by Steve Turner
Cash and Snow became reacquainted in 1969 when their paths crossed at Saigon airport, and later, during the taping of the Johnny Cash Show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, where Snow became a familiar figure backstage. By then he was the pastor of his own church, Evangel Temple, on Dickerson Road in Madison, and had a vision for making a Christian impact on the country music industry. One of his earliest musical recruits was Larry Lee, a songwriter signed to House of Cash. He later persuaded Cash's sister Joanne to join the choir. Because of Joanne, June's twelve-year-old daughter, Rosey, started to attend services at the church, and ultimately, so did June and then Cash.
The unimposing church impressed Cash with its unconditional love, joy, and unselfconscious worship. As a Pentecostal denomination, the Assembly of God emphasized the more demonstrative "spiritual gifts," such as physical healing, prophecy, visions, and speaking in tongues. It also stressed the importance of "holy living," discouraging too much close contact with "the world." A comparatively recent denomination, it was founded in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1914, and at one time counted Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis among its members.
Initially Cash felt uneasy about the differences between the Assembly of God and the Southern Baptists. June, raised in a Methodist church, had similar reservations. In the end, they realized they agreed more than they disagreed with the Assembly of God tenets. Snow came over to Cash's log cabin and prayed with him. "We knelt right there and prayed together," the preacher later said. "When we did, God's spirit met with us and confirmed the experience we had there. I could really feel God."
Snow convinced Cash he would benefit from making his commitment public. He did, at Evangel Temple on May 9, 1971, when Snow made an altar call after preaching a sermon on the responsibility of a father as the spiritual leader of a family. The text was Acts 16:31: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house." As he had at age twelve, and more recently at First Baptist Church at age thirty-five, Cash knelt at the altar, declared that he was sorry for his sins, and promised to endeavor to live a life of obedience to the will of God. June knelt beside him. Later Snow said, "It is one thing for a public figure to join a church. It is another thing for him to humble himself enough to get down on his knees and crawl and cry in front of a congregation."
Cash became noticeably more diligent about his faith. Influenced by Assembly of God teachings that tend to divide activities into either "secular" or "sacred," he began to prioritize gospel promotion over art or entertainment. For a while, it seemed to him that his wealth and fame had been built on the "stubble" that would be burnt away on the Day of Judgment. What was the value of singing to people about trains and prisons, cotton fields and love gone wrong if they were perched on the edge of hell? Wasn't it an abuse of his power if he neglected to tell his audience about the way of salvation? "I don't have a career anymore," Cash announced. "What I have now is a ministry. Everything I have and everything I do is given completely to Jesus Christ now. I've lived all my life for the devil up until now, and from here on I'm going to live it for the Lord."
The most obvious manifestation of this new attitude was the film Gospel Road, a presentation of Christ's life through narration, song, and drama made for the big screen. He wanted to make it, Cash said, "because I think Jesus was the most misquoted, misread, and misunderstood man in history. People have twisted his words to suit their needs. People also died for him. They died for his words." It was an ambitious and not obviously commercial project, yet when Cash approached Robert Elfstrom (who had filmed Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music) to direct it, he had no storyboard. Besides a working title (In the Footsteps of Jesus), all he had was the idea that he would visit locations in Israel connected with Christ's life and deliver lines to the camera in almost the same way that he had composed the Holy Land album. Relevant songs could later be interspersed. He also wanted to dramatize some of the more crucial biblical scenes. Perhaps most importantly, Cash planned to finance it himself—to the tune of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars—in order that he could maintain complete artistic control.
"He felt it was payback time," says Elfstrom. "He had made a lot of money doing the TV series, and he wanted to use that money to make a film about something he really believed in. I don't think that the TV series made him that happy. It wasn't his cup of tea. What he liked was to do things the way that we made this film. It was his money and he liked to do things the way he wanted. He liked to do things impulsively. He wanted to roll the dice."
After two intense years working with shooting scripts, rehearsal schedules, and words written for him by other people, Cash wanted to take things as they came, believing that some creative good would emerge. Elfstrom, who went to Israel ahead of Cash with writer Larry Murray (who had worked on the Johnny Cash Show), says that the script they began shooting with had no more than eight pages. The actors they'd hired for the dramatic pieces were all untrained, and most of them had been recruited from the backpacking community in Tiberius. "We were winging it," says Elfstrom. "When we started he told me that we should just do a lot of shots of the feet of Jesus walking here and there. That was all he had. He thought you could take repeated shots of a pair of feet and put music on top."
A team of forty or so worked on the film in Israel throughout November 1971. They based themselves in Tiberius on the Sea of Galilee and shot many of the scenes in an abandoned Palestinian village close to Jericho. They also filmed in Nazareth, Samaria, near the Dead Sea, and in the Negev Desert. One sequence they filmed but never used captured Cash being baptized in the Jordan River by Jimmy Snow, who'd been invited to join the trip as the film's religious consultant.
Key roles were cast in a way more befitting a home movie than a feature film. June became Mary Magdalene, Johnny's sister Reba became Mary the mother of Christ, Jimmy Snow had a brief appearance as Pontius Pilate, and Larry Lee appeared as John the Baptist. They spent days looking at European and American backpackers who could pass for Jesus Christ but couldn't find a suitable candidate. "Then one day they just looked at me and said, Bob, why don't you do it?" says Elfstrom. "I had blond hair, I was a hippie, and that was it. All of a sudden I was directing the film, shooting it, and playing the role of Jesus!"
Cash had started recording the songs for the film with producer Larry Butler before he left the U.S. They continued to work on the songs and incidental music throughout the first half of 1972. Christopher Wren, a senior editor from Look magazine was researching Cash's biography Winners Got Scars Too at this time and, being an ex-folkie from New York, wrote the song "Jesus Was a Carpenter" while hanging out at the Cash house. "I was in the living room and there were guitars all over the place. I was fiddling with some chords and he asked me what I was doing. I told him I was writing a song and he said, 'Well, I'm going upstairs for a nap. If you've finished when I come down and I like what you've written, I'll record it.' He liked it and recorded it. I was surprised!" Another song Wren had already written, "Gospel Road," provided the title for the film. Cash rerecorded "He Turned the Water into Wine" and wrote "I See Men as Trees Walking" and "Praise the Lord" specifically for the project.
In the meantime, at the invitation of country star Connie Smith, Kris Kristofferson had paid a visit to Evangel Temple in 1971. During the service Snow asked a member of the congregation, aspiring singer Larry Gatlin (who was then working as a janitor for a local TV station), to perform a song he'd written about his dependence on God. The song was called "Help Me":
I never thought I needed help before,
I thought that I could get by, by myself,
Now I know I just can't make it any more,
With a humble heart, on bended knees,
I'm begging you please, help me.1
For reasons he finds inexplicable even today, Kristofferson was so moved by the song that, against all rational judgment, he walked down the aisle in response to Jimmy Snow's altar call. "It was what I guess you would call a religious experience," he say
s. "I've never had one before or since. To this day I don't know why I did it. I think Jimmy sensed that I didn't know what I was doing because he asked me if I was ready to be saved and I told him that I didn't know. He put his hand on my shoulder and told me to get down on my knees. There were a number of us kneeling and I don't remember what he was saying. It was something about freedom from guilt. All I can remember is that I broke into tears. I was weeping and when it was over I felt like I'd been purged. I was carrying a lot of guilt at that time. I felt that I had disappointed my family, my friends, my ancestors, and everybody that knew me. So I wrote that song." The song he wrote later that day in the back of Connie Smith's car was "Why Me."
Early in 1972, Gatlin repeated his performance of "Help Me" at Evangel Temple when June was in the congregation. She loved the song so much that she scribbled Gatlin's name down on the back of a blank check and went home to tell Cash about this exciting new singer, Larry Gatlin. A few months later, in April, Cash attended a Sunday morning service, and Snow, presumably having noticed Cash's presence, again asked Gatlin to perform. "As I was putting up my guitar afterward in the pastor's study John walked in behind me," says Gatlin. "John Cash could walk in a room behind you and you'd know he was there. You could feel his presence. I turned around and he said, 'Er, son. I like that song, son. You know, we're making this movie about Jesus and tomorrow we're in the studio and I'd love for you to come over and help us. Can you do that?' I said, 'Mr. Cash. I just got fired from my job on Friday. I'll be there first thing Monday morning.'"
At CBS studios Cash viewed the partially edited film on a monitor and pointed out sequences that he felt needed music. He told Gatlin that he needed something to go over a scene of the Last Supper, so Gatlin went home and wrote "The Last Supper":
Have a little bread Simon
Give a little wine to James my brother
Go ahead and eat boys
And love one another.2.
A week later they moved to the recently completed House of Cash Recording Studios in Hendersonville and cut "Help Me" and another Gatlin song, "Steps." "That was the start of one of the most meaningful and cherished relationships of my life," says Gatlin. "He put me on my first national TV show in New York. He took me to concerts. He wrote the sleeve notes for my first album. He launched my career."
The symbiosis between Cash, Kristofferson, and Gatlin went even further. Kristofferson recorded "Why Me" and the last track on side two of his new album, Jesus Was a Capricorn. As the last track on side one he sang "Help Me" with Gatlin. "I did it because I loved the song and was so grateful for the effect that it had on me," says Kristofferson. "To further demonstrate my gratitude, I put it on the B side of my single 'Why Me' instead of one of my own, giving Larry mechanical royalties on the biggest single I ever had. Payback!" Cash used Kristofferson's "Burden of Freedom," a song about personal responsibility that alluded to Christ's suffering, on the Gospel Road soundtrack and later recorded both "Why Me" and Gatlin's "Help Me."
Radical Christian groups who mixed countercultural style (long hair, rock festivals, communal living) with traditional biblical content emerged in the 1970s as a belated response to the cultural changes of the 1960s. They worshiped with rock music, adapted "hip" terminology, and often met in abandoned buildings rather than in churches. Like Johnny Cash, an influential number of what the media dubbed "Jesus Freaks" had experimented with drugs, sex, and alternative spiritual beliefs, and, significantly, they came to prominence just as the idealism of the 1960s was fading. The murders carried out by members of the Manson Family showed what a dangerous cocktail hallucinogenic drugs, occultism, and half-digested Eastern mysticism could make. The death of an African American music fan at the hands of Hell's Angels guards at the Rolling Stones' Altamont concert illustrated the limits of freedom. The breakup of the Beatles proved that more than love was needed to stop people warring.
Though not directly inspired by what TIME magazine, in its cover story of June 21, 1971, called "The Jesus Revolution," Gospel Road did exemplify the new mood of openness in popular culture to the name and image of Jesus. Recent songs by John Lennon, James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel, the Rolling Stones, and Eric Clapton had all referenced Jesus. Even a new genre of music known as Jesus Rock, with proponents like Larry Norman, Randy Matthews, and Love Song, emerged, harnessing the rhythm and beat of rock music to often explicitly Christian statements. And two rock musicals about the life of Jesus premiered that year on the American stage. Godspell, written by Stephen Schwarz and John Michael Tebelak, opened off-Broadway on May 17 and Jesus Christ Superstar, with words by Tim Rice and music by Andrew Lloyd-Webber, had its Broadway premiere on October 12.
Buoyed by this new fascination for Jesus, Campus Crusade for Christ, a conservative evangelical organization working with students, organized a week of teaching evangelism for eighty thousand young people in June 1972. Held in Dallas, Texas, Explo '72 attempted to make Christianity relevant to a generation that had grown up with rock music, student protests, ecological concerns, spiritual quests, and alternative states of consciousness. The week's culminating event was a massive outdoor concert for more than one hundred fifty thousand on an abandoned racetrack just outside the city. Billy Graham, a cosponsor of the week and the keynote speaker at the nine-hour show, referred to it as a "religious Woodstock," which was exactly how Campus Crusade wanted it to be perceived. They wanted the opportunity to prove that non-Christians didn't have the monopoly on "love, peace, and music."
Cash was by far the best-known performer on a bill made up of Jesus Rock artists whose records sold through churches and Christian bookstores and who were predominately unknown to readers of Rolling Stone or Creem. He in turn invited Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge, thinking that it would be good for them to see the Christian crowd and for the Christian crowd to hear songs like "Why Me" and "Burden of Freedom." Dressed in black and overwhelmed by a stage set full of brightly colored Peter Max—style clouds, rainbows, and flowers, Cash sang "I've Seen Men Like Trees Walking," "A Thing Called Love," and "Supper Time." Between songs he told the crowd, "I have tried drugs and a little of everything else, and there is nothing more soul satisfying than having the kingdom of God building inside you and growing." Kristofferson, who still couldn't make sense of his experience at Evangel Temple, felt decidedly uncomfortable performing his slim gospel repertoire in front of thousands of fresh-faced young people, knowing that his appearance would be interpreted as a public declaration of faith. "I was singing songs that I thought were spiritual, but people wanted to hear more songs specifically about Jesus," he says. "Eventually I had to tell John that I couldn't do these type of shows anymore. I felt like a hypocrite."
Cash however, continued to play at similar events. He went to London with Carl Perkins and the Tennessee Three to perform at Wembley Stadium for the closing concert of SPRE-E '73, a British version of Explo '72. He performed songs from Gospel Road ("the best album I've ever made"), and he told the thirty-thousand- strong crowd that in the past he'd given his "flesh to the devil and left only the bones to God." Billy Graham warned people that he feared Russia was about to attack China and that this would launch Armageddon. "I see no glimmer of hope in the scientific world," he said. "There is no place to hide. The whole world is a problem . . . Jesus Christ is the answer. There is no other."
Jimmy Snow started a gospel music version of the Grand Ole Opry. It took place late on a Friday night at the Ryman Auditorium after the regular Opry show and was called the Grand Ole Gospel Hour. There Kristofferson premiered "Why Me" and Larry Gatlin first performed "Help Me" outside of a church. Cash played there and at the All-Lutheran Youth Gathering in Houston. He played at the Youth for Christ Super Rally in Kansas City and at the Johnny Cash Country and Gospel Festival at Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania. He showed no reservations about being associated with mainstream American evangelicalism and was unconcerned that it might damage his career.
Besides appearing with Billy Graham, Cash performed for other evang
elists like Oral Roberts, Tommy Barnett, and James Robison. A preacher's theological stripe didn't bother him at the time, as long as somewhere in their message they preached the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ. He didn't appear to mind whether that gospel came wrapped in a prayer cloth, a charm, or a warning about the imminent end of the world. Cash would either brush aside the criticisms of those who thought that some high-profile evangelists were manipulative, insincere, dishonest, and greedy, or even suggest that their suspicions were demonically inspired. In a song titled "Billy and Rex and Oral and Bob" he celebrated the ministries not only of Billy Graham, Rex Humbard, Oral Roberts, and Bob Harrington, but the late Billy Sunday, James Robison, Kathryn Kuhlman, Garner Ted Armstrong, Tommy Barnett, Jimmy Snow, and Reverend Ike.
Ordained for proclaiming the gospel of Jesus
The great super preachers go crusading on
And the people all gather in great congregations
To hear of a Savior who came to atone.
And they kneel at the altar and walk away happy
Then the Devil starts gossip 'bout money and sex
And making it hard on the good men of God
Like Billy and Bob and Oral and Rex.
Cash's lack of discrimination later affected him when some of the individuals he supported were found guilty of the very sins their enemies had accused them of. Through his relatively newly opened eyes, all evangelists and all teachings bearing the Christian name had seemed equally valid. He had an almost childlike trust in preachers. "I really don't know too much about doctrine," he once confessed. "I just simply believe in God and Jesus." In The Man in Black he asked himself why televangelists were criticized and abused by so many and concluded that it was because they had "been to the top of the mountain. They had seen heaven a little clearer than I had. Maybe things had been revealed to them that don't get passed around freely to the rest of us. The wind of the spirit had blown through their minds."3.