“Singing Mailman Who Delivers”: The improbable way John Prine got his start in music
There is no science behind what the best environment is to create. It varies from person to person, as some people need to be forced to create something, whereas for others, it comes naturally. From Bob Dylan to Paul McCartney to Joni Mitchell, they will all have had very specific circumstances under which they could most effectively write music.
For instance, the Rolling Stones initially started playing covers, but they didn’t write their first original song until Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were forced to. “When you start writing, it doesn’t matter where the first one comes from, you’ve got to start somewhere, right?” he said, “So Andrew locked Mick and myself into a kitchen in this horrible little apartment we had. He said, ‘You ain’t comin’ out’, and there was no way out.”
Meanwhile, Prince would repeatedly play two movies when he was trying to write. “Here’s the deal. Since 1997, Soul Train has been my aquarium. That’s a Prince term,” said Questlove before explaining what he meant by that, “When he was alive, whenever you’d go to Prince’s house, two things were always on TV: [the 2003 animated film] Finding Nemo and Black Orpheus, this beautiful Brazilian film from 1959. He would have those on a constant loop: ‘Yeah, it’s my aquarium’.”
The fact is that there is no science behind creation; people write in their own circumstances. However, one of the most bizarre writing techniques was what John Prine used to do before becoming famous. While living in Chicago, he got a job delivering mail; it was while he was delivering mail that he would come up with tunes in his head and begin writing songs.
He was always a big fan of folk music and would usually try to write folk songs while he was working. He used to also go to a venue called The Fifth Peg on Armitage Avenue, which held open mic nights. He never performed, as he was always shy and lacked faith in the songs he wrote while delivering mail.
One night, after speaking to a fellow artist and offering some pointers, the artist became frustrated and challenged the artist to go on the open mic stage to “do better.” The usually shy Prine got up on stage and performed some of the tracks he had written while working for the first time.
He impressed everybody at the show and was asked to return to do some paid gigs. It was at one of these paid gigs that his career really took off as the film critic Roger Ebert was in the audience and decided to write about him. The article was called Singing Mailman Who Delivers A Powerful Message In A Few Words, and it skyrocketed Prine to bigger and better heights in popularity.
“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,” wrote Ebert, “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… Prine’s lyrics working with poetic economy to sketch a character in just a few words.”
