use.”
“Last night I saw an accident/At the corner of Third and Green/Two cars collided, and I got excited/Just being part of that scene.”
“It was Christmas in prison/And the food was real good/We had turkey and pistols/Carved out of wood.”
“My father died/On the porch outside/On an August afternoon/I sipped bourbon and cried with a friend/By the light of the moon.”
“Onomatopoeia/I don’t wanna see ya/Speaking in no foreign tongue.”
Onomatopoeia? Who uses such words, the second-longest I’ve ever heard, behind supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, which we all know is completely made up.
The boyfriend didn’t hang around long but the album did. More and more, it lived in my room. You have to watch little brothers. At the time I didn’t understand that Sweet Revenge was a departure from Prine’s self-titled debut, the more tender collection everyone knows and rightfully loves, packed with the signature songs that flabbergasted Roger Ebert and Kris Kristofferson. “Sam Stone.” “Hello in There.” “Angel From Montgomery.” “Six O’clock News.” “Donald and Lydia.” (I might be forgetting one?) Sweet Revenge was a more cynical take on life.
Bulls-eye.
I reached back and learned all of Prine’s early songs, and I followed him right through his rockabilly period of the late ‘70s. Saw him perform at The Red Barn on the U of L campus, c. 1978, the first of many Prine shows. I can still conjure him onstage at the Palace, framed by backlit cigarette smoke, finger-picking his D-28 and strumming that big ol’ J-200. All those fans (“he’s my wife’s uncle’s cousin!”) who just can’t shut up during the quiet songs. Ah, Louisville.
Prine was a gateway to artists like Jerry Jeff and Guy and Kris and Waylon and Willie and Emmylou. The gift that keeps giving. Steve Earle. Lyle Lovett. Iris. Patty. Jason Isbell. Prine was never all that popular with most people, but you’d bump into fans in the oddest places, and that would prompt lengthy exchanges of favorite Prine couplets and similes. Our Mark Twain.
If I loaned you ten bucks or sprang for six Heinekens, all that would evaporate. If I turned you onto John Prine, that was for a lifetime. I shared him with people who may have never gotten there otherwise — Mary and Roger and Badger and Phil and God knows who else. That feels like an accomplishment.
The past runs a tab. Bills come due, always, and no bankruptcy attorney can make them disappear. Last night, under a pink moon, while we FaceTimed with loved ones in the Bay Area, they came and hauled off my 1959 Porsche convertible. But I still have the boots. And the keys. I saw John Prine, goddamnit, and they will never, ever take that away.
