Andy: Jann wants to know, “What do you see as the predominant themes running through the recent albums?”
Truman: Well, I don’t see any themes running through their songs. It’s just like you—taking Polaroid photographs all night long, or . . . I think when they’re good, it’s really by accident, even though everything about them is rehearsed down to the last degree. The Beatles’ songs very often made some sense, but I can’t think of a single Rolling Stones song that, from beginning to end, made absolutely logical sense. It’s all in the sound.
Andy: “Did you have a good time on the tour?”
Truman: Yes. I did. Because I’m a highly curious person. It was a new world—the mechanics of it. The frantic atmosphere in which it was conducted. I really enjoyed it. I wasn’t bored. I had a good time.
Andy: Did you feel guilty about not finishing the article?
Truman: Not in the least. When I make up my mind about something, I never feel guilty. That’s it. No artist should feel guilty. If you start a painting and you don’t like it, you don’t finish it.
Andy: Why did you take so long to tell him?
Truman: Well, because I hadn’t really made up my mind. I had all of the material there, and it was sitting there, and it was bothering me, and I kept thinking, “Well, it would be so easy, really, to do it.” Finally, the time came that I just made up my mind that I wasn’t going to do it. And I just told him. They voted me Rookie Reporter of the Year [laughs].
I just have my own ideas about things, like anybody else. . . . It wasn’t something that I really wanted to do, and there were other things that I really wanted to do, which I really wanted to pull together. Which I have since pulled together, so. . . .
A Lady: Excuse me, Mr. Capote. The next time you have a party, have your friends wear these.
Truman: Oh, aren’t you sweet. . . .
Andy: What’s that?
Truman: Who knows?
JOHNNY CASH
by Robert Hilburn
March 1, 1973
Music seems to have been an important part of your life from the beginning. What was the first time you remember listening to music?
The first I remember was my mother playing the guitar. Before I started school. I was four or five years old, but I remember singing with her. Carter family songs, a lot of them. I don’t remember any of them in particular, but I know they were gospel songs, church songs.
Besides listening to music you had to work on the farm when you were a kid. Was that an important part of your character building?
Hard work? I don’t know. Chopping cotton and picking cotton is drudgery. I don’t know how much good it ever did me. I don’t know how much good drudgery does anybody.
But I get the feeling, though, that you have empathy with people who work hard, that you want to reassure them in your music that their life has meaning.
Yeah. I got a lot of respect for a man that’s not afraid to work. I don’t think a man can be happy unless he’s working. And I work hard on my music. I put in a lot of thought. I lose a lot of sleep, a lot of nights, because I’m laying awake thinking about my songs and about what’s right and wrong with my music. I worry about whether that last record was worth releasing, whether I could have done it better. Sometimes I feel that the last record was exactly like the one I released fourteen years ago. I wonder if I’m just spinning my wheels sometimes. I wonder if I’m progressing, if I’m growing musically, artistically. I guess I’ve quoted Bob Dylan a million times, his line, “He who is not busy being born is busy dying.” I’ve always believed that.
Going back to your childhood, what was the next step—musically?
I started writing songs myself when I was about twelve. I started writing some poems and then made some music up to go along with them. They were love songs, sad songs. I think the death of my brother Jack, when I was twelve, had a lot to do with it. My poems were awfully sad at the time. My brother and I were very, very close.
Did you sing the songs to your family? What was the reaction?
Oh well, you know how families are. My dad would pat me on the head and say that was pretty good, but you’d better think about something that will buy you something to eat someday. My mother was a hundred percent for my music. When I was sixteen she wanted me to take piano and voice lessons. She even took in washing to get the money. I think I had one voice lesson. The teacher told me not to take any more because it might affect my delivery.
What was the first time you sang in public?
I guess it was at high school commencement. I sang Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” I had a high voice, a tenor when I was a teenager. I had just piano accompaniment. I was pretty scared. I didn’t do anything else until after I got out of the Air Force.
Did you have a feeling at that time, when you went into the Air Force, that you were ever going to really get into music?
Yeah, I always knew. I really did. I always knew. I remember writing my brother when I was in the Air Force telling him that I’d be recording within a year after I was discharged. I wrote “Folsom Prison Blues” while I was in the air force in Germany. I wrote it one night after seeing a movie called Inside the Walls of Folsom. I also wrote “Belshazzar” and “Hey Porter” in the air force.
When you got back to Memphis, how did you get into the music business?
I found out about Sun Records in Memphis. They were getting pretty hot with Elvis about that time, so I called about an audition. I remember how scared I was the first time I walked into Sun. It was Sam Phillips and his secretary, Miss McGinnis. They didn’t even remember I had an appointment to record. I got the first of seven “come back laters.” I told Phillips that I wrote gospel songs. I thought “Belshazzar” was the best song I had to show him. He said, “Well, the market is not too good for gospel songs. Come back sometime when you feel like you’ve got something else.”
But we eventually got together, and I believe we recorded “Hey Porter” the same day. The first session was really something. Luther Perkins had a little secondhand Sears amplifier with a six-inch speaker. Marshall Grant had a bass that was held together with masking tape. I had a $4.80 guitar that I had brought back from Germany. Phillips had to be a genius to get anything out of that conglomeration.
Not long after “Hey Porter” was released, I was back in the studio recording everything I had written and some songs that I hadn’t written. It was exciting, things were happening so fast. I remember one day going into the studio and Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis were both there. Carl Perkins came in a few minutes later, and the four of us stood around the piano singing hymns.
I think we sang for a couple of hours; and I understand Sam had the recorder on and there is something like ten hymns recorded by that “quartet.”
How did you get together with Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant?
We met at a garage where my brother worked. They were mechanics. They had just been fooling around with music. Roy told me they were both guitar players. Marshall had never touched a bass at that time. So, here we were: three guitar players. We tried to get Marshall to start playing the bass, and Luther agreed to try the electric guitar. We felt we needed the instruments to round out the sound.
How did you work out the arrangements?
I just had it all in my head. I’d show Luther the notes on the guitar, and he’d play it over and over until he learned it.
How did the Johnny Cash sound come about?
That boom-chick-a-boom sound? Luther took the metal plate off the Fender guitar and muted the strings because he said he played it so ragged that he was ashamed of it and he was trying to cover up the sound.
What did Phillips say when he heard the sound?
He thought it was really commercial. He just flipped over it.
How did you feel when you had the first record in your hand? It must have been a big day for you.
It was the most fantastic feeling I ever had in my life. I remember signing the recording contract the day the
record was released. I had both the contract and “Hey Porter” in my hand when I left Sun that day. And I had fifteen cents in my pocket. I remember coming out of the studio and there was a bum on the street. I gave him the fifteen cents. That’s true. Then I took the record to the radio station, holding it like it was an old master painting. And the disc jockey dropped it and it broke. By accident. It was the next day till I could get another one. That was really heartbreaking. But the record went on to get a lot of airplay, especially in the South. Presley’s first manager, Bob Neal, called me and wanted me to do some concerts with Elvis. The first place I played was Overton Park in Memphis. I did “Hey Porter” and “Cry, Cry, Cry” and the reaction was good, very good.
“I Walk the Line” was the big record for you. Did you have a special feeling about it when you finished it?
I thought it was a very good song, but I wasn’t sure about the record. I was in Florida when I first heard it on the radio, and I called Phillips and begged him not to send any more copies out. I thought it was so bad. I thought it was a horrible record. And he said let’s give it a chance and see. But I didn’t want to. I wanted it stopped right then. I got upset with him over it. I thought it sounded so bad. Still sounds bad.
Your voice or the arrangement?
The arrangement. And I didn’t like the sound, the modulation and all. But that’s what turned out to be the most commercial part of it. Sam was right about it.
What made you eventually leave Sun?
There were also some business matters that we didn’t see eye to eye on. He had me on a beginner’s rate after three years, and I didn’t feel right about it. But, mainly I knew that I could do different kinds of things with a larger label. I could record an album of hymns for Columbia, for instance, and that was important to me at the time.
What was it like returning home to Arkansas after you had become famous?
Well, I was still the country boy to those people. I mean I wasn’t anything special to them. A lot of places I’d go in those days made you feel like the big radio star that I had wanted to be, and it felt good. I really ate it up. But at home all the old people would come up and say, “Boy, I remember when you used to bring me buttermilk every other Thursday” or something.
Was there a point that you ever lost touch with those people? During the bad years? Was there a point where you really didn’t think of them as friends anymore?
Yes, right. I felt like I didn’t belong, and for about seven years I didn’t go back. I didn’t go back around those people. I didn’t want any of them to see me.
That was the bad time for you, the pills and all.
Yeah, not too long after I moved to California. I still don’t know why I ever moved to California. I liked it there, had worked out there quite a bit and thought I’d love living there. But I didn’t really belong out there. I never really felt at home there. I tried to, but I just didn’t. I got into the habit of amphetamines. I took them for seven years. I just liked the feel of them.
Was it the lift?
Yes, it lifts you, and under certain conditions it intensifies all your senses—makes you think you’re the greatest writer in the world. You just write songs all night long and just really groove on what you’re doing, digging yourself, and keep on taking the pills. Then, when you sober up later, you realize it wasn’t so good. When I run across some of the stuff I wrote, it always makes me sick . . . wild, impossible, ridiculous ramblings you wouldn’t believe.
You took more pills to cover up the guilt feelings. And I got to playing one against the other, the uppers against the downers, and it got to be a vicious, vicious circle. And they got to pulling me down. On top of that, I thought I was made of steel and nothing could hurt me. I wrecked every car, every truck, every jeep I ever drove during that seven years. I counted the broken bones in my body once. I think I have seventeen. It’s the grace of God that one of those bones wasn’t my neck.
Over a period of time, though, you get to realizing that amphetamines are slowly burning you up, and burning you up is the truth—because they are hot after a while. Then you get paranoid, you think everybody is out to do you in. You don’t trust anybody—even the ones who love you the most. It’s like a bad dream now.
Was there a point in your life that you think you hit bottom? Like the time in Georgia when you woke up in jail?
Yeah, that was in ’67. That’s when things started turning. But that was just one of the many awakenings I had. You know, that one has been written up in a lot of books and magazines, but that was just one of dozens or hundreds of times that I started reawakening and realizing that there was something good that was going to happen to me, that I had to pull myself out, that life was going to take a turn for the better.
I’d had seven years of roughing it and I felt I had seven years of good times and good life coming. I really felt in 1967 that there were seven big years ahead.
How did you start pulling out of those bad times?
Well, it really started about the time June and I got married. The growth of love in my life and the spiritual strengthening came at about the same time. Religion’s got a lot to do with it. Religion, love, it’s all one and the same as far as I’m concerned, because that’s what religion means to me. It’s love. About the time I married June, we started growing in spiritual strength together. And it shows up onstage.
You can’t fool the audience. You can’t fool yourself. If you’re not yourself onstage, it shows. I’m really happy now. But that’s not the same as being content. I still want to grow more as a performer, as an artist, as a person. So, I’m still working hard at it. I never go on that stage when I’m not scared. There’s always that fear that somebody’s going to throw eggs at you or something.
How would you get yourself up physically and emotionally for a recording session during those troubled years?
I missed a lot of sessions. I’d come into the studio with a fog over my head, not really caring what condition I was in. Just go in on sheer guts and give it a try. It showed up on a lot of my recordings.
What was it about Dylan that attracted you?
I thought he was one of the best country singers I had ever heard. I really did. I dug the way he did the things with such a country flavor and the country sounds. “World War III Talkin’ Blues” and all those things in the Freewheelin’ album. I didn’t think you could get much more country than that. Of course, his lyrics knocked me out, and we started writing each other. We wrote each other letters for about a year before we ever met.
I was playing here in Las Vegas the first time I heard one of his albums. I played it backstage, in the dressing room, and I wrote him a letter telling him how much I liked his songs, and he answered it and in so many words told me the same thing. He had remembered me from the days of “I Walk the Line” when he was living in Hibbing, Minnesota. I invited him to come see me in California, but when he came to California later he couldn’t find my house.
I got another letter that was written in Carmel and by the time I answered it, he’d already gone back to New York. When I was in New York not long after that John Hammond told me that Bob was in town. So he came up and we met at Columbia Records. We spent a few hours together, talking about songs, swappin’ songs and he invited me up to his house in Woodstock. After the Newport Folk Festival, he invited me to his house again.
Some people say that Dylan is aloof or withdrawn, that he is hard to talk to. Did you find him that way?
We never did really talk all that much. There’s a mutual understanding between us. I never did try to dig into his personal life and he didn’t try to dig into mine. If he’s aloof and hard to get to, I can understand why. I don’t blame him. So many people have taken advantage of him, tried to do him in when they did get to him, that I wouldn’t blame him for being aloof and hard to get to. Everybody tells him what he should write, how to think, what to sing. But that’s really his business.
Let’s talk about your own songs. Do you have any
special memories about them?
Sure, most of my songs bring back memories. Things like how I happened to write them, where I was when they were released and so forth.
“Train of Love”—I remember writing that in 1955 when I was on the Louisiana Hayride show in Shreveport. Sam Phillips happened to be there. And I called him into the dressing room and asked him what he thought about the song. He really liked it. We recorded it on the next session.
I wrote “Give My Love to Rose” about ten blocks from San Quentin prison. I was playing a club there one night in ’56, the first time I came to California. And an ole boy came backstage, an ex-con, to talk to me about Shreveport. He was from there. And I’m not sure his wife was named Rose, but his wife was in Shreveport and he said something about “giving my love to my wife if you get back to Shreveport before I do.” He had just gotten out of prison. I wrote the song that night.
The Rolling Stone interviews Page 11