Bonnie & John’s Time Machine
The song “Angel From Montgomery” released in 1971, the year I was born. My middle name is John. Once, deep down in Southern California, I lived on Montgomery Drive.
The first time I remember hearing “Angel From Montgomery” was in 1990, while home from college for the summer. Sifting through my parent’s sparse music collection, I found a Bonnie Raitt and John Prine duet live from 1985. Bonnie’s voice made me shiver, John’s words made me think. Then, it was the perfect pairing of Bonnie’s voice and John’s words that made me cry. When they sing “Angel” together, in that moment, they sound like seasoned time-travelers. They’ve been to heaven, they’ve been to hell, and they prefer the 1980s.
In the summer of 1990, my mom and dad were recently divorced. Life was weird. Home alone, with stereo system cranked loud, I discovered a song that seemed to shed light on my situation. But how does a teenage kid reckon with the realization hidden in a lyric like “My old man is another child that’s grown old”? Or how about the searing insight of “If dreams were lightning, thunder were desire; this old house would have burned down a long time ago”? And alas, the gut-kick loneliness of: “How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, come home in the evening, and have nothing to say?”
The thing is, with brilliant songwriting, no reckoning is necessary. Only connection — however fleeting or enduring. You only need to recognize it, maybe cherish it, but sure as hell be open to the light of it. That’s the stuff of time travel.
So here we are thirty years later, and “Angel From Montgomery” burns hot in me, like the first time I heard it. John and Bonnie and their words and voices are still consummate time-travelers. Now, John’s the angel, Bonnie’s grace is giving us all the shivers, I keep enjoying the healing wonders of music, and…my parents are back together. Life is even weirder.
And with the weirdness, old songs can bring new and different light—like how, for some of us, “Just give me one thing that I can hold on to. To believe in this living is just a hard way to go,” means something entirely more heavy in 2020 than it did in 1990. Or does it?
But guess what? After all that heat and reflection and healing, “Angel From Montgomery” isn’t even my favorite John Prine song! There are so many more. Go find you one, make a memory, share it, and don’t deny yourself a good cry.
