Common Sense (John Prine album)
| Common Sense | ||||
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| Studio album by John Prine | ||||
| Released | 1975 | |||
| Recorded | Ardent Studios, Memphis, TN and Larabee Studios, Los Angeles | |||
| Genre | Folk, Alt-country, Americana | |||
| Label | Atlantic | |||
| Producer | Steve Cropper | |||
| John Prine chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
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| Robert Christgau | A− |
Common Sense is the fourth album by American folk singer and songwriter John Prine, released in 1975.
Common Sense was produced by Steve Cropper and was recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis and Larabee Studios in Los Angeles. The album features contributions from Bonnie Raitt, Glenn Frey, Jackson Browne and Steve Goodman. Bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn, who played in Booker T and the MGs with Cropper, plays on "Forbidden Jimmy" and "Saddle In The Rain". The album marked the first time Prine recorded an album on Atlantic without producer Arif Mardin, and critics took note the change in the Prine sound. In the Great Days: The John Prine Anthology liner notes, Prine insists Sweet Revenge "was a really good record, but I didn't want to keep making the same album over and over, do another 'Dear Abby.' I was really reaching on Common Sense, trying to do some different things musically." According to Eddie Huffman’s book John Prine: In Spite of Himself, the singer was “perfectly content with the record he cut in Memphis. But Cropper was moving into the rock ‘n’ roll big leagues as a producer, working on Rod Stewart’s next record around the same time. He decided Prine’s album needed fleshing out. Despite the singer’s reservations, Cropper took the tapes to Los Angeles and added the kinds of overdubs Prine said he wanted to avoid...”
For the sleeve to his 1988 release John Prine Live, Prine wrote that he began writing "Come Back To Us Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard" "in the summer of '73 during a tour of Colorado ski towns with Ramblin' Jack Elliott. What I had in mind was this girl who left home, did drugs, did religion, did husbands, and ended up doing diddley." In the Great Days anthology, Prine explains the idea behind the title track: "It's a song about the American dream only existing in the hearts and minds of immigrants until they live here long enough for democracy to make them cold, cynical, and indifferent, like all us native Americans. It don't make much sense." In the same essay, Prine reveals that "Saddle In The Rain" is "another song about friendships and relationships, and being let down. Ever since I can remember, when I was a small kid, anytime I had a friend who really let me down, it would affect me. The disappointment was always large with me. So I guess that's why that's a theme I go back to every once in a while." "Saddle In The Rain" is one of only two songs from Common Sense to appear on the 1976 Atlantic greatest hits compilation Prime Prine (the other being "Barbara Lewis").
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