John Prine and his guitar, Flocked wallpaper sold separately.
John's Prine's upcoming appearance at the Dodge Theater in Phoenix is not to promote anything but the continued propagation of John Prine’s lifeblood —singing and performing for the people, which he clearly still loves. Our nation's Poet Laureate called John Prine a "national treasure," but as his recent spate of brilliant albums prove, he's far from being a buried treasure.
I had the privilege of interviewing John Prine for azcentral and here's some of our conversation that wasn't included due to space requirements. Here's Prine on spinning stages, songwriting partners, working with Mac Wiseman, Billy Bob Thornton and major record label deals.
Phoenix is a market a lot of touring acts just skip over but you’re playing here pretty consistently.
Prine: I wouldn’t skip Phoenix. I love coming here. It’s a great little town. It’s got everything.
Normally when you play here, you’ve been at the Celebrity Theater with the spinning stage. Did you ever have any bad experiences playing in the round?
Prine: I like the Celebrity. Usually I don’t like playing in the round, I feel like a birthday cake. I played a place in Houston that’s made more for theater so they had monitors but you went past the monitors, they didn’t move but the stage did. I tried to tell the guy that owned the place that it was like playing on the back of a truck in a parade. And every two block I get to hear myself. And he just looked at me like I was crazy.
How’s you get through that? Did you just sing extra loud?
Prine: I just pretended I was somewhere else. I picked a previous concert from another year and did that (laughs).
When you’re touring without a new album, are you testing new stuff out on the road?
Prine: I do that. You'll see if a song feels to you that it needs work or if the bridge is in the right place, like crossing the river at the right time. I know when I got something-I know when I‘ve got a John Prine song. And I also know when I got something different that the crowd that comes to hear me, it’s gonna be very different for them, I got a pretty idea whether they're gonna like that. Sometimes you’ve gotta be a little careful and tell them a story to get them into it (laughs). And sometimes. a new song won’t go over so good live and you get it in the studio and it will be one of the better songs on the record.
You’ve been recording a lot of other people’s material the last few years, those in-between albums like “In Spite of Ourselves.” Do you pick songs that feel like something you’d write?
Prine: These are songs I’ve been singing more or less to myself over the years. I recorded the album “Standard Songs For Average People” with Mac Wiseman because they were songs I wanted to hear Mac sing. He was really happy to be asked to sing those standards because all people want to hear him sing is bluegrass. And he’s a big fan of pop music and he cut his teeth on Bing Crosby and I can tell by his voice that he’s a crooner. I’m not but I’ve got my own record company (Oh Boy records) so I can do what I want and that’s why I do those kind of records in-between my regular records. I figure why have a record company if you can’t make records the kind that you want. And I was never any good at outguessing the public anyway. Why should I make money for anybody but myself?
With you heading your own record label Oh Boy, it’s come full circle to the days where you got signed and you had people who were actually into music running a label, like Jerry Wexler at Atlantic. Someone who actually has a hand in making music.
Prine: I was there when it all changed. That was part of the reason I started Oh Boy. When I was signed to Atlantic, I had a ten record deal. I was supposed to deliver two albums a year of fresh material. Well that all sounded great to me when I was a mailman. I was happy to be on that label. Jerry Wexler was hands-on, he put me in the studio with producer Arif Mardin and Wexler would be listening to stuff as it went along and I didn’t feel that (attention) after he left. So they let me out of my contract but it cost me. I never made a dime for them but it cost me. I owed them seven albums so I had to pay up. I stayed within the Warners Group, Asylum signed me and after that I've been independent ever since. I started my label in ’84 and people told me I was committing suicide. They told me “you can’t do that.” I know I have an audience and I want to go directly to them and then whatever I get on top of that is cream on the top.
You say people don’t come to you to ask you to write songs for them but you did write "In Spite of Ourselves" for a movie (Daddy and Them, in 2002).
Prine: Yeah, Billy Bob Thornton asked me to write that but I wrote it in less time than it takes me to sing it, (laughs). Luckily it was a song I wanted to sing myself.
You did a lot early Sixties country favorites on the “In Spite of Ourselves” CD. like “Backstreet Affair.” That’s what’s lacking in country now. Cheating songs! Everything seems hunky dory in a modern country song. Everybody's got a job and a truck.
Prine: It all goes back to who’s running the record companies when the corporate guys took over. They figured out a way to make hits that had nothing to do with music. Get someone who looks good on a video and teach him to sing. And get people to write songs for him that sound like pop or rock and roll songs.
You’ve written with some heavyweights in the pop field, like Donnie Fritts who's written for soul artists as well as country, and Roger Cook, who did all those 60s and 70s hits for British groups.
Prine: Exactly. Like Roger, we’re best of friends. He’s just one of the people I met through my association with Cowboy Jack Clemens. There was this whole gang of people who came from all different backgrounds and Jack was the force that brought them all together. Me and Roger shoot snookers or play dominoes. Roger’s written hundreds of songs but you’ll never see his name alone on a song. He wrote all that stuff with Roger Greenway like “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” and “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress.” It was just like a Lennon and McCartney arrangement. Roger’s still that way today. He’ll come to me with a song that just needs another verse and a bridge and say “I can't do anything with this.” And I say “Jeez the thing is almost a tree.” If I like a song, I can get a real clear picture of what it needs. If something is already there and just not some coloring or shading I like to do that. And we also have stuff we start from scratch. But it’s nothing I look at as a job because he’s such a good buddy. We just come to a table with “Uhh, you got any ideas?” I know guys that just like to write from titles. Then if you get excited within the first half hour you might have something but if it gets to be too much of a grind, I’d just rather get a hot dog.
Do you have a list of titles you haven’t been able to write a song around?
Prine: I’ve had this idea for a song for 25 years trying to write a song about the Vulcan in Birmingham Alabama. There’s this big statue overlooking the city. I read the history about it. They used it for advertising, they put overalls on him. He’s a Greek god. They put a real light on the statue’s torch and if there was a traffic fatality the light would turn red. And I thought wow, Can you imagine a mother sitting up looking out of her picture window seeing that light turn red and wondering if it was her son. A little movie starts going in my head. I’ve been trying to write this song for years, it’s not the kind of song I want to bring t the table with somebody else so I’m thinking now I’ve got two songs going. And that’s what’s stopping me. I’m trying to tell two different stories. It’s called The Iron Man From Birmingham. It’s an historical narrative like "Sink the Bismarck."
Where was the first place you played "Angel From Montgomery" live?
Prine: Back in Chicago. I wrote that in ’69. Bonnie Koloc was the first to record it.
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