If you could sum up what was unique about John Prine’s work, you might look to what inspired him to write "Angel From Montgomery": a vision of a woman who feels older than she is, "standing over the dishwater with soap in her hands.” He so often found other people more interesting than himself - which only serves to make him more interesting.
Probably most John Prine fans know how he got started, how Roger Ebert walked out of a Chicago movie theatre because the popcorn was too salty — true or not, I love that detail, because it sounds like it came from a John Prine song — and into a little club where he saw this young guy with a scratchy voice and a steady picking hand, three years out of the Army and working as a mailman, singing songs that he wrote. Ebert went home and rushed out a rave review that, among other things, pointed out that Prine's work was notable for its complete lack of narcissism. Shortly after, Kristofferson showed up to marvel at him, strings were pulled ... and within a year, the mailman was a star.
It’s one of music’s most authentic Cinderella stories, but there is something more to be gleaned from it than the fact that sometimes the good guy wins and the poor boy gets lucky. I think often about the fact that Prine was a soldier, a mailman. In fact he wrote most of his first album — a perfect album — on his mail route. This should serve to makes us mindful of how the mail carrier passing by the yard, the woman pushing the shopping cart with three kids in tow, the guy that fixes your car, the kid on the corner in the cheap shoes … any of these people could be geniuses, filled with strange beauty, wisdom, striking images and shards of poetry.
But there will never be another John Prine: someone who's idea of an inspiring figure, worthy of an immortal song, was a tired woman washing dishes.
No comments:
Post a Comment