by Steve Turner
Did you feel comfortable with the original Sun sound?
As I said, I grew up on blues, gospel, and country, but at the time we recorded in 1955 every record that was coming out of Nashville had a fiddle and a steel guitar. One would take the first half of the instrumental, and the other would take the second half. I was just fed up with the sound that had been coming out on country records for the past six or seven years, and so I stuck with my own Tennessee Two sound, the boom-chicka-boom rhythm. I felt comfortable with it. It was not really rockabilly like Scotty Moore or "That's All Right (Mama)." But I was in that world for two or three years.
Did you feel a part of it?
Very much so. I toured almost exclusively with Sun people—Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sonny Burgess, Billy Lee Riley, Warren Smith. I even wrote "Rock-'n'-roll Ruby" for Warren Smith, which was a pretty good seller for him.
There was a feeling of artistic innocence about those days because there was no precedent.
Yes. We were having fun. We were really having fun. I don't think you could compare our tours to anything that had gone on the road before. Colonel Tom Parker had managed Eddy Arnold, who was a really big country singer in the late 1940s, but it didn't take him long to realize that he had to handle Elvis a little differently. I've seen that kind of reaction twice in my career—Elvis and the Beatles. I went to see the Beatles the first time I met Paul in 1964 [actually 1965] at Cow Palace in San Francisco. I saw the same thing that night that I saw in 1955 with Elvis. I haven't seen it since.
Was Paul McCartney a fan of your music?
I don't think so. I don't know. I was invited backstage, and their dressing room was in a trailer outside Cow Palace. I went in and met all four of them. I don't know if they were fans. I just went to meet the Beatles.
Why?
Well, I was a fan of their music!
Are you still a music fan?
I listen to a lot of music. If I hear a song I like, I sleep with it, I live with it, and I wake up with it. It doesn't matter whose it is.
Do you still want t o meet the artist?
I sure do. I get a kick out of meeting an artist I admire. I had always wanted to meet Michael Jackson, just to say I had met him. And I did meet him. June and I had recorded a song called "Jackson," and I wouldn't have thought he would have made the connection in a million years, but there's a line in the song that says, "We got married in a fever / Hotter than a pepper sprout." I walked up and said, "Hi, Michael. I'm Johnny Cash," and he said [puts on falsetto voice] "Johnny Cash! Hotter than a pepper sprout!"
Would you risk embarrassment to go backstage and meet someone?
No. I'd never impose myself. I'd never go uninvited. I've been backstage at some rock concerts where my son would get tickets to see Twisted Sister, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, or Iron Maiden, and they would call up and tell him to come backstage and bring me. So I would go. I've met Iron Maiden in Toronto, during a soundcheck but, as I say, I never turn up uninvited.
How does Johnny Cash take to heavy metal?
It feels good. I like the way it feels in your liver. The vibrations! I did sixty networked television shows, and I had everyone on in the business. I had everyone you can imagine, from Burl Ives to Mahalia Jackson to Kenny Rogers and the First Edition.
If you were doing the shows today, would you invite Twisted Sister and Metallica?
If they wanted to do TV. I'm not sure that they would want to do TV. I like the people I've met. I like Dee Snider [of Twisted Sister] very much. He's a good man. I went to those heavy-metal concerts, because of all the concern about censorship and music. I wanted to see what it was all about. Of course, I'd heard it all before. Every day I would take my son to school, we'd listen to the car radio, and I probably heard more rock than I did country. I knew what was happening and, for the most part, I liked what I heard. Having seen all the craziness of working with Elvis Presley, and having seen the Beatles, I couldn't believe it was going to be that much different at a heavy-metal concert, and it wasn't. The main differences were that the sound was a little louder, and they had better lighting systems than we had back then. All I saw was a bunch of kids letting off steam in a good, safe atmosphere.
How do you think people perceive you?
As a conservative country singer who lives in the South somewhere. The misconception is that I'm regional, and they might even sometimes imply that I'm a redneck and, heaven forbid, a bigot. For instance, I did a TV show with Peter Falk (Colombo), and when we were rehearsing he told me what my line was, and he said, "You say so and so, or however you say that down there." I put my script down and said, "We say it almost exactly the way you do up there!" I looked him full in the eyes, and he smiled, and we were friends from then on. I could see right up front that he had that perception. But "I've been everywhere" and I've seen almost everything.
About what do you think you are best at singing? What causes are you best at representing?
I'm not blowing a bugle for any big causes right now, but in performance I love to do "Long Black Veil." I like just as much to do Springsteen's "Highway Patrol." That's one of the high points of my concert. I give Bruce the credit for writing that song. I wish I had written it. These are songs of the underdog, of the working man, of the down-and-out and, as is the case in a lot of country [music], of tragedy.
You cross over political boundaries in the issues that concern you.
You're right. I'm not really concerned about boundaries. I just follow my conscience and my heart. Kris Kristofferson has got a new song called "The Heart" that has the line "The heart is all that matters in the end." Follow your heart. That's what I do. Compassion is something I have a lot of, because I've been through a lot of pain in my life. Anybody who has suffered a lot of pain has a lot of compassion. Maybe I don't have enough. Maybe I do get jaded sometimes. I get tired after a concert, and I pass right by a panhandler to get to my room really fast and order room service. It's been a long time since I left the cotton fields.
Would you have been as powerful a performer if you had never strayed from your Christian upbringing?
I hadn't thought of that. Yes, if I had kept my head clear all of these years, I think I would have accomplished more, but I guess I'm right where I'm supposed to be in my life right now; so I'm happy with it. I don't have any regrets, and I don't carry any guilt trips around. I shook all that off with forgiveness and soul-searching. Forgiving myself mainly.
If you had stayed on the straight and narrow, would you have been Pat Boone rather than Johnny Cash?
No. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I always wanted a hit gospel song, but God gave me "A Boy Named Sue" instead, and I'm happy with it.
Since writing The Man in Black you returned to your drug habit. But, as I understand it, you're clean now?
Yes. I'm back out of that. I never lost my faith during that time, but I lost my contact with God because anyone chronically on drugs and alcohol becomes very selfish. You don't think about anyone else. You think about yourself and where your next stash is coming from or your next drink. I was at the point where I was thinking of nothing in the world but how long my supplies were going to last and where I was gonna get my next prescription. I wasted a lot of time and energy. I mean we're not just talking days, but months and years. So, I think I might have had a few more pinnacles in my life, if I hadn't gotten involved.
It must have been worse after you'd publicly admitted your problem and announced that God had rescued you. You must have felt a bit of a wretch.
Yes. I did it all again to show 'em I knew what I was talking about! No, chemical dependency is a progressive disease, and it hit me a lot harder the second time around because I was older. At the time I wrote The Man in Black, that's what I had to say. I made my point and was honest about it. I felt good about it. I'm straight now and have been for a long time. I'm drug free and alcohol free. But I may get stoned tomorrow. You never know with this disease. I don't intend to, and I'm hoping and praying I don't, but I mi
ght.
Does playing a concert give you a high?
It gives me a high like none other you can get. It's so good to get out there and perform without drugs. It is for me. But when I started taking them, it was so good to get out there and perform with drugs! I loved them! That's why you take them.
Almost all the Sun artists felt a tension between the rock-'n'-roll life and the values they had been taught growing up in church.
We were all roughly from the same area. We were all raised in the church and all greatly influenced by gospel music. That was Elvis's first love, and it was Jerry's, and Carl's, and mine. Carl Perkins has written hundreds of songs he has never recorded, and half of them are gospel. That's where our strength is. Regardless of how vocal you might be about your religion or you faith, it all comes down to the fact that it's a personal thing between you and God. It works. For me, it's where I get my strength.
It was as if they didn't totally reject it, and yet none of them stuck with it all the time.
Roy Orbison and I were talking about that very same thing. He quoted a line from a song of his, "Best Friend": "A diamond is a diamond / a stone, a stone / but a man's not all good, not all bad."
How do you live in Hendersonville?
I live in a house on a lake. I have about one hundred and seventy-five acres of land. The lake lot is only about five acres, but across the road is fifty acres that are fenced in, and that's where I keep wild animals and exotic birds. I also have a log cabin with a fireplace right in the middle of the woods, and that's where I go sometimes to write and to get away from everything. The other one hundred acres is pasture, wood, and fields. Sometimes we have cattle on it, sometimes not. Then there are twenty-five acres up by my office, which are just open field.
Where do you do most of your creative work?
Either in my log cabin, at a farm in a little town called Bon Aqua, Tennessee, or in my private library upstairs at my house. When I'm at home I write either very early in the morning or very late at night when things are really quiet. On the other hand, I've written as many songs on the road in the back of a bus, on an airplane, or backstage as I have in a quiet place. One energy generates another.
What makes you want to write one more song?
If the idea is there, it's a great feeling to put down a song. Sometimes I write without even touching a guitar. Sometimes I have a tune in my head, and then I see how the lyrics tie together. I love words; so I see how the story ties together. It's just the joy of writing. I love to write.
Do you find the form of the music too limiting?
No. I don't know if I've reached the limit or not. Every song I write is different; so I don't feel the need to burst out of anything. I enjoy writing a simple love ballad or a simple story. I just wrote a Scottish folk song called "A Croft in Clachan," and it's just a simple story set in the seventeenth century about this boy leaving the town of Clachan to fight the English and then coming back home to the girl he's going to marry. When I was writing it, Paul McCartney was talking about "Mull of Kintyre" and he said, "You should finish it. 'Mull of Kintyre' was the biggest song I ever wrote." That's something to think about! A Scottish song was the biggest song he wrote! So I finished it, and I'm going to record it with Glen Campbell.
Do you think that you've lost direction a few times in your career?
No. I haven't had any particular direction in my music. I just do it the way I feel it at the time.
Wouldn't you admit that there have been artistic troughs?
Oh, yeah. Sure. There have been times when I'd lose interest. There were times when I was tired of touring or tired of the whole thing, and so I'd just do a book or a movie, but I always came back to the music. I'm back to it stronger than ever. I'm just really into it now.
Now that you employ over forty people, does it make it harder to be a simple song writer like the blues musicians you admire?
When I start to write a song, I don't think of the colonial-style building where my offices are. I think of the song. When I was writing my Scottish folk song, I was seeing the boy who loved there. Whatever I'm writing I put myself into the song.
What books do you read?
I read all kinds of books. . . . I like American history. Right now June and I are reading The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes's book about Australia. I've read everything James Michener has written. Colleen McCullough, Jack Higgins, Stephen King—I've read a lot of his. I like biblical novels like The Robe, The Silver Chalice, Ben Hur.
Did you write The Man in White during one of your spiritual "up" periods?
I wrote it over a period of nine years, when I was straight! That's why it took so long. I wasn't straight very much.
How did y o u come to correspond with B o b Dylan in the early 1960s?
We were writing together before we ever met. We'd write mainly about music, about what we were listening to, what we were writing, what we were recording. I wrote the first letter. It was 1963, and I was working Las Vegas. I got the album Bob Dylan and played it all the time. On the way home I took one of those vomit bags out of the back seat of the plane and wrote Bob a letter. He wrote me a little letter back and said that he was surprised to hear from me, because he was brought up in Hibbing on Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. He talked about "I Walk the Line" and a couple of my songs, and I wrote back. Then I got another letter from him, and so on. They weren't only about music but his observations of people and things he was doing. He'd talk about the Pacific Ocean or the plains of Kansas, "a two-thousand-mile wide beach" as he called it.
Did you influence him around the time that he recorded John Wesley Harding?
I don't think that I had anything to do with it at all.
Nashville Skyline?
They stayed at my house, Sara and the kids, the week he was recording, but it wasn't something I did. It was his idea to do the album.
Would he ever ask advice o n song writing?
No. Never. He might give advice, but he never asked for any. I don't think Bob Dylan would ask advice from anybody on song writing.
What did you think of his "born again" albums?
I didn't see him during that time. I don't think Bob was ever into organized church religion. Some of the songs were good gospel. I did "Man Gave Names to the Animals" in a Christmas TV special that I recorded in Scotland. I loved "Slow Train Coming," but through those years I was very much the observer. He lived in California in half seclusion. No one saw him that much. Bob is very much his own person. He is a loner and a very shy person. I can respect that because I like my time alone. I was sick in the hospital over a year ago, and I got a telegram from him. That's all I've heard from him in over seven years. I've had no influence at all on his religion.
You're a patriotic American, but you're likely to clash with other patriots over American foreign policy.
All of the men in my family over the past two hundred years have had to go into the military. I was in the air force during the Korean War. My father was a World War I veteran. His grandfather was a Civil War soldier. His grandfather's grandfather was a Revolutionary War soldier. But even though I spent four years in the air force, I'm not military minded at all. Our government scares the daylights out of me. They swooped down and raided little Grenada, Libya. We should defend ourselves, I guess, in the Gulf, but that scares me too. With Central America, Panama . . . what were we doing there? What have we got troops down there for? I'm not saying this because my son is now draft age. I've always felt this way.
When you're away from America and think of home, what image comes to your mind?
The farm in the country where I like to go. This little farm is one hundred and seven acres in the most rural county in Tennessee. It's an hour and fifteen minutes from my home, and at the back of the farm there is a spring. It's a little spring that runs year round, and it's always fifty-eight degrees, summer or winter. It comes from way deep in the ground. I think of that a lot when I think of home. I like to get up there and drink from that s
pring. I just lay on the ground beside it. That's paradise on earth to me, that little place with the dogwood and sycamore trees all around. You don't hear a car, a train, a plane, or anything. All you can hear is nature.
Your book suggests that June has been a tremendous source of spiritual strength for you.
She's a solid rock. She never changes. I'm very unpredictable in my moods, but she's an anchor. She's also been a victim of my craziness.
When you talk in the book of your brother's death, that is a very moving passage. Has that event remained an influence on your life?
My brother Jack? It really was and still is. He was two years older than I. He was a very devout Christian and a very good boy. A very tough boy. He was named after the boxer Jack Dempsey—Jack Dempsey Cash. He looked like Jack Dempsey. He was built like a heavyweight champion. At fourteen he was about six feet tall and was a solid rock. He was a very devout Christian, who read his Bible every day. He was a very wise person. He gave advice on a lot of things. We were very close. When he died, I felt a really great loss, but his memory has always been an inspiration to me.
Chronology
1929
June 23 Valerie June Garter born in Maces Spring, Virginia
1932
February 26 J. R. Cash born in Kingsland, Arkansas
1935
March 23 Cash family moved to Dyess, Arkansas
1937
January 16 Flooding in Dyess
1944
Christian conversion and baptism at First Baptist Church, Dyess, Arkansas
May 20 Death of brother Jack Dempsey Cash at age fourteen
1950
May 19 Cash graduated from Dyess High School
July 7 Enlisted in U.S. Air Force
September 21 Started Special Intercept Operator Course at Keesler AFB, Mississippi