The song John Prine wrote when he was staring down death
Few cut such a unique presence in contemporary country-folk as Chicago singer-songwriter John Prine.
Much like Randy Newman or Warren Zevon, Prine was able to lyrically veer between heartfelt balladry and ruminative poetry, while also deftly dropping numbers dripping with satire and acerbic smirk. It’s quite a rare feat in country’s rustic tradition. Whereas Johnny Cash would jump into a comedy ditty like ‘A Boy Named Sue’ amid his outlaw tales, Prine’s witty worldview pulsed with a sharper bite of humour none of his peers ever quite knew how to wield.
Yet, Prine’s glittering folk career was blighted by health issues. In 1998, squamous-cell cancer had struck the right side of his neck, requiring intense surgery and radiotherapy, the damaged saliva glands and excised neck tissue necessitating speech therapy to regain his singing voice. Again in 2013, cancer in the left lung forced further surgery and a rehabilitation regimen of running up and down his stairs, reaching for his guitar while out of breath, and singing two songs. Six months later, he was on tour again.
Music seemed to possess a powerful healing aid, as well as a means of exploring mortality. Such themes were poured into ‘When I Get to Heaven’. Serving as the semi-promo for 2018’s The Tree of Forgiveness, Prine brewed his poetic musings on life and its end with his characteristic gaiety, deciding to lyrically cast a bustling party filled with all the vices and pleasures hopefully on offer in his eternal whereabouts: “I’m gonna have a cocktail, vodka and ginger ale / I’m gonna smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long!”
“I wrote that song because I figure there’s no cancer in heaven,” Prine revealed to Uncut just after the album’s release. “So when I get up there, I’m going to have a cocktail and a cigarette that’s nine miles long. That’s my idea of what heaven is like.”
It turned out that what Prine and producer Dave Cobb thought ‘When I Get to Heaven’ needed was a shindig to match its conceptual party-throwing. Inviting various friends, family, and fans to Nashville’s RCA Studio A, handing out kazoos to the jubilant crowd, all amounted to a gleeful reverie in the air for Prine’s comic examination of the Grim Reaper’s beckoning, bony finger.
“Oh boy,” Prine recalled. “You can hear everybody having fun when they’re singing along and all playing those kazoos. You can’t help but laugh.”
One such well-wisher was Americana singer Brandi Carlile, who had raced to the studio straight from the airport to participate in Prine’s country-folk cheer. “We were just having a good time drinking, dancing and singing along, and I started the yodelling to make John laugh,” she said. “I didn’t know it would end up on the record!”
Two years later, Prine would sadly pass away from Covid complications. But he left a celebrated legacy revered by a myriad of disparate artists over the years, everybody from the original Man in Black, Bob Dylan, and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters all confessing their love for his stirring songcraft.
