When I was around 12 or 13 I took my lawn mowing money into the big town and splurged on two LPs, John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High and the follow up Farewell Andromeda. I was way into John Denver at the time and, though I mostly bought 45s, I really wanted ‘em both so I fairly decimated my cash fund. I remember that they were Dynaflex, a thin lightweight vinyl that RCA was using at the time and I played the hell out of ‘em. I’m not one to pick favorites but after awhile I noticed that the two songs that I was the most into were “Paradise” and “Angel From Montgomery”, both written by this guy named John Prine. After about a month I’d saved enough money to head to the record section at G.C. Murphy’s 5&10 while my folks shopped for groceries and picked up John Prine’s first LP. When I took it home and put it on my Lloyds record player John Denver hopped into the back seat. I don’t think it left the turntable other that to flip it over for a solid month or more. Every song resonated so deeply that it was truly unbelievable. After a few plays I began to dissect each song line by line to try to figure out how it was done so perfectly. Like I said back there I’m not into ranking things but John Prine’s first LP has to be one of the greatest and most important debuts of all time. The simplicity of the words and melodies gave me hope that maybe I could do this as well. I’d written songs in my head for as long as I can remember and, though I didn’t actually learn to play the guitar until I was around 20, the head songs gradually started to get better. There are more than a few others but he’s easily my top songwriting influence.
I know that he’s gone in the physical sense but he’ll always exist as long as I’m breathing and forever after. It’s hard to choose but here’s one he did with his buddy Steve Goodman that’s resonating hard today. Safe travels, man.