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Meat Loaf 1/2022

Meat Loaf (74) was born Marvin Lee Aday in Dallas, Texas, on September 27, 1947, the son of Wilma Artie, a schoolteacher and Orvis Wesley Aday, a former police officer who went into business selling a homemade cough remedy with his wife and a friend under the name of the Griffin Grocery Company. Marvin, who later changed his name to Michael, stated in an interview that when he was born, he was “bright red and stayed that way for days” and that his father said he looked like “nine pounds of ground chuck”, and convinced hospital staff to put the name “Meat” on his crib. He was later called “M.L.” in reference to his initials, but when his weight increased, his seventh-grade classmates referred to him as “Meat Loaf”, referring to his 5-foot-2-inch (157 cm), 240-pound stature. He also attributed the nickname to an incident where, after he stepped on a football coach’s foot, the coach yelled “Get off my foot, you hunk of meatloaf!”

Meat Loaf’s father would binge-drink alcohol for days at a time, a habit he started when he was medically discharged from the U.S. Army during World War II after being wounded by fragments from a mortar shell. Meat Loaf often accompanied his mother in driving to the bars in Dallas to look for his father, also quite often staying with his grandmother. He attended church and Bible study every Sunday.

He was 16 years old on November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That morning, Meat Loaf had seen the President when he arrived at Dallas Love Field. Later, after hearing of Kennedy’s death, he and a friend drove to Parkland Hospital where he witnessed Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, covered in her husband’s blood, getting out of the car that brought her to the hospital.

In 1965, Meat Loaf graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School, having appeared in school stage productions such as Where’s Charley? and The Music Man. He played high school football as a defensive tackle. After attending college at Lubbock Christian College, he transferred to North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas).

In 1967, when Meat Loaf was 19 years old, his mother died of cancer, and his father lunged at him with a knife after falsely accusing the teen of having girls in his bedroom. Meat Loaf used the money his mother left him to rent an apartment in Dallas, where he isolated for three and a half months, at which time a friend found him. Soon after, he went to the airport and caught the next flight to Los Angeles.

Meat Loaf intentionally gained 60 pounds to fail his physical examination for the Vietnam War draft. Despite this strategy, he still received his notice to appear before his local draft board, but chose to ignore it.

Meat Loaf rise to music stardom was not a straight shot, primarily because his musical talents were distracted by his performing arts abilities. In Los Angeles however, Meat Loaf formed his first band, Meat Loaf Soul. His voice and being at the right time in the right spot, resulted in the band receiving several recording contracts. Meat Loaf Soul’s first gig was in Huntington Beach, California in 1968 at the Cave, opening for Van Morrison’s band Them and Question Mark and the Mysterians. Meat Loaf later described his early days in the music industry as being treated like a “circus clown.” The band underwent several changes of lead guitarists, changing the name of the band each time, to names including Popcorn Blizzard and Floating Circus. As Floating Circus, they opened for the Who, the Fugs, the Stooges, MC5, the Grateful Dead, and the Grease Band. Their regional success led them to release a single, “Once Upon a Time”, backed with “Hello”. His voice attracted attention and he was invited to join the Los Angeles production of Hippie era classic the musical Hair.

With the publicity generated from Hair, Meat Loaf accepted an invitation by Motown, in Detroit. In addition to appearing as “Mother” and “Ulysses S. Grant” at Detroit’s Vest Pocket Theatre, he recorded the vocals with fellow Hair performer Shaun “Stoney” Murphy on an album of songs written and selected by the Motown production team. The album, titled Stoney & Meatloaf (with Meatloaf spelled as one word), was released in September 1971 and included the single “What You See Is What You Get”; it reached number 36 on the Best Selling Soul Singles chart and number 71 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Meat Loaf and Stoney toured with Jake Wade and the Soul Searchers, opening for Richie Havens, the Who, the Stooges, Bob Seger, Alice Cooper, and Rare Earth. Meat Loaf left Motown soon after the label replaced his and Stoney’s vocals from the one song he liked, “Who Is the Leader of the People?” with new vocals by Edwin Starr. He moved to Freeland, Michigan for a year and was the opening act at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom 80 times.

In December 1972, Meat Loaf was in the original off-Broadway production of Rainbow at the Orpheum Theatre in New York. After the tour, Meat Loaf rejoined the cast of Hair, this time at a Broadway theater. After he hired an agent, he auditioned for the Public Theater’s production of More Than You Deserve. During the audition, Meat Loaf met Jim Steinman. He sang a Stoney and Meat Loaf favorite of his, “(I’d Love to Be) As Heavy as Jesus”, and subsequently got the part of Rabbit, a maniac that blows up his fellow soldiers so they can “go home.” Ron Silver and Fred Gwynne were also in the show. In the summer between the show’s workshop production (April 1973) and full production (November 1973 – January 1974), Meat Loaf appeared in a Shakespeare in the Park production of As You Like It with Raul Julia and Mary Beth Hurt.

In late 1973, Meat Loaf was cast in the original L.A. Roxy cast of The Rocky Horror Show, playing the parts of both Eddie and Dr. Scott. The success of the musical led to the filming of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in which Meat Loaf played only Eddie while Jonathan Adams was cast as Dr. Scott, a decision Meat Loaf said made the movie not as good as the musical.

About the same time, Meat Loaf and Steinman started work on Bat Out of Hell. Meat Loaf convinced Epic Records to shoot music videos for four songs, “Bat Out of Hell”, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”, “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth”, and “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” and convinced Lou Adler, the producer of Rocky Horror, to run the “Paradise” video as a trailer to the movie. During his recording of the soundtrack for Rocky Horror, Meat Loaf recorded two more songs: “Stand by Me” (a Ben E. King cover), and “Clap Your Hands.” They remained unreleased for a decade, until 1984, when they appeared as B-sides to the “Nowhere Fast” single.

In 1976, Meat Loaf recorded lead vocals for Ted Nugent’s album Free-for-All when regular Nugent lead vocalist Derek St. Holmes temporarily quit the band. Meat Loaf sang lead on five of the album’s nine tracks. That same year, Meat Loaf appeared in his final theatrical show in New York City, the short-lived Broadway production of Gower Champion’s rock musical Rockabye Hamlet. It closed two weeks into its initial run.

Even though Meat Loaf and Steinman started working on Bat Out of Hell earlier in the 70s, they did not get serious about it until the end of 1974. Meat Loaf then decided for the time being at least, to leave theater and concentrate exclusively on music. Meat Loaf was cast as an understudy for John Belushi in The National Lampoon Show. It was at the Lampoon show that Meat Loaf met Ellen Foley, the co-star who sang “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and “Bat Out of Hell” with him on the album Bat Out of Hell.

Meat Loaf and Steinman spent time seeking a record deal; however, their approaches were rejected by each record company, because their songs did not fit any specific recognized music industry style. Todd Rundgren, under the impression that they already had a record deal, agreed to produce the album as well as play lead guitar along with other members of Rundgren’s band Utopia and Max Weinberg. They then shopped the record around, but they still had no takers until Steve Popovich’s Cleveland International Records took a chance, releasing Bat Out of Hell in October 1977.

Meat Loaf and Steinman formed the band Neverland Express to tour in support of Bat Out of Hell. Their first gig was opening for Cheap Trick in Chicago. Meat Loaf gained national exposure as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live on March 25, 1978. Host Christopher Lee introduced him with a groan worthy joke. Later that year in his enthusiasm, Meat Loaf jumped off a stage in Ottawa, Ontario, breaking his leg. He finished the tour performing in a wheelchair.

Bat Out of Hell sold an estimated 43 million copies globally, including 15 million in the United States, making it one of the 5 best-selling albums of all time, notwithstanding that Rolling Stone Mag placed it only 301 on their list of 500 Best Rock Albums.

In 1979, Steinman started to work on Bad for Good, the intended follow-up to 1977’s Bat Out of Hell. During that time, a combination of touring, drugs and exhaustion had caused Meat Loaf to lose his voice. Without a singer, and pressured by the record company, Steinman decided that he should sing on Bad for Good himself. While Steinman worked on Bad for Good, Meat played the role of Travis Redfish in the movie Roadie until his singing voice returned. Steinman then wrote a new album for Meat Loaf, Dead Ringer, which was released in September 1981. Steinman had written five new songs which, in addition to the track “More Than You Deserve” (sung by Meat Loaf in the stage musical of the same name) and a reworked monolog, formed the album Dead Ringer, which was produced by Meat Loaf and Stephan Galfas, with backing tracks produced by Todd Rundgren, Jimmy Iovine, and Steinman. In 1976, Meat Loaf appeared on the track “Keeper Keep Us”, from the Intergalactic Touring Band’s self-titled album. The song “Dead Ringer for Love” was the pinnacle of the album, and launched him to even greater success. While it failed to chart in the US, it reached No. 5 in the United Kingdom and stayed in the UK Singles Chart for 19 weeks. Cher provided the lead female vocals in the song.

On December 5, 1981, Meat Loaf and the Neverland Express were the musical guests for Saturday Night Live where he and former fellow Rocky Horror Picture Show actor Tim Curry performed a skit depicting a One-Stop Rocky Horror Shop. Also on the show, Curry performed “The Zucchini Song” and Meat Loaf & the Neverland Express performed “Bat Out of Hell” and “Promised Land.”

Following a dispute with his former songwriter Jim Steinman, Meat Loaf was contractually obliged to release a new album, resulting in Midnight at the Lost and Found, released in May 1983.

Steinman had wanted equal billing on the album’s title; he wanted it to be called “Jim Steinman presents…” or “Jim and Meat”, or vice versa. For marketing reasons, the record company wished to make ‘Meat Loaf’ the recognizable name. As a compromise, the words “Songs by Jim Steinman” appear relatively prominently on the cover. The singer believes that this was probably the beginning of their “ambivalent relationship”.

According to Meat Loaf, Steinman had given the songs “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” to Meat Loaf for this album. However, Meat Loaf’s record company did not want him to sing Steinman’s songs, saying that nobody wanted to hear them. (hiss record company just refused to pay for Steinman). The joke was on them as Bonnie Tyler’s version of “Eclipse” and Air Supply’s version of “Making Love” topped the charts together, holding No. 1 and No. 2 for a period during 1983. Meat Loaf is credited with having been involved in the writing of some of the tracks on the album, including the title track, “Midnight at the Lost and Found” but Meat would later admit, he was not much of a songwriter and did not like the songs he had written for the album.

Poor money management as well as some 45 lawsuits totaling US$80 million in disputed claims, including some from Steinman, resulted in Meat Loaf filing for personal bankruptcy in 1983. The bankruptcy resulted in Meat Loaf losing the rights to his songs, although he received royalties for Bat Out of Hell in 1997. For the next several years Meat Loaf continued to churn out music, including albums like Bad Attitude (1985) and Blind Before I Stop (1986) to mixed results. But the hardworking singer continued to tour, (annual World Tours throughout the 80s), which kept him afloat..

In 1984, Meat Loaf went to England, where he felt increasingly at home, to record the album Bad Attitude; it was released that year. It features two songs by Steinman, both previously recorded, “Nowhere Fast” and “Surf’s Up.” The American release on RCA Records was in April 1985 and features a slightly different track list, as well as alternate mixes for some songs. The title track features a duet with the Who’s lead singer Roger Daltrey. It was a minor success with a few commercially successful singles, the most successful being “Modern Girl”. In 1985, Meat Loaf took part in some comedy sketches in the UK with Hugh Laurie. He also tried stand-up comedy, appearing several times in Connecticut.

Blind Before I Stop was released in 1986 by Arista Records. It features production, mixing, and general influence by German pop producer Frank Farian. Meat Loaf was involved in the composition of three of the songs on the album and performed “Thrashin” for the soundtrack of the 1986 skateboarding film Thrashin’ , starring Josh Brolin.

Meat Loaf (L) and Jim Steinman (R)

Following the success of Meat Loaf’s touring in the 1980s, he and Steinman began work during December 1990 on Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell; the album was released in September 1993. The immediate success of Bat Out of Hell II resulted in the sale of over 15 million copies, and the single “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” reached number one in 28 countries. In March 1994, at the 36th Annual Grammy Awards, Meat Loaf won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo for “I’d Do Anything for Love.” This song stayed at No. 1 in the UK chart for seven consecutive weeks. The single featured a female vocalist who was credited only as “Mrs. Loud.” Mrs. Loud was later identified as Lorraine Crosby, a performer from England. Meat Loaf promoted the song with American vocalist Patti Russo, who performed lead female vocals on tour with him. 

In 1995, Meat Loaf released his seventh studio album, Welcome to the Neighborhood. The album went platinum in the United States and the United Kingdom. It included three singles that hit the top 40, including “I’d Lie for You (And That’s the Truth)” (which reached No. 13 in the United States and No. 2 in the UK) and “Not a Dry Eye in the House” (which reached No. 7 in the UK chart). I’d Lie for You (And That’s the Truth) was a duet with Patti Russo, who by then had been touring with Meat Loaf and singing on his albums since 1993. Of the twelve songs on the album, two are written by Steinman. Both are cover versions, the “Original Sin” from Pandora’s Box’s Original Sin album and “Left in the Dark” first appeared on Steinman’s own Bad for Good as well as the 1984 album Emotion by Barbra Streisand. His other singles, “I’d Lie for You (And That’s the Truth)” and “Not a Dry Eye in the House”, were written by Diane Warren.

In 1998, Meat Loaf released The Very Best of Meat Loaf. The album featured three new songs co-written by Steinman – two with Andrew Lloyd Webber and one with Don Black, “Is Nothing Sacred”, released as a single. The single version of this song is a duet with Patti Russo, whereas the album version is a solo song by Meat Loaf.

In 2003, Meat Loaf released his album Couldn’t Have Said It Better. For only the third time in his career, he released an album without any songs written by Steinman. The album was in comparison a minor commercial success worldwide and reached No. 4 on the UK Albums Chart, but the accompanied sellout world tour to promote the album and some of Meat Loaf’s best selling singles, was a financial juggernaut.

Steinman had registered the phrase “Bat Out of Hell” as a trademark in 1995. In May 2006, he sued Steinman and his manager in federal District Court in Los Angeles, seeking $50 million and an injunction against Steinman’s use of the phrase. Steinman and his representatives attempted to block the album’s release. An agreement was reached in July 2006. Denying reports in the press over the years of a rift between Meat Loaf and Steinman, in an interview with Dan Rather, he stated that he and Steinman never stopped talking, and that the lawsuits reported in the press were between lawyers and managers, and not between Meat Loaf and Steinman.

“I consider him to be one of my best friends, ” Meat Loaf said, of Steinman. “But the real thing is about managers. So, really, I didn’t sue Jim Steinman. I sued his manager.”

His recording career included the following albums: Bat Out of Hell/ 1977 (43 million copies sold) – Dead Ringer/ 1981 – Midnight at the Lost and Found/ 1983 – Bad Attitude/ 1984 – Blind Before I Stop/ 1986 – Bat Out Of Hell II/ 1993 – Welcome to the Neighbourhood/ 1995 – Couldn’t Have Said It Better/2003 – Bat Out of Hell III/ 2006 (Certified Gold) – Hang Cool Teddy Bear/2010 – Hell In A Handbasket/ 2011 – Braver Than We Are/ 2016. He sold more than 100 million records during his 54-year career, and his first Bat Out Of Hell album, released in 1977, spent more than 10 years in the Official Albums Charts. But he wasn’t restricted to music. He has no less than 108 acting credits to his name, including the Oscar-nominated Fight Club, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, ‘Focus’,  Wayne’s World and the 1997 Spice Girls film, Spice World. Actually more than Meryl Streep or Will Smith.

A thoroughly complicated man, Meat Loaf was an extroverted introvert, suffering from social anxiety, religious, opinionated, politically divergent. He was a vegetarian for 11 years, despite carrying the name “Meat Loaf”. The combination of all these traits turned him into the perfect mouthpiece for Jim Steinman’s musical creationism.

At times they couldn’t stand each other’s guts and turned against their nature, but when they ran their output through the same musical cylinders, they mesmerized the world. When Jim Steinman died from liver failure  on April 19, 2021, Meat Loaf was not far behind.

He died on January 20, 2022, most likely as a result from Covid-19 in Brentwood, Tennessee, ironically enough the heart of country music. He was 74.

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John Prine 4/2020

John Prine (73) was born on October 10, 1946 and raised in Maywood, Illinois. Prine was the son of William Mason Prine, a tool-and-die maker, and Verna Valentine (Hamm), a homemaker, both originally from Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. In summers, they would go back to visit family near Paradise, Kentucky. Prine started playing guitar at age 14, taught by his brother, David. He attended classes at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, and graduated from Proviso East High School in Maywood, Illinois.

He was drafted into the United States Army during the Vietnam War, serving as a vehicle mechanic in West Germany, before becoming a U.S. Postal Service mailman for five years leading up to  beginning his musical career in Chicago.

“I likened the mail route to being in a library without any books. You just had time to be quiet and think, and that’s where I would come up with a lot of songs,” Prine said later.

While Prine was delivering mail, he began to sing his songs (often first written in his head on the mail route) at open mic nights at the Fifth Peg on Armitage Avenue in Chicago. The bar was a gathering spot for nearby Old Town School of Folk Music teachers and students. Prine was initially a spectator, reluctant to perform, but eventually did so in response to a “You think you can do better?” comment made to him by another performer. After his first open mic, he was offered paying gigs. In 1970, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert heard Prine by chance at the Fifth Peg and wrote his first printed review, “Singing Mailman Who Delivers A Powerful Message In A Few Words”

Roger Ebert Review:

Through no wisdom of my own but out of sheer blind luck, I walked into the Fifth Peg, a folk club on West Armitage, one night in 1970 and heard a mailman from Westchester singing. This was John Prine.  He sang his own songs. That night I heard “Sam Stone,” one of the great songs of the century. And “Angel from Montgomery.” And others. I wasn’t the music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, but I went to the office and wrote an article. And that, as fate decreed, was the first review Prine ever received.

While “digesting Reader’s Digest” in a dirty book store, John Prine tells us in one of his songs, a patriotic citizen came across one of those little American flag decals. He stuck it on his windshield and liked it so much he added flags from the gas station, the bank and the supermarket, until one day he blindly drove off the road and killed himself. St. Peter broke the news: “Your flag decal won’t get you into heaven anymore; It’s already overcrowded from your dirty little war.”

Lyrics like this are earning John Prine one of the hottest underground reputations in Chicago these days. He’s only been performing professionally since July, he sings at the out-of-the-way Fifth Peg, 858 W. Armitage, and country-folk singers aren’t exactly putting rock out of business. But Prine is good.

He appears on stage with such modesty he almost seems to be backing into the spotlight. He sings rather quietly, and his guitar work is good, but he doesn’t show off. He starts slow. But after a song or two, even the drunks in the room begin to listen to his lyrics. And then he has you.

He does a song called “The Great Society Conflict Veteran’s Blues,” for example, that says more about the last 20 years in America than any dozen adolescent acid-rock peace dirges. It’s about a guy named Sam Stone who fought in Korea and got some shrapnel in his knee. But the morphine eased the pain, and Sam Stone came home “with a Purple Heart and a monkey on his back.” That’s Sam Stone’s story, but the tragedy doesn’t end there. In the chorus, Prine reverses the point of view with an image of stunning power:

“There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm Where all the money goes…”

You hear lyrics like these, perfectly fitted to Priine’s quietly confident style and his ghost of a Kentucky accent, and you wonder how anyone could have so much empathy and still be looking forward to his 24th birthday on Saturday.

So you talk to him, and you find out that Prine has been carrying mail in Westchester since he got out of the Army three years ago. That he was born in Maywood, and that his parents come from Paradise, Ky. That his grandfather was a miner, a part-time preacher, and used to play guitar with Merle Travis and Ike Everly (the Everly brothers’ father). And that his brother Dave plays banjo, guitar and fiddle, and got John started on the guitar about 10 years ago.

Prine’s songs are all original, and he only sings his own. They’re nothing like the work of most young composers these days, who seem to specialize in narcissistic tributes to themselves. He’s closer to Hank Williams than to Roger Williams, closer to Dylan than to Ochs. “In my songs,” he says, “I try to look through someone else’s eyes, and I want to give the audience a feeling more than a message.”

That’s what happens in Prine’s “Old folks,” one of the most moving songs I’ve heard. It’s about an elderly retired couple sitting at home alone all day, looking out the screen door on the back porch, marking time until death. They lost a son in Korea: “Don’t know what for; guess it doesn’t matter anymore.” The chorus asks you, the next time you see a pair of “ancient empty eyes,” to say “hello in there…hello.”

Prine’s lyrics work with poetic economy to sketch a character in just a few words. In “Angel from Montgomery,” for example, he tells of a few minutes in the thoughts of a woman who is doing the housework and thinking of her husband: “How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, come back in the evening, and have nothing to say?”

Prine can be funny, too, and about half his songs are. He does one about getting up in the morning. A bowl of oatmeal tried to stare him down, and won. But “if you see me tonight with an illegal smile – It don’t cost very much, and it lasts a long while. – Won’t you please tell the Man I didn’t kill anyone – Just trying to have me some fun.

”There’s another insightful one, for example, called “The Great Compromise,” about a girl he once dated who was named America. One night at the drive-in movie, while he was going for popcorn, she jumped into a foreign sports car and he began to suspect his girl was no lady. “I could have beat up that fellow,” he reflects in his song, “but it was her that hopped into his car.”

Roger Ebert’s laudatory review set the stage for this remarkable singer/songwriter. Quirky fact aside: “Ebert was being paid to watch and write a review of a film; but as he tells it the film was so bad that he walked out on it half way through, and went looking for a beer to cut the taste of the popcorn. If the film had been any better, Prine’s career might have been entirely different or started a little later”.

Singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson heard Prine at Steve Goodman’s (City of New Orleans) insistence, and Kristofferson invited Prine to be his opening act. Prine released his eponymous debut album in 1971, featuring such songs as “Paradise”, “Sam Stone” and “Angel from Montgomery“, giving bittersweet tragic-comic snapshots of American society and also fed into the anti-war movement. The album has been hailed as one of the greatest albums of all time.

The acclaim Prine earned from his debut led to three more albums for Atlantic Records. Common Sense (1975) was his first to chart on the Billboard U.S. Top 100. He then recorded three albums with Asylum Records. In 1981, he co-founded Oh Boy Records, an independent label which released all of his music up until his death. His final album, 2018’s The Tree of Forgiveness, debuted at #5 on the Billboard 200, his highest ranking on the charts.

Indeed, Prine was a rare songwriter with a gift for both melodic and lyrical incisiveness. He didn’t need to pull any verbal sorcery to make you gasp and think “Did he just do that?” The magic was all in how profoundly and bluntly he observed the most mundane details of life and death, even for characters living on the fringe. His melancholic tales were economical and precise in their gut-punches.

Prine’s lyrics work with poetic economy to sketch a character in just a few words. In “Angel from Montgomery,” for example, he tells of a few minutes in the thoughts of a woman who is doing the housework and thinking of her husband: “How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, come back in the evening, and have nothing to say?”

Prine can be funny, too, and about half his songs are. He does one about getting up in the morning. A bowl of oatmeal tried to stare him down, and won. But “if you see me tonight with an illegal smile – It don’t cost very much, and it lasts a long while. – Won’t you please tell the Man I didn’t kill anyone – Just trying to have me some fun.”

At the time John Prine was all over the magazines, but he was nowhere on the radio. But without a radio hit, Prine remained a cult item. Actually, he remained a cult item for his entire career. But it’s funny, cult can supersede major success if you hang in there and do it right.

But after the debut, Prine’s notoriety, his “fame,” the attention he got, seemed to go in the wrong direction, you knew who he was, but most people did not. He had fans who purchased his records, but only fans purchased his records and went to see him live.

Eventually Prine switched labels from Atlantic to Asylum, he worked with his old cohort Steve Goodman, but “Bruised Orange” did not live up to its commercial expectations. It was everywhere in print, I purchased it, but after its initial launch, that’s the last you heard of it. Eventually, after three LPs with the definitive singer-songwriter label, Prine took off on his own, with his Oh Boy Records, partnering with his manager Al Bunetta and their buddy Dan Einstein. It worked. His fans, supporting the project, sent him enough money to cover the costs, in advance, of his next album. Prine continued writing and recording albums throughout the 1980s. His songs continued to be covered by other artists; the country supergroup The Highwaymen recorded “The 20th Century Is Almost Over”, written by Prine and Goodman. Steve Goodman died of leukemia in 1984 and Prine contributed four tracks to A Tribute to Steve Goodman, including a cover version of Goodman’s “My Old Man”.

“How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, And come home in the evening and have nothing to say”

Everybody knew “Angel From Montgomery.” It was never a single, never a radio hit. They knew John Prine had written “Angel From Montgomery.” And the great thing about famous songs is they carry their writers along. So when Bonnie Raitt entered the music scene full force with a number of Grammy Awards in the 1990s, the original recorded version from “Streetlights” was superseded by her live performances, if the song got any airplay, it ended up being the live take from her 1995 double album “Road Tested.”

And as a result of this, suddenly the winds were at John Prine’s back, he was a known quantity, his impact increased, his career rose, and it was all because of this one song.

Of course Prine had songs covered by other famous artists, some of them you could even call hits, but I’m not sure fans of David Allan Coe really cared who’d written his numbers. And it wasn’t only Bonnie Raitt. Over the years other people had covered “Angel From Montgomery,” and Raitt’s success lifted all boats, suddenly “Angel From Montgomery” was part of the American fabric. And this is strange. This is akin to Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” a song everybody knows that was not featured on the hit parade, but contains the essence of America more than the tracks that are.

Now “Angel From Montgomery” reaches you on the very first listen.

“If dreams were thunder, and lightning were desire

This old house would have burnt down a long time ago”

That kernel, that inner mounting flame, if it goes out, you die.

“Just give me one thing that I can hold on to

To believe in this living is just a hard way to go”

But you wake up one day and you discover this is your life, that you’re trapped, that your dreams didn’t come true, and you’re not only frustrated, you’re angry.

So then there’s someone like John Prine, telling your story. That’s what you resonate with, you’re looking for understanding, someone who gets you. And America discovered this singer/songwriter en masse.

In 1991, Prine released the Grammy-winning The Missing Years, his first collaboration with producer and Heartbreakers bassist Howie Epstein. The title song records Prine’s humorous take on what Jesus did in the unrecorded years between his childhood and ministry. In 1995, Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings was released, another collaboration with Epstein. On this album is the long track “Lake Marie”, a partly spoken word song interweaving tales over decades centered on themes of “goodbye”. Bob Dylan later cited it as perhaps his favorite Prine song. Prine followed it up in 1999 with In Spite of Ourselves, which was unusual for him in that it contained only one original song (the title track); the rest were covers of classic country songs. All of the tracks are duets with well-known female country vocalists, including Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, Patty Loveless, Dolores Keane, Trisha Yearwood, and Iris DeMent.

In 2001 Prine appeared in a supporting role in the Billy Bob Thornton movie Daddy & Them. “In Spite of Ourselves” is played during the end credits.

Prine recorded a version of Stephen Foster‘s “My Old Kentucky Home” in 2004 for the compilation album Beautiful Dreamer, which won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album.

In 2005, Prine released his first all-new offering since Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings, the album Fair & Square, which tended toward a more laid-back, acoustic approach. The album contains songs such as “Safety Joe”, about a man who has never taken any risks in his life, and also “Some Humans Ain’t Human”, Prine’s protest piece on the album, which talks about the ugly side of human nature and includes a quick shot at President George W. Bush. Fair & Squarewon the 2005 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.

On June 22, 2010, Oh Boy Records released a tribute album titled Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine.

In 2016, Prine was named winner of the PEN/Song Lyrics Award, given to two songwriters every other year by the PENNew England chapter. Prine also released For Better, or Worse, a follow-up to In Spite of Ourselves. The album features country music covers spotlighting some of the most prominent female voices in the genre, including; Alison Krauss, Kacey Musgraves, and Lee Ann Womack, as well as Iris DeMent, the only guest artist to appear on both compilation albums

On February 8, 2018, Prine announced his first new album of original material in 13 years, titled The Tree of Forgiveness. The album features guest artists Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires, Dan Auerbach, and Brandi Carlile. Alongside the announcement, Prine released the track “Summer’s End”. The album became Prine’s highest-charting album on the Billboard 200.

In 2019, he recorded several tracks including “Please Let Me Go ‘Round Again”—a song which warmly confronts the end of life—with longtime friend and compatriot Swamp Dogg in his final recording session.

Most of today’s music doesn’t even have any melody, they’re based on beats. And pop numbers are cotton candy, they could be written by school kids, they’ve got no depth, despite the industry hyping them. And then there’s someone like John Prine. Who was always about the songs, who never wavered, who grew by being small, by nailing the experience of the average person, struggling to get by, at least emotionally, if not monetarily. And isn’t it funny how Prine’s music survives. Will it be heard forty or fifty years from now? I don’t know, but the odds are greater than those of the songs on the hit parade.

Prine never sold out, he was the genuine article. And he might not have been in the mainstream, but he was always in the landscape. He even survived cancer. He seemed unkillable. And now he’s gone.

Prine underwent cancer surgery on his throat in 2008 – and on his lungs in 2013 – but joked that it had actually improved his singing voice. Grammy-winning singer/songwriter John Prine died on March, 2020, aged 73, due to Covid-19 complications.

Tributes:

Throughout his five-decade career, Prine was often labeled the “songwriter’s songwriter,” not just because his only chart-toppers were scored by other great writers recording his music, but because few songwriters were as universally beloved, admired, and envied by their peers as Prine was.

• Speaking to the Huffington Post in 2009, Dylan – who performed with Prine – described his music as “pure Proustian existentialism”.

• “Midwestern mind trips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs.”

• Robbie Robertson, from The Band – who used to back Dylan – described Prine as “a genius”.

• “His work… a beacon of clear white light cutting through the dark days,” added former Led Zeppelin frontman and solo star Robert Plant. “His charm, humour and irony we shall miss greatly.”

• He won his first of four Grammy Awards in 1991, for The Missing Years, which bagged best contemporary folk album. It was a category he would top again in 2005 for Fair and Square.

“We join the world in mourning the passing of revered country and folk singer/songwriter John Prine,” the Recording Academy wrote in a statement.

• “Widely lauded as one of the most influential songwriters of his generation, John’s impact will continue to inspire musicians for years to come. We send our deepest condolences to his loved ones.”

• “If I can make myself laugh about something I should be crying about, that’s pretty good,” he said.

• “If God’s got a favorite songwriter, I think it’s John Prine,” Kristofferson said at Prine’s 2003 Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame induction.

• “He’s just one of the greats, and an old, old soul,” his friend Rosanne Cash once said of him. Roger Waters declared in 2008 that he prefers the “extra-ordinarily eloquent music” of Prine to the modern bands influenced by Pink Floyd’s work, like Radiohead. Prine’s music, the Floyd bassist/vocalist said, lives on the same plane as icons like John Lennon and Neil Young.

• And the reigning American bard-in-chief Bob Dylan was effusive in one 2009 interview, naming Prine as among his favorite writers, adding: “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs… Nobody but Prine could write like that.”