John Prine’s Early Nashville Years, In His Own Words

John Prine never had a chance to write his own memoir. But in the late 2010s, he’d begun working on one with the author Tom Piazza. After Prine died in 2020 — from complications due to Covid-19 — Piazza revisited the series of trips, encounters and conversations he’d had with the legendary singer-songwriter and began turning them into a book. 

“This isn’t a biography of John Prine, or a chronicle of John’s musical development, a critical assessment, an oral history, or a study of his influence on American culture,” Piazza writes in the book. “What started as a memoir, in his voice, changed, inevitably, into a book about friendship, and loss…a portrait, the best I can deliver, of John, and of our friendship, as he made the most of the final two years of his life.”

That book, Living in the Present with John Prine — out September 9th — is a mix of memoir and reportage about Prine’s life and later years. But the most thrilling sections, written by Piazza in Prine’s own voice, are snippets and previews of what Prine’s never-completed memoir would have been. These chapters of the book are both revelatory for what they reveal about Prine’s early life and heartbreaking in that they reinforce that the complete book he should’ve had the chance to write will never exist. 

But in the chapters that do exist, Prine’s voice jumps off the page. Here, in this exclusive excerpt, Prine discusses some of his earliest experiences in his future hometown of Nashville, including what would end up becoming a fateful meeting with the legendary producer Cowboy Jack Clement.

The first time I came to Nashville, in the early 1970s, my buddy Lee Clayton took me to the Grand Ole Opry and brought me backstage. The Opry was still at the Ryman then, and there was so little room backstage that you bumped into everybody – literally! Ernest Tubb was here, on my right, Roy Acuff on my left. We were standing between the back curtain and the brick wall, and Dolly Parton walked by and all the men had to suck their guts in to let Dolly get by. And I thought, “I’m in hillbilly heaven.” I grew up listening to country radio at my Dad’s feet, and all the people I’d heard on radio were there in front of me. And they were friendly as could be. If you were introduced to them they stopped and said your name back to you – “Great to meet you. What are you doing here? Welcome to Nashville.” It was heaven to me.

In either late ‘76 or early ’77 I came down from Chicago with a group of songs I had that eventually became Bruised Orange. I had most of the Bruised Orange songs written – “Chain Of Sorrow,” “There She Goes” – I didn’t know my marriage was falling apart, and I had already written a divorce song – “Fish and Whistle,” “Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone,” “Iron Ore Betty.” And “That’s The Way The World Goes Around.”

I came to Nashville to meet with a producer named Ray Baker. Ray Baker had produced a record on Moe Bandy that I really loved – “Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life.” It just had a great sound to it. So I’d called up my manager, Al Bunetta, and told him I wanted to work with Ray Baker. That’s what I wanted my next record to sound like. Al set up a meeting, and I came down to Nashville. I got here in the evening, and I was supposed to meet Ray Baker the next day.

That was the night I met Cowboy.

A friend of mine who ran the Atlantic Records office in Nashville met me that evening when I got here, and the first thing he says is, “You gotta meet the Cowboy.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. I always thought Jack Clement was either a hit songwriter, or the name of a publishing company, because I’d seen it so many times on records. My friend said, “He’s both.” I went because my friend insisted. I didn’t have an appointment. He brought me over, introduced me, and left.

Jack took me to Sperry’s for dinner that first night, and we hung out for the next two days. Me and Jack just hit it off. He took me all around town. We went everywhere. And I never made it to Ray Baker’s. Way up in the next evening I had a plane booked to go home and Jack took me to the airport. Back then, the airport was so small, you could leave your car parked in front and walk in to the gate. Jack walks me to the gate, and we stop for a beer – I had about a half hour before my plane left.

So Jack says to me – we’d been together hanging out for two days and one night – he goes, “So what do you do, John?”

I looked at him. “Jack, I write songs and make records.”

He goes, “Really!”

I said, “Yeah.”

He says, “How many records?”

I said, “I’ve made four records, for Atlantic. I just left them, and I signed with Asylum.”

He goes, “How many records didja sell?”

I said, “I don’t know… maybe sixty, sixty-five thousand.”

He goes, “Really.”

I said, “Yeah.”

He goes, “So what’s your problem?”

I said, “What…?”

He says, “What’s your problem?”

I said, “What do you mean?”

He says, “Exactly. What’s your problem?”

I said, “I ain’t got no problem…”

It’s time to get on the plane. “Jack, it’s great to meet you. Can’t wait to see you again.” And all the way home, I’m going, “What is my problem?” It stuck with me. When I got home I started looking up who Jack Clement was.

I find out Jack had been Sam Phillips’ right-hand man at Sun Records. Jack was the one who was there when Jerry Lee Lewis walked in off the street and sang “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On.” Sam Phillips was out of town and Jack called him, said, “You got to get back to Memphis, you won’t believe what I just cut!”

The year before I met him Jack had produced Waylon Jennings’ Dreaming My Dreams record, which was a big game changer for the Outlaw country movement. It was a huge record, and great sounding. Today when I put that record on it sounds brand new. The whole album is incredible, from beginning to end. And they had just reissued Elvis’ first Sun recordings, and I’d never heard all ten recordings that Elvis did at Sun when he first came there. And it was all just like an explosion.

I told Al Bunetta, “I’m sorry; please give Mr. Baker my apologies, but I want to go back down and talk to Jack Clement. I want to sing some of my songs for Jack and see what he thinks.”

I never had a mentor, a musical mentor, except my brother Dave, because he taught me. Jack was the first person I admired like him since my Dad died. The impact that he made on me – it wasn’t just musical. Every time Jack talked to me, he got my total attention. Everybody else might as well have been my English teacher. My attention would be everywhere but on who was talking to me. The mind of a songwriter: I’m not thinking about what I’m doing here; I’m thinking about the next song! When Cowboy would talk he would get my attention. That’s how I knew, you know? It wasn’t just producer-artist relationship; it was more than that.

Cowboy took time to teach me how to not be scared of a microphone in the studio. He knew that I was scared without asking me. He knew that was part of my problem, that that was why I didn’t like listening to myself. Because of how nervous I was. I couldn’t listen to those first albums; I hated my voice. I didn’t know anything about a microphone, didn’t know how to approach it. I was totally scared; I could hear the fear in my voice. Especially that first album. I heard my voice quivering.

He told me, “I’ve seen you perform live, and you know how to connect with those people. Somehow you have to look at that microphone and know that they’re on the other end. That you’re not alone in the studio. The same people you’re playing to live are listening to you in the studio.”

Nobody ever took time to do that with me.

That he was a producer was kinda beside the fact. Cowboy’s business was fun. “We’re in the fun business. If we’re not having fun, we’re not doing our jobs.” That was his motto. “If this is work, why the fuck did we become musicians? To work for a living?” He couldn’t stand musicians that just read music and did it for the money. In that Shakespeare movie there’s one scene where Jack is sitting right here, behind his desk, and Waylon is there, George Jones over here, Johnny Cash, all in one room. You could walk in here any given day of the week and there would be Cowboy and Frank Ifield. Cowboy and Waylon. Cowboy and Johnny Cash.

He’d sit here and leave that window open in the spring and summer, and a squirrel would come and visit him. Jack would leave food here for the squirrel. He had two cats, named Fred and Ginger, and they’d eat ham out of his pocket. He’d keep this piece of ham in his breast pocket and they’d sit on his shoulder and reach down. It was a circus, of sorts. He called it the Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa. He planned on turning this into a place where when people came from out of town, they’d stay here instead of a hotel. Whoever was recording here would be able to stay here, wake up here, have their breakfast here, and then go right upstairs into the studio.

He also had Jack Clement Recording Studio a few blocks away from here. JCRS was the hottest studio in town. Over half the Number Ones in Nashville in the late sixties were cut there. Jack came up with things like church pews with microphones built into the pew so four women could sit down like they were in church and sing backups and not have any microphones in their faces, just pick them up with indirect mikes. I mean, such a cool place, just down the street.

He had to sell it in the early seventies, because he made a movie called Dear Dead Delilah. It was kinda like one of those Bette Davis horror movies – What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? – it was kinda like that. With Agnes Moorehead. Jack directed it. He had never been in a movie, let alone directed one. About halfway through the movie the backers dropped out, and Jack made the fatal decision to back his own movie. He was making millions off of JCRS. But he had to sell the place at the height of its popularity to pay for the movie. I saw the movie once – I fell asleep twenty-five minutes into it. He finished it, and also paid for the distribution! Not just the production. Everybody dropped out on him. He was stubborn, and he was crazy. People warned him about other things like that, and he would always just go ahead.

But his instincts with music were always dead on. Johnny Cash called him up himself, about “Ring of Fire.” A different producer had cut the song. He said “Cowboy, I had a dream last night I heard mariachi horns on my new single, and I can’t get my producer to put ‘em on there.” Jack said, “I can do it.” So Jack put the mariachi horns on “Ring of Fire,” which was the hook. That’s what sold the song.

Excerpted from Living in the Present with John Prine. Copyright © 2025 by Tom Piazza. Used with permission of the author. All rights reserved.