John Prine’s Writing Credit on “A Good Look”
For years, I wondered what John Prine’s involvement in the writing of “A Good Look” was. During the show in Indianapolis, at the end of Scooter Blues, JBS revealed the origins of the song’s first verse, which was written by John Prine. Apparently John left JBS a note with the first line of the song at the Butcher Shoppe in Nashville.
Here’s a basic transcript taken from Nugs recording.
“This is a song called ‘A Good Look’. A long time ago, there use to be a studio in Nashville called the Butcher Shoppe. It was co-owned by a good buddy of mine, David Ferguson, and a good buddy of mine who is no longer with us named, John Prine.
There was uh, in the back of the studio, there was a little room we called the ‘Writing Room’. There was a snooker table, and a drum kit in there, and a little table, and a juke box, an old Wurlitzer. And I kept some notebooks in there. I don’t think I ever actually wrote anything in that room, but John and I would take turns leaving little notes for each other. We were never in the room at the same time over like four years. It was a weird thing. I come in and find these little riddles and scribbles he left. The first verse of this song is one of those scribbles I found. And I thought, ‘That’s pretty clever.’”