COVER STORY
John Prine This Old Man Is Goin’ to Town BY HOLLY GLEASON John Prine stepped over the monitor at the Carefree Theater on Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach, looked down, winked, said, “Hi, Holly!” and proceeded to laugh. He was power-strumming “LuLu Walls,” and he was fired up. Something about that song got him bashing hard, a noted contrast to the ruminative sketches of the human condition that had pulled me to him as a barely teenager. Having just taken a full-time job at the Palm Beach Post, my interview for the Miami Herald hadn’t run. He hated interviews, I’d been told, but we’d ended up talking a couple hours about life, old school Nashville, listening to WSM-AM, Midwestern values and Mr. Peabody’s Coal Train. He had a big sense of humor about being “John Prine,” an object of obsession for enough to keep his lifestyle afloat, but not exactly a household name. After the show in that old movie theater, we sat on a couch, where he made the pitch for A Tribute to Steve Goodman, a Chicago-folkie-grounded tribute to his best friend, who’d died. Willie Nelson just had a No. 1 with “City of New Orleans” to help make sure the three Goodman girls got their college education paid for: Prine was doing his part to maintain the legacy of his running buddy. That was the thing about John: He was never really in it for himself. Over the years, he’d be in all kinds of places, doing all kinds of things, but mostly, he liked to stand back and grin, watching people and taking in all that joy. Wasn’t long before John got a great idea. His younger manager was an overly serious, somewhat awkward type. Maybe he’d play a little cupid, do what had to be done. Our first date could’ve been funded by John’s American Express card, except I wanted to go to Krystal. “Keep her,” he advised when he heard where we’d had dinner. And so, barely much more than a kid, I started spending so much time on the road with the dark headed songwriter, Garry Fish, his Sancho Panza tour manager, and Dan Einstein, my soon-to-be third ex-fiancee, Fish joked, “We saw you more than our wives those years.” It was Wolf Trap in the spring when the heat soaked through John’s jacket and left him in a clinging soggy tank top. You could literally wring the night air out. There to write the bio for German Afternoons, I was standing in the wings, watching the zealous fans pressing into the stage, reaching up for him like the masses in “Tommy.” I was terrified. Turning to Fish, I half-squeaked, “Do something!
They’re going to hurt him.” “Hurt him? They love him,” came the response. “Look...” They did. The sold out crowd rocked gently as they leaned over the front of the stage, singing the songs softly when it was a ballad like “Sam Stone” or “Hello In There,” more raucous for “Blow Up Your TV” or “Illegal Smile.” It was a revival, but also a moment to reconnect with who they were. That was the magic: who you were, as you are. Enough, plenty, seen for the cracks and broken places and loved almost more for them. Still, John wasn’t pious. He’d take over the Bridal Suite at the Peabody Hotel and have three and four day poker parties, breaking only to have cocktails and watch the ducks march in the lobby. One night, flown in from LA on a record company junket, I turned up super-late, thinking they’d still be rocking, only to be met by a sleepy-eyed Prine in striped pajamas, hair akimbo, just shaking his head. Scanning my companions, he chuckled, admonishing, “Choose wisely” as he shut the door. When I got fired from The Palm Beach Post — accused of being on the take from Southern Pacific and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, as well as sleeping with Sam Kinison — John decided Dan and I needed to go to Europe. Passport packed, we embarked on a whirlwind tour of folk festivals across England and Belgium; touring the country in a vintage Daimler, we took in the countryside, realized how loneliness, emotional scars, alienation and indignation wrapped in humor were universal. It was a magical trip, except for the part where my eyes wouldn’t stop leaking. Standing in baggage claim in Belgium, John first brought chocolate only to receive more tears; then flowers and more
tears; finally, a little stewardess doll, and yes, even more tears. The tour was renamed the Pack, Unpack & Cry Tour. But that was John: He’d never get mad. He knew none of what was said was true — “my God,” he teased, “the alimony alone, they couldn’t have afforded you!” — but he hated seeing the pain. Whatever it took, he was my Huckleberry. And I wasn’t alone. There was nothing like being charged with taking John to Dan Tana’s for dinner. Old Hollywood kind of hang, white linen pasta and all sorts of characters hanging around. Tucked into the elbow of Santa Monica Boulevard, he loved the thick darkness that almost swallowed the candlelight whole. Laughing, we’d talk about records, gossip about people we knew, sometimes wait for Dan to get off work. Occasionally run into someone he knew. You never knew who, only realize when you saw legs that weren’t attached to a waiter at the edge of your table. It was that thing he had that pulled people to him. Twice I looked up, and — oh, crap! — it’s Bob Dylan, who would sit down, and just start talking.
PAGE 8 | April 15 - 29, 2020 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
Part of what made John so precious was his ability to love all without bias. People were good or not his kind. When Dan and I were getting to the end, we made the trip to Dublin for a merging of musical worlds TV taping called “Sessions.” Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Marty Stuart, the O’Kanes, Rosie Flores, Flaco Jimenez and Guy Clark were part of the American contingent — and it was a week of entirely too much everything. Dan had promised not to work, and immediately forgot the promise. To make it up to me, I was asked if I wanted to visit Windmill Studios with John. Prine being friends with Cowboy Jack Clement had entre with U2’s people. Windmill was their studio. I said, “Yes, of course,” and got to be there when John saw Fiona for the first time. It’s funny how life works. John was trying to coax back Rachel Peer, his then-wife who’d taken off and had surfaced in Dublin, actually playing bass for his taping. I hated the idea. The pretty dark haired studio manager with the great laugh seemed to be so much more right. Two nights later in the deepest hours, I spied them tucked into a banquette at the bar holding hands. Dan and I wouldn’t make it, but John and Fiona somehow managed to transcend an ocean, the road and his idiosyncratic life. But in the inbetween, there are so many polaroids of still life with John. Tracking up in the hills above Sunset with Howie Epstein, pushing
