Johnny Cash: The Life (63 page)

Before the first session, the pair exchanged notes and tapes for weeks while searching for new tunes, and they had a bevy of choices. Petty had observed their enthusiasm for finding songs during the making of the first album. Rubin and Petty went out to dinner one night with Cash, and he played old Hank Williams radio broadcasts while they were in the car. “Johnny would go on and on about how much he loved this song or that one and Rick kept saying, ‘Write it down, write it down,’ so they wouldn’t forget to try it.”

By the time the sessions started, Cash and Rubin had a pretty good idea of what numbers they wanted to record. “Some songs were obvious, but the more we did together, the more I realized what a great interpreter Johnny was, and I looked for things that would be a real stretch,” Rubin says. Though Cash’s own suggestions had been the heart of the first album, he was eager for more of Rubin’s suggestions. During that first session Cash smiled and told Petty, “I want to make a record that will offend Johnny Cash fans.”

Once Cash and Rubin agreed on a song, they’d play a recording of it for the musicians. Then the musicians would gather in a circle and work for a half hour or so on an arrangement, with Cash singing along. Then they’d begin recording, usually wrapping up the song within two or three takes.

“Those were wonderful sessions,” Petty says. “Everything was so loose and natural. If I happened to be fooling around on the organ, Rick might hear something and say, ‘Keep doing that on the next song.’ That even happened when we played this old country song, ‘Kneeling Drunkard’s Plea.’ I barely know how to play the organ, but Rick liked something and he said, ‘Play some churchy thing,’ and I just kind of went into this sound and it ended up on the record.”

The album’s musical backing proved revelatory, providing explosiveness on the upbeat tracks that made you wonder what Cash might have sounded like in the 1970s and 1980s if he’d had a driven, world-class band behind him. “Country Boy,” a song of his from the 1950s, rocked with the stinging force of the Allman Brothers, or maybe even Dylan’s
Highway 61 Revisited
days. For many longtime Cash fans, the music was breathtaking. It’s no wonder Cash’s vocals felt inspired.

As the sessions proceeded, Petty questioned some of Rubin’s choices, including “Rusty Cage,” a howling expression of personal affirmation written by Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, who stood with Kurt Cobain as one of the leaders of the grunge movement in rock. Even Cash wondered about Rubin’s judgment as he listened to the dark, relentless drone of the Soundgarden recording in which Cornell’s words were largely reduced to an inaudible scream. “That song was the point where I thought Rick had lost his mind,” Petty says later. “When he played it, I thought there’s no way in the world we are going to be able to make that work. I said, ‘Rick, this isn’t going to work.’ But Rick got a guitar player and played ‘Rusty Cage’ the way he imagined Cash’s record would sound.”

Seeing that Cash still wasn’t sold, Rubin, who had no experience as a singer, sang the lyrics so Cash could better envision the final recording. “If Johnny felt the words were right—that they were a story he could tell—I figured we could figure out a way to support those words musically, and ‘Rusty Cage’ was an example of that,” Rubin says. “When Johnny actually heard the words, he was down with it.”

No one was more pleased with the recording than Cornell, a longtime Cash fan. “I was simply knocked over that Johnny Cash would record a song that I wrote,” he said. “I remember when my brother brought home
At San Quentin
when I was nine. We listened to it over and over for about a year. Short of the Beatles covering a song that I wrote, it was the biggest fan experience I’ve ever had.”

But one Rubin song that no one accepted was the unlikely choice of an old Robert Palmer pop-rock tune, “Addicted to Love.” Though Cash good-naturedly attempted a vocal, there was so much ridicule from Petty and the others that Rubin quietly put the track on the shelf.

As the recording continued off and on into 1996, Cash was steadily crisscrossing the country doing the old songs—from the Primadonna Casino just outside Las Vegas and the Silver Star Casino in Philadelphia, Mississippi, one week to the University of Michigan and the Sheraton Hotel ballroom in Honolulu, Hawaii, another week. Then it was back into the studio, where, in addition to Petty and Stuart, he was backed by Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, and drummer Steve Ferrone.

When the sessions ended, Rubin and Cash picked fourteen songs from the thirty or so they’d recorded and decided to title the album
Unchained,
after one of the songs. The tune, an expression of Christian humility and gratitude, was by Jude Johnstone, a little-known Nashville songwriter who was friends with Cash’s daughter Kathy. Cash loved the theme, and Rubin thought the title fit the spirit of Cash’s renewed artistry and image. In the cover photo by Andrew Earl, Cash looked less theatrical than on the first record; dressed in his usual black, he stands by a weathered old barn, his hair almost totally gray rather than dyed black. This photo didn’t telegraph “outlaw” so much as “seasoned old musician.” Additional photos inside the album booklet showed Cash looking every bit his sixty-six years—and then some.

Beyond Beck’s “Rowboat” and the Cornell number, most of the remaining songs were old Cash favorites. They ranged from the Hawaiian-flavored ballad “The One Rose,” which he first heard on a Jimmie Rodgers record, to “I’ve Been Everywhere,” the Hank Snow hit. Cash’s only new composition was “Meet Me in Heaven,” which was inspired by the inscription on his brother Jack’s gravestone.

One of the collection’s strongest tunes was the title track from
Southern Accents,
Florida native Petty’s 1985 concept album about growing up in the South. Near the end of the sessions, Cash thanked Petty for his work on the album and apologized for not having recorded any of Petty’s tunes. When he asked Petty which one he should add, Petty told Cash he didn’t need to do that—he already had plenty of good songs. Overhearing the conversation, Rubin suggested “Southern Accents” and talked an embarrassed Petty into singing it. Cash was hooked on the opening lines:

At the end of the song, Petty remembers with a smile, “Johnny looked at me and said, ‘I’ve got to record that. It’s better than ‘Dixie.’”

While he waited for the release of the album in November, Cash was back on the road, this time a mix of prestigious locales, including the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles and the Fillmore West again in San Francisco, and lots of less glamorous meat-and-potatoes venues in secondary markets. During the shows, Cash’s health problems continued to mount.

On December 7 Cash, though suffering from the flu, was feted in Washington, D.C., at the Kennedy Center Honors along with four others—playwright Edward Albee, jazz saxophonist Benny Carter, actor Jack Lemmon, and dancer Maria Tallchief. “To say the least, it’s been a good party and a long ride,” Cash told a
New York Times
reporter.

By that time
Unchained
had entered the pop charts, but its showing was disappointing. It stayed on the key
Billboard
pop chart only two weeks, peaking at number 170. After two months, sales were less than for
American Recordings
for the same period. One reason was that most of the music press largely passed on the album, partly because they had seen the earlier album as part of a larger human interest story.
American Recordings
had also given a lot of young music writers an excuse to write about someone who was an early hero for many of them. In some ways, they felt that they had already given Cash his due.

The fact that the first album wasn’t a big commercial hit also made media exposure for the second album less likely. There, too, was disagreement over the music itself among the few critics who did review
Unchained,
even though it was, in many ways, a more personal and affecting collection. Rubin wasn’t discouraged; he viewed
Unchained
as simply the second step in a building process. He continued to believe the best was yet to come.

Cash was back on the concert trail in 1997. He spent most of April in Europe, and then returned to the States, where on May 12 in New York he taped an episode of VH1’s
Storyteller
series with Willie Nelson. On the show, they sang some songs and talked about their experiences. Rather than use the platform to showcase his current work, Cash sang only “Drive On” and “Unchained” from the two Rubin albums. He and Nelson focused mainly on vintage material, from Nelson’s “On the Road Again” to Cash’s “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.” After more U.S. dates in May and June, Cash toured Europe again in July, rightfully took it easy during most of August, and then went back out on the road, touring in a big way in September and October, playing such varied spots as the House of Blues in West Hollywood, the Mid-South Fair in Memphis, and the University of New Mexico.

One of those dates—October 4 at the House of Blues—proved to be a godsend for June. Vicky Hamilton, a young record executive and talent manager who had played a key role in the development of the flamboyant glam-rock bands Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses, told Rubin backstage how much she enjoyed June’s moments in a lively guest spot. She was especially moved by the couple’s duet on “Far Side Banks of Jordan” and loved the way June literally kicked John in the butt during a vigorous rendition of “Jackson.” Rubin told Hamilton that she ought to make a record with June. Hamilton’s reaction: no way. She didn’t know anything about country music except what she had heard as a child in Charleston, West Virginia. But Rubin kept pressing her. “You’d be perfect, you’re a coal miner’s daughter,” he said. “Go talk to her.” Hamilton was intrigued, but also intimidated. She knew enough about country music to realize that John and June were icons, and she did little more than nod hello as she and June passed on the stairs. Later that night, Rubin told June about the conversation and gave her Hamilton’s number.

June wasted no time. Early the following morning, she phoned Hamilton’s office at Vapor Records, an upstart label owned by Neil Young and Elliot Roberts. “When I got in, there was this note from June in my inbox,” Hamilton says. “It read, ‘Rick Rubin says you need to make my record. Call me back. June Carter.’” Hamilton still thought the idea was crazy, but she returned the call out of courtesy.

“June was determined,” she says. “We got together at the Four Seasons, where she and John were staying, and she was so excited about making a record that I got swept up in it and I started thinking it might work. I’d help her find a label deal and a producer. I liked her right away and wanted to help her.”

Meanwhile, Cash continued to struggle physically, causing June to worry most nights whether they’d make it through the show. His failing eyesight made it difficult for him even to make his way from the dressing room to the stage; the stage crew put fluorescent tape on the floor to help guide him. Lou Robin watched carefully for any sign he’d have to cancel the next group of dates. By now, John was openly talking about retirement, though the earliest target date anyone recalls him mentioning was sometime in 2000. Holland, his longtime drummer, figured the end was going to come much sooner, and he warned other members of the band and crew to think about lining up another job—just in case. “It wasn’t the kind of thing you’re never ready for,” Holland says. “But I wouldn’t have been surprised if John had to stop at any point.”

That point finally arrived the night of October 25, 1997, at the Whiting Auditorium in Flint, Michigan—just about as routine a stop on the tour trail as you could imagine.

Cash had been playing Flint since the 1960s, but this was the first time he had played the two-thousand-seat home of the Flint Symphony Orchestra. It was the same week Cash’s second autobiography was published, and he and June were scheduled to fly to New York the following day to kick off a brief book promotion tour.

Val Awad, the production manager for the Whiting, sensed something was wrong as soon as she saw Cash backstage. “It wasn’t drink, it wasn’t drugs, it was something else,” she said. “I thought maybe Alzheimer’s; I didn’t know.”

As soon as Cash walked onstage, several members of the audience, too, felt the same concern.

After a few numbers, Cash dropped his guitar pick and nearly tumbled onto the floor when he bent over to pick it up. “As Johnny began to stagger, we, as nurses, instinctively started to stand up to go to his aid as he looked like he could fall,” said Marie Macaulay, an RN who was sitting with some co-workers near the stage.

Cash, however, was able to straighten up with the help of a bandmate. Embarrassed, he decided to share with the audience a secret he had been carrying for months. He told the crowd he had Parkinson’s disease, which ran in his family. He’d noticed he was having impaired balance, difficulty concentrating, and occasional slurred speech, classic symptoms.

Mistaking the statement for a joke, several in the audience laughed.

“It ain’t funny,” Cash replied sharply before he caught himself. “It’s all right,” he told the audience. “I refuse to give it some ground in my life.”

Cash didn’t want to leave the stage, though band members were ready to help lead him to the dressing room. He ran through several more songs, including “Rusty Cage” and “Delia’s Gone,” as well as old favorites such as “Get Rhythm” and the ever-present “I Walk the Line.”

His daughter Cindy watched it all from the edge of the stage, and she rushed to his side once he did finally head for the dressing room. “When he left the stage, he told me to please help him walk,” she says. “I didn’t think about this maybe being his last show; I just didn’t want him to fall. I could see that he was dizzy and he was starting to panic. It was heartbreaking.”

JOHNNY CASH PROCEEDED TO NEW YORK
, as planned, for the TV show appearance but canceled the rest of the book tour and returned home to Hendersonville to meet with a team of doctors. Lou Robin issued a press release saying that Cash was indeed suffering from Parkinson’s disease and needed to cancel all public appearances indefinitely. “He’s faced a lot of challenges in his life,” Robin wrote. “He thrives on challenges. Johnny feels confident that once the disease is medically stabilized, he will soon resume his normal schedule.” A week later the diagnosis was changed to Shy-Drager syndrome, a harsher disease that also attacks the nervous system. He was told he had eighteen months to live.

Within days, Cash was back in Baptist Hospital with double pneumonia and other ailments. The treatment included the use of a ventilator to clear Cash’s lungs, and ultimately an induced coma. Rumors circulated through the Nashville music industry that he was dying. His family and friends gathered around him. Cash remembered regaining consciousness well enough on occasion to hear the dire talk around him, though he still couldn’t communicate. On one occasion he awoke to find his old friend Merle Haggard cradling him in his arms. On another he heard his doctor speaking to God. “She told God that she and medicine had done all they could, it was in His hands now.” She spent the whole night praying.

Watching all this for more than a week, June sent word out on the Internet that fans should pray for John. He was now, she too felt, totally in God’s hands. The following morning, Cash not only had come out of the coma but was sitting up in bed drinking coffee. He and June maintained that his recovery was due to divine intervention.

The experience had a profound impact on Cash’s children. Hours before he awakened, Rosanne poured her heart out to him in a four-page letter: “In these 10 days, I have learned more than I thought possible about love and the resources of the human spirit and the fragility of us all. Dad, you were so sweet laying in your bed. It was an opportunity to be close to you in a way I’ve never known before. All pretense, any issues, defenses, resentments, fear, expectations, everything just fell away like cardboard and there you were, your pure essence, and there I was in awe and appreciation….All else was burned away in these 10 days. It was an honor to be able to just give love to you—to wipe your forehead, stretch your hands and feet, hold your hand and pray for you.”

Rosanne closed the lengthy letter with these words: “I love you so much, dad—nothing else is real. Please forgive me for the way I’ve hurt you, separated myself from you and withdrawn. I am so deeply grateful and proud that you are my father.”

The letter meant the world to Cash, who just months earlier had pleaded—once again—in a note to Rosanne for her and his other daughters for them to stop blaming him for the early years of neglect. In the letter, written at the Cinnamon Hill house on Christmas Eve 1996, he wrote: “I believe I’m still being paid back—out of a lot of resentment for leaving you girls
29
years ago. I believe I have never been forgiven for the neglect, emotional abuse and abandonment. I believe I’m somehow expected to ‘make up’ for it, which is impossible. For me, it was a matter of survival. When God gave me a son, I vowed not to make the same mistake again and I didn’t.”

Then to correct the impression he’d given that he loved his son more than his daughters, Cash added: “When the lady at the…Kennedy Center asked for a list of people I wanted invited, your name was first on the list, followed by your sisters and John Carter, 5th [the order of his children’s birth]. My brothers and sisters and co-workers came last.”

Over the next few months, Cash put on a brave front. He told friends and loved ones that he simply refused to accept the Shy-Drager diagnosis and that he looked forward to getting back into the studio. But he was still in constant pain and kept worrying how, without any tour income, he was going to be able to go on supporting all those people who depended on him. He also wanted to simplify his life.

He had put the House of Cash building, which included his museum, up for sale in 1989 for $795,000, but no buyer emerged. In explaining Cash’s decision at the time to try to sell, his brother Tommy, who had become a real-estate agent and was handling the property, said, “I’m not going to get into why he has decided to cut down generally all the unnecessary expense in his life and his career, but he is in the process of doing that. He is putting out many, many, many dollars for things that could be cut back on, and this is just one thing they’re considering doing.”

He was now thinking about a new sales push. In putting the property back on the market, Cash was selling not only the museum building (now for $1.2 million), but also an old railroad depot which John and June had moved from Madison to their property to display June’s antiques ($75,000), the lot on which the museum and depot both sat ($250,000), and two seven-acre-plus lots adjoining the property ($1.8 million).

The year-end balance sheet from one of the years after Flint showed his net income at well under $100,000. Even at the end of his life, Cash’s assets—aside from property and future royalties—were accounted in the low seven figures, far less than is generally assumed for a star of his stature.

Unchained
won a Grammy for best country album in February 1998—over bigger sellers by artists such as Alan Jackson, Patty Loveless, George Strait, and Dwight Yoakam. This was even sweeter than the contemporary folk Grammy. The album had been up against the best that Nashville could produce, and Cash had won. Rubin was especially delighted. He took Nashville’s indifference to the albums personally. After that Grammy, he bought a full-page ad in the March 14 issue of
Billboard
magazine literally giving the finger to those professionals who had turned their backs on Cash and continued to ignore him.

The $20,000 ad was dominated by a striking photo that Jim Marshall, a noted rock photographer who had also been at Folsom, had taken of a snarling Cash flashing his middle finger at the camera the day of the 1969 concert at San Quentin. Lou Robin says Cash was “fed up” with the TV crew following him everywhere he went and he decided to send them a message. In the ad, which Rubin showed Cash before submitting it to the trade publication, the text read, “American Recordings and Johnny Cash would like to acknowledge the Nashville music establishment and country radio for your support.”

Cash was uneasy about the ad. Before agreeing to it, he phoned Billy Graham. “He didn’t tell me what to do or not to do, just that he wouldn’t judge me either way,” Cash said. “After my talk with him, I prayed about it and called Rick back. I gave him the go-ahead.”

The ad was cheered and jeered in Nashville—tacked up on scores of record company bulletin boards by young Turks who also resented the conservative ways of most of the city’s record labels, but criticized, too, as a crude West Coast record industry gimmick. Asked about the ad, Rubin told
USA Today,
“We hope it will open the eyes of the country community and hopefully they’ll say, ‘The guy did win…and he’s making records considered the best in country and maybe we should readdress the situation.’”

Willie Nelson, who cut out the ad and hung it on the wall of his tour bus, told the same paper, “John speaks for all of us.”

No longer having to spend weeks on the road, Cash spent most of the summer and fall of 1998 putting together songs for the new album and visiting his doctors. He and June also worried about the failing health of others around them. Both of June’s sisters were seriously ill. Helen had been hospitalized for months with various stomach problems. She passed away on June 2.

All this brought John and June closer together. As their world shrank, their love deepened. They were enjoying the kind of relationship he had dreamed about in the Air Force and his fans had imagined they were living all along. To Cash, their love was another sign of redemption. He was also thrilled that June was getting the chance to make an album again.

“The love affair between them was never stronger than those last years,” says Kelly Hancock, Cash’s niece. “June told me one day that nobody truly knew the depth of her love for John, and I must agree.”

Vicky Hamilton, who at forty-one was experienced at pitching new bands to record labels, didn’t think she’d have any trouble finding a label that wanted to work with someone as celebrated as June Carter, but she was turned down by everyone she contacted in Los Angeles and in Nashville. Nobody wanted to sign a nearly seventy-year-old woman. After several months, Hamilton realized there was only one person in the record business who wanted to be involved with a June Carter Cash album—Hamilton herself. “I was astonished and pissed,” she says. “I never had the idea of starting my own record label, but I did it out of anger that the industry would not support someone as iconic as June Carter Cash.”

Even then, Hamilton couldn’t find a deal. Thinking it’d be easy to get a major label at least to go into a joint venture on an album, Hamilton formed her own label, Small Hairy Dog, and returned to established labels, but she was again rebuffed. Finally, in the summer of 1998, she worked out a deal with tiny Risk Records, an indie label in Los Angeles, which put up $35,000.

Much like Rubin with Cash, Hamilton prepared for the album by asking June to send her tapes of songs she’d like to record. The song Hamilton focused on was “Far Side Banks of Jordan.” Hamilton had heard the Cashes sing it at the House of Blues, where there wasn’t a dry eye in the place, she says, including hers.

Of the forty or so songs Carter sent Hamilton, there were old songs—“Ring of Fire” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”—as well as new compositions, notably “I Used to Be Somebody.” This last, with references to palling around with James Dean during her acting days and hanging out with Elvis Presley on the concert trail, came across to some listeners as a somewhat bittersweet reflection on what might have been if she hadn’t given up acting and other solo career dreams for Cash.

But Hamilton says she perceived no sense of regret or thwarted ambition when she spoke to June about the song. “Oddly enough, I never got the feeling the album was so much about her,” she adds. “We had a lot of fun making it, but I got the feeling she did it because that’s what he [John] really wanted. He was so supportive, so proud of her. To my mind, they were truly soul mates. They had a closeness that I’ve only seen a couple of times in my life. It was a great love story.”

John Carter said that his mother was the “director, the bandleader, the vocalist, and the cheerleader” during the recording sessions in the fall of 1998. “Spontaneity was the order of the day,” he recalled. “You never knew exactly what was going to happen or how the sound would actually come together.”

Early in the process, June named the album
Press On,
a statement of resolve from “Diamonds in the Rough,” a Carter Family song. Over the weeks of recording, June was joined by Cash, Marty Stuart, Norman Blake, and champion fiddler Laura Weber (who would become John Carter’s second wife). It was a warm family affair.

The sessions were understandably emotional for John Carter. Years later he would speak in detail about watching his parents seated so close together their heads nearly touched as they put their hearts into the lyrics on “Far Side Banks of Jordan.” The scene was dear to him for another reason. It was the last time, he says, he saw them both strong together. For the rest of their lives, one or the other would be ravaged by illness.

Like everyone else around the couple, John Carter imagined that his father would pass first. Yet years later, listening again and again to that day’s recording, he points to a “sadness and conviction” in his mother’s voice that made him wonder whether she didn’t believe that she might be the first to go. The album would be released the following April.

That April was also noteworthy when Cash was saluted in a TV special taped in New York City for the cable channel TNT’s
Master Series.
In the days leading up to the show at the Hammerstein Ballroom, the question was whether Cash, who had just celebrated his sixty-seventh birthday, would be well enough to attend. It had been nearly two years since the final concert in Flint, and he had spent two weeks in serious condition in Baptist Hospital the past October with pneumonia.

Lots of his friends were represented in the telecast. Dylan, U2, and Springsteen checked in with videotaped performances: U2 with a reggae-flavored version of “Don’t Take Your Love to Town,” Dylan with “Train of Love,” and Springsteen with “Give My Love to Rose.” Among those on hand in person, Kristofferson sang “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” Lyle Lovett delivered “Tennessee Flat-Top Box,” and rapper Wyclef Jean performed “Delia’s Gone.”

Finally, Cash appeared onstage to a grand ovation. Marshall Grant, setting aside the bitterness of the lawsuit, stood by his side as Cash sang “Folsom Prison Blues” and “I Walk the Line.” During the final number, June and the rest of the old cast joined him. The show was widely reviewed, providing additional steam to Cash’s revived career.

Because Cash wasn’t strong enough to travel to Los Angeles regularly for recording sessions for the third album, Rubin arranged for engineer David Ferguson to set up some recording equipment in a cabin on Cash’s Hendersonville property. In the liner notes for what would become
American III: Solitary Man,
Cash described the relaxed atmosphere that surrounded the sessions, which started just weeks after the TNT special.

“I began the album…in the cabin, in the middle of a 50-acre compound surrounded by cedar trees, deer, goats and peacocks,” Cash wrote. “The window unit air conditioner doesn’t work anymore. We had buffalo, and every time it came on, they rammed it with their horns. Sometimes we have to stop tape for a thunderstorm. We play back the songs and the mockingbirds sing along with it.”

But that tranquil scene couldn’t obscure the physical struggle involved in making the album. Last-minute cancellations were becoming increasingly frequent. “It was a hard one because Johnny was sick and he was trying to get himself out of pain,” David Ferguson says. “I’d get a call the day before he wanted to record, and a lot of times I’d get a call the next morning saying he wasn’t up to it so we’d cancel the session. As time went on, it got to where we were canceling sessions 60 to 80 percent of the time.”