By John Meagher

Copyright independent

Long before his death from Covid-related complications in 2020, John Prine was being referred to as a songwriter that other songwriters looked to for inspiration. Many of the giants of song – Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters – would name Prine as one of the greats. He never attained the same level of success, or indeed celebrity, as any of those, but that didn’t matter to him. He was a man who lived life on his own easy terms and left behind an extraordinary body of work.

That’s certainly the sense one gets from this peek behind the curtain, but this is far from a conventional biography – if it could be called a biography at all. Instead, American novelist and occasional journalist Tom Piazza offers snapshots of the great troubadour’s life and times, what made him tick, how he set about forging songs right to the end of his life.