You think it’s easy being Destiny’s Child?
Ha! — Ha! The sultry singing trio would like you to know how wrong you are.
“We were young and sacrificed a lot,” 19-year-old lead singer Beyoncé Knowles gripes to the U.K. Telegraph. “I had to give up cheerleading, as did the others.”
“With beauty comes pain,” seconds Michelle Williams, bemoaning the sore feet that come from traipsing around in high heels and the misery of squeezing into a tight corset night after night.
And as if forgoing comfort and cheers weren’t bad enough, the band members say they’ve had to make the ultimate sacrifice: sex.
Knowles tells the Scottish Daily Record that she and her bandmates haven’t really been getting much action recently; men are too cowed by their fame to approach them, so they’ve just been sleeping with their Bibles.
The tabloid suggests that the trio’s message to interested fellers is, “Please, just come up to us and say, ‘Hello, how are you?’”
Or they could just say their name.
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Prodding the Cougar within
“I hear these records on the radio and I think, ‘What the fuck was I thinking about putting all that music on there?’”
– John Mellencamp, revealing that you weren’t the only one wondering what he was thinking.
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Sober now, but not Furlong?
Remember how, a few months back, Edward Furlong was babbling about how, even though he was in Alcoholics Anonymous, he still thought it was A-OK to toss down a few cocktails now and then?
“Am I having a drink every night? No, not at all,” the “Terminator 2″ kid told Us Weekly back in December. “It can be a good, sick feeling coming into a place. Everybody knows you. You’re in front of the line. People hand you free cocktails. Lots of women are around. How can that not be a good feeling?”
Cut to … Tuesday night, when a bad, sick feeling reportedly landed Furlong, now 23, in the emergency room at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles According to the New York Post, just hours after his pal Robert Downey Jr. was nabbed for drug use, Furlong’s friends found him outside an L.A. club, “completely out of it” and in a pool of vomit, presumably his own. Fearing he’d OD’d, they checked him into the hospital.
According to the hospital, he was released early Wednesday morning.
Is it too much to hope that this time the poor kid’ll terminate the tippling totally?
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He’s just drawn that way
“I’m not a bad person.”
– “Survivor” mastermind Mark Burnett clearing up a common misconception.
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Juicy bits
Speaking of “Terminator” stars with P.R. problems, the National Enquirer is reporting that Arnold Schwarzenegger had a long extramarital affair with a woman he met when she was only 16. Arnold’s people deny it, as does the woman reported to have been his longtime lover. The New York Post, however, suggests that advance word of the supermarket tab’s allegations may have been what chased him out of the race for governor of California once and for all. The cause and effect thing sounds a little dubious to me. But who knows? Maybe this’ll mean Arnie the aspiring politician won’t be back …
Loca who’s performing at the Miss Universe pageant: Ricky Martin. The admitted bonbon shaker will sing his latest single, “Loaded,” on the televised show, which is being held in Puerto Rico. And thanks to Miss France, for at least this one brief, shining moment, no one will be focused on Ricky’s sexuality.
Walk the line? Johnny Cash contends that Urban Outfitters stepped way over the line by selling T-shirts with Cash’s name and likeness on them without his permission. So, Launch.com reports, the man in black and his longtime photographer, Jim Marshall, are suing the chain for copyright infringement, false designation of origin, and misappropriation of right and publicity. They’d like the store to stop making the shirts and cough up profits, attorneys’ fees and punitive damages. And they probably wouldn’t mind seeing ‘em step into a burning ring of fire, either.
Shush! Marcel Marceau has something to say. “I am not a man of talk,” the 78-year-old French mime announced at a ceremony in which he was named U.N. goodwill ambassador for the World Assembly on Aging. But nevertheless, Marceau will speak out on behalf of the elderly in his new role. Because sometimes, I guess, the elderly feel like they’ve been put in a box that gets smaller and smaller and smaller.
Says who?
And now, the prize in the bottom of your metaphorical Crackerjack box, a quiz …
Test your celebrity quotient (CQ) by matching the celebrity with the quote.
1) “We want to be remembered for something. We want to be a part of something that’s greater than ourselves, certainly. So I’m happy with that early work.”
a) Meryl Streep on her work in ’80s films like “Silkwood” and “Sophie’s Choice.”
b) Anthony Michael Hall on his work in ’80s movies like “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club.”
c) Susan Sarandon on her work in the ’80s bringing food to hungry mothers and children in Nicaragua.
2) “I can’t see it as a curse anymore. It’s so prevalent in my life. It’s just like living with a birthmark or something. I mean you just don’t think about it.”
a) Colin Firth on being typecast as “Mr. Darcy” in the British miniseries “Pride and Prejudice.”
b) Hugh Grant on being typecast as the “nice guy,” despite his inner pervy-ness.
c) Renée Zellweger on her widely blabbed-about 38C “Bridget Jones” knockers.
3) “I do miss sex.”
a) Tom Cruise on life without Nicole.
b) Angelina Jolie on having to run to the corner store without Billy Bob.
c) Anna Nicole Smith on life without her dead husband’s money.
4) “Puffy, I love you. I miss you. You will always be in my heart.”
a) J.Lo. on her famous ex-squeeze.
b) P. Diddy on his former nickname.
c) Janet Jackson on her dead pet pooch.
5) “I may be the only mother in America who knows exactly what their child is up to all the time.”
a) Barbara Bush on her son the president.
b) Steven Spielberg’s mother, Leah Adler, on her son the entertainment powerhouse.
c) Colby Donaldson’s mother, Gay, on her son the “Survivor” contestant.
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Miss something? Read yesterday’s Nothing Personal.
Answers:
1) b. That sound you hear is millions of former high-school geeks cheering. (Source: AP)
2) a. Funny, that’s just the sort of thing Darcy might say! (Source: AP)
3) c. Hard to believe she had much more when her ancient hubby was alive. (Source: U.K. Mirror)
4) c. If you answered either of the other two, you were barking up the wrong tree. (Source: Jackson’s “All for You” liner notes)
5) a. The question is, does he know? (Source: U.S. News & World Report)
In the summer of 1955, Johnny Cash, a gaunt 23-year-old singer from Arkansas, stepped up to the microphone in Sam Phillips’ tiny studio on Union Avenue in Memphis and recorded “Folsom Prison Blues,” with its irresistible twangy guitar intro and these now-famous (and still shocking) words: “When I was just a baby/My momma told me, ‘Son/Always be a good boy/Don’t ever play with guns’/But I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die.” He was so cool and convincing that to this day, there are people who assume Cash was singing about himself.
Unlike Merle Haggard, who served time in San Quentin State Prison for armed robbery, Cash, even in his hard-livin’, motel-trashin’ younger days, was never more than a small-time offender. According to Nicholas Dawidoff’s authoritative “In the Country of Country,” Cash was jailed on seven different occasions, each time for just one night. Once, he got thrown in the slammer in El Paso, Texas, after trying to smuggle amphetamines across the border from Mexico. (Cash’s early self-destructive habits are legendary and well-documented.)
But Cash is no murderer. Still, he has always identified with those who step outside of the law, and he has probably recorded more murder songs than just about any other singer alive — and that includes Tupac. Sixteen of them, including “Folsom Prison Blues,” can be found on the third CD of “Love God Murder,” a three-disc set of songs selected by the Man in Black himself. (Each disc is also available separately.)
With liner notes written by Cash, his wife June Carter Cash, U2′s Bono and, oddly enough, director Quentin Tarantino, the collection is surely intended to further cement Cash’s reputation as an American musical legend. (As if that’s necessary.) Trouble is, Cash’s long recording career has nearly as many peaks and valleys as Elvis Presley’s. “Love God Murder” contains some of Cash’s best (and best-known) songs, but it also includes too many forgettable ones.
“Murder,” for instance, kicks off (naturally) with “Folsom Prison,” followed by the chilling “Delia’s Gone,” from his acclaimed 1994 comeback album “American Recordings.” The two songs are joined at the hip. Cash, practically bragging about his bloody deed, sings, “First time I shot her/I shot her in the side/Hard to watch her suffer/But with the second shot she died/Delia’s gone, one more round, Delia’s gone.”
Those songs are hard to follow. By comparison, “Mister Garfield,” from 1965, and “When It’s Springtime in Alaska,” from 1964, are garden-variety murder ballads. Only when Cash sings in the first person — as he does on “Cocaine Blues,” “The Long Black Veil” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Highway Patrolman” — does he approach the brilliance of “Folsom” and “Delia.”
“God,” which contains 16 of Cash’s sacred songs, holds up better. One standout is “Belshazzar,” a revved-up rockabilly number from 1957 that Cash sang when he first auditioned for Phillips at Sun Records. (Cash pitched himself as a gospel singer, but Phillips convinced him to stick to secular material.) After Cash moved to Columbia Records in 1958, his producer, Don Law, allowed him to record “Hymns by Johnny Cash,” his second album for the label. “God” features three great songs from that effort: “It Was Jesus (Who Was It?),” “The Old Account” and “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” Unfortunately, “God” contains a few numbers that never should have been resurrected, particularly “The Greatest Cowboy of All.” That would be Jesus, who, according to Cash, “loves all his little dogies/He speaks to them kind and gently/And he’ll lift up any maverick who falls.” Yee-haw!
“Love” is the standout disc of this collection. (It’s the one to buy if you don’t want the entire anthology.) To understand why, read Cash’s revealing liner notes. “I remember when I fell into June’s ‘Ring of Fire,’” he writes. “There was a lot of showing it as well as saying it. Never has there been a deeper love than my love for her. At times it was painful, but we shared the pain, so it was just half painful. Now, even though it [has] mellowed out, the flame of our love still burns, and it burns, burns, burns.”
The song, of course, is “Ring of Fire,” which June Carter wrote in the early 1960s after falling hard for Cash. “I felt like I was falling into a pit of fire and I was literally burning alive,” she has said. That’s a recipe for great love songs, and “Ring of Fire” is one of them. It’s here, of course, along with “I Walk The Line,” “All Over Again” and “I Still Miss Someone.” But many of the selections are little-known gems, like “A Little at a Time” (1962), in which a heartbroken Cash moans, “Hurt me, a little at a time/Turn me away, a little at a time/Walk away slow like you don’t want to go/Leave me, a little at a time.” Then there’s “Happiness Is You” (1965), a simple ode to the love of his life: “No more chasing moonbeams or catching falling stars,” he sings with contentment. “I know now my pot of gold is anywhere you are.”
Cash is now 68 and suffering from Shy-Drager Syndrome, a rare degenerative neurological disorder. Naturally, that adds a certain poignancy to “Love God Murder.” Is this Cash’s swan song? Don’t bet on it. Lately, he’s been recording a new batch of songs for a third Rick Rubin-produced album, to be released sometime later this year. He may even play a few shows here and there. It’s a touching footnote to a blessed career. As Cash muses in the notes, “God likes a Southern accent and He tolerates country music and quite a bit of guitar.”
Walking home from a Super Tuesday party — or whatever one calls a get-together with a bunch of people sitting around eating pizza and screaming at CNN — I found myself humming Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel.” Once it became official that Gov. George W. Bush of Texas and Vice President Al Gore of Tennessee were to be their parties’ candidates in the presidential election come November, “Blue Yodel” was a natural choice. (You might know it by its first line: “T for Texas/T for Tennessee.”) Of course, the song is sung from the point of view of a man who’s off to buy a “pistol just as long as I’m tall” to shoot his sweetheart, and then a shotgun to kill the man who stole her, so it has more to do with the governor’s affinity with the National Rifle Association than with the vice president’s critique of the same, but still, it’s a good, handy song and quite a relief. It’s not like we had an Arkansas vs. Kansas theme to whistle last time around.
“Blue Yodel” was just the beginning. In the days since I cast my ballot in that primary, my head has been an overheated jukebox, flipping from one Texas or Tennessee tune to another, from Johnny Cash doing “Tennessee Stud” to Gene Autry’s “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” backed with the Louvin Brothers’ cover of “Knoxville Girl” and Lyle Lovett’s “That’s Right (You’re Not From Texas)” with a segue into Red Foley’s “Tennessee Saturday Night.” There are so many songs taking up so much mental energy, I’m kind of hoping the serial killer from Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” drives into my cerebral cortex and blows them all away; as he might put it, one of the meannesses in this world is the weird concentration of songs and singers in Texas and Tennessee.
In a political campaign, three kinds of songs resonate for the electorate. There are the songs the candidates and their staffs choose to fire up their rallies. For example, Gore has been blasting Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” and Shania Twain’s “Rock This Country.” (You’d think he was running for office in Canada.) Bureaucrat Bush has also been known to dabble in BTO, going with “Takin’ Care of Business,” though in my opinion he might want to look into a 1989 song by the Reivers of Austin, Texas, called “Star Telegram.” It’s one of the prettiest evocations of the lovely, lazy side of the American dream, a family unwinding in a Fort Worth back yard, sweet Kim Longacre singing “with Orange Crushes in my hand.” Seems to me that’s the kind of life politicians are supposed to be aiming to give us — a nice hot Texas day barbecuing with Grandpa, where the worst problem to tackle is the gosh-darn chiggers. Because, as Pat Robertson said of Bush, he has done some very good things for Texas, things that would also work “in the United States.”
Then there are the songs we sing to ourselves that portray candidates as we see them. When I watch Bush’s face on television, the jukebox in my brain — granted, not a particularly subtle machine — drops the needle on Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s “Dallas,” in which “Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eyes.” Either that or, if I’m in an apathetic mood, a lost Mel Tillis classic called “Coca Cola Cowboy.” “You walked across my heart like it was Texas,” Tillis crooned, “and you taught me how to say I just don’t care.” Then again, in his Super Tuesday victory speech, Bush proclaimed his support for the “generation next,” so I guess he’s a Pepsi man.
The Tennessee and Texas songs represent the more organic third category, the sort of no-brainers Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra play to introduce the candidates as they walk on, assuming Bush’s death wish includes ever going on “Letterman” again. I called one of my favorite Texans, country music historian Bill C. Malone, author of the forthcoming “Don’t Get Above Your Raising: Country Music and the Southern Working Class,” and asked him if he had any Texas-song advice for the governor. “To me, it would be ‘Waltz Across Texas,’ that Ernest Tubb song. It’s just a real nice song,” says Malone, adding, “I don’t want to do anything that would help George W., though.”
“Waltz Across Texas” is sweet, and certainly waltzing across Texas “with you in my arms” is a lot prettier of a picture than the one presented in its Democratic counterpart, “The Tennessee Waltz,” a Tennessee state song that Gore has been known to croon. It was co-written by Pee Wee King, who coincidentally died on Super Tuesday as Gore was waltzing away with the delegates. (My favorite version, a sad lullaby by chanteuse Sally Timms, appears on the “Straight Outta Boone County” CD compilation from Chicago’s Bloodshot Records.) Gore’s covering “The Tennessee Waltz” seems ill-advised, considering the actual content of the song: A man takes his sweetheart to a dance and introduces her to his buddy, and the buddy steals her away, leaving the singer brokenhearted. For a Clinton administration official to sing a song about infidelity is like a two-step in the wrong direction.
But perhaps Gore sings “The Tennessee Waltz” not for its words but to capture a little of its crossover mojo. Malone says that the song is a landmark in American popular culture, the tune that made country music pop music. It was recorded several times by hillbilly groups in the late ’40s, but made its mark in a 1950 version by Patti Page, which hit No. 1 on the pop charts. In the process the song made Acuff-Rose the No. 1 country-music publisher in America, Malone says, and created Nashville as we know it. As he writes in his book “Country Music U.S.A.,” “‘The Tennessee Waltz’ alone must be given much of the credit for country music’s commercial surge and the future integration of America’s popular music forms.” Malone calls it “just a pleasant, lackluster song.” To paraphrase Bush, the song was a uniter, not a divider, so no wonder pleasant, if lackluster, Gore wants to associate himself with its breakthrough success.
Of course, wouldn’t it be nice if Gore threw off the hokum of Nashville and went around singing my favorite song about his real hometown, Washington? He could do Parliament’s “Chocolate City,” looking voters and NRA lobbyists in the eye while shouting, “You don’t need the bullet when you’ve got the ballet,” and asking, “Are you up for the down stroke?”
Hank Williams III’s new album, “Risin’ Outlaw,” is as derivative of Johnny
Cash as Hank Williams Sr. You think you’ve heard it all before, but the disc wins
you over by the end. This kid once played hardcore punk, but now
he’s as authentically honky-tonk as his grandfather was, singing about
tonk basics like drinkin’, cheatin’, sin and redemption and death. “Most of the
older people who come to see us start cryin’,” the 26-year-old says
on the phone from a trailer outside Nashville. “They say, ‘Boy, you sing like
your granddaddy.’”
Hank Williams Sr., the honky-tonk god of country music, wrote and
sang standards like “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” He drank and drugged himself to death at 29, suffering a heart attack on the way to a gig on New Year’s 1953. His son, Hank
Jr., who was 4 at the time, became his own brand of country rebel in the late 1970s and went on to become one of the music’s biggest stars throughout the 1980s.
Performances are one thing, but don’t talk about Hank III’s new record. It sucks
bigtime. “It’s weird,” he says. “People come up to me and say, ‘Oh, your
album kicks ass.’ It don’t. I just can’t get behind it. I’m already looking
forward to the second album.”
Huh? “Risin’ Outlaw” has great picking. Williams does a great cover of Johnny Cash’s
“Cocaine Blues.” Then on Wayne Hancock’s “Thunderstorms & Neon Signs,” Hank
III’s voice whines as ghostly as his granddaddy’s. What’s wrong with the
disk? It’s not honky-tonk enough.
“It’s a Nashville record,” he explains, his voice thick with scorn. “Everything that’s done in this town gets ruined. If you’re gonna use a $100,000 studio and the
best equipment and all these players and this and that, it’s not gonna sound
pure. It’s gonna sound slick. Me and my producer had a big fall out. We went
around and around and around and around. And then he left. That’s the way it
goes, I guess.”
He pauses. “The way they do their vocal tracks at Curb [his
label], is they make me sing each song fuckin’ 60 times in a row. No
matter if I think that’s the best vocal cut in the world. Then they take
little snippets and words out of each take. If a record is done the way it
should be done, it’s cut live with two mikes.”
Merle Haggard gave a similar complaint about Curb three years ago. “Record
live?” Hag said in the back of his tour bus as it rolled through New Jersey.
“Of course it’s better. Don’t matter what damn thing I want with Curb. Record
live or dead.” Then he laughed, “Man, you should have heard the record I made
back when I was dead …”
Hank III laughs too when he hears this. “If we ever recorded live, we’d scare
off every fuckin’ producer in this town. It’s all, ‘Radio ain’t gonna touch
that. It sounds too thin. It has to sound fat.’”
What it sounds like
is Hank III has kicked some desks around. “I have. Every time I’ve dealt with
Curb, I’ve been told one thing and then been stabbed in the back. They’re people I
don’t trust. They’ve never gotten behind me. Every time I’ve gotten in
Rolling Stone, I did that. I rub it in their face. ‘What other act of
yours got in Rolling Stone twice without an album? We’re the ones
beatin’ the street without your support.’”
Why asked if his father, Hank “Monday Night Football” Williams Jr., supports
his son’s record, Hank III says, “I’ve only heard him say that he’s proud.
I’m sure that he didn’t want me into this kind of business.” Has Hank III
ever played with his pop? “No.” He’s apparently forgotten the sorry
record they did called “Three Hanks: Men With Broken Hearts,” with Hank Sr.
“The first guy I ever dueted with was George Jones,” Hank III volunteers. “He wanted to do a
Hank Williams song. ‘You sound so much like your granddaddy, it scares me!’
I’m pretty sure we did ‘I’m So Lonesome I could Cry.’ That was a real cool
moment to me. To be able to say the first guy I ever sang onstage with was
George Jones.” He pauses. “Like I say: Waylon, George Jones, Hag, Willie
Nelson. We got respect from all these older guys. We just don’t have respect
from people in the business. What they do is pop country. If you ever saw us
live, you’d understand.”
I point out that three songs on the record, including one about the devil, were written by someone named Shelton Williams. Who’s he?
“Me,” Hank III replies. “All the Hanks have first names. Hiram Hank
Williams Sr. Randall Hank Williams. And then Shelton Hank Williams III.” He pauses. “Why the hell they put me as ‘Shelton Williams’ is another
thing I don’t understand. Friends call me Shelton. People in the business
call me Hank.”
If Nashville is so evil, there must be an alternative-country Emmylou
Harris/Jimmie Dale Gilmore empire somewhere in America?
“Well, there is,” Williams answers. “Austin. Everything is happening in that town.
You have a million studios and a million producers. One of my biggest quotes
is ‘I’d rather have the respect of Texas than Tennessee any day.’ That’s why
I’m so insecure about this album because I know I’m not going to get the
respect from the guys I know in Texas.”
Is he sure? “I’m positive,” Hank III
answers with a dry laugh. “I’m talking about true purists. True country guys.
Pickers. Players. Like Wayne “The Train” Hancock. Dale Watson. I’ve been tryin’
and tryin’ to get out of this town because this town is dragging me down. I
just can’t afford to move to Austin.” Why not? “Child support,” he confesses.
“A one-night-stand waited three years to tell me I had a kid. Her dad’s a
cop. The judge slaps me with $26,000 in debt. I was 20 years old.
Scary shit, you know.”
At least Hank III gets out of Nashville to tour as well as visit important
sites haunted by his grandfather’s ghost. Last year, they stopped at the West
Virginia country gas station where Hank Sr. was found slumped dead in the
back of his car by his chauffeur.
“The gas station is on a two-lane road. I
started hearin’ the stories about the service manger who’d been workin’ the
pumps. While Hank’s driver was callin’ the police that Hank was dead, the
service guy went in the backseat and took Hank’s hat and pistol out of the
car. The guy later said every time he wore my granddaddy’s hat bad things
would happen. His hair would fall out. The guy ended up blowing his head off
with my granddaddy’s gun.”
Hank III pauses, then speculates, “If Hank
Williams had lived he might have been the most hated man in the world, because
of being as cocky as he was about his songwriting and singing. Hell, he was
29 and he was as mature as a 45-year-old. I think he knew that he was going to
die. He wrote ‘I’ll Never Get out of This World Alive.’”
The same can be said about his grandson. Hank III is notorious for
worshipping pills, booze and reefer. “I did a rehab thing not too long ago,”
he reveals. “And they were trying to get Steve Earle down there to talk to
me. But I kept puttin’ him off. He probably has opinions about me or
whatever. No matter what I’m into I’ll never be as hardcore as he got with
all those needles and shit. He took it out to the bottom. I have a 1,000 percent respect for that guy, but I just don’t know if he respects
me. But he did it and he’s kicking ass and still putting out great music and
still in the scene. Good thing.”
At the call’s end, Hank III is given a good-natured warning: “Watch out for
that lost highway now.”
“All right, man,” Hank III says. “I’m just young right now. I’m not going to
kill myself. I promise.” Then he adds wistfully, “The Lord is going to make
me suffer too much. He’s going to keep me here a long time.”
Less than a minute into “At Folsom Prison,” Johnny Cash — the Man in Black, the baddest badass in the music biz — drawls, “I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die.” The song is “Folsom Prison Blues,” and the crowd of 2,000 convicts, a handful of armed guards and a warden or two, roars in bloodcurdling approval. The moment is surely one of the most chilling in music history. It’s not that you are hearing the sound of hardened killers celebrating a music-fueled orgy of bloodlust. The audience for Cash’s performance was most likely made up of petty cons busted for larceny or B&E; even in 1968, convicted murderers were not allowed to gather in the cafeteria for a couple of hours of music on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The moment is chilling because it shows that even in the dehumanizing confines of the American penal system, the 2,000 men who called Folsom home were still buying into the ideal of the romantic outlaw.
It’s an ideal Cash cultivated carefully throughout his career, and never more studiously than on this release. Cash, like Hank Williams before him, bridged the divide between the sacred and the profane, dressing all in black so he would look similarly at home in a prison mess hall or a church rectory. His iconic, understated introduction — “Hello. I’m Johnny Cash” — sounds equally polite and menacing. He could be humbly introducing himself to his girl’s parents, or he could be making sure you know his name before he shoots you dead. Like all great introductions — James Bond’s and Dirty Harry’s come to mind — Cash’s sounds at once suave and sinister.
Whether singing about junkies, killers and whores or fetishizing love and otherworldly redemption, Cash’s stately baritone sounded, as the most resonant voices do, as if it were the truth, and the truth appealed to everyone from suburban Republicans to petty thieves. Johnny Cash, after all, could boast enough mainstream cachet to host a prime-time variety show — ABC’s “The Johnny Cash Show,” which aired from 1969 to 1971 — while also writing songs that served, literally, as killing music. (Gary Gilmore is infamously described in Norman Mailer’s “The Executioner’s Song” as using Cash to steel his nerves before he shot down a Utah gas station attendant.) In bridging this divide Cash offered something otherwise unattainable to both outlaws and straight society. To the former, Cash promised both second chances and the possibility of worldly success; to the latter, a Wild West romantic ideal that has long been a part of this country’s folklore.
From the start of his career in the mid-1950s, Johnny Cash had courted an outlaw image so assiduously that when he played this hour-long, 19-song set in Folsom Prison, he could lean heavily on jail tunes without really altering his typical set list. More than half the songs are either set behind bars or describe an imminent trip to the clink. In either an ultimate display of irony or a perfect parable to describe Cash’s life, the singer never served serious time.
“I have been behind bars a few times,” Cash writes in the liner notes with his loping scrawl. “Sometimes of my own volition, sometimes involuntarily. Each time, I felt the same feeling of kinship with my fellow prisoners.” But his time was hardly the stuff prison memoirs are made of. In 1965, hopped up on speed and popping pills to maintain his touring schedule, Cash was busted by the narc squad in El Paso, Texas. He received only a suspended sentence. The next year, he was arrested again, this time for a late-night flower-picking spree on private property.
Nonetheless, performing in front of cons — a captive audience if there ever was one — was clearly something Cash cherished, and something he did often and remarkably well. He did it nearly perfectly on “At Folsom Prison,” one of the most powerfully visceral albums recorded, period. Americans bought the record in droves. When it was first released, in 1968, the Beatles, the Stones and the Beach Boys were all at their most psychedelic. Yet Cash turned a stark album of straight-ahead country rock into a bestseller, his first in five years. While the Beatles were singing about the love you make, Cash was earning cheers in Folsom by describing the impulsive, coked-up slaughter of his girlfriend on “Cocaine Blues”: “Shot her down ’cause she made me slow/I thought I was her daddy, but she had five more.”
This re-release — part of Columbia’s “American Milestones” series — adds just enough extras to the previously available “At Folsom Prison” editions to make it worthwhile. On an album on which arcana — from the cover shot of Cash’s glowering, sweat-speckled face to the on-air announcements (“Sandoval, prisoner 88-419, is wanted in reception,” the warden announces at one point, making it sound as if Folsom Prison is some twisted summer camp) — has taken its place in America’s musical folklore, the addition of a dozen black-and-white photos of Cash striding the prison grounds in his trademark three-piece black suit are intensely perfect.
Three new songs are added as well. A slight, rousing version of Harlan Howard’s “Busted” and a quick acoustic run-through of “Joe Bean” help round out a musical cycle that never should have been abridged. And the seven-minute version of Cash’s 1963 folk ballad “The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer” shows off Cash’s familiarity with workingman folk tunes.
Even better, the Columbia remastering gives the music more depth. Where Luther and Carl Perkins’ slashing lead guitar lines sounded slightly tinny and flat on the Folsom/San Quentin CD that has been available for years, here they sound as if they are carved in metal. And “Jackson,” on which Cash is joined by his soon-to-be-wife, June Carter, is redolent in throaty swagger, with the Tennessee Three’s boom-chicka-boom driving on what remains one of recorded music’s most rousing duets. You can hear every note as W.S. Holland rides his cymbals, every ounce of pressure as the Perkins boys strut their way through the set.
Johnny Cash, now hobbled by age and infirmity, will not make another masterpiece. At this point, we’ll be lucky if he is ever able to perform publicly again. For several years, Cash has suffered from Shy-Drager syndrome, a nervous-system disorder similar to Parkinson’s disease. On Sunday, the 67-year-old singer was admitted to Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tenn., where he is being treated for pneumonia and is listed in serious condition.
But his inability to perform now is no injury to his legacy. “At
Folsom Prison” contains enough to satisfy any reasonable person, to say
nothing of a gun-toting outlaw, for a lifetime.
Johnny Cash has the look of a Mafia don as he greets family and friends under a tent erected next to his mansion. The 67-year-old suffers from a neurological condition known as Shy-Drager syndrome, which makes walking difficult and at times impossible. So he accepts the hugs, kisses and good wishes of loved ones from a chair. Sitting down, the legend looks undiminished, still large enough to fill out his black, double-breasted suit, which he leaves unbuttoned. He even appears powerful as people bend over to put their arms around his broad torso and whisper into his ear. He lifts up a crying grandson with apparent ease. “Oh, I know,” he says, altering his depths-of-hell voice in an attempt to speak baby talk. “I’m sorry.”
June Carter Cash, Johnny’s wife and a musical legend in her own right, appears more the gracious hostess than the main attraction, even though tonight, that’s exactly what she is. The early evening event is to honor June upon the release of “Press On,” her first solo record in more than 25 years. June will play for the invited guests later on, and if she’s nervous at the prospect of performing on her own instead of in support of her husband, which is what she’s done mostly since the couple married over 30 years ago, she doesn’t show it.
June’s there at the front door of her home, urging guests to go inside and take a look around. Built along the banks of Old Hickory Lake, next door to the lot where the late Roy Orbison used to live, the place practically creeks with history. It’s crowded with hand-carved, dark wood furniture that the couple’s imported from all over the world. Portraits of Cash family members share wall space with gold records and priceless photos: Johnny chatting up Prince Charles. Waylon Jennings looking young and a little tipsy. Carl Perkins recording in the studio back in the day.
As I reach the bottom of one set of stairs, a man extends his hand to introduce himself: “I’m Tommy Cash, Johnny’s brother.” Just beyond Tommy is a table adorned with a collection of acoustic instruments, a few of which, I’m told, were used by the original Carter Family, the first family of American folk music, progenitors of modern country music and the family Johnny joined when he married June. Around the corner, through a hallway and down some more stairs is the lakeside room where Johnny hosted his legendary “guitar pulls” in the late ’60s and early ’70s. The events were informal, star-studded jams at which, as Johnny writes in his ’97 autobiography, “Kris Kristofferson sang ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ for the first time … and Joni Mitchell ‘Both Sides Now.’ Graham Nash sang ‘Marrakesh Express’ and Shel Silverstein ‘A Boy Named Sue.’ Bob Dylan let us hear ‘Lay Lady Lay.’”
There are bold-faced names in the flesh as well — George Jones(!), Naomi Judd, Jane Seymour(!), Diane Ladd — but the event feels more like a wedding than a star-studded gala. “Entertainment Tonight” is on hand, but for the most part, the camera hands inconspicuously keep their gear at the rear of the tent where everyone gathers to eat and watch June perform.
A lot of people talk about how June and Johnny have made them feel like family. With a plate full of fried green tomatoes and slices of roast pork, I sit next to Laura Weber, the young violinist/multi-instrumentalist who’s playing in June’s band. Laura’s parents, Pat and Sharon, came in from Oregon for the occasion. The parents flew into Nashville a few days ago, but they’ve spent most of their time at the compound helping the Cashes, whom they’d never met before, prepare for the evening’s festivities. They seem at ease among all the celebs, local and otherwise; neither parent flinches when Nashville songwriter Tom T. Hall ducks in to flirt and joke with their daughter.
But still, reverence is hard to disguise. Pat’s eyes beam when he tells me that June is allowing Laura to play a vintage guitar that was a favorite of Maybelle Carter, June’s mom and an original Carter Family member. Dad knows that the instrument could likely have been used to help create the music his daughter has devoted her life to playing. Later on in the meal, Sharon tells me that she read an article recently — she doesn’t remember where — in which a musician was quoted comparing Johnny Cash to Abe Lincoln. At first she thought the comparison seemed silly, “but now,” she says, “I think that it sounds about right.”
The evening proceeds with a casualness that befits the album that occasioned it. “Press On” is an unbound, rustic-sounding collection of Carter Family nuggets (“Diamonds in the Rough,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”), classic June Carter originals (“Ring of Fire”) and quirky new numbers (“Tiffany Anastasia Lowe”); the playing is sharp, but the overall effect is loose, like a front-porch jam, complete with giggles and miscues.
The plan for the concert was to perform the entire album, but the script gets tossed at the outset. The first standing ovation comes a good hour before the music even starts, when Johnny takes the stage to say a few words. His illness is evident mostly in his face, which is swollen and red. The only time the singer alludes to his health is when he thanks the Lord for allowing him to stand, if only for today, on his own two feet. Otherwise, he talks of June and the love they share. “Her time has come now,” he proclaims, his voice still deep as ever. “This album, ‘Press On,’ is just a small bit of what she has to offer.”
June, dressed in a smart suit and high heels, her hair pulled loosely back, professes to be embarrassed by the attention, but she thanks Johnny for his remarks all the same. After instructing everyone to get something to eat, she walks off. When she returns to the stage over an hour later, she does so with her autoharp in hand and playfully asks, after noticing how much of her legs become exposed when she sits on her stool, if anyone has a safety pin that she can borrow.
Johnny looks on from the front row as June introduces her first song, explaining how she wrote it, a long time ago, after waking up in the middle of the night and telling herself, “I think I’m in love with a wild man.” She looks at Johnny. “I was frightened of him. I wasn’t going to tell him I was in love with him. And I wasn’t going to tell anyone else either.”
Then she plays “Ring of Fire.” The way Johnny immortalized it, the song chronicled a man’s unsteady relationship with wildness and his inability to break free from it. June reclaims the song, seizing its perspective and flipping it around. In the hands of June and her band, “Ring of Fire” is a rickety, swaying folk ballad. As she sings, “burns, burns, burns,” you can hear the voice of a girl who long ago fell for a guy who trashed hotel rooms for the hell of it. The kind of guy who’d borrow your car, wrap it around a tree and never apologize.
Johnny’s visibly moved as he joins his wife to perform onstage. The man may be ailing, but he can still play a guitar and sing, and he introduces “The Far Side Banks of Jordan” by offering up a bit of its history. Twenty-five years ago, he brought the tune with him from Nashville to Jamaica. “This is going to be our song,” he told his wife. And so they play it. They’re voices aren’t perfect together, never have been; June’s is hillbilly sweet and high where Johnny’s is earthbound and famously, immovably low. The point is that the song is theirs, and they’re still singing it. When the tune’s over, Johnny takes June’s hand. He kisses it, considers it for a second, and then gives it a bite. Then he walks off the stage and out of the tent. He never returns. Abe Lincoln all the way.
June’s group is a touch under-rehearsed. At one point, John Carter, the only child of June and Johnny, the co-producer of “Press On” and a member of the band, shuffles a bunch of papers and announces, “We lost the lyrics!” “Oh I know it,” his mom replies, and the band launches into “Losin’ You.”
The mishaps only underscore the informality of the event. When June wants to locate one of her daughters, she simply cries out, “Where are you Rose?” (In the distance: “I’m over here Mama.”) Before singing “Tiffany Anastasia Lowe,” June calls up the granddaughter who inspired her to write it. Tiffany, as her grandmother points out, is young and quite striking; apparently she was or is being courted by a certain maverick film director. On the record, the song is an oddity. Here, it makes sense. Tiffany can only laugh as her grandma sings, “Tiffany run find an earthquake girl/Go jump in a crack/Just don’t let Quentin Tarantino find out where you’re at/’Cause Quentin Tarantino makes the strangest movies that I’ve ever seen.”
The crowd is as loose as the band by the time the encore rolls around. June’s set her autoharp down and taken the mike. She pumps her arms like a preacher, unleashing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” arguably the most immortal of all the Carter Family songs. The tent feels like a church as the crowd sings along from their seats. The applause lasts long after the spiritual winds down. No one cries out for Johnny. It was June’s show, and this time, Johnny was her guest.
