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The fevered love of June and Johnny
By Steve Beard
May 17, 2003
On Thursday, May 15, June Carter Cash (1929-2003) died of complications
from heart surgery. She was 73.
It is strangely fitting that the last time the public saw the face of
June Carter Cash was on the enormously popular music video for Johnny
Cash's rendition of a song called "Hurt." She is seen looking down upon
her beloved husband as he sings about pain and loss. The well-worn
lines upon her face express love, betray concern, and proclaim pride.
Johnny was her man through thick and thin.
"I hurt myself today/ To see if I still feel/ I focus on the pain/ The
only thing that's real," Cash sings. "The needle tears a hole/ The old
familiar sting/ Try to kill it all away/ But I remember everything"--a
poignant reminder of his dark years in the 1960s.
June remembers those days of thunder and lightening. She stood by
Johnny's side--doing everything she could to break his voracious
dependence on pills and save his soul. "She'd take my drugs and throw
them away, and we'd have a big fight over it. I'd get some more, and
she'd do it again," Cash recalls. "I'd make her promise not to, but she
would do it anyway. She'd lie to me. She'd hide my money. She'd do
anything. She fought me with everything she had."
She waged this war because she loved Cash too much to watch him die.
Through the power of prayer and June's tough love, Johnny was able to
break the power of addiction and find peace in his heart. It also
become a spectacular love story and a 35-year marriage.
June came from the legendary Carter Family--musical pioneers of folk,
country, and bluegrass music. When she met Johnny for the first time
backstage at the Grand Ole Opry in the late 1950s, June was singing
back-up for Elvis. "I want to meet you. I'm Johnny Cash," said the
tall, lanky Man in Black. She responded by saying, "Well, I ought to
know who you are. Elvis can't even tune his guitar unless he goes,
'Everybody knows where you go when the sun goes down.'" It was a line
from one of Cash's first hits, "Cry, Cry, Cry." During their tour,
Elvis would drag June along as he popped coins in the jukeboxes
throughout the South to hear Cash's songs.
June's family joined Cash on the road in 1961. They worked hard to help
him fight his addiction. "What June did for me was post signs along the
way, lift me up when I was weak, encourage me when I was discouraged,
and love me when I felt alone and unloveable," he writes in his
autobiography Cash (HarperCollins). "She's the greatest woman I have
ever known. Nobody else, except my mother, comes close."
Their marriages fell victim to a manic touring schedule (and drugs in
Cash's case--he was divorced in 1966). "One morning, about four
o'clock," recalls June, "I was driving my car just about as fast as I
could. I thought, 'Why am I out on the highway this time of night?' I
was miserable, and it all came to me: 'I'm falling in love with
somebody I have no right to fall in love with,'" recalled June in Will
You Miss Me When I'm Gone: The Carter Family & Their Legacy in
American Music (Simon & Schuster). She was frightened of his way of
life, having seen first-hand the way that lifestyle killed country
legend Hank Williams. She thought to herself, "I can't fall in love
with this man, but it's just like a ring of fire."
"Love is a burning thing," Johnny would sing, "And it makes a fiery
ring/ Bound by wild desire/ I fell into a ring of fire." Although the
song was a huge hit for Cash, it was written by June and her cousin
Merle Kilgore. It also best typifies the relationship between Johnny
and June.
They both knew what was percolating between them. "We knew what was
going to happen: that eventually we were both going to be divorced, and
we were going to go through hell. Which we did," recollects Cash. "But
the 'ring of fire' was not the hell," he clarifies. "That was kind of a
sweet fire. The ring of fire that I found myself in with June was the
fire of redemption. It cleansed. It made me believe everything was all
right, because it felt so good."
Together, the two of them would sing, "We got married in a fever/
Hotter than a pepper sprout" for their hit "Jackson" and it serves as a
good descriptor of their relationship (they were married in 1968).
Johnny embraced June's Christian faith and it became the foundation for
their new marriage. "Theologically, June and I are on even ground, but
she's a prayer warrior and I'm not," Cash says. "She's so good at it,
in fact that sometimes I catch myself thinking that, well, maybe I
don't have to pray, because she's praying for me. Which of course is
not a healthy idea and demonstrates one of the reasons she needs to
pray so hard for me."
They created a great dependence upon one another and a deep,
inpenetrable bond. "I think all this free love is a passing plaything,"
said Cash in a 1971 interview with Redbook magazine. "June and I found
what we want in this world, and it's beautiful, the love we have for
each other.… I don't think there's anything in this world that could
destroy my marriage to June."
Nearly thirty years later, Cash would tell Rolling Stone that
"unconditional love" was the glue of his marriage. "You hear that
phrase a lot, but it's real with me and her. She loves me in spite of
everything, in spite of myself. She has saved my life more than once,"
he said. "She's always been there with her love, and it has certainly
made me forget the pain for a long time, many times. When it gets dark,
and everybody's gone home and the lights are turned off, it's just me
and her."
Steve Beard is the founder of Thunderstruck.org. This article is
adapted from the forthcoming book, Spiritual Journeys (Relevant), where
he profiles Johnny Cash.
http://www.thunderstruck.org/june3.htm
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