Life has a way of not going the way you planned. In February of 2020, John Prine told Tom Piazza, a musician and writer he'd been friends with for a couple of years, that he he was ready to work on writing a memoir. The weekend of February 27th, 2020, Prine and Piazza sat down with a tape recorder for what they figured was the first of a series of discussions about the book. Unfortunately, there were no follow up sessions. In March of 2020, the Covid virus shut down the world. On March 26th, John Prine was admitted to the ICU with COVID symptoms. He passed away on April 7th, 2020.
Remarkably, Tom Piazza took not only that too brief interview and combined it with his recollections of their also too brief two year friendship as well as interviews with other folks who knew and loved John Prine and has crafted a book that is not so much a memoir of a dead man, but something more powerful, a book that feels like the living spirit of the man himself. Reading the book feels like hanging out with John Prine, something that is a very worthwhile thing to do.
John is a great story teller and boy does he tell great stories in this book. And folks who know John tell great stories about John. John tells about meeting Bob Dylan at Carly Simon's apartment in 1971. John's first record isn't out yet, it's still two months away from release. So John is the new kid but he's hanging out with Kris Kristopherson and Steve Goodman at Carly's place and Bob Dylan shows up. Bob has a new song "George Jackson" which he plays, and Goodman, who's a smart Aleck, leans in and says "That's great, Bob, but it ain't no 'Masters of War.'" Bob is cool and doesn't smack Goodman (something I probably would've done) but then Prine to kind of defuse the tension starts playing "Far from Me" one of his (Prine's) new songs and Bob joins in after the second chorus! Jerry Wexler at Atlantic had sent an advance copy of the record to Dylan. Another buddy there, Eddie Olson, (Carly Simon must've had a huge apartment) says "Hey, Bob, there's some people back in Chicago that think John Prine sounds a lot like you. What do you think?" Bob looks at Eddie and then looks at Prine and says "The first time I heard your record I thought you'd swallowed a Jew's harp." Of course Prine cracks up as he recounts this tale.
Prine is always telling stories, like the time Sam Cooke entered a Sam Cooke sing-alike contest because he and his touring band needed gas money. The first prize was fifty bucks. They came in second and won a set of jello molds!
But the book is much more than just fun anecdotes about famous people, it's about John Prine being in the moment, whether he's buying shoes, eating hot dogs (John loved hot dogs), hanging out and loving life. John Prine connects with people in a way that is made vividly clear in the pages of this book. Prine doesn't try to direct his life, he's too busy living it.
Piazza copes with the grief we fans share at the loss of John Prine by giving us a book that feels like the conversation with our friend is ongoing. We'll always have the songs and the knowing smile. This book is like one more road trip with the top down, the radio playing an old song and John saying "You know, this reminds me of..."
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