AMERICAN FOLK LEGEND John Prine, widely considered one of his generation’s most influential songwriters, died following complications of coronavirus today, his publicist told AFP on behalf of his family.

He was 73 years old.

On 3, April Prine’s wife Fiona had posted on social media the beloved country and folk star was on his eighth day in the ICU on a ventilator, and had pneumonia in both lungs.

Once dubbed the “Mark Twain of American songwriting,” over his five decades in the music business Prine carved an image as an off-the-cuff wordsmith who forged melancholy tales with a dose of surrealist wit.

Bob Dylan has named Prine among his favorite songwriters, citing the literary yarn Lake Marie as a favorite from his fellow folk bard’s vast catalogue.

“Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism,” Dylan said in 2009. “Midwestern mind-trips to the nth degree.”

Born 10 October 1946 in Maywood, Illinois, Prine took up music as a hobby before emerging on the Chicago folk revivalist scene in the late 1960s, when he was discovered by country star Kris Kristofferson.

His 1971 self-titled debut album was a critical hit, a first collection of his unique social commentary and protest songs that would make the troubadour a staple of Americana for decades to come.

His anti-Vietnam War hit Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore found a second coming in the early 2000s as the United States embarked on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, earning Prine both standing ovations and angry hate mail.

“When someone turns the country backwards,” he told Florida’s St. Petersburg Times in 2005, “they should at least expect to be called out on it.”

‘Homespun sense of humor’

The bluegrass-loving musician with a penchant for allegory enjoyed riffing on country music tropes with stereotypical spoofs, adding whimsical touches to heavier lyricism.

Prine spun tales of past loves as well as solitude, estrangement and regret, in work often streaked with prominent threads of mortality.

“His is just extraordinarily eloquent music – and he lives on that plane with Neil [Young] and [John] Lennon,” said Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters of Prine in 2008.

In 1981, tired of the recording establishment he considered exploitative of artists, Prine founded his own record label Oh Boy Records in Nashville.

The Grammy winner with 19 studio albums to his name this year received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy, which praised him as “one of the most influential songwriters of his generation”.

In 2019 Prine was inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, and in 2016 joined elite company including Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen in earning a prestigious songwriting award from the PEN literary organization.

“The combination of being that tender and that wise and that astute mixed with his homespun sense of humor – it was probably the closest thing for those of us that didn’t get the blessing of seeing Mark Twain in person,” said fellow musician Bonnie Raitt, who covered one of Prine’s most cherished songs “Angel From Montgomery” in 1974.

‘National treasure’

Prine’s storied career included two battles with cancer. In 1998 he received a squamous cell cancer diagnosis and had surgery to remove diseased tissue in his neck, severing several nerves.

After a year of speech therapy he was able to perform again, albeit with a new gravelly timbre.

In 2013, he fought lung cancer and had part of his lung removed, a process he rehabilitated from by running up and down his stairs and singing two songs with his guitar while still breathless.

The artist’s wife Fiona had said on 17 March that she had tested positive for COVID-19, and his family on 29 March said Prine was intubated and in “critical” condition due to the virus that’s left more than 80,000 people dead worldwide.

Tributes poured out for the deeply influential artist, with Justin Vernon of experimental folk band Bon Iver calling Prine “my number 1″.

“A simple majority of who I am as a person, let alone a musician, is because of John prine,” Vernon said.

Bruce Springsteen declared Prine a “true national treasure and a songwriter for the ages,” writing “over here on E Street, we are crushed by the loss of John Prine.”

“John and I were ‘New Dylans’ together in the early 70s and he was never anything but the loveliest guy in the world.”

Ever fun-loving in the face of tribulation, the heaven Prine envisioned on his last album, released in 2018, would allow him to resume his youthful habits: “I’m gonna get a cocktail: vodka and ginger ale / I’m gonna smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long.”

“I’m gonna kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl,” Prine sang. “‘Cause this old man is goin’ to town.”

© – AFP 2020