Johnny Cash On 

Love, God, Murder and Music

Launch.com

Spring 2000

The Man In Black is a little gray around the edges. Bleary. "I just woke up," he says in the exact same voice as he would sing, "I just woke up"--a deep, no-nonsense, stern but mournful growl. "I had a late night--my son and his lady came in about 11 o'clock and we stayed up until about one, which is kinda unusual for me these days. I usually go to bed with the chickens." Quite a change for a man who's spent the past 45 years or more staying up late as part of the job. But if illness has stopped him from touring--a family barn dance is "the only show I've got booked this year," he admits--it has thankfully not kept him from working. This year has seen the release of three thematic albums, Love, God, and Murder--compiled by Johnny Cash himself while he was wintering in Jamaica--and, due in the fall, a brand-new album, his third collaboration with Rick Rubin. The Slayer producer was the man behind Cash's stark acoustic 1994 masterpiece, American Recordings, and its Grammy-winning follow-up, Unchained, whose Danzig, Beck, Spain, and Soundgarden covers introduced the country star to a new generation of rock fans.

"I Walk The Line"

"Delia's Gone"

"My God Is Real"

"We've recorded about 24 songs so far, in Nashville, my cabin studio, and in Rick's place in California," says Cash. As for covers, "I've got a Nick Cave song called 'Mercy Seat' that might be a surprise to a few people. The mercy seat's the electric chair." That's not that surprising. With Cave, or Cash, it's not likely to be a comfy sofa.

"I've often wondered," Quentin Tarantino writes in his liner notes to Murder, "if gangsta rappers know how little separates their tales of ghetto thug life from Johnny Cash's tales of backwoods thug life. Cash sings tales of men trying to escape--escape the law, escape the poverty they were born into, escape prison, escape madness. But the one thing Cash never lets them escape is regret. Unlike most gangsta rap, Cash's criminal life songs rarely take place during the high times [but] after the cell door has slammed shut or a judge's gavel has condemned a man to death."

Cash didn't ask Tarantino to write notes for Murder--just as he didn't ask U2's Bono to write for God (though he might well have leaned a little on his wife June Carter Cash to write the love-letter that appears in the sleeve for Love). He says he "wouldn't have imposed on them; I thought it was a kinda far-fetched idea"--but he was "pleasantly surprised" at the insights they came up with. He's especially taken with Bono's line "Johnny Cash doesn't sing to the damned, he sings with the damned."

So how come Cash sings so convincingly about murder? He did once have quite a reputation with guns...

"I started off as an antique gun collector,

and then I got into shooting--just target practice. I never carried guns. Well," Cash chuckles, "I guess I did carry a gun, but I never intended to use it. Talking to people in prison over the years who have committed murder, I understand what it's like, but I don't really know because I haven't experienced that. I don't understand taking another human being's life; that's got to be the ultimate sin. But--back to what Bono said, I think he may be right--I watch some of these television preachers and I think, 'If he's going to heaven, I don't want to be with him!' I'd rather walk among with the damned: If you've got a light to shine, why not shine it in the darkest valleys, where people really need it?"

If you buy the Love, God, Murder boxed set, you'll get some free temporary tattoos: a gun, a crucifix, and a heart. Though they look like they accidentally fell out of a heavy metal magazine, they're actually totemic: All the best Cash songs are equal parts heart, crucifix, and gun. There are murder ballads as tender and soul-searching as love songs, hymns as dark and intense as murder ballads, love songs as severe as a Southern Baptist preacher's lesson about hell. Take, "Ring Of Fire" for instance. His wife June wrote it (with Merle Kilgore) for Johnny when they were married--both of them to other people.

"That's the way our love affair was. The first time I met June--backstage at the Grand Ole Opry in 1956--I got on my knees and told her I was going to marry her some day. We were both married to other people at the time. We fell madly in love, and we worked together and toured together--together all the time. So when the tour was over and we couldn't stay together and had to go home to someone else, it hurt."

Country love songs these days don't hurt. "Well, you know, I don't hear people that are really laying it on the line like we did back then--maybe they are, maybe I'm just not able to see it, but I don't see anybody on the country music scene whose songs have moved me all that much," laments Cash. "And I think the country fans are losing a lot by radio not playing some of the older, veteran artists. I think they're cheating them out of their tradition."

Cash credits love--love for June and for God--for saving him from his years of drug abuse. "I had my years in the wilderness, all right, but it was an experience. The drugs I was taking at the time [amphetamines] made me live life with a great intensity, and I felt everything to the nth degree. I used drugs because they made me feel better, but then they stopped working. But a lot of good songs and albums came out of those years. I've had a lot of people say to me, 'Do you think you would have written more songs or better songs if you hadn't been on drugs?' But I don't think so. I think I wrote exactly what God meant for me to write. You know, life is full of trouble. For everybody."

Especially, it seems, for the great country legends. So many--Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers--have led lives hit by tragedy, but Cash, although plagued by illness, doesn't feel part of that club. "I feel great. I've outlived Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams by about 35 years. I've got no troubles right now," he insists. "Life is beautiful."

Sylvie_Simmons