For more than fifty years, Bonnie Raitt has walked onto stages with the kind of calm that makes difficult songs look effortless. But one of the most unforgettable performances of her life began very differently — with grief so fresh that she was not sure she could make it through the song at all. Years later, Raitt opened up about what happened in the days after the death of her dear friend John Prine, revealing that before she sang “Angel From Montgomery” in tribute to him, she was still trying to understand how to perform a song that suddenly carried the weight of goodbye.
Prine died on April 7, 2020, from complications related to COVID-19. For Raitt, the loss was not simply the death of a songwriter she admired. They had known each other since the early 1970s, and their friendship stretched across nearly five decades of touring, laughter, music and shared history. “Angel From Montgomery,” which Raitt began performing early in her career, became one of the defining songs in her repertoire and one of the strongest musical threads connecting them.
Raitt later recalled that less than 24 hours after receiving the news, she was asked to speak publicly about Prine. She was still “very raw,” she said, and barely remembered what she told viewers because the shock had not settled into anything she could easily explain. A few days later, she was asked to record “Angel From Montgomery” for an online tribute, and that was when private grief collided with the responsibility of honoring a friend whose songs had been part of her life for nearly half a century.
There was no packed arena waiting beyond a curtain. Raitt was at home, and she later admitted she was grateful there was no audience because she needed multiple takes to finish the performance. The song she had sung for decades suddenly felt different because the man who wrote it — the friend who had once stood beside her and shared it with her — was gone.
That is the part audiences rarely see. A performer can know every chord and every breath of a song, but experience offers little protection when grief changes what the words mean. For Raitt, “Angel From Montgomery” had long been about longing, regret and the desire for another life. After Prine’s death, it also became a vessel for memory.
Raitt has described Prine as one of her dearest friends and later said that losing him was one of the great heartbreaks of the pandemic. Their bond began around 1971 and continued through decades of performances together. They were musical companions who grew up in public, crossed paths repeatedly and remained connected no matter how many years passed.
When she finally recorded the tribute, Raitt understood that she had to sing not only for herself, but for everyone mourning Prine. That choice gave the performance its emotional force. There was no need for dramatic staging. Every pause, every fragile edge in her voice and every familiar chord carried the knowledge that she would never again sing the song with him in the same room.
The loss followed her into later years. In 2022, when musicians gathered in Nashville for the “You Got Gold” celebration honoring Prine, Raitt performed “Angel From Montgomery” again with Brandi Carlile, describing the gathering as both a wake and the celebration friends had never been able to have during the pandemic.
That is why the story behind the performance matters. The most powerful part did not begin when Bonnie Raitt touched the first chord. It began before the music, when she sat with the knowledge that a friend of nearly fifty years was gone and wondered whether she could sing his song without breaking. She did, and in doing so turned private grief into something thousands of people could carry with her — proving that sometimes the notes we struggle hardest to play are the ones that remain with us longest.
