Int CMM aug 94

John was expecting the release of his first album for American Records when he sat down with John Marthland for this interview. This album would be a significant departure from the style of the past for JRC. As it turned out, the work would be critically acclaimed as a work of excellence by many in the music world.-M H.

"You wanna just do the interview right here?" Johnny Cash asks, gesturing around the communal area where the donuts and coffee are, on the second floor of the House of Cash in Hendersonville, Tennessee. When I suggest it might be a little quieter if we did it in his office, he quickly replies, "Well, that's okay with me, but I'm tired of sitting behind that desk; if we're gonna do it there, you sit behind my desk."

And that is indeed the way we do it, me behind the desk and John sunk down into the couch, where he can squirm and stretch all he wants. As we speak, Cash is awaiting the release of a brand new album&emdash;his first, astonishingly, in three years. Called American Recordings, it's unlike anything else he's ever done: 13 songs, one voice, one acoustic guitar. The essence of Johnny Cash, if you will. He wrote some new songs for it, revised an old one, and cut some favorites by other writers, such as Kris Kristofferson's "Why Me Lord" and Leonard Cohen's "Bird on a Wire" (which is a pluperfect example of Cash the Song Curator, with a Iyric he probably couldn't have written himself, but which says much the same things he says in the songs he does write himself).

The album was done for American Records&emdash;which began as the home of rappers like The Geto Boys, quickly took in heavy metal acts like Slayer, and has grown into an across-the-board label with additions like The Black Crowes. The producer is label boss Rick Rubin, making his and his label's first foray into country music, and the album was recorded in his living room, Cash's cabin on the lake in Hendersonville, and live at the Viper Room, Brat Packer Johnny Depp's club in Hollywood. The week before I visited Cash, he had delivered the keynote address to the 4000 or so attendees at South By Southwest, the hippest of the music-biz conferences, in Austin. His "address" consisted of him playing a few songs and talking about what his music has meant to him over the years. That night, he played Emo's, the town's leading grunge palace, before about 200 lucky souls, most of them record company guests, while the line outside snaked around the block. He did an hour solo, and then about 40 minutes more with his band. The response was ecstatic.

All of this has raised a few eyebrows around Nashville.

But some things never change, too, and that's what I was thinking as I surveyed the walls of Cash's office. I have been in many more stars' offices than I could ever hope to remember, and the walls are invariably covered with plaques, certificates, photos of the star with other celebrities. Cash hangs no Gold record awards or the like; he discretely displays a photo of himself with Tex Ritter, and another with Hank Snow, and every other available inch of wall-space is covered by pictures of his family members. These, you can't help thinking, are the people that really connect John R. Cash to his muse; these are the constants that have allowed him to endure and make sense of his turbulent life.

And so in the interview we touched on various periods of that life and career, as well as his always-acute observations on the rest of the country music world.

CMM: Everybody's talking about what a radical departure this is for you, but I can remember back to things like the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island in the early 60's, when you were doing something pretty equivalent to this&emdash;do you feel like this is entirely new?

CASH: Well, you know, to the generation today, I guess it looks to a lot of people like I'm doing something new. But this is the most comfortable way to do it for me, just me and my guitar. It's an album I always wanted to do. Twenty-five years ago Marty Robbins and I were at a show, and we were talking about things we wanted to do, record-wise. And I told him that I always wanted to do an album called Johnny Cash Alone, with just my guitar, singing one on one, just me to you. He did an album like that, after that, and I always wanted to do mine, but I never had any record company until now interested in supporting a project like that. But with this new record company, Rick Rubin wanted to get the "real," whatever that is, Johnny Cash.

This is a very personal album. I hear all kinds of rumors out of Nashville that Johnny Cash is trying to go rock 'n' roll. I'm the first one to know that I'm too old to rock'n' roll. And I'm very proud of my country music following, and still the award that I'm most proud of is the Country Music Hall of Fame. This album, they're having a hard time putting it in a category, as hard as they try. But it's just me and my guitar, and it's the dream album I talked to Marty Robbins about doing 25 years ago.

CMM: How did you ever get hooked up with Rick Rubin?

CASH: Well, he heard that my contract was running out with Mercury. For some reason he wanted me on his label. He came down to see my show at San Juan Capistrano; he came to a fair in California to see me, he came to about three or four shows. Backstage at the first show, he said he wanted to sign me, and I said, "What would you like to do with me?" And he said, "I would like for you to do whatever feels right to you." That sounded pretty good to me. I didn't know his track record, the music he had recorded, until a little later. I asked who else he had on the label that he'd produced, and you know, it's kinda like, I was on the same label with Mitch Miller, but I didn't do what Mitch did. That is the silliest thing that's going around now; people are talking about how Johnny Cash's producer is the same producer who did Slayer and Red Hot Chili Peppers and all these people. But that's got nothing to do with me. Rick made me know that I could maintain my musical integrity, that I could do what felt right, and we would take plenty of time and all the money it took to do the album we wanted to do, and that the promotion budget was unlimited. And all of this sounded really good to me, after coming off several dry years where the record company just did not put up what it took. Jack Clement did a great job on me with what he had to work with. Mercury/ PolyGram Nashville did the best job they could do with what they had to work with, too. And I understand about demographics; I don't have to be told about demographics anymore, but I'm happy to be doing what I do and I'm comfortable with it.

CMM: I understand there's lots more where this came from.

CASH: I did something like 110 tracks in all. Every time I got a good cut on a song, Rick would say, "Now what else do you want to do?" He always asked me what I wanted to do, and I appreciated that. But he had his own ideas too. He would lay songs before me, or mail songs to me. Some I liked and some I didn't. I did some and some are on the album. We tried a few other things too. Tom Petty's guitar player was on a couple sessions, but playing country acoustic. We also experimented with some other rhythm sections, but it didn't work, and we never really expected it to; we just wanted to experiment. Now on the next album...I don't know who might be on that. Some of the tracks are gonna be the guys I've been working with on the road all along. But I will probably use other musicians too, like I always do. I don't know the concept of the next album yet, so I can't say.

CMM: Talk a little more about the individual songs.

CASH: I wrote five of them, and I wrote four within the last year: "Let the Train Blow the Whistle"&emdash;"Drive On" was my Vietnam veterans song&emdash;"Redemption" is a gospel song about the plan of salvation through the blood. "Like a Soldier" is a love song. The other is the new Iyrics to "Delia's Gone," which is a ally old traditional song. I cut it before, but this is a newer version. I couldn't remember enough verses of the old one to sing it, so I wrote some new ones. I sing that one a lot in concert, a fans are always asking for it, so I thought I'd cut a new version and try to get it before a new audience. "Drive On" came from what I remembered about Vietnam, from being there in'69 plus a lot of books I read, and talking to a lot of veterans. "Drive on, it don't mean nothin"' is an expression they used a lot i Vietnam. "Tennessee Stud" is a song I always wanted to record, A rock artist named Glenn Danzig wrote a song for me called "Thirteen." My ex-son-in-law Nick Lowe wrote "The Beast Me" in 1979, and I've just been able to record it. "The Man Who Couldn't Cry" is an old novelty song by Loudon Wainwright III.

CMM: With nearly 100 tracks in the can, is there any chance you'll release another album just like this one?

CASH: Yeah, I recorded a lot of gospel, and we're probably going to do a gospel album soon. So if we decide on an acoustic gospel album, we've got one already. I cut spirituals and gospel&emdash;some of the country classics like "Where We'll Never Grow Old,' "How Beautiful Heaven Must Be," songs of that ilk, 30's an 40's radio gospel. A couple of church hymns, and some black gospel like "Strange Things Happenin'Every Day," a Bob Dylan song called "In My Time of Dyin'," a mixture of every thing I feel.

CMM: Don't you think it's pretty ironic that a record of acoustic guitar and voice took longer and cost more than anything you've ever done?

CASH: You've got to take into consideration travel, days i hotels...it was a lot of work, with a lot of people working on it But when I say expensive, I mean time-wise as well, and studio time costs. I've never spent this much time on an album&emdash;probably an average of two sessions a day for about 30 days, at least&emdash;I'd need calculator. Good new songs kept coming in, and the old classics kept pop ping up from the different people saying why don't you do this one an that one, and I'd run right out the and cut it. And then I'd do them over and over and over, until we got that right attitude, that right mood. I'll b in a different mood tomorrow than am right now, and it's got nothing t do with drugs (laughs); it's just that that's the way we are. I'd get a cut o a song and say, "Maybe that sound pretty good right now, but let's try i again tomorrow night, later, see how a late-evening performance of that song might sound." They may b subtle differences, but they are differences, and we kept going for that one final performance that was the one that had all the feeling and emotion that we wanted. That's what took a lot of time. Whereas with a lo of musicians you'd take a lot of time to get everybody sounding right an doing the right licks, I had to get all the emotional licks right.

And it's pretty scary to sit down i front of a DAT recorder, just me and my guitar, cuz I'm not a musician, I just accompany myself on my guitar, just me and my thumb, no pick. There'd be little things I didn't like about my voice that we'd do over, and then there'd be this new one I wanted to try, and it's just a lot of work to get 110 songs right. But we did it because we were going for the best we could come up with in any field&emdash;we did blues, we did gospel, we did country, we did Appalachian, we did Carter Family, we did Jimmie Rodgers, we did Gene Autry. I did songs by people really active and hot on the music scene today.

CMM: You claim that this is closer to the real Johnny Cash than anything you've ever recorded, so what do you think someone who listens to it will take away that they didn't already know about Johnny Cash?

CASH: There's a line in "Let the Train Blow the Whistle" that goes, "On my old guitar sell tickets, so someone can finally pick it." The fans will finally hear just how little I can play the guitar. I can only strum it with my thumb, I can't pick it at all. What they will hear is 13 songs from the gut and from the heart, and they will feel, I think, the emotions I felt when I recorded it. I think fans by now who've known me primarily for lines like "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die" won't take me too seriously in "Delia's Gone" when I say, "First time I shot her, I shot her in the side/Hard to watch her suffer, with the second shot she died." They know that's for fun, and I think with all the heavy stuff on the album they'll appreciate me sharing a little humor with them. And they'll know that when I get into spiritual matters, like in the song "Redemption," when I say, "I was redeemed by the blood," I think they'll believe it. I hope that if I'm ever arrested for being a Christian, there'll be enough evidence to convict, and "Redemption" is a song that really came from the heart. I think they'll know the real me, whatever that's worth.

CMM: Can I backtrack a while now? When did you first play at Newport to young urban audiences?

CASH: '64. That was right in the middle of the folk song revival, which is what I've been doing all my life! I felt like, hey, they're finally singing the songs that I sing. Everything from "Hobo Bill's Last Ride" to "Delia's Gone." I didn't feel like I was charting a new direction, I felt like I was doing something that really worked; I was doing all these hootenanny shows all over the country at colleges, was even in a movie called Hootenanny Hoot. I feel confident in saying that I've always done what I felt was right for me to do musically, and I have held on to my musical integrity, except for a period there in the late 70's

CMM: Maybe it wasn't so different musically to play dates like Newport and hootenannies back then, but certainly there was a huge gap perceived between Nashville and the young urban types who went to those kinds of things.

CASH: There was a gap perceived between me as a Memphis rockabilly and Nashville, also, so what's the difference there? When I came to Nashville in '56 to see the manager of the Grand Ole Opry&emdash;my manager brought me up here to try to get a guest shot on the Opry&emdash;he walked by me a dozen times with^ out speaking, and let me sit there for two hours, and finally he just motioned me to come in his office. I came in there and sat down, and he said, "What makes you think you belong on the Grand Ole Opry?" That was the first thing he said to me. And I said, "'Folsom Prison Blues' is Number Two, and I think the fans would like to hear me sing it." So he stared at me for about two hours it felt like, and then he said, "Be here Saturday night." So I was. Now the people&emdash;Minnie Pearl, Ernest Tubb, Hank Snow&emdash;all of them welcomed me with open arms. I think some of the old-timers in the business had a lot more vision about what this is all about than some of the people who were running the business. I was encouraged to do it the way I felt it by people like Ernest Tubb. He told me, "You're different, you sound different, you act different, you look different; if that's the way you honestly feel it, then that's the way you want to do it, and don't let anybody change you."

Very reluctantly, after the success of that first night, they invited me back, said "Come back sometime," you know. Then I became a member of the Grand Ole Opry a year later, but they had this rule that if you're a regular member, you have to be here 26 Saturday nights out of the year. I knew I couldn't do that&emdash;I was booking all over the North American continent. So I had to quit the Opry. And I guess I've always been sort of an outsider. It's been a good five years since I was asked to come down and do the Grand Ole Opry. It's not that I'm waiting for them to ask me, it's just that that's the country music community's attitude here towards me.

CMM: What's your take on what's going on here now? So in any veterans have been hung out to dry, and those demographics you mentioned a while ago have taken on such priority...

CASH: We are a fact of life. Some of them, not all of them, down on Music Row act like, Johnny Cash, go away, we don't want to see you anymore. They also said that to Charley Pride, they said that to Merle, they said that to Waylon, and Waylon is one of the most actively loved people in this town. Now I hear that they don't wanna play Hank Williams Jr.'s records, cuz he's too old. The worst story I've heard down in Nashville: I was in a recording studio about three years ago, and somebody from

Randy Travis' record company came in. I asked him what was going on, and he said, "Nothing, we're just looking for a new Randy Travis." I said, "What's wrong with the one you got?" (Laughs.) That was so stupid. I'm not moaning about not being played on the radio. I know I'm 62 years old. And I've been around twice, and it looks now like I might have a third shot at a new audience. If I don't, I can still get work, and I'm not worried about the Billboard charts, I'm not worried about bookings next year.

The music scene in Nashville is very exciting right now; I love some of the videos I see, though I'm a little tired of seeing everybody getting in an old car or running through a wheatfield. But they entertain me, even if every video's a new artist I never heard of. There's a lot of good-looking women in country music right now, and I like that. I like the way the women have come into their own in country music. I think Trish Yearwood is around from now on. I think she's so great.

CMM. Do you?` have other favorites among the new artists?

CASH: I like that Collie boy. Yoakam. Yoakam dares to be different. I see a lot of myself in him, and I appreciate him&emdash;I think he's probably better than a dirt sandwich. (Laughs.) I think Carlene Carter's a ball of fire, she's doing great. I'm proud of Rosanne; she's got so much integrity. Maybe that's why she left here; not only musical integrity, but integrity as a person. This town is still the place to come to make it in country music. There's a lot of great talents in this town. Tony Brown, I really admire him. Randy Scruggs, he's a great producer and great musician. Jack Clement, there ain't nobody like Jack Clement, and he's still a man of vision.

CMM: You describe yourself as a perpetual outsider here, but you lived in California from '58 until '65 and then came back why have you stayed here so long if that's really how you feel?

CASH: I came because like I said, it was the place to go. I'd also just gotten divorced and was killing myself on amphetamines. I wanted to be in the Country Music Hall of Fame one day, and I almost missed it a few times, I guess&emdash;I went off in some weird directions in the 60's. All my friends were here, people I admired. Still have a lot of friends here and people I admire. It's that record-making machine that I hate. That's my big gripe about Nashville. And that machine is a money-eater, it's a glutton for money, and if you don't have the big bucks behind you, you don't get nowhere. They spend millions on promotion.

CMM: This talk about the machine ties back in to something you said about the new album, which is that you'd been wanting to do it for 25 years without being able to. But there was a time in the late 60's and early 70's when Johnny Cash was the biggest thing in this business, and it seems like you should have been able to call your own shots.

CASH: I tried it, I tried it. I did an album in'59 called Ride This Train. That was the closest thing to it. But I said then that someday I'd do it with just my guitar, and more personal, more up close, more just me and you. When I was doing the TV show, right after the prison albums, I mentioned to the producers, to the record company, that now is the time I wanna sing songs just me and my guitar, maybe tell a few stories. They didn't wanna hear about it, because the success of the prison albums, the TV show with Bill Walker's orchestra, that was all going good and they didn't wanna change a thing. And I didn't push it; I just hoped that someday I would have a producer and a record company that would go for it.

CMM: When you look back to that period we're talking about on Columbia, which of those albums really stand out for you as complete albums, which are your real favorites ?

CASH: I think artistically it's one that Larry Butler produced called Any Old Wind That Blows. But my real favorite is Ride This Train. I'm proud of the work I did with Larry Butler, but my all-time favorite producer is Jack Clement; he's like a brother, but he knows me so well it's scary sometimes. I work really good with him, because we work everything out together, even if we have to fight it out, but we always accomplish what we set out to do.

CMM: Do you have favorites of other peoples' versions of your songs?

CASH: Yeah, I like The Sweethearts of the Rodeo singing "Get Rhythm." I think those girls are great. I like Collin Raye's version of "Big River." A rock group called One Bad Pig recorded "The Man in Black." (Laughs.) It was kinda wild, but it was good. Crystal Gayle's "I Still Miss Someone," she did such a great job on that one; I like the way Rodney Crowell sings that song too. The greatest thing that's been recorded for me is a Rosanne song called "My Old Man." That was a wonderful song.

CMM: The way you performed in Austin last week, doing a set solo with acoustic guitar and then one with your band, is that the way you intend to work in the immediate future?

CASH: No. I'm mainly working with June and John Carter and The Carter Family, which is what I'm really comfortable doing. But the shows I'm doing for the record company, I'm working as a solo artist, just me and my guitar, for an hour or so, and then the band comes out and we do 30 or 40 minutes of the old stuff. That was nothing new in Austin, that was like a 50's honky tonk. It was the in-place in Austin, and it was a very exciting night; they were really receptive, and I loved doing that show. I went out and looked at it the day before so I knew what I was getting into.

CMM: Did you have apprehensions about playing to audiences like that?

CASH: No, I talked to Rosanne about it. She thought it was the thing to do, but she said be careful. I said, "What do you mean be careful, remember I'm 62, right?" And she said, "No, just don't let them embarrass you." I got to thinking, how could I go wrong by just taking my guitar and singing these songs that I worked on for a year? That's what I did, and the rest of it was songs I been singing for 30 years or more. People always ask, "Do you give your daughter advice?" "No, I ask her advice." Her and Carlene both. They're out there bouncing around the younger generation and know what's going on in that demographic world, and we talk a lot.

CMM: The funny thing is, in that demographic world, you're playing to a younger audience than they are, in this instance.

CASH: The other night I told that audience, "I hope you enjoy the show, grandchildren."