One of my favorite songs by John Prine is “Lake Marie,” which first appeared on Lost Dogs + Mixed Blessings
“Lake Marie” The Song
The tale of the peaceful waters of “Lake Marie” can be divided into three segments. First, the song begins with a story about Native Americans along the Illinois-Wisconsin border discovering two white babies. Although it is unclear how the Native Americans learn the names of the two babies, they name their Twin Lakes after the two little girls. The smaller and less fair lake is named “Lake Marie” after the less fair baby.
In the second part of the song, the singer tells about falling in love with a woman at Lake Marie. Many years later, the two go to Canada to try to save their crumbling marriage.
The third part of the song tells of a crime scene, where police find two naked bodies, apparently by Lake Marie. The singer then brings this third part of the story back to his lost love: “All the love we shared between her and me was slammed / Slammed up against the banks of Old Lake Marie.”
Below, Prine performs “Lake Marie” in 2010 at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.
What Inspired John Prine to Write “Lake Marie”?
There are in fact two lakes like in the song, Lake Marie and Lake Elizabeth. A John Prine fansite, the John Prine Shrine, explains how Prine came to write the song. While Prine was in Wisconsin for a show, a crew member told Prine a tale about the local Lake “Marie” (actually, it is “Lake Mary”). As the crew member told a mysterious tale about the lake, Prine decided he wanted to visit the lake. So he and the crew member drove twenty-five minutes to see the lake.
After seeing the lake, Prine and his brother visited a library to read stories about the lake. There, Prine discovered that Lake Marie and its sister lake, Lake Elizabeth, were named after two babies discovered by a Native American tribe.
From there, Prine began writing the song that began with the baby story. The Prine Shrine explains:
But after that [first verse], John went into some fictional story-telling about a marriage on the rocks, and a shadowy double murder that took place in the proximity of Lake Marie. “When I was done, it was exactly what I wanted. I guess the point of the song is that if the Indians hadn’t named the lakes after a couple of white girls, they would still be peaceful waters.” (Puckett 15)
What About the Dead Bodies?
And then there is the crime scene in the story. In an interview in No Depression, Prine explained that the dead bodies in the third part of the song were inspired in part by Chicago news footage he saw as a kid about a series of murders.
Regarding the bodies in the song, though, on various discussion sites, listeners debate the relationship between the story of the narrator and the double-murder at the end. Is the narrator one of the victims of the crime along with his lover (or former lover), or is the narrator the perpetrator of a murder-suicide? Or, is the narrator just someone watching about the murder on TV?
I lean toward the latter interpretation. It seems that the narrator is seeing the story on television. That explains why he is seeing it in black and white: “You know what blood looks like in a black and white video? / Shadows!”
The TV interpretation is consistent with Prine’s statements about the song. The crime scene at the lake seems to reflect on how the land had changed since the white people came and took the land from the Native Americans.
This TV interpretation also fits with another quote from Prine. He reportedly said that the reference to the TV coverage of the murders was not a particular murder. He knew it seemed like a sharp left turn in the song, “but when I got done with it, I kind of felt like it’s what the song needed right then.”
A Great Song
The love story and its struggles and its heartbreak, though, are what tie the song together and make it a classic, not to mention Prine’s wonderful emphasis on certain words and syllables as he talks through the lyrics. It is a brilliant song. Heck, it is Bob Dylan’s favorite John Prine song, which says a lot.
As Prine explained generally about his songs in a 1970 article by movie critic Roger Ebert about the then-young singer, “In my songs, I try to look through someone else’s eyes, and I want to give the audience a feeling more than a message.”
So enough with the analysis, and you should just enjoy the feeling here in a more recent version of “Lake Marie” on Sessions at West 54th, in a John Prine performance that one commenter called, “Arguably, the best 10 mins of music on You Tube.”
Live versions of “Lake Marie” appear on Prine’s Live On Tour
And that’s the story behind the song.
What do you think “Lake Marie” is about? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
John Prine song: “Lake Marie” — I believe the part about the murders and bodies found in a “forest preserve” was about the finding of the Grimes sisters’ bodies in 1956. Two sisters, 15 and 13, lived in southwest Chicago and went to a movie theater to see a movie about Elvis Presley. They never returned home. A couple of weeks later a passerby saw two naked bodies in a ditch off a road passing through a “forest preserve” near the suburb of Willowbrook. Hardwood forests divide the western suburbs of Chicago from the western side of the city and are called “forest preserves.” Those woods border the DesPlaines River that flows down from southern Wisconsin and after passing along its southward route branch off to the southwest to help form the Illinois River. About the middle of the rivers passage of Chicago and western suburbs is the home town of John Prine, Maywood. His family lived in a frame two-story house on 1st. Avenue or Illinois 171, about 1/2 mile from the DesPlaines River and the forest preserve in Maywood. I lived near there too. Two other John Prine songs tell of events that I either saw also or were near to in that time period.
That makes a lot of sense, thanks! Although Prine said that no one murder was the source for the song, he has said that murders in the area around where he grew up influenced the segment in “Lake Marie.” So it seems very likely that the story of the Grimes killings, which received a large amount of publicity and was never solved, would have been a part of Prine’s childhood, as he was 10 at the time. Thanks for the explanation about the geography in relation to his family too. Take care.
Thanks.
I was very surprised to hear this song on Austin City Limits. The place he is talking about is Twin Lakes Wisconsin. I used to live there. It’s Lake Elizabeth, and Lake Mary, or Marie in the song. Library mentioned to look up the history of the place was the nippersink public library in nearby Richmond
I really like the way he weaves the site into his song as a site of meeting his future wife and then I’m coming around the barn with the divorce.
Austin City Limits from the Tree of forgiveness to her is a classic and a wonderful wonderful epitaph. R.I.P my friend and thank you.
I think the feeling conveyed is one of lost innocence, of safety by desecration of a special place. When JP was 10 the loss was from the bodies found in the forest near his home, later Lake Marie, a special, safe place for the characters in the song, becomes tarnished in the same way “ forever”. The shadows from the past catch up again. Trying to reconnect to safety and love, the character flee to an untarnished place lake in Canada. It sor5 of reminds me of Crazy as a Loon. Stalked by failure, place after place.