Common Sense

Steve Cropper produced it at Ardent Studios in Memphis and in Los Angeles, and it was the first Atlantic record Prine made without Arif Mardin. Bonnie Raitt, Glenn Frey, Jackson Browne and Steve Goodman appear, and Donald Duck Dunn plays bass on Forbidden Jimmy and Saddle in the Rain. According to Eddie Huffman, Prine was content with what he cut in Memphis, but Cropper took the tapes to Los Angeles and added overdubs. Prine said he did not want to keep making the same album, another Dear Abby.

He began Come Back to Us Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard in the summer of 1973 on a tour of Colorado ski towns with Ramblin' Jack Elliott. He Was in Heaven Before He Died was partly inspired by his father, who died in 1971. The record closes with Chuck Berry's You Never Can Tell.

Reviews were mixed. AllMusic called it the worst of his Atlantic albums, while Christgau called it the most genuinely miserable album he had heard in years. Prine told Fricke that after it there seemed to be nothing to write about but the road, which was nothing.