"Sam Stone" and Me

John Prine takes the very hardest parts of the stories and cradles them before handing them off to you

Not very long ago, “Sam Stone” came on Radio Woodstock. It’s a lacerating song, about a little pain and the larger lack of confidence that leads to addiction and the box you lock yourself into. The world outside may continue - kids, family - but you wouldn’t know, as you are too busy “climbing walls while sitting in a chair,” until that part ends, too.

Or in this case, does not end, or not so long as “Sam Stone” continues to take up residence in my head. He’s been there about ten days now; there when I wake up and when I go to sleep. I know the beats of his life, watch him simultaneously push away death and reach for her; I am with Stone when he falls fully into her embrace. I am not bothered being with him, and I am grateful the late singer-songwriter John Prine, who brought Sam Stone to the world in 1971, has chosen to have him sit with me for a bit.

But I did wonder why, which had me looking up what others thought of “Sam Stone.” Bob Dylan named it one of his favorites and called Prine’s lyrics, “Midwestern mind trips to the nth degree.”

“John Prine is so good, we may have to break his thumbs,” Kris Kristofferson said, of Prine’s debut album, recorded soon after he got out of the army and was still working as a mailman. Also, of 24-year-old Prine: “No way somebody this young can be writing so heavy.”

I can see why Kristofferson called Prine’s lyrics heavy - in 2013, Rolling Stone readers placed “Sam Stone” #8 in the 10 Saddest Songs of All Time - but I think there is a lightness, too, in that Prine takes the weight; takes the very hardest parts of the stories and cradles them before handing them off to you. There is gentleness here; there is deliberation, a willingness to be both the soft knock at the door and the person standing alongside as you absorb the bad news.

It’s a bit of an odd time around these parts, existing in a sort of alongside-life as my mother slips away. Which made me wonder if we are engaged in a trade, Prine and I: He is going to let me watch over Sam Stone for a little bit or maybe, he is giving him the chance to watch over me.

First new paid subscriber who can also name the line in “Sam Stone” that hurts me the most gets a galley of the new book.