Cash: The Autobiography (16 page)

beehives, about a dozen of them, active ones, full of bees—a fog of bees. If I'd climbed in there I'd have been stung to death within seconds. Hmmtn, I thought, better not. The truck drove off and I started walking. The whole day passed before I encountered someone willing to give me a nonlethal ride, but eventually I did and I lived to tell the tale. As it turned out, Jesse and I had picked a bad spot to burn. The three mountains scorched by our fire were part of a wildlife refuge area for, among other species, endan- gered California condors. A count of fifty-three had been made before the fire; after the fire, it went down to nine. I was such a mess that I didn't care. I went into the depositions full of amphetamines and arrogance, refusing to answer their questions straight. “Did you start this fire?” “No. My truck did, and it's dead, so you can't ques- tion it.” “Do you feel bad about what you did?” “Well, I feel pretty good right now.” “But how about driving all those condors out of the refuge?” “You mean those big yellow buzzards?” “Yes, Mr. Cash, those yellow buzzards.” “I don't give a damn about your yellow buzzards. Why should I care?” And so on. It was just ugly, that's all. They decided to sue me, and I ended up paying them $125,000 in 1964 money, about $1 million today. The next camper-related story turns on a tank of propane gas I bought for Jesse when he was new and dumped in the trunk of my 1958 Cadillac, the car I'd bought to replace the Lincoln I bought from Ferlin

Husky to replace the '54 Plymouth with the bass fiddle on the roof. I was high when I bought the propane, and still high as I drove over Coldwater Canyon into Beverly Hills and started smelling propane. The smell matched the sound of the tank rolling around in the trunk, but my mind went to work and I convinced myself it would be okay, that I could make it home without having to stop. I was wrong. There's a stretch of straight road about four blocks long on Coldwater Canyon, and then the road curves. If you don't curve with it, you'll hit a big old palm tree. That's where I was, heading into that curve, when the car exploded. I'd been thinking it might happen, so I was ready. I already had my hand on the door as the propane tank blew, and as soon as I felt the concussion I yanked down on that handle and rolled. I hit the pavement, tumbled all the way across the street, and landed in the middle of somebody's lawn in time to get a great view of the fireworks. They were spec- tacular. When that Caddy hit the tree, the flames shot up a hundred feet or more and burned until the whole propane tank was empty. The valve had been wide open, knocked loose when the tank started rolling around in the trunk. I was okay: bruised and cut and scraped and burned—my skin looked like an alligator's—but basi- cally sound. They covered my face with vitamins A and E and I healed up nicely, with no scarring at all. I looked terrible at first, though—so bad that when a friend of mine visited me in the hospital with his pregnant wife, she got very upset, and later that evening she mis- carried. You might have been thinking my wrecks were pretty amusing in a live-fast, die-young, hell-bent kind of

way. What I think is that the life inside that woman was too young to die. I also think it's a good idea to dwell on the literal meaning of “hell-bent.”

I've done no direct physical violence to people, but I certainly hurt many of them, particularly those closest to me, and I was hard on things. I kicked them, I punched them, I smashed them, I chopped them, I shot them, I stuck them with my bowie knife. When I got high I didn't care. If I wanted to let out some of my rage, I just did it. The value of whatever I destroyed, the money it cost, or its meaning to whoever owned or used it didn't matter one bit to me, such was the depth of my selfishness. All it cost me was cash (if that), hands off. Somebody else, usually Marshall Grant, had to actually face the people and do the paying. As to the particulars of all those acts, I'm not going to go °ver them again. I've written about them before and talked about them many times in interviews, and I'm through with them. Frankly, I'm tired of having to tell those same old stories, particularly since I'm now work- ing on my third generation of questioners. It's disturbing, too, to confront the fact that, in many eyes, the kind of motel vandalism I pioneered is now a kind of totem of rock 'n' roll rebellion, a harmless and even admirable mixture of youthful exuberance and contempt for con- vention. That's not what it was for me. It was darker and deeper. It was violence. It also wasn't the whole picture, because we dis- played our share of youthful exuberance, too. I pulled all kinds of stunts that weren't harmful or destructive, and so did my companions. Stu Carnall, who'd teamed up with Bob Neal from Memphis to handle my affairs once I'd settled in California, was very talented in that area. While Bob, a gracious, nonjudgmental man, counseled against my craziness (and my growing drug habit), Stu, who came out on the road with us while Bob stayed back at the office, decided after a while that he'd join me rather than fight me. He took a different route, preferring alco-

hol to pills and stopping short of destruction and vandal- ism, but he was very creative. He liked to put on a top hat and a long black cape, march up to desk clerks, and request his rooms. If perchance they didn't have reserva- tions for a Baron von Karnal, which of course they didn't, he'd rap his cane on the desk and shout, “Young man, I demand my suite!” Amazingly, or perhaps not so, he got it more often than not and was given special service, too. He only did that in the big cities, of course. It would never have worked in the smaller places. We really missed Stu and his contributions to our entertainment when he decided to end his partnership with Bob and open his own office. Gordon Terry was another lively character. The women loved him, and he loved them, despite the fact that he also loved his wife, Virginia, and his two daugh- ters, Betsy and Rhonda. They were a nice family and Virginia was a great cook, one of the very best Southern fried chicken cookers on the planet—still is, too, and more besides. She has a catering service in Nashville these days. She was totally devoted to Gordon, no matter what he did or didn't do, and through it all she kept the family together. Gordon was every bit as talented with a fiddle as Virginia was with a frying pan. He started working my shows soon after he left Ferlin Husky's band, doing a solo spot and opening the show. On stage he was all per- sonality, a fabulous entertainer, and he was hot—he played the fire out of that fiddle. He got them warmed up, all right. Johnny Western was fun, too. He brought cowboy glamour to the show, and it wasn't fake. He was a real authority on the Old West, both in reality and as it's been reflected in music, TV, and the movies. Moreover, he was the fastest gun alive at the time. I never saw anyone clear leather quicker than Johnny Western, and while I never approached his speed, he got me drawing pretty fast by

the time he was through with me. He was also a fine gui- tar player, one of the very few who could play Luther Perkins-style guitar almost as well as Luther. (He was the first man I called when Luther died, but he had other commitments.) Between him and Gordon Terry and sometimes the Collins Kids, Larry and Lorrie, I had a powerful show going by the time I stepped on stage myself. It was a new manager, Saul Holiff, who pushed me to take my show, and my career, to another level. I was perfectly happy where I was, doing what I loved to do and getting paid for it, but after I got to know Saul—we met when he booked a date for me in London, Ontario, where he lived—I started liking his ideas. Instead of just ballrooms and dance halls around the United States and Canada, he said, I could be aiming at Europe, the Orient, and big places in big U.S. cities, Carnegie Hall perhaps, the Hollywood Bowl. And that could be just the begin- ning. I took him on, and what he said, he did. Saul was my manager for the next decade, into the early 1970s, when he decided he'd had enough of show business and retired to live a happy life. He made many of the most significant moves of my career, and I owe him a lot. I don't think I wore him out—nobody did; he just had no need to keep working, so he didn't. But I certainly wasn't the easiest of clients. Saul stayed pretty well insulated from the fallout, though. When I did something that left a mess—things broken, people abused, money squan- dered, laws broken, jail cells visited—his technique was simply to disappear, either back home to Ontario or out of touch, unavailable even by telephone. Marshall Grant was the one who had to deal with it. It was Saul who put me together with June, profession- ally speaking, booking her to appear on my show at the Big D Jamboree in Dallas, Texas, on December 5, 1961, a date I knew was going to be the start of something big. Perhaps he knew, too.

I first laid eyes on June Carter when I was eighteen, on a Dyess High School senior class trip to the Grand Ole Opry. I'd liked what I heard of her on the radio, and I really liked what I saw of her from the balcony at the Ryman Auditorium. She was singing with the Carter Family that night, but also doing her solo comedy act, using Ernest Tubb as her straight man. She was great. She was gorgeous. She was a star. I was smitten, seriously so. The next time I saw her was six years later, again at the Opry but this time backstage, because by then I was a performer too. I walked over to her and came right out with it: “You and I are going to get married someday.” She was either still married to Carl Smith or about to be married to Rip Nix, I forget which, so she wasn't available, and I knew that. I just wanted to let her know how much I thought of her, how great she was in my eyes. She laughed. “Really?” she asked. “Yeah.” “Well, good,” she said. “I can't wait.” And there went the seed, in the ground. Another five years passed before December 5, 1961. Gordon Terry and Johnny Western were both on the bill, but the Big D Jamboree was a big deal, and Saul reck- oned we could use another act. “I know you like June Carter, the girl on the Grand Ole Opry, so I booked her to appear tonight as well,” he told me. Which was more than fine with me. She was better than ever on stage that night, which didn't surprise me at all and made my next question that much easier. “How about joining our show, doing this some more?” I asked her. She thought about it a little while, then said "Well, I

don't know. I'll talk to Saul and see if I can work every- thing out with him. Then, if we can come to a meeting of the minds, you're on. I'd love to.“ That made me happy indeed. She and Saul worked out the finances, and on February 11, 1962, she joined our company on the road in Des Moines, Iowa, for a show at the KRNT Theater booked by Smokey Smith, a disc jockey and friend of mine. Patsy Qine was on that show, too, and Barbara Mandrell, then just twelve years old and on her first tour. It started happening immediately. I was all set to go on stage that night, primed and ready as far as I was con- cerned, but not in June's eyes. ”Here, give me that shirt!“ she told me. ”What shirt?“ I asked. ”That one you got on,“ she replied. ”You're not going on stage with your shirt all wrinkled like that!" I wasn't exactly accustomed to people ordering me around like that, so for a moment I bristled. Then I jerked the shirt off and threw it to her. She ironed it, and I went on stage in a nicely pressed shirt. Thus began her lifelong dedication to cleaning me up, and my lifelong acceptance of that mission. I was enthralled. Here was this vivacious, exuberant, funny, happy girl, as talented and spirited and strong- willed as they come, bringing out the best in me. It felt wonderful. We all liked it, in fact; she was a tonic for our whole crew. Life on the road improved immensely. After Des Moines we went to Oklahoma City for a show with Carl Perkins, Sonny James, and pretty little Miss Norma Jean, and already I had June riding in my car with me. I liked Luther, Marshall, and Fluke, but not the way I liked June Carter. I made the implications of that point clear to the boys, including Johnny Western

and Gordon Terry. I let them know from day one: “Don't mess around with June Carter. I'm covering her. I'm watching over her like a big old rooster, and don't you forget it.” They didn't. It was a hard thing for Gordon in particular to pull off, not messing with a pretty girl when she was right there in front of him, but it helped that June had a very good reputation among her peers in the music business. It was known that she didn't mess around, that if she played at all, she played for keeps. At the end of that first tour I asked Saul to make sure We had her booked for all our upcoming tours. He did that, and from that point on, June was with me every time I went on the road, for the good times and the bad.

One of the worst times came early: my con- cert at Carnegie Hall in May of 1961, which apart from being an event in itself was the final stop on one ride and the beginning of another. When I got to New York I was already burned out. I'd been in Newfoundland with Merle Travis and Gordon Terry on a moose hunt sponsored by a company introducing walkie-talkies to the civilian market. One of the things a walkie-talkie would be good for, they fig- ured, was communication between hunters in the woods, and we were there to publicize that proposition. As it turned out, the radios didn't get much use. I shot a moose about three hundred yards from the cabin and called vlerle on the walkie-talkie to tell him so, and it went something like this: “Merle, I got a moose.” “That's nice. I might get one too if you'd stay off this thing-” That was about it for the walkie-talkies. You don't need them when you're holed up together in a cabin tak- ing drugs and drinking, which is what we were really doing those three days. We all had our own preferences in that regard—Merle was on sleeping pills while I was on amphetamines—but it worked out, more or less. If Merle could keep his dosage right, he'd stay in what he considered his mellow mood, not nervous, for long peri- ods of time. In that state he could be hilarious, a wonder- ful conversationalist and raconteur. He took so many pills that eventually they'd start working like they were supposed to and put him to sleep, but sometimes that took three or four days. For me, the trick was to match my biochemical schedule, running on the fast track, to his. Sometimes it worked and great stories were told,