Bruised Orange
| Bruised Orange | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||
| Studio album by John Prine | ||||
| Released | 1978 | |||
| Recorded | January–March 1978 at Chicago Recording Company | |||
| Genre | Folk, Alt-country, Americana | |||
| Label | Asylum | |||
| Producer | Steve Goodman | |||
| John Prine chronology | ||||
|
||||
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
  |
| The Village Voice | B– |
Bruised Orange is the fifth album by American folk singer and songwriter John Prine, released in 1978.
After the tepid reviews for his 1975 album Common Sense, Prine turned to his friend and fellow Chicago songwriter Steve Goodman to produce Bruised Orange, which was recorded and mixed at the Chicago Recording Company between January and March 1978. Prine had done work on the new album with Jack Clement but, as he explained to Paul Zollo of Bluerailroad magazine, "I had made the record already but I didn’t have it. I worked with Cowboy Jack Clement, who was a huge mentor to me and the reason why I moved to Nashville. I moved there and we worked for three to four months, solid. And through all kinds of outside forces and things that shouldn’t have been going on in the studio, we didn’t get the record that we were playing every day. We really enjoyed making the record, but we didn’t get it on tape the way we were hearing it in the studio." Frustrated, Prine went to Los Angeles and spoke with several "big-time producers" but admitted to Zollo that had lost his enthusiasm for the project: "I talked to, Christ, twenty different producers, really great guys, great producers. Big-time producers. And I just didn’t want to do it. I just didn’t have the heart to do the record again. And Goodman said he would do it." The album features "If You Don't Want My Love" which Prine co-wrote with Phil Spector.
In the Great Days: The John Prine Anthology liner notes, Prine claims that the inspiration for "That's The Way The World Goes Round" came from him being "kind of fed up with a lot of cynicism that I saw in people, even in myself at the time. I wanted to find a way to get back to a better world, more childlike. I immediately went back and started writing from a child's perspective." Prine was introduced to Phil Spector by L.A. Times writer Robert Hillburn and wrote "If You Don't Want My Love" with the producer at his house, recalling to Bluebirdrailroad magazine, "It happened on the way out the door. We’d been there for seven hours, jokin’, drinkin’. And by the way, when you go in the house, he’s got two bodyguards on his shoulder. It was just craziness, you know...So I was leaving around four in the morning, and all of a sudden Phil sits down at the piano as I was getting my jacket on, and he hands me an electric guitar unplugged. And I sit down on the bench next to him. I played him 'That’s The Way The World Goes Round', and he really liked it. He said, 'Let’s do this,' and he played the beginning notes of 'If You Don’t Want My Love'. And we came up with the first couple lines and he insisted that we repeat them. Over and over. He said it would be very effective. And we took 'That's The Way The World Goes Round' and took the melody and turned it inside out...And that was on my way out the door. And as soon as he sat down and had a musical instrument, he was normal. That’s the way he was. He was just a plain old genius."
...
Wikipedia