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John Prine, one year later: Remembering everything
When John Prine was introduced to the city of Gulfport, according to Fiona Whelan Prine, it was love at first sight. “It was like he landed in the landscape of one of his songs. It was just magical to him.”
Prine died due to complications from Covid-19 one year ago, on April 7, 2020, the day after the couple’s 24th wedding anniversary. He was 73.
“For the most part, I’m doing OK,” his wife reports. “I’m very grateful to have the work that I have, taking care of John’s legacy and helping run his record company, Oh Boy Records. We’ve had a busy year and it’s definitely helped to have that distraction.
“But I miss John, of course. It’s hard to believe that it’s a year, honestly.”
Prine, the beloved Midwestern singer/songwriter whose work seamlessly combined aching poetic verse and pathos with wry humor, met Fiona Whelan in her native Ireland in the late 1980s.
They spent part of their honeymoon on St. Pete Beach – one of John’s favorite places – and returned at least once every year so their three sons could enjoy the Gulf beaches during spring break from school. The music legend forged numerous rock-solid friendships in the area.
“Over the years, especially after John got cancer, he wasn’t going to be lying out on the beach,” Fiona explains. “He wasn’t one for that kind of thing, anyway. But I would hang out at the pool with the kids.
“And he would invariably run off to a car show with Joe Nuzzo, or some other harebrained notion that Johnny Green might take. And they would head off for a couple of hours.”
It was 2005 when the Prines decided to make things a little more permanent.
“One day,” she recalls, “he was off on one of his jaunts with Johnny Green, who at that time was managing the casino in Gulfport. And Johnny said ‘Come over here, I want to show you this house.’ John went over and immediately fell in love with it.”
Summoned (from poolside at the Don CeSar) by her husband, she loved it too. “Walked in and absolutely fell hook, line and sinker for the house, the community, everything. And it seemed like we spent the last 15 years of John’s life trying to get back there more often.
“But he got busier and busier. We didn’t always get to spend as much time as we would have liked to. But I certainly have now. It’s part of our family story, as much as Ireland is.”
Indeed, Fiona says, her boys pretty much grew up in Gulfport. The family tended to spend summers in Ireland, and also kept a house in Nashville, near the music business, but Gulfport was always something special.
“That little home is very important to me,” she says. “I’ll be keeping that for my refuge for quite a while.”
Looking at life
“He was talking about his mortality when he was in his 20s. ‘Please Don’t Bury Me’ was written as a very young man. John had a simple but profound way of looking at life. And he was very aware that life and death were absolutely entwined. That we were all traveling in the one direction.”
The last song on what turned out to be Prine’s final album was called “When I Go to Heaven.” Typically, the subject matter is undercut with belly laughs:
I wanna see all my mama’s sisters/’Cause that’s where all the love starts
I miss ’em all like crazy/Bless their little hearts
And I always will remember these words my daddy said
He said, “Buddy, when you’re dead, you’re a dead pecker-head”
I hope to prove him wrong/That is, when I get to heaven.
He recorded one last song, on Thanksgiving Day 2019, and Fiona released it a few months after her husband’s death. In “I Remember Everything,” Prine seemed to be taking stock of the things that mean the most to him:
I remember everything
Things I can’t forget
Swimming pools of butterflies
That slipped right through the net
And I remember every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morning light
Like roses miss the dew.
“I do think that John, in the last couple of years of his life, was as apt not to get into the humor of things,” Fiona explains. “I think he was more willing to get down into his own feelings. Because a lot of the songs he wrote in the past were second or third person, or he was describing somebody else’s situation. He was using a lot of metaphor to describe his own situation.
“But I think this song is as personal, really, as he had gotten in recent years. Talking about his own life. I think that maybe happens when you get older. I mean, he was not that old, but he had made it to 73, and he was grateful, for sure.”
His gratitude most certainly extended to the doctors who’d saved him from cancer in 1996 (resulting in the removal of tissue from his neck) and 2013 (in his left lung). Both episodes were life-threatening, life-affirming and life-changing.
“He definitely felt very fortunate, very blessed to have recovered from that first serious cancer in 1996,” his wife remembers. “And then he would always jokingly say ‘Well, it’s unlikely now that cancer will ever kill me,’ because they kept such a close eye on him. He was diligent about all of that stuff – he would go for all of his checkups. He never missed anything that he knew would help keep cancer out of his body.”
The coronavirus snuck up on them like a thief in the night.
“Covid, excuse the pun, infected everything about our grief. I couldn’t be with my family in Ireland, and they couldn’t be with me. That was very difficult. That’s the longest time I’ve spent away from them. And then of course my boys and I were very careful, because we know what Covid can do at its worst.
“All that to say that we will meet for the first time on Wednesday, all of us. In fact, most all of us have been fully vaccinated.”
Epilogue
Like every showbiz career that lasts for five decades, Prine’s had its highs and lows. Happily, he went out on a high note. He was named Artist of the Year at the 2017 and ’18 Americana Music Awards; in 2019, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Posthumously, Prine was named the honorary Poet Laureate of his native Illinois.
Most importantly, Fiona relates, was the recognition and appreciation he’d begun to receive from a younger generation of fans. “I think he got to know that and see that in the last five or six years of his life. It was not as easy for him to ramble around Nashville in his dirty black T-shirt. No matter where we went, there was always somebody … but John always appreciated that attention, if you will.
“It was less attention and more like it was somebody who was running into a friend. Maybe they’d never met him before, but there was a connection there between John and his fans.”
Joanne Gonzalez
April 21, 2024at1:18 pm
My brother introduced me to John Prine as a young teen! I’m 60 and have loved his music forever! My sister told me I found niche when I began working with intellectually disabled adults. My favorite Prine song is Hello In There! That song inspired me to reach out and believe me they may not speak but they certainly communicate! I absolutely fell in love with them! Still working and loving b good it. So sorry for your loss Fiona and family!
Lupe Owen
May 3, 2021at3:48 pm
I meet and hear his music at my friend Joe Nuzzo’s house and parties it was very sad to know about his dead.
I am glad you love our st. Pete area and beaches and that he did too, I live at the beach and enjoy sailing on the waters playing his music. He will always live because his music will always live on our hearts
Marty finkelstein
April 28, 2021at7:51 am
I wrote a song recently. Ode To John Prine.
It is on my YouTube song page. How would I share it with his wife. I have been writing songs for 50 years.
This is a line in the song
There was Dylan of course
Neil Young not far behind
But noone invited the spark quite like
You John Prine
EBB
April 17, 2021at3:28 pm
Saw John Prime in concert in 1972 at a George McGovern fundraiser. Knew immediately John was very special. Followed him ever since. His work lives on!
CATherine Hamel
April 9, 2021at11:49 pm
John Prine.. I literally cry when reminded of your passing. You were so much of an active part of my ‘first’ life, back when I played the acoustic guitar and was introduced to your wit, heartache, landscapes both familiar and not to me. Yet when my second life began, back when I was 31 years young, I was ‘gifted’ with a Traumatic Brain Injury that so toppled my life . Forgot all of the songs that I’d written and no longer picked up the guitar. Yet you John, with simply a handful of musician favorites, remained. As a TBI survivor, your lyrics often mean something different to me, than they did back in my guitar playing & songwriting days; within this new life, oftentimes they’d feel oh so personal. You’d gift me a needed laugh; or hold me up as I’d relearn necessary life-living skills. And I didn’t even know that you lived basically in my own St. Petersburg back yard; I might have been able to say “Thank You” in person. So to your Angel Soul, your beloved wife Fiona and three kids, I share my Grace of Gratitude 🙌🏻❤️
Carla Crist
April 8, 2021at7:32 pm
I have listened to and loved John Prine’s songs for 43 years. His songs can bring you out of really bad days. His music is fun, happy & soulful. Every time I cross the Wabash “I give her a wink from the passenger side”!!! I am lucky enough to say I’ve seen him live in some of the best venues. A very intimate theater in Louisville, KY. An outdoor park in Chicago. There are more. He will always be one of the GREATS! Thank You John Prine for all of your many songs/stories.
Frank Taylor
April 8, 2021at11:56 am
I lived in the Chicago and worked in city . Old Town was my favorite hang out so I heard John from the get-go. After eventually moving back to Virginia, I introduced my family to Prune music concerts in Richmond and went to his concerts in the DC area. They, too, became what I called Prinioneers. John was more than a performer, he was an experience.
Sally
April 7, 2021at10:56 pm
The name John Prine has circulated around my brain and more often my heart. He had me with his peaches song that was so wildly funny and rang so true.. all the way to “Hello in there”. Though young, I’d worked with the very old and recognized how beautiful & brilliant he was. I can never forget his words or his very modern take on growing up in the USA and the power those words held if one cares deeply about our past culture and the joy he gave so freely with humility and his humor which was supposed to take out the sting but couldn’t God bless his big ole heart.
Brad Shapiro
April 7, 2021at3:15 pm
Like so many others, John felt like a close friend who wrote song’s about MY troubles and quirks. We laughed at death, breakups, war and more. He isn’t gone completely.
Mindy
April 6, 2021at3:14 pm
Beautiful tribute to a wonderful artist. A poet and a musician… So sorry for his early loss to the plague of this century. His last work is heart warming.