I guess I just process death differently than some folks. Realizing you're not going to see that person again is always the most difficult part about it. But that feeling settles, and then you are glad you had that person in your life, and then the happiness and the sadness get all swirled up inside you.
John Prine
Soon as I could play one guitar chord and laid my ear upon that wood, I was gone. My soul was sold. Music was everything from then on.
If I can make myself laugh about something that I should be crying about, that's pretty good.
I take my own syrup, ketchup, and mustard, just in case of emergencies, in my suitcase. Whatever I can steal from the hotels. It's usually Heinz ketchup, and they give you a weird mustard. You don't get French's or anything; you get some sort of Dijon or some mustard. That's just for hot dogs. I don't use mustard for anything else.
My sense of humor has saved me more than a couple of times in my life.
When I turned 40, I invited Johnny Cash to my party, even though I knew there was gonna be 200 people roasting a pig and wild as can be. He didn't come, but the next day, I got a bowl of chili he'd made and a note that said, 'John, I'd love to come to your party, but that would mean I would have to leave my house.'
I embraced loneliness as a kid. I know what loneliness is. When you're at the end of your rope. I never forget those feelings.
It was always difficult for me to listen to my singing voice for the first 20 years or so. I mean, I really enjoyed singing, and I enjoyed doing live shows, but being in a recording studio and having to hear my voice played back to me would really drive me up the wall.
'The Ways of a Woman in Love' is one of my very favorite early Johnny Cash songs. I like the way the lyric talks about the character walking by the girl's house and wishing he was the one in her arms.
I had a year-round Christmas tree with nothing but colored vinyl 45s hanging on it, like, old Elvis records and stuff.
I started out in the folk music world only because of the way my songs were written and performed, with just an acoustic guitar, but I always related to the rock n' roll lifestyle.
You know that first love that leaves you? You never forget that, especially if you're a songwriter. I must have gotten nine songs out of that girl.
I don't like to see Christmas trees torn down.
I'd rather get a hot dog or a doughnut than write a song.
There is a certain comedy and pathos to trouble and accidents. Like when a driver has parked his car crookedly and then wonders why he has the bad luck of being hit.
I could never teach a class on songwriting. I'd tell them to goof off and find a good hideout.
I thought I was grounded. I thought from my kinda blue-collar outlook on life that I would call myself a grounded person. I was not. I was like a balloon flying around in the air. And as soon as our first child was born, boom - my feet came right down to the ground.
I sound like that old guy down the street that doesn't chase you out of his apple tree.
I'm kind of like the Lone Ranger or Batman. I can just go to my mansion and jump out in my uniform and sing on weekends.
I think if you write from your own gut, you'll come up with something interesting, whereas if you sit around guessing what people want, you end up with the kind of same schlock that everybody else has got.
To tell you the truth, the nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame totally surprised me. I had no idea that was coming. I know a lot of people like to say it's enough just to be nominated. But I've been nominated for so many things, I'd like to get this one. I think it's a long shot, considering I never had a No. 1 rock n' roll record.
It doesn't hit you until you pull up to the hospital, and you see 'cancer' in big letters, and you're the patient. Then it all kind of comes home.
I was in the Army in the 1960s. I didn't go to Vietnam. I went to Germany, where I drank beer. But I did have an empathy with the soldiers in Vietnam.
Kris Kristofferson and Steve Goodman were the two most unselfish people I ever met.
I used to read a lot of Steinbeck, and I admired Roger Miller and Bob Dylan.
I always had an affinity for older people. I had a job delivering newspapers, and one place I had to go was an old people's home. Some people would introduce you to their neighbors as if you were a nephew or grandson. They didn't get many visitors, so they acted like you were coming to see them. And that stuck with me for a long time.
One time, I went to school, and they asked us all to find out where our roots were. It's goin' around the class, and the kids were going, 'I'm Swedish-German' or 'I'm English-Irish.' They got to me and I said, 'Pure Kentuckian.'
People keep inventing all these new machines, and producers and recording engineers keep wanting to use them.
I wrote most of 'Hello in There' in a relay box, which looks like a mail box, only bigger. Sometimes, it was so cold and windy on my mail route that I'd go inside the relay box and eat a sandwich, just to get away from the wind. I remember working on 'Hello in There' inside the relay box.
It's usually drawing on personal experience. I don't think I could dig deep enough trying to get into somebody else's life. Like 'Far From Me' - I wrote it about this waitress that I was dating when I was fifteen or so, and she broke up with me.
In my songs, I try to look through someone else's eyes, and I want to give the audience a feeling more than a message.
I can't really sit around and talk with people who believe that the Bible is the way it happened, because that's man-made. I'm a writer, too; that's how I look at the Bible. Like, 'I could've written a better version than that,' you know? At least a more interesting one, and then maybe more people would go to church. I could definitely do a revamp.
Yeah, early '71 is when I got my record contract. I had a record come out by August of '71. Things happened really fast.
When I was a boy, my family used to watch a lot of Laurel and Hardy.
I became a recording artist before I knew it. And I just - when I would listen to my old records, I'd just hear this young, extremely nervous fella that that made me want to run out of the room, you know, rather than listen to what he had to say.
There's only two things. There's life, and there's death.
My music has been called so many different things over the years. I figure as long as it's selling, call it what you want.
I was kind of thrown into - I didn't expect to do this for a living, being a recording artist. I was just playing music for the fun of it and writing songs. That was kind of my escape, you know, from the humdrum of the world.
People thought we were crazy for starting a record company. They really thought I was shooting myself in the foot.
I guess what I always found funny was the human condition.
I was a mailman walking in the snow six days a week, 12-hour days. Every two weeks, I'd get a check for $228.
I didn't hear anybody talking about the plight of a soldier coming back home and what he'd gone through. That was why I wrote about that stuff. If somebody else had done it, I probably wouldn't have touched the subject.
When I was a mailman, writing songs was my escape from the regular world, and now writing songs is my job. And I've always been one to avoid my job.
The only time I ever think about getting old is when I look in the mirror. I feel pretty good about it, actually.
I hate to admit it to my wife, but I only wear two outfits on the road, and then a third one during the day, but I carry about 20.
Along the way, we have had some wonderful adventures and have met thousands of dedicated fans - indeed, many of them feel like family to us now.
'Sam Stone' is a song about futility.
Even when I was coming up in the singer-songwriter ranks during the early '70s, I thought that people who were stylists and stuff shoulda still been up on the pedestal. I mean, it's fine to recognize people who write songs, but it kinda got out of hand, you know?
The more producers I talked to, the more I got looked at like I was crazy for wanting to make a live-sounding album.
Howie Epstein was a kind, patient, and extremely talented musician. He took two years out of his life and dedicated his undivided attention to the making of two of my records. Those records changed my life thanks to Howie.
