The standard way to go when closing out an album is to choose a bold statement of a song, something sweeping and epic. John Prine was never a standard artist, so why should it surprise anyone that he went a different direction on his 1971 self-titled debut album?
Prine closed out the album with “Flashback Blues,” a number which, from a musical standpoint, is genial and unassuming. But when you get deep into the lyrics, you find a somewhat bittersweet treatise on how retrospection can not only deceive, but also prevent you from living in the present.
Choosing the Closer
It’s somewhat astounding to think how many stone-cold classics can be found on John Prine’s debut album. “Sam Stone,” “Hello in There,” and “Paradise” established him as an unparalleled storyteller. “Illegal Smile” and “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore” let it be known there were few funnier songwriters out there. “Angel Montgomery” was a gem waiting to be discovered. Around every corner lies a classic.
The excellence and sure-handedness of the record becomes a little bit more understandable when you realize Prine had been perfecting those songs in his head for quite some time. As he trod the streets as a mailman in Illinois, he worked out all the lyrics and melodies.
When he finally earned the chance to record those songs, he was more than ready. Thus, it’s one of those rare debut albums that sounds like a greatest hits record. Oddly enough, “Flashback Blues” is one of the most unheralded songs on the whole record.
Still, it feels like the perfect song to close out the album. On the one hand, it allows things to go out on a somewhat upbeat note, at least on the musical side of things. Lyrically, the song talks about the pitfalls that await a walk down memory lane. Since many of the songs on the record deal with events of the past, that insight proves quite fitting.
Examining the Lyrics of “Flashback Blues”
Perhaps more than any song on the John Prine album, “Flashback Blues” gives the normally straight-talking songwriter the chance to spread his wings a bit with poetic flights of fancy. This is especially true in the first verse, which expertly sets the tone of fractured nostalgia: While window shopping through the past / I ran across a looking glass / Reflecting moments in a burned out light.
Prine suggests the emotions that roil beneath us transcend the fickle nature of passing time: Tragic magic prayers of passion / Stay the same through changing fashions. The depth of those feelings never wanes: They freeze my mind like water on a winter’s night.
He warns that relics of the long-gone days don’t tell the whole story: Photographs show the laughs / Recorded in between the bad times / Happy sailors on a sinking ship. Maybe surviving the past is all that matters: Waving goodbye with tears in my eyes / Well, sure I made it but you know it was a hell of a trip.
The refrains sum all this up, as Prine shows a bit of regret that the time he once spent frivolously didn’t leave him much to show for it. All I got for proof / Is rocks in my pocket and dirt in my shoes. His final verdict is that any type of reflection requires leaving someone behind: Don’t you know that I hate to leave here / So long babe, I got the flashback blues.
Thus, the album ends with a farewell, albeit a somewhat ironic one. How fitting that message is as we look back on John Prine’s wonderful debut. Thinking of it, we deal with our own case of the “Flashback Blues,” realizing that few write with such offhand beauty and wisdom these days, while Prine always did.
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