Musical legend John Prine died from the COVID-19 coronavirus. He was 73 years old.
John Prine was my touchstone for most of my adult life. He followed me through the Navy, during college, while I rode my bicycle across the country, and all throughout my crazy days of exploration at the Grand Canyon. He was always there to help make sense — and nonsense — of it all.
I met John one spring day at the tiny airport outside sleepy Richmond. It would have been 1973.
I was in charge of booking bands at Randolph Macon College. And I picked him up in a friend’s battered blue Corvette. I was feeling pretty cool.
As we loaded his one small bag — John traveled pretty light in those heady days — he suggested that we go find a bar somewhere. So we headed to a hole-in-the-wall dive bar I liked down in The Fan.
A few drinks in, John turned to me and said, “Let me ask you a question. Where the hell am I?”
I said, “Richmond.”
He was like, “Virginia?”
“Yep,” I replied.
He chuckled as he nodded his head, took a long pull on his cigarette, and then drained his beer. “My agent just tells me when to get on the plane and then some nice fellow like yourself always picks me up and shows me around before I play. Then I get on another plane, or a bus, or a train, and off I go.”
John Prine was like a horse run hard and put away wet. I’m amazed he made it as long as he did. I bet he was equally surprised.
John Prine was a poet, comedian, and a singer of simple truths. He was, in many ways my generation’s musical Mark Twain, but without the silly white suit and the stupid cigar. John was a man of great humility. He didn’t like or crave attention. It was pretty easy to see that all the hub-bub about his rich talents seemed to always make him laugh. And while I certainly wouldn’t claim, after one brief encounter almost forty years ago, to say I knew John Prine, I’m still pretty sure he would not want us to mourn his passing.
So, raise your glass to a man whose music will never die and yell, “SWEET REVENGE!” up into the wild blue yonder above.