The Missing Years (John Prine album)
| The Missing Years | ||||
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| Studio album by John Prine | ||||
| Released | 1991 | |||
| Recorded | Huh Sound Theater, Los Angeles, CA and The Money Pit, Nashville, TN | |||
| Genre | Folk, alt-country, Americana | |||
| Length | 54:32 | |||
| Label | Oh Boy | |||
| Producer | Howie Epstein | |||
| 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-) |
| Chicago Tribune |
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| Entertainment Weekly | (A-) |
The Missing Years is the 10th studio album by American folk musician John Prine, released in 1991 on Oh Boy Records. It won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
According to the Great Days: The John Prine Anthology liner notes, manager Al Bunetta and longtime Prine associate Dan Einstein were brainstorming over prospective producers at Oh Boy headquarters and the name of Howie Epstein came up. Epstein, the bass player in Tom Petty's Heartbreakers, was a longtime fan, with Prine recalling "I'd heard for years that he and (Heartbreakers keyboard player) Benmont Tench would show up at my shows. And I heard all the guys in the Heartbreakers played my stuff on the road. So Al called Howie. And before he could even hang up the phone, Howie was in the office. Four hours later, he was still there, talking to my manager about my music."
The Missing Years was Prine's first studio release since his 1986 album German Afternoons and is regarded as Prine's comeback album, featuring contributions from Tom Petty, Phil Everly, Bonnie Raitt, Albert Lee, and Bruce Springsteen. It was recorded at Huh Sound Theater in Los Angeles and The Money Pit in Nashville.
Although many listeners might assume that the album's title might allude to Prine's recent sabbatical from the music business, it actually refers to the song "Jesus The Missing Years", which speculates upon the unrecorded middle 18 years of Christ's life. The surreal piece features, among other things, Jesus traveling to France and Spain, marrying an Irish bride, inventing Santa Claus, and opening a show for country singer George Jones. "All The Best" dealt with the theme of divorce, with the singer commenting before a performance of the song on Irish TV in 1990, "Country songs and country songwriters are a strange lot. Seems like some of the best country songs over the years have come from some of the sadder situations in life - like divorce. Having recently acquired my second divorce, about a month later the song truck pulled up and dumped a bunch of great songs on my lawn."
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Wikipedia