'John Prine' by John Prine - Track-by-Track (50th Anniversary)

Julian Spivey Photo

by Julian Spivey
John Prine’s 1971 self-titled debut album is not only one of my all-time favorite albums, but also, I believe one of the most underrated albums of all-time and likely the greatest debut album of all-time.
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Today is the 50th anniversary of the release of John Prine.

From Maywood, Ill. Prine learned how to play the guitar when he was 14, attended Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music and served a stint in the U.S. Army in West Germany. After his time in the Army, he returned to Chicago where he took a job as a mailman and spent his free-time writing songs and then performing them as a club performer. It was performing in these clubs where he caught the eye of two soon-to-be very famous men – film critic Roger Ebert who’d write a rave review of one of his shows for the Chicago Sun-Times and songwriter Kris Kristofferson, just breaking out with songs like “Me & Bobby McGee,” “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” and “For the Good Times.”

The raves from these men helped get Prine a record deal with Atlantic Records and John Prine would be released on Sept. 23, 1971.

Rolling Stone magazine would review the record with: “This is a very good first album by a very good songwriter. Good songwriters are on the rise, but John Prine is differently good. His work demands some time and thought from the listener – he’s not out to write pleasant tunes, he wants to arrest the cursory listener and get attention for some important things he has to say and, thankfully, he says them without falling into the common trap of writing with overtones of self-importance or smugness. His melodies are excellent.”

In 2012 Rolling Stone would rank John Prine as the 452nd greatest album of all-time on its list of the top 500, but in the updated list just eight years later in 2020 it would climb all the way to 149th.

The fact that John Prine, the album, and John Prine, the songwriter, have been held in such high esteem by the Americana music community over the last decade-plus likely led to the album’s reconsideration and there’s no doubt Prine has been a large impact on such stars of today like Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell, Kacey Musgraves, Sturgill Simpson and many others.

Here is a track-by-track look at John Prine …

1. Illegal Smile
“Illegal Smile” is an interesting way to get into your debut album. It starts out with this quintessential folk finger picking on the guitar before going into quick depression with the lyric: “when I woke up this mornin’/things were lookin’ bad/seemed like total silence was the only friend I had” and then quickly into “a bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down and won” – the first display of Prine’s curious wit and wordplay on record. But our narrator has the key to escape reality – and the song goes into a chorus on what many listeners over the years believes to be a paean to marijuana. Prine at least once confessed the song wasn’t actually about smoking pot, telling Performing Songwriter “The song was not about smokin’ dope. It was more about how, ever since I was a child, I had this view of the world where I can find myself smiling at stuff nobody else was smiling at. But it was such a good anthem for dope smokers that I didn’t want to stop evert time I played it and make a disclaimer.” Smart move on his part. “Illegal Smile” is a nice way to enter John Prine. It’s nice and loose and followed by another nice and loose track before incredible seriousness takes way for a while.

2. Spanish Pipedream
“Spanish Pipedream,” which many will remember for the memorable chorus extolling listeners to blow up their televisions and throw away their newspapers, is fun and loose and tells the tale of a soldier meeting a stripper who gives him some of the best life advice you’ll ever hear. The song takes on a country twang with Leo LeBlanc’s nice pedal steel guitar playing throughout and certainly includes one of Prine’s most memorable choruses ever written. It makes for a great sing-along.

3. Hello in There
There are a few devastating masterpieces on John Prine that show Prine was a master lyricist and storyteller with empathy many years beyond his 24-years of age at the time of the album’s release and the “Hello in There” is the first example. “Hello in There” is the tale of an elderly couple lonely with retirement and their kids all having moved away or died in war. It begins with a beautiful 30-second guitar intro before getting into the couple’s story of their kids and then the desolation of the chorus: “Ya know that old trees just grow stronger/and old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day/old people just grow lonesome/waiting for someone to say, ‘hello in there, hello.’” It’s the specificity of the same old, same old life that just hits me like when the narrator calls up his old factory worker buddy and the only answer for “if he asks what’s knew” is “nothing, what’s with you, nothing much to do.” It’s a slice of life that rarely gets covered in music of any kind – the old and weary of this country who are just kind of wasting away and don’t have to do so – and it’s just mesmerizing to have come from someone younger than 25 years old. What’s truly amazing is Prine captures a similar feeling again on side two of his debut.

4. Sam Stone
I believe whole heartedly that “Hello in There” is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard, despite its incredible sadness, but it may not even be the most depressing track on side one of John Prine, as it’s immediately followed by “Sam Stone,” a tale of a war hero who comes home with a heroin addiction that ultimately ends his life. America was embroiled in the Vietnam War at the time of the release and “Sam Stone” is a stark tale of what was happening to so many of American’s fighting men when they returned home, often unpopular with fellow Americans for fighting in an unpopular war unwanted by many. It’s fitting that the track opens with a church-like organ from the legendary Bobby Emmons that really hits the dirge-like quality of the song. The final line of the chorus: “sweet songs never last too long on broken radios” will rip the heart right out of your chest. A Rolling Stone reader’s poll in 2014 ranked “Sam Stone” as the eighth saddest song of all-time (no. 1 on the list was Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven”).

5. Paradise
“Paradise,” which is probably the countriest and certainly bluegrassiest track on John Prine, is quite possibly the best known track on Prine’s debut album. It’s a bit peppier than the two excellent tracks that precede it in “Hello in There” and “Sam Stone,” but still a downer when listening to the lyrics. “Paradise” tells the toll that strip mining for coal took on Appalachia and essentially ruined the homeland of his ancestors. But with the incredibly catchy chorus of “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” the pain of the story goes down a bit easier.

6. Pretty Good
“Pretty Good” isn’t a track I always listen to when spinning John Prine, but I think it’s placement as the final track on side one of the record is crucial for helping bring the listener out of the emotional spiral that was the previous tracks. “Pretty Good” gets back to some of Prine’s sly wit that he started the album off with in “Illegal Smile” and “Spanish Pipedream.” The lyric “pretty good, not bad, I can’t complain/but actually everything is just about the same” isn’t a bad way to go about living your life.

7. Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore
Side two of John Prine begins with “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” which makes for a great bumper sticker slogan (though I see “blow up your TV” from “Spanish Pipedream” more often on them), a witty protest anthem of nationalism or over-patriotism in the style of stuff like Woody Guthrie or early Bob Dylan may have written, but with a little more sarcasm included. It was a popular track amidst the Vietnam War. I’m not sure how relevant it’s been in much of the half-century since it’s release, but I do have to say it got quite a few spins and in-car shouts from me during the last President’s term in office.

8. Far From Me
“Far From Me” is the breakup track of John Prine and, boy, it’s just as heartbreaking as Prine’s tales of elder loneliness, drug-addled heroes and the loss of Americana. Prine puts himself in the narrator’s shoes waiting on a small-town waitress finishing up her shift and every little thing about him getting on her every nerve, despite not even trying. It’s the chorus that really tears me up: “and the sky is black and still now/on the hill where the angels sing/ain’t it funny how an old broken bottle/looks just like a diamond ring/but it’s far, far from me.” The absolute most devastating lyric in the song though is: “we used to laugh together/and we’d dance to any old song/well, ya know, she stills laughs with me/but she waits just a second too long.” The song is the perfect encapsulation of a relationship ending and knowing there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

9. Angel from Montgomery
“Angel from Montgomery” is likely the greatest song off John Prine, but most of the album could easily be considered a “greatest hits” of John Prine which mind-boggling for a debut record. On “Angel from Montgomery” Prine’s narrator is probably a middle-aged woman (though she refers to herself as “old”) wanting to escape a boring, monotonous life. Again, Prine was merely 24-years old when this album was released, and he was writing life stories decades ahead of his time and capturing these moments and feelings with the deftness of literature’s best. “Angel from Montgomery” has some of my all-time favorite lyrics ever written, especially “if dreams were lightning and thunder were desire/this old house would’ve burned down a long time ago.” This quote is hanging above the entrance to a local music venue in Little Rock, Stickyz Rock ‘N’ Roll Chicken Shack, and I absolutely love that. I also really appreciate the verse: “how the hell can a person go to work in the morning/then come home in the evening and have nothing to say?” The whole song captures this mood of tedium that makes you feel for this character who desperately wants a reprieve. I believe Prine’s version to be the definitive one, but Bonnie Raitt released a version on her 1974 album Streetlights, that many heard first and associate more with her.   

10. Quiet Man
“Last Monday night I saw a fight between Wednesday and Thursday over Saturday night/Tuesday asked me what was going on, I said, ‘Sunday’s in the meadow and Friday’s in the corn.” I don’t have a damn clue what that means but it’s just so absolutely John Prine and I can’t help but smile when hearing it. As a writer I fully believe that sometimes other writers, especially songwriters or poets will just put words and phrases together because they sound fun or nice or beautiful together and I think “Quiet Man” may have been one of those moments for Prine. Maybe there’s some deep meaning there, but I don’t know that I really want to know it.

11. Donald and Lydia
“Donald and Lydia” is such an interestingly written song. It’s kind of written like a play where the playwright sets up the characters one by one and when Prine sings the song he begins each portrait of the characters with their name and then describes them to the audience. The titular characters are both lonely people seemingly meant for each other, but mostly just fantasize about loving each other. I’m honestly struggling to think of another song I’ve ever heard that’s set up quite like “Donald and Lydia.”

12. Six O’Clock News
From the first time I listened to John Prine when I was in college (more than a decade ago now) until recently when I feel it’s been surpassed by both “Angel from Montgomery” and “Hello in There” my favorite track was “Six O’Clock News,” which seems beloved by Prine fans, but not necessarily a go-to favorite of many. I think as a young twentysomething I was mostly drawn to the macabre, dark side of a tale of a young man who kills himself upon finding out he’s illegitimated. I still love the song – particularly Prine’s uber-twangy take on the vocals – but I think some of the more mature mastery of lyrics on those other songs have led to it falling backward a couple of spots. I’m not sure if the suicide is realistic, but the boy in the song was based on a neighborhood child friend of Prine’s who eventually found out who he thought was his oldest sister was, in fact, his mother.

13. Flashback Blues
“Flashback Blues” is a fun little ditty to end John Prine. There’s not a whole lot to be found about the song online, but in her original December 1971 review of the album for Rolling Stone Karin Berg said: “’Flashback Blues’ is an up-tempo farewell lament that’s a poetic tumble of keen nostalgia, insights to loneliness and isolation, the pain of seeing oneself in emotional nakedness and the running ahead of that pain – but it sometimes catches up.” Damn. Even when Prine’s up-tempo, it’s thought-provoking and a bit down. “Don’t you know that I hate to leave here/so long babe, I got the flashback blues” is a pretty great way to end one of the all-time greatest albums though. 

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