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How am I these days?" he says, parroting my opening question of the first of our four interviews with something between the flicker of a light little smile and a Man in Black nervous tick. "Well, I'm doing okay. I guess I'm happy. In fact, I'm happier than I've ever been."

I don't doubt him for a moment, firstly because Johnny Cash is a truth-telling kind of person and secondly because the man before me today exhibits signs of greater content than the man I interviewed five years ago-or for that matter, fifteen years ago.

Basically, there is about him a certain lessening of tension, a quieting of the vibration in the air around him which warns Cat on a hot tin roof; man pursued by demons, powder keg about to blow. Cash's body language still suggests a mild case of St. Vitus' Dance, and that train-a-comin' tremor still runs through his speaking voice, but other outward signs-a well-fed look, a cigarette habit which probably replaces more immediately threatening addictions-bear witness to a net gain in inner peace. Since his 1985 trip to the Betty Ford Center and subsequent commitment to a drug-free style of life, Cash doesn't rattle near as bad as he used to.

We'll have to talk about drugs and health (both physical and spiritual) at some point in this year's round of interviews, but today, in a suite at the Opryland Hotel on the day of the 1988 CMA Awards show, we begin where we usually do, with the man's music.

It would seem that in this area, the more things change the more they remain the same. Despite the radical move he made a couple of years back, taking his business to the Polygram label after two decades at CBS, Cash's basic ambitions and dilemmas are almost exactly what they were when I first talked to him fifteen years ago. Then he was trying to break out of a rut both by doing something new (recording with Waylon) and by deepening something old (going back to the Tennessee Three/Johnny Cash bare-bones rockabilly sound. He was happy with his music, and unhappy with his music.

Ditto today. As we talk, he has just released two radically different albums: the costly and ambitious Water From the Wells of Home, a collection of duets with Waylon, Hank Jr., Paul McCartney, Tom T. Hall, Emmylou Harris, the Everly Brothers and his wife June, daughter Rosanne and son John Carter Cash; and Classic Cash, a starkly simple double album in which he and his band set up in the Reverend Jimmy Snow's church studio and cut new versions of all his favorite old hits the hard way. For "hard," read cheap, fast, "live" makes no difference.

"We brought the Classic Cash album in under budget, which was $35,000," he says, "and I think it sounds pretty good. You see, I asked for a budget that low, because I think that if you spend much more on a Johnny Cash album, you're doing something wrong. You're not doing it the way the fans like to hear Johnny Cash records sound; All my greatest successes-'I Walk the Line 'Folsom Prison Blues', 'A Boy Named Sue'-have had that simple Spartan sound."

Given that statement, and almost identical statements in all our past interviews, I'm still wondering why on earth the majority of the Johnny Cash albums of the last fifteen years have not reflected such an approach to record making.

"Well," says the man, "other people have all kinds of other ideas about how to make Johnny Cash records. I've always had the final word on what gets released and what doesn't, but you know, when you've been working with people for months on a project, you tend to go along with their ideas."

That makes sense, but while oversensitivity to the wishes of others probably plays a powerful role, it's just as often Cash himself who takes directions other than the one he keeps identifying as the one true musical path.

The Water From the Wells of Home album is a perfect example. He began, he says, with "four or five real strong songs by great writers, John Prine and people" as the basis of a hard-core Johnny Cash album, but then he decided to incorporate a duet with June Carter on one of their favorite recent songs, Dave Loggins' and Don Schlitz's "Where Did We Go Right." Then, when he and his son John Carter wrote "Water From the Wells of Home" together, he decide he had to include that too, and then...et cetera, et cetera, and pretty soon he was making an all-duet album, spending all the time and enduring all the costs and complications such undertakings entail.

He doesn't regret it, not one bit-he's proud of the album, as he is of most of his recent work-but it's interesting that now (again) he's sitting here saying "Now I'm going back to recording simply, doing my own thing. Everything I wanted to sing with other people is on that album. I mean, the record company gets all excited when some rock person does one of my songs, or I do a duet with someone like Paul McCartney, but I'm not going chasing after Bono or Springsteen, Iron Maiden, John Cougar Mellencamp, whoever someone thinks I ought to sing with. I haven't told my record company I'm not going to do that yet, but I'm not. I'm gonna do my own thing."

If you find the sum total of what Cash has said so far confusing, you're not alone. Is Cash really calling the shots? What does Cash really want to do?

The probable answer to the latter question is that what Cash wants to do changes all the time, both because he's a musical adventurer as much as he is a digger of his own roots, and because he's got a good ear for a convincing argument. Why else, for instance, would he have made an album as energetically roots-essential as his magnificent 1977 Rockabilly Blues, and then, just when he had us hard-core Johnny Cash fans on the edge of our seats for the first time in years, hand himself over to Billy "Sugar" Sherrill for the numbingly overproduced The Baron, the dullest album he's ever made?

Well, there is a "Why else?" It's called "sales." Hits. Top Ten records. Though Cash is beyond competition on the legend-in-his-own-time side of things, his last decade or so has been somewhat dry vis a vis chart action. And this has been more true of his "own thing" music-the great songs on Rockabilly Blues ten years ago, and the different but just as artistically successful selection on Johnny Cash Is Coming to Town, his relatively recent first Polygram album-than it has been of his musically adventurous and/or I'll-buy-that-idea records.

You can speculate why this should be so, second guessing until you end up back where you started, but someplace between "What does Cash want?" and "What do the fans want?" you should at least consider the question of what record companies want, and how they want it. Cash, you see, may well have spent much of the 1970's and most of the 1980's in the commercial cool zone simply because no matter what kind of music he made, his style and that of CBS Records did not mesh.

"I live out in Hendersonville, and I refused to come downtown to join in the fight: participate in the cutting of throats, sit in on the meetings, court this executive and that executive, be available for anything they wanted me to do," he explains. "For a long time there I'd record an album and turn it in without even asking them what they wanted from me. I thought that if I did what I felt was right for me, and turned it in, they should just go with it but maybe I was expecting a little too much. And as it turned out, album after album, it wasn't what they wanted. I saw the light when I did my dream gospel album, twenty songs I like to sing and feel good about. I finished it at great cost and turned it in, and they rejected it."

In Cash's words, he had ended up "out of sight, out of mind" at CBS. "They had their new artists they were all excited about-like Rosanne Cash, which was all right with me-but I needed to go with someone who was excited about me, who thought I still had potential."

Hence his move to Polygram, run by his old friend Dick Asher in New York and his buddy Steve Popovich in Nashville. At Polygram, he says, there is no lack of communication; he doesn't need an appointment to drop by Popovich's office for a chat, and whenever he's at home he and Popovich talk at least twice a week. "They've made me feel like I'm important on the label," he says.

But still, no banana. No big hit record, and a change in the wind to boot; Popovich is now on his way out at Polygram. So really, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

"In the end, it all comes down to the song, and the arrangement," says Cash, "and sometimes it comes down to who the company decides to spend their promotion money on this month. Polygram has new artists, too. They're selling records, and the company's got to support them, keep them going. But maybe one month will be my month, and that'll be all right. That's all I'll ask for."

It's a complicated business, this, and obviously it frustrates Cash; it's been frustrating him, and causing him to doubt his worth as a musician, ever since I've known him. His final statement on the subject is typical. "If you don't have it in the first place on the record, it's not going to fly no matter how hard you push it," he says. "I feel like we may have it on this Water From the Wells of Home album-but if we don't, that's nothing new to me, lately."

Two points to consider here. The first, which Cash may not grasp as firmly as he should, is that consumer taste and business politics aside, his music does still "have it" when he's following his strongest instincts, really doing his own thing. His Johnny Cash Is Coming to Town album proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The second point is something Cash does seem to have a handle on. There are more important things in life than hit records.

There is for instance the continuation of life itself; heart beating, organs functioning, all that. On this issue Cash has a clear understanding: "I like drugs, but I can't have them, 'cause they'll kill me." His understanding is somewhat clearer than it us to be, before the pain pills he took for an injury a few years ago kicked him back into the eye of addiction he had broken in 1967. "I know why I am the way I am, that chemical dependency a disease," he says, and I know it's a progressive disease. That second time around, I went down lower and hit the bottom harder than I ever imagined was possible, and if there's a next t time it'll be even worse."

He also understands that there's no point in blaming anybody or anything else for the way he is "I could blame my mother for the fact that I'm a addict, or I could talk about all the pressure I'm under, but really, I was in the supermarket the other day, watching one of the checkout girls bagging groceries, and I thought to myself, 'Cash, things girl right there is probably under more pressures right now than you've ever been'. It's simple: I'm an addict because I really like drugs."

Then too, he knows that his disease is a fact of life which demands constant attention. "I want drugs every day, and I think I always will," he because I've got that wild streak, that black do inside of me that wants to bite. So choosing not to take drugs is a daily thing, and I have to watch my flanks. Some mornings I have to sit quietly an say to myself, 'At this particular point in the day, you're going to be tempted, 'cause yo 're going to be seeing so-and-so, and he's gonna drawerful of stuff, so just before you get things re, you start thinking about the-ugh! Betty Ford Center."' He laughs at himself. "That works," he says.

That laugh is significant, evidence of some new found self-acceptance at work, and so are other recently acquired habits: talking to his old druggie buddy and new sobriety partner Waylon almost every day, sharing his problem and its antidotes with other people who know what he's talking about, and, ultimately, realizing what life without drugs has to offer.

"Addiction is progressive," he says, "but so is sobriety. The more time goes by, the better I feel. The better life is. Now I'm so happy at home with June and John Carter. I can't wait to wake up in the morning. I didn't use to wake up; I'd come to' when the drugs wore off. I dreaded the light of day when it cracked through those windows. I'd have to pull the covers over my head, go take something else to make me sleep a little deeper.

"But now I'm up at 5:30 or 6, and I love my quiet time in the morning. I'll have my coffee, I'll read the Bible, I'll sit in front of the TV with the sound off and reflect on the day coming. Sometimes I'11 make a list of things I want to do; not just appointments, but things I want to do, even things I want to think about. And I'm much more productive these days."

It's pretty nice, hearing our legendary Man Pursued By Demons talking like this, and it's also pretty nice to share his gratitude that not just his own house is in order. When June's daughter Carlene Carter sought help a year ago, she completed the set of Cash/Carter offspring in recovery. As we speak, all the kids who have traveled the road of the family disease are sober.

So much for the weightiest matters on our 1988 interview agenda. Cash goes off for his afternoon nap. Sober people who get up at the crack of dawn and work evenings do things like that.

We go to it again the next day at the Polygram offices, after the CMA Awards show in which Cash inducted Loretta Lynn into the Country Music Hall of Fame (a great moment, that; Loretta's jewelry and Cash's TV dignity blown asunder in an explosion of country-girl glee). Today we're covering the concerns-and-causes areas of Cash's life, the things about which he cares and likes to speak his milld.

Politics come first, and there things remain the same. Cash still refuses to embrace the brand of conservatism with which most people identify him, ignoring~ abundant evidence to the contrary. He still believes, for instance, that the United States should not be trying to impose its political will on Central America by violence. "I see these politicians get up and say, 'We can't have another communist country in the Western Hemisphere', but who are we to say? Our whole thing is that we're free to choose our own form of government and worship as we please and say what we want, and I'm all American in that way; I think communism is a bad thing. But I can't tell another people who are hungry how to live. They'll follow anyone who blows in their ear. So I don't know what's best for Nicaragua, but I don't think that saying we don't want another communist country in Central America is a good enough excuse for a war."

On the home front of social justice and concern for the abused and underprivileged, Cash is still singing the same tune, but to different audiences. "I've pretty much given up on trying to do anything to change the prison system," he says.

"There's no rehabilitation and nothing much to recommend it at all, because nobody wants to spend any money on prisons. In fact, the whole judicial system in this country is a nightmare.

"So I'm tired of beating my head against that wall. I'm involved in things where I can actually help people: the Retarded Citizens of Tennessee, the American Cancer Society Sumner County chapter, Jessi Colter's shelter for battered women, children's things." He also continues to donate his services to Billy Graham's crusades, and remains impressed by the man. "He still lives in that log house on the mountain in North Carolina, he still wears those $79 J.C. Penney suits, and he's still driving that 1973 Chrysler station wagon."

Even closer to home, Cash says, "I'm glad to see that Nashville finally realized the Urban Cowboy craze is over; that nobody in New York City is buying cowboy boots and overproduced, orchestrated, uptown countrypolitan-type records. At the Awards show I was struck by what a mixture of lifestyles and music types there was on that stage; everybody from me to Highway 101. I found myself thoroughly enjoying all of it."

I ask him to join me in praying that no new trend surfaces to wipe out today's unprecedented abundance of consumer choice in country music. "Sure, I'll do that," he laughs. "Things are pretty good the way they are."

Our third interview session is an unscheduled bonus. I'm at Cash's house on the lake in Hendersonville, where I've been documenting June Carter's mind-boggling antique collection for another magazine~June's compulsive purchasing in this area being one form of addictive behavior as yet untreated in the Cash household-when John rises from his afternoon nap to join us in the family room. Here we have Cash at his best: rested, relaxed, candid and funny.

It's been a busy day. Rock megastar Bono and another member of U2, chaperoned by John's old friend and musical co-conspirator Jack Clement, came by to visit over lunch (a plan for a Cash/Bono song resulted), and before that June and the other women of the household spent the morning cooking [and photographing favorite family dishes for an upcoming June Carter cookbook.

John enjoyed both events, particularly the morning cooking, which put him in mind of his childhood in Arkansas, receiving an education in the ways of the world from the talk of the women cooking and quilting together in those more communal times. We talk about that kind of thing for a while, until the subject leads to mention of June's late uncle, A.P. Carter, the reputedly straightlaced leader of the original Carter Family, and Cash can't resist. Over June's strenuous objections he tells his favorite A.P. story, the one about what his wife Sara and sister-in-law Maybelle did when they noticed the unmistakably circular impression made in the genuine cowhide of his wallet by one of those drugstore items carried hopefully, often for years, by country boys then and now. The women put A.P. in his place pretty good that time.

June wails. "What's the family going to think, John?"

"It's okay, honey, it's okay. Just tell'em it was my fault. That trashy Cash boy shamin' you again." Right. The same pillar of the community who was seen driving his big black Mercedes the wrong way up Nashville's 16th Avenue South a couple of years back, making gruesome faces at shocked and outraged citizens (No, Martha, it can't be-Johnny Cash doesn't DO things like that!) and embarrassing the hell out of poor Rosanne in the passenger seat...

June goes off upstairs, still squawking good-naturedly in defense of the family proprieties, and our talk turns to another trashy Cash boy, John's long-haired, earring-wearing, rocking and rolling son who set up house by himself recently ("very traumatic, the last one leaving home") and has, as we speak, just taken off with a friend towards the wide open spaces of the West.

"He says he's going to 'find himself " says Dad. "Well, bull. I know what he's looking to find, and it's not a 'he'."'

He laughs. "But he'll be okay. He's a good kid.

He doesn't drink or drug, and he's not mouthy. The only thing I worry about is that the way he looks and the way the cops are out there-the way they are everywhere, I guess-the day's coming when he's liable to get the heck beat out of him with a billy club. It's like when he tells me, 'Daddy, I want people to see the real me, not just the surface. I don't care; I'm gonna grow my hair down to my ass.' I tell him, 'Go right ahead, son, it's your hair and it's your ass. But you'd better be prepared to pay the price."'

The subject of authority-provoking images concealing good hearts prompts me to tell Cash the latest news from Steve Earle, with whom I talked the other day. Cash listens with interest to the story of how the great but long-haired and bigmouthed singer/songwriter got the shaft from his Nashville record company and the cold shoulder from the CMA, then grimaces and says, "Well, he'll be okay. He's too smart to let 'em keep him down. But it figures, y'know. Steve's another Indian in the white man's camp."

That last remark echoes back over the years. It's one of the ways Cash described himself during our first interview, and its recurrence now reminds me why I admire and enjoy Mr. Cash. Here's a man who, despite having become a massive and broadbased pillar of the conservative country music community, still has his feet in the dirt and his head on the same level as the rest of us; he hasn't fooled himself into believing his own myth. He's a committed Christian without a trace of intolerance for those who aren't. He's a musical legend with not a shred of false pride or complacency. He's a strong man more than willing to admit his weaknesses. He believes in things worth believing injustice, compassion, the basic rights of every human everywhere-and he puts his mouth and his money where his heart is. He also manages, bless him, to be a lot of fun.

As I drive away from Cash's house I'm feeling good. I'm happy for him that he's happy today, and I'm grateful on my own and others' account. I'm thinking that we're fortunate that Johnny Cash who has given such warmth and depth to our world for so long now, continues to survive among us in such spiritual and creative health.

The final interview, conducted by telephone in late January, is also unscheduled, but not a bonus. It is, rather, made necessary by dire events which lent a bitter new flavor to good feelings about Johnny Cash. Through the holiday season of 1988 and the turning of the new year 1989, an attack of pneumonia following heart surgery presented us with the strong possibility that we were about to lose him. For several days nobody attending the patient could say with any certainty that his body would survive its latest~ est trial.

Those bad days began because John's physical condition did not match up to his health in other areas. He suffered a "sick, fainting spell" a couple of weeks after our talk at his house, went for a checkup and was told that an artery leading out of his heart was 90% blocked. A heart attack could hit him at any moment.

Surgery was scheduled immediately,~and it was successful. The artery was cleared without complications. But three days after John came out of the recovery room, pneumonia struck suddenly. His lungs filled with fluid, and he started to die.

It was a close run thing. Doctors had to insert a suction tube into his lungs through a chest just closed after surgery. John reacts badly to many drugs, so they had real problems finding a safe and therapeutic combination of medications under the worst kind of pressure. Everyone had very good reason to be as worried as they were.

But Cash himself, who was conscious throughout the excruciating procedures necessary to keep him on this earth, did not share their worst fears. He says that "it hurt like hell-really, it was by far the worst pain I've ever gone through-but I just didn't feel that it was my time to go. I knew I'd make it."

And so, obviously he did; the old good news is that he is still alive to tell me that. The newer good news is that he's well enough to answer his own telephone and tell me the best news of all.

"I'm feeling really good," he says. "I still haven't got all my strength back, but it's only four weeks and four days since the surgery, and I'm walking a mile and a half every day. There was still some fluid in my left~lung three days ago, but it's gone now, and my heart's just fine. My heart recovery rate-how long it takes for your pulse to get back to normal after exercise-is a third of what it was before the surgery. So really, I'm in great shape."

Moreover, he says, the recent crisis has brought on some welcome changes. He's quit smoking; easy, he says. He's on a new low cholesterol, low salt, low sugar, low carbohydrate diet which "is really good" and has already helped him shed 17 pounds. And he's in the process of arranging a future in which there will be less touring, more rest and recreation and whatever else he feels like doing. He's through being a slave to the road.

For us fans that last change is both good and bad. It's bad because we won't get to see the Johnny Cash road show as often as in the past. It's good because-well, because in my opinion John's road show has always been a trap. For too many years the musical adventurer in him, the creative artist, has suffered because he's been busy playing The Llegendary (predictable, conservative) Johnny Cash live-in-person; now perhaps he'll have more time and energy for what he does best.

On that front we have a promising situation. John says that his new record producer, the veteran Nashville bass player Bobby Moore, "is another guy who says he knows how Johnny cash records should sound, and I believe him." What he means is that Bobby and Polygram's new Nashville boss Harold Shedd are in perfect tune with the idea that the new album should consist of "good new songs done the Johnny Cash way, nice and simple like we used to do at Sun Records."

Let's hope that Cash holds onto that thought, that he actually does what he's been saying he really wants to do ever since I've known him. Adding some creative selfishness to the arsenal of other good new things in his life would be a smart move. Generous, too; my ears would certainly appreciate it.