by Steve Turner
Copyright © Joel Baldwin
Cash on Old Hickory Lake, Hendersonville, Tennessee
Courtesy of John Carter Cash
Johnny and June at London Airport, May 1968
Courtesy of John Carter Casr
Performing at the premiere of The Johnny Cash Show, taped May 1, 1969
Copyright © Don Hunstein
Johnny and June in New York recording studio, 1975
Courtesy of House of Cash
Johnny Cash with his kids at Bon Aqua, July 4, 1975. Left to right: John Carter, godson Tony Bisceglea, friend Chris Brock, Cindy, Rosanne, Johnny, grandson Thomas Coggins, Tara, and Kathy.
Courtesy of John Carter Cash
Johnny Cash cheers up a young child at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, 1977.
AP Photo
John Carter, Johnny, and June Carter Cash at the dedication of a star honoring him in the Hollywood Walk of Fame on March 10, 1976
Copyright © Robert Alexander
Johnny Cash adored mother-in-law, "Mother Maybelle" Carter. This photo captures a moment of tenderness at the 50t h Anniversary celebration of Carter Family recordings at the Carter Fold, August 4, 1977.
Courtesy of House of Cash.
Pastor John Cobaugh baptizes Cash in the Jordan River in 1979
Copyright © Jim McGi
Ray and Carrie Cash, parents of Johnny Cash
Copyright © Karen Wilder Robin
Johnny Cash on a tour bus in Europe, 1981
Copyright © Laura Cash
Anna Maybelle and Joseph Cash
Copyright © Laura Cash
The Cash Cabin Studio
Courtesy of House of Cash
Cash and Jane talk backstage
Copyright © Laura Cash
Dustin Title
Copyright © Anne Goelze
Jane Carter Cash and Laura Cash
Courtesy of John Carter Cash
The Carter Family at Mexican border radio
station XERA. Clockwise: AP, Janette,
Announcer "Brother Bill," Sara, Maybelle,
June, Anita, and Helen Cater
Courtesy of House of Cash
Jack Cash
Copyright © Laura Cash
John Carter Cash with his dad in the Studio
Courtesy of Cindy Panetta
Eddie Panetta and Cindy Cash Panetta
Courtesy of Cindy Panetta
Cindy Cash Panetta and daughter Jessica Brock
Courtesy of John Carter Cash
John Carter, Laura, and Anna Maybelle Cash at Cinnamon Hill in Jamaica
Copyright © Martyn Atkins
June Carter Cash
in the studio during
The Man Comes Around
recording session
Copyright © Laura Cash
Johnny Cash with granddaughter
Johnny Cash inMaces Springs,
VA on June 23, 2003
Copyright © Tara Schwoebel
Carlene Carter's daughter
Tiffany Lowe and grand
daughter Luna Kai Darling
Courtedy of Lou RObin
Manager Lou Robin, Cash, and Karen
Robin, at Johnny's sobriety anniversary
party—with a '50s theme
Courtesy of John Cater Cash
Ray and Carrie Cash's 50th Anniversary—
August 20,1970. (From left: Louise, Roy, Carrie, Ray,
Tommy, Johnny, Joanne and Reba)
Copyright © Laura Cash
Carlene Carter's son Jackson Routh
with wife Emily and daughter Anni
Copyright © Karen Wilder Robin
Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Hank Williams Jr., and Waylon Jennings at a six-month sobriety celebration for Cash at Jennings' home, July 1984.
Courtesy of House of Cash
Cash talks on the phone from his truck
in the early 1980s
Courtesy of House of Cash
The sign outside of the House of Cash,
early 1980s
Courtesy of John Carter Cash
Johnny and June Carter Cash, Billy and Ruth Bell Graham
Copyright © Alan Messer
Johnny Cash and Billy Graham
at a Billy Graham Crusade in Denver, Colorado, in 1988
© 1988 photograph by Alan Messer www.alanmesser.com
June Carter Cash New York City, 1988
1999 by Alan Messer www.alanmesser.com
Cinnamon Hill, Jamaica, January 1999
Copyright © Martyn Atkin
Tom Petty, Cash, Rick Rubin, and Marty Stuart
in the studio for the American Recordings.
Copyright © Laura Cash
Johnny & June's last portrait together,
taken at his private office at home. March 2003
Courtesy of House of Cash
Handwritten by J.R Cash in the late 1940s
13
The Man Comes Around
THE ENFORCED SECLUSION at Old Hickory Lake was not to Cash's liking. He wasn't officially housebound, but travel presented fresh difficulties, and he had more and more doctor appointments to keep. He'd spent most of his adult life on the road—with his musicians as a surrogate family and his tour bus as a home away from home. Moving from city to city suited his restless nature. Basking in the applause of the crowd was a safe and controllable form of intoxication. "It gives me a high like none you can get," he said in 1988.
As Cash the man slowed, so did Cash the business. The Johnny Cash Museum shut its doors in 1995 and now, with Cash off the tour, talk of selling the House of Cash began. The payroll that once listed over forty people now ran in single figures. In January 1998, Carl Perkins died after suffering a series of strokes. In June, Helen Carter died at the age of seventy. Just over a year later, Anita Carter died at the age of sixty-six.
"It depresses him," Rosanne said at the time. "He's not used to sitting around. He's a very powerful person and not to feel well—that's really hard for him. He spent over forty years on the road, and suddenly he's not there. When that energy comes to a screeching halt, there's a lot to deal with just inside yourself."
Perhaps he could have managed a single illness, but almost every part of his body decided to rebel at the same time. His asthma only compounded the chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder in his lungs, his jaw remained a constant source of pain, and his stomach regurgitated food. Partially deaf in his left ear and partially blind from glaucoma, he suffered also from damaged nerve endings and abscessed feet.
It's difficult to say whether Cash's years of drug abuse contributed to his ailments. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there may be a connection between heavy amphetamine use and diabetes in later life. Some family members thought he'd been overmedicated for years, and others thought that he had been operated on more than necessary. Neither of his parents had suffered ill health at his age (now sixty-six) and both had lived well into their eighties. He insisted that years of hard work on the road, not the drugs, wore out his body. "Maybe I did [wear myself out]. But it was to a good purpose. They [the pundits] should be thankful that I wore it out . . . writing and recording and touring and doing concerts."
As Cash's faculties declined, public and professional acclaim for his work increased. People seemed to realize that they may not have many more chances to tell him face to face just what an exceptional contribution he had made to music. In December 1996, Cash received a Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award. Vice President Al Gore nominated Cash for the award that honored his body of work for revealing "the entire range of existence, failure and recovery, entrapment and escape, weakness and strength, loss and redemption, life and death." In February 1998, Unchained won the Grammy for Best Country Album, and the following year the Recording Academy gave him the Grammy's Lifetime Achievement award.
It was in 1998 that he first had discussions about making a movie of his life story called Walk the Line. He approached James Keach, mo
vie-producer-husband of Jane Seymour, who had first met him when he and June had guest starred on Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman and had grown to be a close friend. "John said that he'd like me to be involved because he didn't trust the intentions of most people in Hollywood," says Keach. "He wanted a film that wasn't just sex and drugs and rock-'n'-roll but his journey as a man and his love with June and the fact that God was at the core of his story."
An original script by Gil Denis, written in close consultation with Cash, was eventually sold to Sony with director James Mangold and his producer-wife Cathy Konrad attached to the project but was put into turnaround and then picked up by Fox 2000. Production started in 2004 with Joaquin Phoenix playing Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June.
In April 1999, the industry gathered at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York for the All-Star Tribute to Johnny Cash. Many of Cash's closest friends and greatest admirers in the business sang their choice of his songs. Filmed highlights included performances by U2 ("Don't Take Your Guns to Town"), Bruce Springsteen ("Give My Love to Rose"), and Bob Dylan ("Train of Love"). Cash watched the show offstage on TV monitors, but after Tim Robbins read the liner notes to Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, the honoree graced the audience with both "Folsom Prison Blues" and "I Walk the Line." In 2001, President George W. Bush presented him the National Medal of Arts.
Being off the road did have its benefits—Johnny now had the time to focus on creating music. He had found a large part of his identity in being a performing artist and now he had to rediscover it as a recording artist. His relationship with Rick Rubin reinvigorated him. He derived great pleasure from researching songs to record in the future, and he enjoyed sending CDs to Rubin for his opinion. He recorded in his cabin, where, through the window, he could watch the goats, deer, and peacocks wandering among the trees. His son, John Carter, would join him and make suggestions. He, along with Cash's son-in-law Jimmy Tittle, would both work on all the American Recording sessions—John Carter as associate producer and Tittle as production assistant. Periodically, Rubin would fly in from L.A. to monitor the progress.
Thoughts of sin and redemption preoccupied him less during the building of this album, possibly because he'd left the arena of his greatest temptations. Spending so much time sick and at home, Cash was not so easily tempted by the lusts of the flesh. "They [the demons] don't come knocking on a regular basis," he admitted. "They just kind of hover in the distance." Instead, he became preoccupied with the transience of life and the consciousness of mortality. The subject even crept into the songs he dredged from his memory—songs he used to sing to his girlfriends back in Dyess—like "That Lucky Old Sun."
Oh, Lord above, don't you hear me cryin'
Tears are rollin' down my eyes.
Send in a cloud with a silver linin,'
Take me to paradise.
Show me that river, take me across,
Wash all my troubles away
Like that lucky old sun, give me nothing to do,
But roll around heaven all day.1
For the same album, Rubin chose more contemporary songs, like Neil Diamond's "Solitary Man," Tom Petty's defiant "I Won't Back Down," and Nick Cave's sombre "The Mercy Seat," which told the story of an execution from the point of view of the condemned man. In Cash's hands "The Mercy Seat" became not only a song of compassion for those facing the electric chair but the testimony of anyone under a death sentence.
And the mercy seat is waiting
And I think my head is burning
And in a way I'm yearning
To be done with all this measuring of truth
An eye for an eye
A tooth for a tooth
And anyway I told the truth
And I'm not afraid to die.2.
The process of collecting material infused Cash's creative juices. He wrote three new songs, cowrote another and coadapted a fourth. "It's the first time I've ever had them bombard my brain like that," he told Rolling Stone. "I hadn't written for more than a year since I got sick, but when I started recording, the ideas started coming."3 Again the songs depicted endings, departures, transitions. The last verse of "Wayfaring Stranger," a song from an 1858 hymnal, summed up his situation:
I know dark clouds will hang 'round me
I know my way is rough and steep
Yet beauteous fields lie just before me
Where God's redeemed their vigils keep.
I'm going there to see my mother
She said she'd meet me when I come
I'm only going over Jordan
I'm only going over home.4.
His voice had grown noticeably weaker. He could no longer reach the high notes, and at times he was reduced to a vocal style that was closer to the spoken word. He was conscious of his loss of vocal power and range, but Rubin urged him on, telling him not to bother with continuous retakes. The fragility added to his art. hen he sang about "this world of woe," his weary, broken voice supplied conviction. When he sang of "that bright world to which I go," that voice gathered a soulful yearning. As Bono perceptively observed, the initial revolution at Sun Records in the 1950s gave young people a voice to celebrate youthfulness, and now Cash, with great dignity, was leading another revolution against the ravages of age, as the first of his generation to sing about the dying of the light.
"Every time I recorded Johnny Cash I knew that it would be around forever," says David Ferguson, who increasingly found himself at Cash's cabin engineering these sessions. "You take extra time with stuff like that. As far as recording him went, you could take the cheapest microphone in the world and put it in front of that guy's voice and you'd know exactly who it was as soon as he opened his mouth. He had so much character in his voice. It got harder during Solitary Man because his voice would change so much. It got harder, but it was still so much fun."
For Cash, the loss of vocal power brought frustration. He felt that he was performing beneath his ability. Rubin recalls, "Some days he would sing well, but you could hear the age in his voice. I would tell him that it didn't sound as though he was tired, it sounded like he was emoting the song. Eventually he'd come around. There were times when he'd even joke about it, saying that no songs out there were safe, because he was going to get hold of them and ruin them."
Whenever Cash completed a batch of material he'd send copies to Rubin in California for review and then, health permitting, fly out to finish the tracks. In Los Angeles, guest vocalists joined him in the studio: Sheryl Crow on "Field of Diamonds" and Will Oldham on "I See a Darkness"; in Hendersonville Merle Haggard joined him on "I'm Leavin' Now" and Tom Petty on "I Won't Back Down" and "Solitary Man."
Two unexpected trips to the hospital interrupted recording in October 1999. The first trip was short—stitches for a gashed leg. Though the second stay for pneumonia was longer, good news came in the form of a revised diagnosis. After reviewing his condition, doctors decided that instead of the terminal Shy-Drager's syndrome, he suffered from the less lethal (but more vague) condition, autonomic neuropathy. At the news, Cash shrugged, "I knew I didn't have such a nasty-sounding disease anyway."
Despite the physical setbacks, Cash always remained positive. He never complained he'd been handed a bad deal nor did he question God's plan. He maintained an unwavering gratitude for every blessing—those received and those to come. On August 16, 2000, he wrote in the sleeve notes for Solitary Man: "I wouldn't trade my future for anyone's I know." His unexpected reference to his future may seem strange, especially knowing that his future held little more than the promise of declining health and diminishing faculties. But not to Cash: "The Master of Life's been good to me," he wrote. "He gives me good health now and helps me to continue doing what I love. He has given me strength to face past illnesses, and victory in the face of defeat. He has given me life and joy where others saw oblivion. He has given new purposes to live for. New services to render and old wounds to heal. Life and love go on. Let the music play."5.The album came out on October 17, 2000, and again met with critical
acclaim.
Almost immediately Cash set about collecting and writing for his next album. The most ambitious song was "The Man Comes Around." Unlike anything he'd written before, he mixed prophetic judgment with visionary insight and delivered it half in speech and half in song. It came, he said, from a dream he'd had of meeting the queen of England who told him, "Johnny Cash! You're like a thorn tree in a whirlwind." He remembered the phrase, he said, and later traced it to a passage in the Old Testament book of Job.
This, in turn, triggered an extensive search of prophetic and apocalyptic literature. The song, crammed with ringing phrases lifted from various parts of the Bible and pieced together as a collage, depicts events surrounding the Final Judgment when "the man" (Jesus Christ) "comes around." The image of "the potter's ground" refers to the burial ground for foreigners bought with the thirty pieces of silver Judas was paid for his betrayal (Matthew 27:3—8). The phrase "Alpha and Omega" is God's description of himself as the beginning and the end (Revelation 1:8). The admonition "whoever is unjust let him be unjust still" is also attributed to the Lord God (Revelation 22:11).
Cash admitted that he spent more time on this song than any other he ever wrote. It shows. "The Man Comes Around" exudes an intensity of something written by someone who knows time is short. The warning is stark—the man is returning to decide "who to free and who to blame," and lest anyone should think that the concept of a loving God means that heaven is inevitable for all, he adds the reminder, "Everybody won't be treated all the same." He underscores the importance of being ready for the return of Christ when he uses the line "the virgins are all trimming their wicks" (Matthew 23:7).
This track could never have been as effective had he recorded it as a young man. Cash's cracked and sometimes breathless voice sounds both urgent and compassionate. It's not the voice of youthful zealousness or sheltered naivete. It's the voice of the pilgrim at the end of his journey.