Legendary folk songwriter John Prine sadly died last week due to COVID-19, and long-time admirer Elvis Costello has shared a lengthy, and moving tribute to him.
COVID-19 has taken the world by storm, and has sadly been the cause of death of many greats in the music world, including the iconic John Prine.
After being noted at first as being in a stable condition by his wife via a Twitter post, the esteemed musician was moved into critical care, and intubated, where he later passed away.
Taking to Facebook, long-time admirer of Prine, Elvis Costello revealed his thoughts on the matter and touching on the loss that he felt.
Starting off, Costello wrote that he had been conversing with playwright Alan Bleasdale about Prine’s passing, recalling “that forty years ago, when we were first introduced, the condition of us becoming friends was that the other also loved John Prine.”
“This was non-negotiable, although neither of us needed to negotiate about it. Alan told me that if he had been a songwriter instead of a playwright, he would have wanted to be John Prine. I told Alan that when I was nineteen and only pretending to be a songwriter, I too wanted to be John Prine.”
With Prine noted as being a legendary songwriter, Costello mentions that even if the late singer-songwriter “had only written his initial self-titled album, his place among America’s great songwriters would be secure.”
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Continuing on, Costello explained that Prine’s songs “were filled with what sounded like sound advice from a friend in a crowded bar or a voice in the margins, but never one that was self-pitying or self-regarding.”
“His gift was to be able to still an audience to the scale of his song; the painful tenderness with which he could sing anyone of his earliest songs as if they were brand new and then follow up with a ‘new’ song, say ‘Jesus The Missing Years’ or any of the tunes from ‘Fair & Square’ or his latest Top Five hit album, ‘The Tree Of Forgiveness’, songs that were equal in quality, even when different in scale and ambition.”
Costello wrote on describing the moment when he finally was able to meet and converse with Prine during his time as presenter and co-writer of Spectacle that featured Prine one evening.
“John was the first interview subject, prefacing our conversation with a stupefying performance of his epic song, ‘Lake Marie’. Truthfully, I could have talked to John all evening about the implications and the writing of this one incredible, panoramic song but of course much of our conversation had to be put aside by the editor in order to accommodate the other guests.”
The news of Prine’s death shook the music world hard, with many artists speaking out about Prine’s influence throughout his music career. Costello explained that maybe it was Prine’s own “resilience that makes accepting” his death more difficult as “he had repeatedly shown such strength and courage in overcoming the challenges of illness.”
“He was so loved by Fiona [Prine’s wife] and his family and all of his friends, admirers and listeners that it was easy to believe that he would be returned to us; to laugh as he read all of those many quotations from his lyrics that acquaintances, strangers and his longest-lived pals have been sharing in these last days. They tell us that a world with John Prine in it has been much better than the poorer one in which we now dwell.”
Check out the full Facebook post from Elvis Costello:
