Interview with Peter McCabe and Jack Killion

Country Music Magazine : 1973

During this time John and June were just completing the making of Gospel Road. This was the first in depth interview that they gave to Country Music Magazine.

When did you first get the idea to make the film "Gospel Road?"

It began about six years ago with a dream June had. We were in Israel for the first time and she said, 'I dreamed I saw you on a mountain with a book in your hand talking about Jesus.' At that time I didn't want to hear anything like that. It sounded too much like preaching.

We went on up into Galilee and we saw this mountain up at the north end of the Sea of Galilee. We didn't know what mountain it was, but we found out later it was Mount Arabel. And all around this area is the land that Jesus lived and walked&emdash;Magdala where Mary Magdalene lived, the place of the Sermon on the Mount, the mountain where He fed the multitude. June said that was the mountain she dreamed about. So we came back two years later and I brought a recorder, and the result of that trip was the Johnny Cash And The Holy Land album. We decided then that some day we'd come back and do a film.

You see, for somebody like me, who grew up singing Jesus songs all his life and who was raised up in a Baptist Church, going to Israel is like going home. You see the things you've been singing about all your life. You sing about the old oak tree at home all your life and you go home and there it is. You want to hug it.

Was that your only motivation?

Another thing happened about three years ago; I met Billy Graham for the first time. He called and said he wanted to come to Nashville to see me. I never had met him. He came down, we had a big meal and we sat around and talked a long time. I kept waiting for him to say what he came to see me about. Finally I asked him. He said he just wanted to meet me and talk to me about music, but another thing he wanted was to talk to me about gospel songs, Christian songs and songs about Jesus. This was just before the big Jesus song thing came along. He said the kids were not going to church, that they were losing interest in religion, and he said he thought that the music had a lot to do with it, because there was nothing in the church house that they heard that they liked. The latest thing that the kids can hear in church is "Bringing In The Sheaves" and "How Great Thou Art," and those are not the kind of things going on in religion that makes the kids say, 'Hey, I like that. Let's go hear some more.' There's nothing that they can relate to.

So he talked to me about myself and other song writers like Kris (Kristofferson), who think along that line, and he kinda challenged me to challenge others, to try to use what talent we have to write something inspiring, that would inspire people to sit up and take notice of religion and Jesus.

Well, first thing that happened, the night after he left, I wrote "What Is Truth." Just him coming to the house inspired me to write that, if you want to call it inspiration. But June and I also got to talking about the thing we'd talked about doing in Israel. We'd thought about making a kind of travelog, walking the steps that Jesus walked and telling His story, and then we talked about taking some contemporary, country-style Jesus songs, having songwriters write them and telling His story with them. As it turned out, that was a rough concept of what the film was actually going to be. We didn't know it at the time. When we went to Israel we had two songs that we thought would probably be in the film. We had gone through all the church hymns, discarded them, not because they weren't any good, but because they didn't say anything to people today. We had "Jesus Was A Carpenter" and another Christopher Wren song called "Gospel Road."

We hired an Israeli film crew to supplement our crew that we took over there, and we decided since we'd gone to all the expense to take a bunch of people to Israel that we were gonna shoot the moon, and we were gonna make as good a film and spend whatever it took for the month that we had to spend over there. And that's what we did. We hired extras. We didn't try to make a little big movie. We didn't try to make a Cecil B. DeMille film. We used as few extras as we could, and at the times when there should have been a multitude of people, we didn't use anybody. We used sound effects, to try to make it seem like there was a multitude of people. Well, when we came back and started editing the film and putting it together, we saw the need of a song to help tell the story here and there. So a boy named Larry Gatlin came along, who wrote a song called "Help Me." Kris has recorded it now&emdash;Kris and Rita Coolidge. And it fit so well in the scene about Nicodemus that we used Kris' recording of it in that scene. We had Gatlin write two more songs, I wrote two or three for the film, and we got Joe South's "Children" for the sequence where Jesus is playing with the little children on the beach.

We spent a year picking songs and fittin' them in the film, and that's what we've got now, a musical drama with a bunch of good, new songs that I think people will enjoy hearing if they can stand my voice. One prerequisite for seeing this film is you've got to be able to stand Johnny Cash for 90 minutes. If you can't, then you don't need to go. But if you can stand me for 90 minutes, then you're gonna enjoy it because it's an excellent film as movies go. If it wasn't, 20th Century Fox wouldn't be spending a half a million dollars to promote it and make prints like they are.

Let me ask you about the financial side of it. Tucked away in a Newsweek report was a suggestion that you consciously went out and raised a lot of money to make this film.

No, I didn't go out and raise it. I had it. I guess it cost half to three quarters of a million dollars, somewhere in that area. I don't know what the cost is gonna be when they tally it up. But it was the first time anybody was ever stupid enough, if you want to call it that, to put up all their own money to make a movie. But that's what we did, and we did it for a very good reason. If we hadn't put up our own money, we couldn't have done it exactly the way we felt like we wanted to do it. We would have had to do it the way the financier wanted it done. And we could have taken somebody's money. We could've had our bank put up the entire amount, because we have a good reputation with our bank, and we had no doubt that we could've got the money. But we wouldn't have had the say and it wouldn't have been our personal film. And this is. This film has our personal feelings in it, and it's got our believability because we believe in what we're saying and what we're doing. I think I understand the effect that you hope this film will have on other people&emdash;but what effects has had it financed. We could've had our bank put up the entire amount, because we have a good reputation with our bank, and we had no doubt that we could've got the money. But we wouldn't have had the say and it wouldn't have been our personal film. And this is. This film has our personal feelings in it, and it's got our believability because we believe in what we're saying and what we're doing.

I think I understand the effect that you hope this film will have on other people&emdash;but what effects has the actual making of the movie had on you, your circle of friends and your family?

Well, it's had a great effect on a lot of people that have been associated with it, like the little crew that Robert Elfstrom (director) brought over. He referred to them as a bunch of blackguards, as a bunch of profane outlaws. The first day on the set, when they realized we were serious about the subject that we were making the film about, all the profanities stopped, and I think most of the drugs stopped&emdash;I'm not sure about that&emdash;and if there was any wenching going on, it was on the sly.

I had about a 30-minute meeting with this crew the evening that we got to Tiberius, Israel. We sat around on the floor, and I told them that whatever they'd done before, it didn't make any difference to me. Some of them had some pretty tough reputations; they'd been in the riots in Mississippi; some of these people that worked on this film had been in South American revolutions. I said, 'We're beginning a film about a man that is my Lord, and you're working for me, and that's all I want you to remember, that we're making a film about my Lord. There's not gonna be any preaching; there's not gonna be any orders given; there's not gonna be any rules laid down.' And I said after the first day of filming, 'I think you're all gonna get into the spirit of the thing and believe in what we're doing.'And the second day of filming, everybody was up at 3:30 a.m. cleaning equipment. We drove 20 miles and were on location when the sun came up ready to start shooting. It was that way every morning. This was the most devoted bunch of people that anybody could ever hope to have. Will you make other movies after this one?

This is probably the first and the last film I'11 ever want to produce because I don't want to be a film producer, if you want to call it producer, 'cause that's what I was on this. This is my life's proudest work that I wanted to produce, to lay down a story and put it on the screen, have people go and sit and enjoy it, and when they walk out of the theater, feel good about it. Not walk out of the theater saying, 'Oh me, I'm a sinner. I've got to run and do something quick, to get right.' It's the kind of thing that will make you think about your religion, but it's a beautiful film.

When Jack Hurst spoke to you last Fall for a story in COUNTRY MUSIC, he asked you when religion became important in your life. You said you didn't know, but you felt it had something to do with when John Carter came along and you and June "realized that you weren't children any more. " Could you talk a little more about that now?

Well, for seven years I tried about every dirty rotten thing there is. I took all the drugs there are to take, and I drank, and then when I married June, I decided all that was no good, that I'd run through every evil, dirty thing there is, and I didn't like it. I wanted to live, I saw a chance to find a little peace within myself. Everybody had written me off. Everybody said that Johnny Cash was through, 'cause I was walkin' around town, 150 pounds. I looked like walking death and they were turning and laughing at me. I saw it myself, many times, people saying, 'Oh man, he's gone.'

Well, it didn't take too much of that for me to say, I'll show you, that ain't all of me. I had June to hold onto, and my religion helped. My religion now is no different than it was when I was a kid, it's just that after a few years of adult life, I went down the wayward path.

Do you feel any sense of accomplishment from those years? I'm thinking particularly about the songs that you wrote.

Yes, there's a lot of things I wrote that I'm proud of through those years. And I feel that every time I went on stage, I tried to do a good job. There were some shows I missed, and some bad shows I probably did, but I'm not ashamed of it. Right now I'm not ashamed of a thing I did because when God forgave me, then I forgave myself, see. That's one thing that people like me have to learn to do, that after you've straightened up and stopped all that, and you know that God forgave you, then the big sin would be not to forgive yourself. So I'm not ashamed of all that rot that I did. I don't like to think about it. Some of it I've erased from my mind, so I don't think about it, and some of it I refuse to admit that I remember.

Do you think your audience has changed since you've moved more toward gospel music? I know many people found it easy to identify with what you were singing, and your songs appealed to anybody who had even the slightest troubled frame of mind.

You know, the accent is not all that much on gospel music. It's just that when I sing gospel music or record gospel music, I'm serious about it, whereas a lot of artists I know, every three or four years, or at one point in their career they say, 'Well I think I'll record a gospel album now because it would be the thing to do and it would show the people that deep down I'm a religious person.' That's the way I used to think about it, too. Now my last record was Any Old Wind That Blows, and the one before that was "Oney. " You know I'm still the same person that I always was. It's just that I'm serious about the gospel songs when I do sing them. I'm serious about this film, but there's a good chance that I might star in a film called "Old Fishhawk," a story about an Indian. 20th Century is now trying to buy the rights for me to do that film, and it's got nothing to do with religion.

I guess there are two things that have really influenced your life and career in the last few years. One, the fact that you stopped taking drugs, and two, the arrival of your son, John Carter.

Yes, John Carter's had a lot to do with it. You know, I used to go rabbit hunting and squirrel hunting, and killing all kinds of animals. But John Carter's almost three years old now. He's got all these animal books, and I tell him stories about animals, and I can't go killing any animals now. John Carter has had a lot to do with the change in me. I'm 40 years old, and all of a sudden this little, redheaded boy comes along. Everybody thought it was going to be a black-haired boy, but this little redheaded boy comes along who looks like June Carter and follows me everywhere I go. I can't go anywhere in this house without him being right at my heels, and I enjoy all the quiet, nice, little things that three year old boys do. There's something strengthening about that. He's had a lot to do with it all right.

Did giving up drugs make you feel that this was the first time you'd stood up to something and really come through it?

There's been a lot of us that was on drugs and quit. There's been a lot of us who had the problem with alcohol and quit it. It takes a real man to be able to do it. It really does. But the toughest thing I ever did was to quit smoking. I can say that, and maybe I don't really mean that, because I made myself forget all those nightmares I had when I was trying to come off barbiturates. Before I married June and lived out here in this house on the lake, I used to get those pills by the hundreds or thousands, and I used to put a hundred of them in a sock and hide them between boards in the floor, or in the ceiling in the bathroom, or behind the light or something. Last week I found a box full of pills! They were not in a sock, but in a matchbox.

Merle Haggard incidentally knows where I used to hide my pills sometimes. I told Haggard where I hid 'em and I'm not going to tell you, but Haggard knows where I used to hide my pills when I wanted to carry 'em on me. But I found a box full of pills under the washbasin and I almost broke my arm to get to 'em. I knew that I had hidden some pills five years ago under that washbasin. I got down on the floor and I stuck my arm under there and the tips of my fingers touched a little box. It slid around a little bit, and I kept straining and skinned my arm to get to 'em, pulled them out and there was that box of yellow pills. Half yellow pills and half tranquilizers because I'd hide both kinds, so I could go up and come back down, too. I pulled this box of pills out and looked at 'em. Smelled 'em, that weird sticky smell they have, and I thought of a bunch of things I'd done while I was on 'em. I took them up to the bedroom and June and John Carter was laying on the bed. And I opened up that box of pills and said, 'June, look what I found.' I emptied them on the bed, and she said, 'Oh, my God, no,' 'cause she remembered a bunch of bad things, too. And I said, 'Don't worry, let's go in here and flush 'em,' and June and John Carter and I went into the bathroom and John Carter said, 'What are you doing that for daddy?' And I said, 'Because it's the thing to do, son.' I said, 'That was bad stuff daddy flushed&emdash;bad stuff.' So we got rid of the pills. There may be some more pills at the house, but if I ever find 'em, I'll flush them too.

To change the subject a little, what do you think is happening in country music now? Probably you, more than anybody, in the last ten years have broadened the scope of country music, popularized it for a much wider audience.

That's happening, and will probably continue to happen, but when it's broadened, it can spread pretty thin. But I think better songs are being written than ever before. Tom T. Hall's "Watermelon Wine" is one of the greatest things ever written in country music. This is the kind of thing I love. It's philosophy, it's life, it's real&emdash;and those are the kind of songs that are going to stay, no matter how wide the spectrum spreads. Songs like that are gonna make it. So I think that so long as people come along like Tom T. Hall writing great stuff like that, then country music is here to stay. Well, it's here to stay anyway, but I mean in a big way, 'cause there's some really good talents around. There's a young writer that we've got here named Dick Feller, who has just recorded for United Artists. He's going to be a big artist. I recorded a song of his, one called "Orphan Of The Road." I think as long as people like him keep coming along, country music's got a great future.

Do you see yourself moving more towards producing?

No, not at all. We've got the best studio at House of Cash, the finest one in Nashville. The feeling here is great. People love to record here, but I don't want to produce. I don't want to produce records. I want to do my own records, and that's it. I don't want to get involved in a bunch of business ends of the business. That's one reason why I'm still around and going, because I haven't stuck myself behind a desk. Although I've got a nice desk here, you won't find me behind it once a month. I don't like the business end of the business.

There was some talk recently that you were going to play more small halls. Is there anything to that?

Well, I'm not only playing small halls. I;m still playing the big halls, but I enjoy going to a town that I've never been in before, like a 100,000 population town. I just looked at the map and made up a list of towns that I gave to my manager last week, for him to check out. I like to play a smaller hall because the audience response is better in an auditorium of 3000 or 4000 people.

What effect, if any, has working with companies like American Oil and Lionel had on your career and your audience?

It hasn't had any effect on me. Those commercials I do for American Oil about every six months take three days of work and then I forget about it. Of course then my fans see me on TV. I don't really know what effect it has on them, except I get a few letters. I haven't had a half a dozen letters in two years offering any harsh criticism on those commercials. I really do use American Oil, up here at the station in Hendersonville, and I try to be realistic about things. I like to sing about trains and the old times and the good old days and all that business, but if my boy gets sick and I need a doctor, I don't want him to walk 15 miles. I want him to burn some gasoline to get out here.

I think there's always two or three ways to look at everything. The commercials I did for American Oil helped pay for things like the film, or part of it. So I use the money that I make to do a little good now and then. We're very active in a lot of charities, in mental health and boys' homes, so I don't have any apologies to make for anything that I do to earn income. I employ a lot of people here and feed a lot of children and I'm very proud of all the work that I do because there's a lot of thought and careful consideration that goes into all of it. It doesn't mean I don't make mistakes because I know I do. I've seen them. I do just about as many things wrong as I do right, but at least I'm doing what I feel is right at the time.

You pledged to support President Nixon and his policies in Indochina toward ending the Vietnam war. Do you feel you were right now that the war has ended?

The only thing I know about that is what I've read. One thing, COUNTRY MUSIC Magazine said something about me refusing to endorse the President. What was that headline?

"Cash Is Cool To The Republicans?"

Well I guess you could say that, but all I said was that I didn't feeI that an entertainer had any business going to political conventions. I still feel that way. It had nothing to do with the Republicans or Democrats, or the President. I think the dignity of the office of President of the United States should be maintained and respected no matter who is our President. He is our President, and we the people have elected him whether you or I voted for him or not. As far as the war in Vietnam is concerned, that war just made me sick. I'm not supporting that war or any other war and whether or not Nixon did his best, I don't know, because I don't know that ~much about his job. I have to assume that he did because we believed in him enough to re-elect him.

Do you think there's been a big change in the American way of life since the sixties? Do you think we're going back to the fifties way of thinking?

No, I don't think so. Change is the whole process of life. Change is for the most part healthy, of course. We made a lot of mistakes in the sixties. We'd like to just erase that whole war from our history books. That would really be nice, except you can't forget the ones that died and every time the war is brought up, you think of something that brings it home. Maybe Vietnam has taught us a hard lesson to not be involved in foreign wars. Maybe that's the lesson we've learned. I hope we have. Then all those things that happened in the sixties were solidifying and strengthening for this country. The riots, the campus riots&emdash;I was just reading a copy of The New York Times I have at the house from 1873, and in Washington, D.C. in 1873 there was a student riot, and there were burnings in effigy and bonfires out in front of the Capitol and students singing and dancing and drinking all night. Kids want to get out roaring, and get organized in their roaring and march while they're roaring. I don't think that?s gonna stop. They're gonna let off steam however they want to. And sometimes they get serious about it and somebody gets hurt. I think we've learned a lot of lessons from the sixties.

What happened at your testimony on prison reform last Fall?

I guess because I got a lot of attention from prison shows and albums, I get a lot of requests from people who want me to be involved in this and that program. One thing I did, I went with Senator Brock to Washington to testify before the Senate Sub-Committee On Prison Reform for some bills he was trying to get through. I told how I felt about prison reform and such, and about some things I had seen or knew about that go on in prisons. People say, 'well what about the victims, the people that suffer&emdash; you're always talking about the prisoners; what about the victims?' Well, the point I want to make is that's what I've always been concerned about&emdash;the victims. If we make better men out of the men in prison, then we've got less crime on the streets, and my family and yours is safer when they come out. If the prison system is reformed, if the men are reformed, if they are rehabilitated, then there's less crime and there's less victims.

Ever since I've been in the entertainment business, from the very first prison I played in 1957&emdash;Huntsville Texas State Prison&emdash;I found that a concert is a tension reliever. A prison is always full of tension, but sometimes it gets to the breaking point and there's trouble. I'm not saying that our concerts have prevented trouble, but who knows? They may have, because I've been called on by a warden here or there to do a concert when they've had trouble, and we've done it, and there's not been trouble. Here at Tennessee State Prison, I had a man come up to me and say, 'I believe I can make it another five years. I know somebody out there cares, cares enough to come in here and sing for us.' A concert does relieve a lot of tension because it makes them forget, it makes them happy, it makes them applaud, it makes them laugh, they tap their feet to the music. That's our purpose, to give them a little relief.

You seem to have acquired a great deal of tolerance and you seem to have mellowed a great deal. How do you see your life moving now?

I think I feel better on stage now than I ever did in my life. I worked a concert in Fargo, North Dakota recently, and I never felt so good on stage as I did that night. I see myself on stage, if God lets me live, 20 or 30 more years. It's what I feed on, the performance and the audience reaction. It's what I love and that's all I want to do. I want to try to write and record better country songs. I've got my own studio here and just because it's the biggest and prettiest in town doesn't mean I'm going to fill it full of fiddles every time I record. I spend a lot of time in there with just my flat top guitar. And another thing, talking about the future, I want to try to become a musician. I started taking piano lessons at the age of 40. I just had my first piano lesson about two months ago and I already know C, F and G7. That's one of the proudest accomplishments of my life is to learn those three chords on the piano, and I've got another lesson tomorrow afternoon, my third lesson. I'm trying to learn to finger pick on the guitar. Red Lane will laugh at this, but I'm trying to learn some finger picking. I learned my guitar lick from Norman Blake and Red Lane. I've been working on it. They don't know how good I'm gettin'. I'm gonna show 'em some day. Then I took my first piano lesson, I learned three chords and I practice them. And then Walt Cunningham, a young man that's been playing piano for us on some of our concerts, taught me how to vamp in 4/4 rhythm and everyday I practice on that. That's something I've never done in my life, sit down and play something. Strumming is all I ever did before.

Is John Carter interested in music?

Yes, he is very much interested in it. June and I did a show at a handicapped children's school last week. We took him with us because there's little kids there. I was right in the middle of a song when he bounded onto the stage and said, 'I want to sing.' I stopped the song and said, 'What do you want to sing?' and he said, 'I wanna sing 'The Cowboys And The Indians And The Sheep'.' So he started singing, and when he got through that I said, 'okay son, let's hear another,' and he said, 'Oh, The Wind Blows On The Cows.' That's the name of another one that he made up. And the kids loved it.

But last week in Fargo, I brought him out on stage because he told me&emdash;now I know the people won't realize that John Carter is old enough to think like this, but he's 3 years old now&emdash;he said, 'daddy, I'm going to sing tonight.' I said, 'What are you gonna sing, son?'And he said, 'Peace In The Valley.' So in the show when I got ready to do "Peace In The Valley," I called him out on stage and he sang the chorus with me. At the end of the song, he took a bow and went off, and they kept applauding, and he came back and took another bow.

When someone interviews you and you talk about your personal life, do you think that serves a purpose to cut through the stage image which I guess all performers have?

Well, when I'm on stage I feel like I'm really a complete person because that's what I feel like I do best and that's what I'm most alive and happy doing, performing. Any other part of me might be interesting to the people that like that image on the stage. Yes, I think it's realistic; it's justifiable, the interviews, the pictures of the life of the man that lives off stage. And I think in most cases it's an honest picture, like right here, because it's really the way I feel about things; when I sit down and talk to you and tell you about these things, it's the way I feel.