Some musical giants are just so good that they defy coolness

JOHN Prine was so good that — at the height of the punk uprising and for some time after — you could still hear his records played on the John Peel Show.

That’s where I first heard his music, having read a review in NME. A good review: this too being a rare thing at the time for anyone of his ilk. Yes, for a while there the American singersongwriter, in general, was deeply uncool, but not Prine.

He was even mentioned in dispatches by Hunter S Thompson, and indeed we learned recently that Dr Thompson had advised his friend Bill Murray to treat his depression by listening to John Prine.

Apparently it worked. It must have been some time in the late 1980s that I did an interview for Hot Press with John Prine and his friend and collaborator Philip Donnelly. That would be Philip the guitar player from Clontarf who was so good, when he went to live and work in America he recorded with the best — Guy Clark, Emmylou Harris, Townes Van Zandt…

I can’t recall the pretext for the interview, but I do recall that it happened on a quiet Sunday in Buswell’s

Hotel — there was some strange reason for this at the time, I just can’t imagine what it might have been. And I think Prine was drinking “vodka-7” (which I was relieved to learn was vodka and 7Up, not seven vodkas).

John Prine was taken by Covid-19 last week — Philip Donnelly had gone on ahead last December.

Brilliant men, giants of the game.

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Emily Maitlis opened Newsnight last week with a few words of obvious truth, correcting the official version of things which states that the contagion is “the great leveller” — explaining to us that it’s much harder, for example, if you’re poor.

She was extravagantly praised for this.

“Extraordinary!” they cried, missing the point that other journalists have been saying and writing such things when the occasion demanded it — because it’s just… well... journalism.

What is journalism after all, but the application of a sceptical eye to the received wisdom of the day? And the expression of that in some coherent form?

No, the “extraordinary” thing here was that it was being done on the BBC, on a ‘news’ programme, which, like many ‘news’ programmes had been practising non-journalism for a long time now — a desiccated old model of hackery in which that statement by Maitlis is mere “opinion”, lacking “impartiality”.

It is a broken old model too, which has facilitated the rise of the far right, and which enables all who are acting in bad faith.

It’s just a shame that they waited until the end of the world to stop it.

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Perhaps the greatest idea which has emerged over the past month is the one from former TV presenter Terry Christian — who is now perhaps the most forceful leader of the opposition in Brexit Britain.

Terry proposed that in future, instead of the Tories giving tax breaks or other forms of free money to their billionaire backers, they should do what they’ve been doing for the health workers — just get everyone to come out and give them a big round of applause.

Round of applause for Terry, too.