DJ Deb Grant on John Prine

0:00BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Today's guest was on this series before, on that occasion as our expert, helping our guest make the case for Frank Zappa. But it wasn't she who had picked him, so we thought DJ Deb Grant should come back, this time with her own choice of great life, and choose somebody herself. Her first choice was Alan Lomax, but he'd already been picked. Second choice, Bob Dylan, didn't work either, as at the moment he's still very much alive, So tell us, Deb, third time lucky. Who's your next pick? I've decided to pick John Prine. I think he's kind of the songwriter's songwriter, which might be because, you know, he's not sort of widely known, I guess, in contemporary music, unless you're really into country or Americana or if you want to follow other songwriters' references.

0:52I know he's a favourite songwriter of Bob Dylan. Famous for his songs, which are kind of serve as a social commentary. He became a mailman when he came home from Vietnam and just started writing songs about what he could see happening all around him. Mailman is the American for postman, is it? Exactly. Who discovered him? So he was first discovered by film critic Roger Ebert, actually. So he was at a bar in Chicago where he played his folk songs and country songs once a week. Roger Ebert just happened to be around the corner reviewing a film, which he apparently walked out of because it was so bad that he felt he needed a drink.

1:35So he went around the corner to this bar where John Prine was playing, and he was so moved by John's songs and performances that he decided to write a review instead of John Prine's performance at this bar. John Edward Prine was born in 1946 in Illinois and died in April 2020, so very near the start of the Covid pandemic. Best known as a country folk singer, Prine is widely regarded as a kind of songwriter's songwriter, as you've just said, Deb, and later will hear one of his lyrics read on Radio 4's poetry programme, Poetry Please. Deb Grant, I should add, has joined BBC Six Music since we last heard from her.

2:18She grew up in Dublin, you can probably just hear in the accent, and she's much loved over here. Is it really his life which is amazing? Is it the singer? Is it the song? It's more his character. After I discovered his music, he released what turned out to be his last album in 2018. And I ended up hearing a lot of interviews with him. I came to know him through him speaking about his own music. And it's really his character and his personality and his attitude that I fell for. Cancer, for instance. Yeah, he had cancer twice. he got it in his neck I think in the mid 90s and he had to have part of his neck removed and it affected his vocal cords and his playing obviously and after he recovered from that he got lung cancer and just comes across as being so resilient and just so grateful for everything that he had attained in his life you know this music career he always seemed to have this real lightheartedness about everything, you know, from his great success and, like, the Grammys that he won to his cancer.

3:25He just seemed to take everything in his stride. Let's hear him talk and sing. Here he is on The Bob Harris Show some three decades ago around the time he released an album called The Missing Years. I've never had a record in 20 years that sold like this one, and they kept on selling. So it's been doing really great. With country music being as popular as it is right now, country music is to me is pop music because that's the way it is it's popular music and that's the music that people are listening to that it's not just a twang and this and that anymore you know it's like really well-made records and some great artists out there making music also in country because it's difficult in this country sometimes to appreciate the massive impact that country music has had again on the american charts i mean there are eight country albums in the american top 20 right now yeah that's doing right it's incredible isn't it You can tell back in Nashville, I mean, they're driving, you know, BMWs instead of Cadillacs.

4:23And yay, Bob is here in the studio with us today. I'm guessing you met him more than once? Yes, I did. In fact, the first time I met him was around the time of the release of his first album in the early 70s, because he appeared a couple of times on the Old Grey Whistle Test, which I was presenting at the time. And I remember distinctly him being another one of the singer-songwriters that initially was marketed as the new Bob Dylan. Everybody had that label at the time. But there was something really special about John. And I think another word to maybe pin onto his lapel is empathy. He was an incredibly empathetic person.

5:12When you met him, you sense that he kind of understood you. And certainly in terms of his observational writing, he clearly could understand the emotions of the people about whom he was writing. Describe the man. Give us a picture of how he looked. Well, when I first met him, yes, you know, this is the 70s, isn't it? So we all had pretty long hair. He had a droopy moustache. Later, his appearance dramatically changed because of the impact of the various health issues that he experienced, not least of which the neck cancer, which involved a certain amount of surgery to take away part of his neck.

5:56And then he had a slightly lopsided, very individual look about him. You can see it in the photos as part of his jaw is missing. Yes, but even that, I don't know, it makes him look even more endearing. There's a vulnerability about him now, which is really, really touching. It's so difficult to try and explain what it is that appeals to me about John's personality, especially given the fact that I never actually met him. It feels a bit ridiculous to be talking about him this way. But when he died early 2020, he died of COVID. And I was absolutely inconsolable. You know, I'd familiarized myself with his music and I'd been listening to all of these interviews, as I said, when he was promoting Tree of Forgiveness.

6:36And it really affected me personally. It felt like a member of my family or a close friend had passed away. And I think, as you say, that there's just something about his character that people sort of just related to and wanted to attach themselves to early on. Like in that Roger Ebert review that I mentioned, one of the things he talks about is the fact that John almost kind of steps away from the limelight. And that's not in a sort of shy, retiring way, because I don't think he was very shy and retiring. It's more that he just presented these beautiful songs with humility, you know, without ego.

7:13He was just delivering this message. They really wallop you sometimes with the emotion. John just seemed like this really, really lighthearted character. I'm interested that you say, you talk about his confidence. He strikes me as one of those people who was so confident in the product, as it were, so confident of what he could do that he didn't need to do anything else. There was no performative side to his character. Yeah, I think, like I say, he was sort of providing this social commentary. I've heard him talk about the fact that when he became a mailman, he just observed all of these things that were happening all around him.

7:52You know, Vietnam vets coming home from the war and being traumatised in old people who were like alienated from society they were so lonely and he was just writing about what he saw and I think that's where the lack of ego comes from. These are wonderful qualities but in a very competitive field like folk and country music they're not enough what made him stand out? Well in those days actually Matthew you know the early 70s Atlantic Records. Jerry Wexler was the person who'd found him really and signed him to the label. There was a sequence of lucky events even that opened that pathway. But having arrived at Atlantic, he would then find himself in an environment that protected his individuality.

8:44And the strength of his songwriting, there were two sides to it. First of all, there was a very tender, empathetic side. But there was also the clear filming of the lives of the people about whom he was writing. And there's a track on the opening album called Sam Stone, which describes the life of not just the man, a returnee from Vietnam who'd been consumed by drugs and difficulties, but also the impact that that had on the lives of the people around him. And when you're writing something as strong as that, you know, you're going to have people that recognize that there's a huge talent behind it.

9:25He wrote as the common man in some ways, didn't he? Yes, he did. And Deb's right. I think he was, you know, his background coming from the services, being a mailman, you know, he didn't have any airs and graces, John, ever. and I think you couldn't even put a cigarette paper between what he was as a person and how he expressed himself in song. I promised earlier that we could hear some of his lyrics being read on Radio 4. Take a listen. This is from 1997. John Prine came out of the same tradition that produced Dylan and was undoubtedly influenced by him. But he has his own distinctive voice, chronicling the bittersweet, unregarded lives of small-town America.

10:10He has a fine eye for detail, and many of his images are strikingly memorable. One of his best-known songs tells the tale of a wounded Vietnam veteran returning home with a morphine habit. There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes, laments his wife. Here's Mark Straker again, with the reading of Sam Stone. Sam Stone came home to his wife and family after serving in the conflict overseas. and the time that he served had shattered all his nerves and left a little shrapnel in his knee. But the morphine eased the pain and the grass grew round his brain and gave him all the confidence he lacked with a purple heart and a monkey on his back.

10:54There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes and Jesus Christ died for nothing I suppose. Little pictures have big ears. Don't Stop to count the years. Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios. Let's go back to the beginning, where he came from, what his parents were like. Can either of you tell me a little bit about his childhood? Well, I know that he grew up in Illinois on the outskirts of Chicago and that his parents had come from Kentucky and his dad was still very proudly into country music. So John talks about broken radios, you know, in his household, just constantly playing country.

11:37And the other thing about that background, Matthew, Kentucky, coal mining drives the economy there. And of course, it's been decimated over the last 20 or 30 years. And John Prine wrote about the impact of that decimation on not just his family, but the wider community. There's another artist from that part of the world called Chris Knight who does a similar thing. So he was very much aware of the roots where his parents came from. I was the kind of mailman, he said, that dogs couldn't wait to see coming down the street. He's funny, isn't he? Is that how he came across as a person? Yes. Did the humour shine through?

12:23Yes, it did. And Deb was talking, weren't you, Deb, earlier about his resilience, I mean, particularly with the health issues that he'd had to contend with. And having been through two major health experiences, extreme health experiences myself, I know that coming through the other side of those puts a lot of the triviality of life into perspective. Do you know what I mean? You find a slightly deeper well and you find that you're thankful, you're blessed to be part of this life. And genuinely, having spoken with John in later years a couple of times on this topic, I know that that's how he was feeling.

13:10Blessed to still be here and blessed that he'd been given the resilience to fight his way through. Deb was talking earlier about how he first got started. Apparently, he was at a club where there was a sort of talent competition and he was grumbling about the lack of talent. And somebody said to him, well, get up and go and try yourself. And he did. That's how it all started. Here's his response to his early breakthrough. I was still basically undecided because I was kind of bewildered by the whole thing. I mean, once I'd got a job in that club, I'd sing three nights a week and sleep all week.

13:49What do you think? Well, this is the thing, isn't it? When you've got absolutely bare-knuckled ambition, that's going to drive you in a different way. and it's going to give you a certain ruthlessness, which John just simply did not have. I mean, if you look at the pattern of the record releases through the years, there's no consistent pattern to it, actually. There'll be gaps where suddenly you don't hear from him for quite a while, and then he'll suddenly put out the missing years, acknowledging the fact that it has been years since he last made a record. And talking about Jesus' missing years as well.

14:27So there wasn't that kind of career drive pattern. I'm going to make it at all costs thing about John. There never was, which was another reason that made him so endearing. Chris Christopherson gave him an early boost. Is that right? Yeah. So Chris went to see him after Roger Ebert published this review and was so blown away that he invited him to open for him at a few gigs. And then it wasn't long after that that John was signed by Atlantic and put out his first album. What were his influences, Deb, musically, lyrically? I think he was influenced a lot by bluegrass music and the music that his dad had been listening to, the country music.

15:16But I think, let me try and remember the quote, actually, because I think it was Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash were the kind of contemporary artists that he'd been listening to. And he saw himself as falling somewhere between the middle of the two. I think he kind of said to himself, if I can find something that's a happy medium between those two artists, then he'd be happy. John Prine is just so good we may have to break his thumbs, said Christopherson. You're listening to The Great Life of John Prine, picked by the DJ Deb Grant. With us too is Bob Harris. And Bob, you once said that you and John both emerged blinking into the spotlight around the same time.

15:55He in Chicago and you on Radio 1. Yes. And then you said you asked him what it takes to stay around so long. I mean, he might have asked the same question of you, I suppose. Take a listen to his answer. He's much older here. His voice has changed. But the sweetness is still there. I take a long time between albums, but I never quite think of what's going on. I know what's going on. I hear it around me, but when I go to record, I never try and catch up with whatever the trend is. And I'm always surprised. When I write my songs, I'm thinking, well, these are not the kind of songs that are going right now, but they're the ones coming out of me.

16:37I get in the studio and the record gets delivered to people and they say it sounds really fresh or just the kind of song we need right now. I have no idea how that happens. Serendevity is what it is. Is that true, Bob? I think he puts that so well, actually. He never was influenced by things that were going on around him in terms of fashion or musical direction or anything like that. And in fact, that very last record, it was, as Deb said, his family that coaxed him into the idea of writing some new songs for that final album. And the way that he eventually decided to do that, to cut off any kind of distraction from the outside world, He booked himself into a hotel for two or three weeks so that everything was done for him.

17:35Everything arrived on room service. He didn't have to think about anything other than being in this vacuum and writing very reflective songs. Because the last record, that's what it was. It was very much a reflection, wasn't it, Deb, of observations across his life and his feeling at that time. Yeah. And just to speak again to his humor, there's a lot of this hilarious story he tells about, you know, being in this hotel room free from distractions, being under pressure to write this album. And all he wanted was a cigarette because obviously he gave up smoking after he was diagnosed with cancer.

18:15But he said that the sort of desire to smoke never really went away. And there's a song on the album where he talks about when I get to heaven. and I was listening to an interview where the journalist said to him, were you thinking about death when you were writing this song? And he said, no, I was just thinking about that. Because there's a line in it that says I'm going to smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long when I get to heaven. And he says, no, it's not about death. I was just thinking about under what circumstances could I ever possibly smoke a cigarette again? Well, maybe in heaven.

18:46This is our cancer in heaven. Nicotine, Bob, and alcohol were both problems with him. Well, yes. I mean, there aren't that many people that have been through extended careers that have not, at some stage or another, gone into that world, if you like. I mean, a lot of people say that... Cliff Richard, perhaps. Well, yes. Well, that is very true, actually, come to think of it. There probably are one or two other people as well. But I mean, so many people say that alcohol aids writing, that it just loosens up, that the process of writing becomes a little bit easier. Words seem to flow a little bit more.

19:33So there's always the temptation there. John wasn't immune from that. He wasn't, don't get us wrong here. He was not a perfect person. And I don't think Debs and I would ever advocate that he was. But he was warm, empathetic, brilliantly talented. So, yeah, if he dabbled a little bit with a few too many glasses of whiskey from time to time, I'm very much prepared to forgive him that. I mentioned before that last bit of archive that his voice had changed. How had it changed and why had it changed, Deb? well after the neck cancer his vocal cords were damaged I think either by the the surgery or the radiation and I don't think he was physically capable of singing for a while after that he had to have a lot of recuperation time and I think it took him a while to get any kind of voice back and then obviously there was the the lung cancer and all of that really took him a while to recover from.

20:38I remember hearing him talk about how he had this personal trainer because he was so used to touring all the time. I think it was rare that he took a break from touring. So he wanted to get gig fit again. And he had this trainer who used to make him run up and down the stairs a lot of times and then immediately perform two songs to get him back to a state of fitness where he could actually perform again. He started up a record company, a simple process, he said in an interview in the mid-80s. He said, you go out into the desert, you put your hand on a rock, you say, I am a record company. Is it as simple as that?

21:13Well, if you're John Prine, then yes, it is. Yeah. Because you don't look at all the problems. It's not so much what's the worst that can happen. You start a record label, it means that you're able to express your own music in exactly the way that you want to and help support other artists that you love. Here from earlier this year is someone who knew him in his later years, singer-songwriter Siobhan May Kennedy. He wrote the template for independent artist, independent label, and yet he didn't even know he was doing that. He just did it because he's John Prine and he's the best human being you could possibly imagine and he you know he started his career on a handshake and it stayed like that John makes everyone from the guy that takes the trash out to Grammy winning and Oscar winning film stars he makes them all feel the same so the fact that he stayed an outsider he loved that yeah and he said I'll never forget him saying you know well that's why I called it oh boy records because you either think oh boy as in that's not good or oh boy you know um he just was one on his own for that he had a late success bob the last album he made turned out to be just about the most successful of his entire career suddenly he had a genuine big top 10 hit album on his hands and it did come at a time where it sounded different from almost everything else going on around it.

22:58And the word that probably sums that up most accurately is the word natural. He didn't seem to have written or chiseled them. They seemed to have just arrived from him in some way. And the simplicity of the setting of the songs, the production of the album, was so open and so lovely. In that way, that final record was the definition of country music. Three chords and the truth, that's what he was writing. The Tree of Forgiveness reached number five in 2018, but he died just two years later, aged 73, of complications caused by Covid. That same year, his wife Fiona talked to the Today podcast about his death and about how they first met.

23:43He was shy, which is the first thing I noticed about him and was surprising. and shy and gentle and unassuming. And he looked quite different from anybody I'd ever met before. So we sat, I mean, there was a lot of musicians in that bar that night and we all sat together all night playing music almost till morning. And next day, John came and took me out for lunch. He showed up at 11 o 'clock at my office. And of course, in all the years I've known him since, I now know that that was the most unusual thing for him to do, to get up and get all dressed and go to somebody's office at 11am and take them for lunch.

24:28So many tributes followed. Let me just quote one of them. He could make you laugh one moment and rip your heart open in the next. How, Deb, would you recall him today? such a difficult question you're just reminding me of how devastated i was when he passed away because like i say he by that point he almost felt like a personal friend um to i don't think i was prepared for how hard it would be to communicate why i like john prine so much you communicated it very well you did brilliantly seriously it was just great to listen to you He's really, really touching and very, very, very... Well, I mean, it was amazing.

25:10I was so looking forward to having you here because obviously you knew him and you met him. It's so amazing to have that perspective and to hear you talk about it as well, you know, because obviously I feel like you loved him as much as I did. I did. I do. Ask me that question again. Let me see if I can answer it specifically. I tell you what, I'll ask Bob first and then you. Okay. How, Bob, would you sum him up, recall, remember him today? With fantastic affection and an amazing regard for his strength. Maybe that's not a word we've used. We've said resilience. But you mentioned there his determination to play gigs, to tour.

25:54And right at the end, only a few weeks before he passed away, he wasn't really in any fit state to get up on stage. but he was determined to make a booking at the Red Rocks Festival, which is huge for country music and for the artists that are invited to take part. There was a strength about him that underpinned this beautiful natural warmth and energy that he had. Deb, if he were in the studio with us now listening, would he be pleased or embarrassed? He definitely wouldn't be embarrassed. I think he understood that he had a gift. He was just lighthearted and good-natured about it. I mean, I think he'd be accepting of the compliment.

26:36With your help, Deb, and with your help, Bob, I think we have put across to me what a wonderful person. So my thanks to Deb Grant, to Bob Harris and to John Prine. And thanks for listening. Goodbye.