I’m sure by now everybody has heard John Prine died this week. He has always been one of my favorite songwriters. His music is part comic, part tragic, and part biting social commentary. With a down-home southern twang and a midwestern sensibility, he finds the comedy in the tragic and the tragedy in the everyday. His songs are from his own experiences and his own heart. He was one of the few songwriters that could bring me to tears.
Social Commentary
His social commentary is timeless. It was political in the sense that he looked at the situation in the United States and saw its impact on the everyday lives of regular people. He never mentioned any particular politicians by name or even the Vietnam War by name. In Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore, he called it “your dirty little war”. In Sam Stone, it was “the conflict overseas.”
Paradise
Paradise was one of the first John Prine songs I heard. It is about the loss of small towns in rural Kentucky to the Peabody Coal Company. This song has roots in Woody Guthrie, but teh destruction of rural towns and rural life continues to this day, probably worse than when Prine first sang about it.
And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away
Illegal Smile
Illegal Smile is one of the only songs that seem dated, given that marijuana has been made legal in many states. The lines about going in front of the judge (Hoffman) to plead his case seem from another time, but if you smoked pot in that time, it was a real danger. It’s probably the main reason it made people paranoid. Does anybody get paranoid when smoking pot these days?
Ah but fortunately I have the key to escape reality
And you may see me tonight with an illegal smile
It don’t cost very much, but it lasts a long while
Won’t you please tell the man I didn’t kill anyone
No I’m just tryin’ to have me some fun
Comedy
His take on the world often had a comic sensibility. He laughed at the absurdity of everyday life. Illegal Smile was a perfect example of that.
Please Don’t Bury Me
Please Don’t Bury Me was another. The lines seemed appropriate when my own dad died having slipped and hit his head. I sang it to him in the hospital when he was in a coma. I hope he heard it.
Woke up this morning
Put on my slippers
Walked in the kitchen
And died
And oh, what a feeling!
When my soul
Went through the ceiling
And on up into heaven, I did ride
When I got there, they did say
“John, it happened this way
You slipped upon the floor
And hit your head”
And all the angels say
“Just before you passed away
That these were the very last words
That you said”
“Please don’t bury me
Down in that cold, cold ground
No, I’d rather have ’em cut me up
And pass me all around”
Grandpa Was a Carpenter
Another song that reminds me of my dad and his uncle Ole is Grandpa Was a Carpenter. Both were carpenters.
Grandpa was a carpenter
He built houses stores and banks
Chain smoked Camel cigarettes
And hammered nails in planks
He was level on the level
And shaved even every door
Another comic song I recommend is Spanish Pipedream, with these lines:
Blow up your T.V., throw away your paper
Move to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try to find Jesus on your own
It has its appeal, especially now.
For a simple (not illegal) smile, you can isten to Dear Abby or Onomatopoeia.
Tragedy
His most famous song is also one of his most tragic. Bonnie Raitt made it famous (or did the song make her famous?) Angel From Montgomery is about a middle-aged housewife who is tired of her everyday life. She wonders what happened to the dreams she had when she was a girl. This is likely something every person who passes middle age thinks about. I know I have.
If dreams were thunder
And lightning was desire
This old house would’ve burned down
A long time ago
According to the official John Prine website, an Angel from Montgomery is a pardon for a prison sentence from the governor or a last minute pardon from the death sentence. That brings a whole new meaning to the title and these lines.
Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go
Sam Stone
Sam Stone is his most tragic song. The song is about a veteran coming home from the war and hooked on drugs, presumably heroin. I don’t think there’s a more heartbreaking line ever written than “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes.”
While it was written at the height of the Vietnam War, it could just as easily have been written now. It presages the opiod crisis of rural America by 40 years. It’s a commentary on the horrors of war and what the soldiers brought home with them. It is very personal, showing the effects of war on a returning soldier, his family and its children.
Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)
Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow) is about an altar boy killed by a train. It also has the best advice on how to deal with tragedy.
You can gaze out the window get mad and get madder,
Throw your hands in the air, say “What does it matter?”
But it don’t do no good to get angry,
So help me I know
For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter.
You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there
Wrapped up in a trap of your very own
Chain of sorrow.
I’ve often wondered what the title Bruised Orange meant. I heard once that a bruised orange doesn’t show the damage on the outside, it just rots from the inside. It’s an appropriate metaphor for what Prine was trying to say with this story.
The Eternal in the Everyday
The average person can identify themselves or people they love in almost all his songs, both the tragic and the comic. He takes an everyday condition and finds the comedy or the tragedy in it. Sometimes, he finds the bittersweet of both. In doing so, he raises the mundane to the eternal.
