His life, like his voice, was not perfect but both shared a ragged glory.Joe Breen assesses the career of Johnny Cash, who died yesterday aged 71
'I don't think I would change anything. I let my record stand the way it is. I made my mistakes, and I paid for them, and they're there showing their butt to the world. But, it's a part of me and it's a part of what I have done. I long ago stopped grieving over and feeling guilty about anything I have done."
Johnny Cash was speaking to journalist and author Patrick Carr in October, 1997. It had taken him a long time to find peace in his valley. And maybe that is what made him such an American icon - his life, like his well-deep voice, was not perfect but both shared a ragged glory.
Cash's journey from a share-cropper's shack in Arkansas to acclaim and awards was not an easy one but he was never less than honest about his strengths and weaknesses. He was famously a hell-raiser, an amphetamine junkie, a born-again Christian, a country music superstar, a country music outlaw, a friend to Presidents and prisoners and a solace and inspiration to young and old alike. And unlike so many, he reserved some of his greatest work until recently.
Thus his life and his career had travelled full circle, from the impetuous and brash rockabilly rebel to the brave and honest reflections of a seasoned survivor.
Cash's appeal went beyond the narrow confines of musical genres. As U2's Bono wrote in the sleeve notes to the God album in the 2000 Sony compilation trilogy: Love, God, Murder: "Johnny Cash doesn't sing to the damned, he sings with the damned and sometimes you feel he might prefer their company . . ."
In the sleeve notes for the Murder album, film-maker Quentin Tarantino states that "Cash's songs of hillbilly thug life go right to the heart of the American underclass. With their brutal sheriffs, pitiless judges, cheatin' tramps, escaped fugitives, condemned men, chain-gang prisoners, unjustly accused innocents, and first person protagonist who'd shoot a man just to watch him die, Cash songs, like the novels of Jim Thompson, are poems to the criminal mentality".
Cash's empathy with the underdog, with the downtrodden, stemmed from his vicissitudes in his early life and his deep religious conviction, something he rediscovered when he married into Carter Family country music dynasty in 1968.
June Carter was a fine artist herself (she co-wrote Ring of Fire about their affair when they were married to different people), but she dedicated herself to pulling her husband together, helping him to recover from his drug addiction and to re-ignite his spiritual quest.
"What June did for me was post signs along the way, lift me when I was weak, encourage me when I was discouraged, and love me when I was alone and felt unlovable," he wrote in his autobiography. "She is the greatest woman I have ever known. Nobody else, except my mother, comes close."
Her death last May must have been a body-blow to a man already suffering from serious illness, including diabetes. She was the central figure in his often turbulent life. In reference to One, the U2 song he memorably covered, he once said that "she and I have fought together and fought for each other and we're one".
If the private life of Johnny Cash stabilised after his second marriage (his first marriage to Vivian Liberto produced a daughter, Roseanne, who later became a major singer), his public face continued to excite controversy. In 1968, the year he married June, he released Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. This was his breakthrough album in that he crossed over from the country charts into mainstream pop territory. It also revealed him once again as the rebel or, in a description of himself he enjoyed, "the Indian in the white man's camp". As Bono remarked, he was the thief among thieves. Who can forget the cold laughter that greeted the line: "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die", though the captive audience went silent for the closing regret-filled line: "now every time I hear that whistle I hang my head and cry".
Cash was drawn to being the Indian throughout his life. He saw himself as the outsider. "Sometimes. Sometimes I do. I'm still not comfortable with a straight necktie on and a suit and pants that match, dress shirts . . . there's just a few things that I've never been able to conform to."
He was the Man in Black, the outsider on the edge of town, his deep baritone able to accommodate all songs from 40 Shades of Green to Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus and to enrich them with his wisdom.
From 1955, when he got his first break with Sam Phillips's Sun Records as a member of a small band, the Tennessee Three, his name was never far from controversy. These were the sin-filled days, the days of drug and alcohol fuelled excess. They would lead to his arrest on drug charges and generally confirm him as one of the wild country boys. They would be followed many years later with the days of regret, reflection and redemption.
The middle years were less fulfilling. In the 1980s, with the exception of his stint with The Highwaymen, the country "supergroup" featuring Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson, he drifted from album to album. It seemed as if his career was on the slow slide to greatest hits packages.
Then in an inspired move Rick Rubin, the producer and owner of the American label, signed Cash. What, reason asked, was a heavy metal producer doing with ageing country star?
The answer was the acclaimed American series of albums of which the fourth and final one (at least while he was alive), The Man Comes Round was released last November. In these stripped-down gems featuring skeletal arrangements and his by now fractured voice, he deals with his life in some of the most personal music of his career.
Ironically, many of the most telling moments are not songs he wrote. His version of Ewan McColl's First Time Ever I Saw Your Face is so seamed with emotion that the listener almost feels like an intruder. The same is true of another unlikely song, his cover version of American rock band Nine Inch Nails's Hurt. This was a heart and soul laid bare. Together the four albums represent a remarkable artistic achievement, a compelling testament of a life. And though the songs and his singing of them spoke of his experience, they also had more universal meaning - love, death and redemption.
In many ways, Johnny Cash's story was perfectly rounded. He lived hard and learned by his mistakes, passing on his values, his experience for what it was worth, unafraid of regret but wary of recrimination or simple judgment. The fact that he did it with a body of song which ranges from the hilarious (Boy Named Sue) to the profound (Lennon/McCartney's In My Life) via a cluster of all-time classics such as I Walk the Line and Ring of Fire makes him an undisputed giant not just of country music but of music.