John Prine Made His Songs Sound Like Your Thoughts
John Prine beat cancer twice. The first time, in 1997, he found a lump on the side of his neck while shaving. The doctors waived him off initially, but after a year of waiting, he decided to have the lump removed. After a biopsy revealed squamous cell carcinoma, the surgeons moved quickly for removal. The surgery removed a large chunk of his neck and damaged his vocal chords — possibly ending his career as a touring musician. After a year or so of recovery, he decided he liked his new voice — thank God for that.
The second bout with cancer happened in 2013. Lung cancer this time, but Prine knew what he wanted to do. “Go in there and cut it out.” A rough thing to go through, no doubt, but the surgery was successful. And after a few months on the mend, John was back touring with folks 30+ years his junior, like Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires, Todd Snider and too many others to name. The cost of this surgery was significant, however. The doctors had to take a portion of his left lung.
COVID-19 is a largely unknown virus, that’s why we’re all cooped up in our houses hiding from it. We’ve never dealt with it before and for that reason, it is so deadly. The worst version of this virus attacks the lungs and respiratory system. A description from The Guardian is particularly vivid. “The lining of the respiratory tree becomes injured, causing inflammation. This in turn irritates the nerves in the lining of the airway. Just a speck of dust can stimulate a cough.
“But if this gets worse, it goes past just the lining of the airway and goes to the gas exchange units, which are at the end of the air passages.
“If they become infected they respond by pouring out inflammatory material into the air sacs that are at the bottom of our lungs.”
“This causes an outpouring of inflammatory material [fluid and inflammatory cells] into the lungs and we end up with pneumonia.”
He says lungs that become filled with inflammatory material are unable to get enough oxygen to the bloodstream, reducing the body’s ability to take on oxygen and get rid of carbon dioxide.
“That’s the usual cause of death with severe pneumonia,” he says.
John Prine died yesterday, 04/07/2020, due to complications of COVID-19. Two rounds of cancer, and specifically the chosen treatment(s) for the disease, left him unable to fight a virus so cruel.
Prine had a way of cutting directly to whatever subconscious feeling you had, whether it was happy, sad, angry, silly, etc. He would hit you directly where you felt it. And the beautiful thing about it was, he’d take what you were thinking or feeling, and somehow repackage it in a song that was much more simple, yet so much more elaborate than what you had been gnawing on in your head.
The first time I heard “Sam Stone” it wrecked me. The song is about a man who comes home from Vietnam, doesn’t quite fit in to society anymore, gets hooked on drugs, and overdoses. My dad didn’t enlist or go overseas, but just about everything else in the song fits. I am not ashamed of the fact my dad overdosed. The only thing I feel is immense sadness for him — and for myself and my brothers. Whatever hole he felt inside himself, he filled it with drugs — mainly pain pills, heroin and crack cocaine.
It’s not an uncommon story in Appalachia. A legitimate injury turns into a prescription for pain medication. When that prescription runs out, the pain is still there. You do what you have to do to numb the pain. Fast forward a decade or so, and you’re on the slippery slope to death. Now my brothers and I are left with our own hole to deal with. It’s very hard on a young man to grow up not knowing who his dad was, what he thought, or how things made him feel. Boys build themselves on the image of their father. Some try to imitate, others build themselves in direct opposition. How do you do either if your dad died while you were too young to figure him out? Family members try their best to fill this hole with their memories and recollections — but it isn’t the same.
“He went to work when he’d spent his last dime
And soon he took to stealing
When he got that empty feeling
For a hundred dollar habit without overtime.”
Addiction makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do. Nothing matters but getting the next fix. It is all-consuming and you will betray friends and family in this pursuit. My dad was no exception to the rule. There were plenty of thefts and robberies along the way. Many nights spent in jail while the folks he had previously stolen from did their best to scrounge up bond money. You’d stay at a friends house one weekend only to come home on Sunday to find your TV or Xbox, or whatever other few possessions you had, were gone. And coincidentally, you saw a pawn shop receipt in your dad’s car when he came to pick you up.
“And the gold roared through his veins
Like a thousand railroad trains,
And eased his mind in the hours that he chose,
While the kids ran around wearin’ other peoples’ clothes”
That last line absolutely hits differently for a kid who grew up in other people’s clothes. Discarded in the quest for the next hit, kids just get in the way. Living with dad isn’t working out anymore, so you go live with mom. When that didn’t work, your aunt, your dad’s friends or your grandma step in and make sure you survive. Without them picking up the slack, I can’t say for certain where I’d be.
“Sam Stone was alone
When he popped his last balloon,
Climbing walls while sitting in a chair.
Well, he played his last request,
While the room smelled just like death,
With an overdose hovering in the air.”
My dad wasn’t alone when he died. Painfully, there were plenty of people around him. The vultures knew he had just gotten his social security check and, by the count on the pill bottle found in his pocket, he had at least 80 hydrocodone just prescribed to his name. This story is hard to tell, but it’s the truth as we know it, passed from person to person: When he first showed signs of overdose, his “friends” turned him on his side on the tile floor of the kitchen so that he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit. They went back to doing what they were doing, because getting their fix was priority number one.
A few hours go by, and they realize he hasn’t come-to or shown any signs of improvement, and they begin to panic. The last thing a drug user wants to do is call the police — and have the police come to their house. So they pick him up — I have to assume one person under each shoulder — and carry him to a vehicle and transport him to another house. One, I assume, a little cleaner where there is less chance they all get busted for the drugs they had in their possession. They drop him on a porch, leave, and call the police to tell them someone had overdosed at that address. Their need to get high, and simultaneously their fear of getting busted and sent to jail, superseded the value of his life.
From what we were able to gather at the hospital that day, the paramedics got there later than would have reasonably been expected - it took about 30 minutes — but they were able to revive him and keep him alive for the family to arrive at the hospital and essentially say goodbye. He passed away the next morning at 7:35 AM. We were told if they had been called sooner, they could have saved him.
Much like John Prine’s music, this story isn’t totally about him. It’s about humanity — and the sadness, folly, humor and complexity wrapped within it. He was in a small group of people who, I believe, were sent to earth to put into words what the rest of us are feeling. And he was one of the best at making you feel like you thought of it first.
“There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothin I suppose”