Johnny Cash: The Life

by Robert Hilburn

  As on that day at San Quentin in 1960, Cash sensed in the overwhelming response that there was more at stake than simply playing to an audience starved for entertainment. He believed that these men and women saw in him a piece of home, and in the coming months that helped him greatly to further his identity in the music world. Looking into the faces of the sometimes smiling, sometimes downcast young soldiers, Cash felt he was summarizing in his music the things they both believed in, in terms of shared heritage and personal aspirations. He knew he would always have to answer to the commercial demands of a music career—he had to sell records and draw crowds—but he also began to accept that his personal destiny was tied to something more challenging and rewarding.

  On the most exhilarating days, he told himself, in his naiveté and grand ambition, that he was celebrating the best of America. Cash volunteered to take messages from some of the soldiers to their loved ones back home. He then delivered them personally backstage after inviting the parents, girlfriends, or wives to be his guests when he did a concert near the soldier’s hometown. Cash, who often worried about his failure to live in accordance with his religious beliefs, felt reassured that God was blessing him after all. He discussed this with June, who also took their good fortune as a sign that God was watching over them, that they were going through a form of redemption.

  Still, these moments of joy couldn’t erase all the unrest that had built up between the couple. John and June were already talking about spending their lives together, but there was the matter of their marriages. Privately, Cash was conflicted. How could he justify leaving his wife and the children? But then again, didn’t he have a right to be happy? For June, whose marriage was already unraveling, his drug habit remained a concern. On some nights she felt gloriously happy about her relationship with John, while on others she felt helpless.

  When June returned to Nashville after the tour, she got a call from Anita, who needed a song to finish an album she was making for Mercury Records. She was already planning to record one song June had written with Merle Kilgore, “As the Sparrow Goes,” and she wondered if June had another.

  Kilgore frequently got together with June in Nashville to write songs. Hank Snow and Anita recorded a duet of one of the early Carter-Kilgore compositions, “Promised to John” (not a reference to Cash), and June also recorded a couple of their songs for Liberty Records, but none captured much attention.

  When Anita phoned this time, June thought immediately of “(Love’s) Ring of Fire,” the song she and Kilgore had written about her increasingly tumultuous affair with Cash. June got the idea for the song after seeing an underlined phrase in a book of Elizabethan poetry—about love being a burning ring of fire (or something to that effect; the exact wording changed over the years).

  It was a simple song, but producer Jerry Kennedy liked the conflicting sense of lust and torment in the song, and Anita recorded it for a single. When he heard the song, Cash, too, wanted to record it, but he held back because he didn’t want to do anything to hurt Anita’s chances with the song.

  The USO tour may have done wonders for Cash’s psyche, but he still had to deal with the challenge of selling more records. When he got back from the Far East, Cash learned that Columbia had told Law point-blank to stop wasting money and time on this drug addict. Law could proceed with the release of “Busted,” but he couldn’t record anything else. Unless the situation changed dramatically, Cash was going to be dropped when his contract expired at the end of the year.

  Still believing in his artist, Law lobbied hard. He told his bosses that Cash was growing steadily as an artist and the new Blood, Sweat and Tears album would demonstrate it. Cash’s best years, Law argued, were still ahead; no one else in country music was showing the daring and imagination of Cash. He pointed to the rave notices about the Far East tour. The New York powers agreed to let Law and Cash go into the studio one more time. The date was set for the first week in March 1963.

  Law, Cash, and Holiff were encouraged when Billboard magazine named the “Busted” single a “spotlight pick” in its January 12 issue, declaring, “Here is the old Johnny Cash on one of his best offerings in a long time.…Could go both country and pop.” The trade publication, however, was even more enthusiastic about another “spotlight pick” in that issue: “A most sensual tune is sold in winning fashion by the thrush who shows off her own individual and exciting singing style.” The single being praised by Billboard was Anita Carter’s “(Love’s) Ring of Fire.” In the end, neither record was a hit. “Busted” spent only three weeks on the country charts, and “(Love’s) Ring of Fire” didn’t make the charts at all. Cash couldn’t believe it. How could he fail with a song as great as “Busted”?

  As the March recording date neared, Cash was frantic. According to a much-repeated Cash legend, the answer to his search for a hit came to him in a dream, when he imagined a version of “(Love’s) Ring of Fire” featuring a blast of mariachi horns. That would get everyone’s ear, he told Law the next day.

  Cash may indeed have dreamed that horn arrangement, but it’s more likely that he heard a similar mariachi outburst on Bob Moore’s recording of “Mexico,” which had been a Top 10 pop hit the previous summer. Law even hired Bill McElhiney and Karl Garvin, the two Nashville trumpet players on Moore’s record, to play on Cash’s session.

  Cash was betting everything on that song and arrangement. When Law scheduled the fateful session in Nashville, he planned to devote the entire three hours to the one song. There was no Plan B. Holiff had already begun canvassing other labels in case Columbia did drop his artist.

  On March 5 the Nashville music community was shocked to learn Patsy Cline had been killed in a plane crash just outside Nashville. She was thirty. June was too shaken to go to the funeral, so she babysat for Patsy’s children. The “Fire” session that week was postponed. Law set a new date of March 25.

  In the meantime, there was some good news. The Blood, Sweat and Tears album, which had been given up for dead after “Busted” stalled on the charts, started selling enough to break onto the pop charts, even if it was just a wobbly number 134. But Cash and Law were too nervous about Cash’s future on the label to rest their case on that showing.

  Cash was so jittery on the eve of the session that he turned to an old friend. Whatever Cash thought of “Teenage Queen,” he believed that Jack Clement knew how to make hits. No one was more surprised than Clement, who had moved from Nashville to Beaumont, Texas, where he ran a recording studio and a publishing business, when Cash gave him a call.

  “I was taking a bath one night when the phone rang and it was Cash,” Clement says. “He told me about this song and how he had a dream about using mariachi horns on the intro. To some people, it probably sounded like a crazy idea, but I think he knew it would sound normal to me. Besides, he wanted someone in his corner.”

  Though he told Law that he just wanted Clement to sit in on the session, it was clear to everyone that Clement was in charge. Cash wasn’t in great shape vocally; the stress had led to the usual uptick in his consumption of pills, but he put everything he had into the song.

  Whereas Anita’s vocal, as lovely as it was, had failed to capture the song’s underlying drama, Cash’s approach truly made him sound like a man caught in a tangled romantic web. He also massaged the words a bit and shortened the title to “Ring of Fire.”

  This was no casual undertaking. The session had the desperate feel of a last chance as the musicians worked on the song again and again. In the end, everyone was elated. Clement had done a great job on the record, not just overseeing the horn parts, but also showcasing the classic boom-chick-a-boom rhythm more dynamically than anything Cash had done since leaving Sun. Clement later said he was surprised how excited everyone was that day. He had no idea what was at stake.

  When Bob Moore heard the single on the radio, he figured Cash had gotten the idea for the horns from “Mexico” and he took it as a compliment. “To me,” he said, “it was like a wink and a
nod, as if to say, ‘Job well done, Bob.’” Years later, Cash would repay the favor by hiring Moore to produce one of his albums.

  The executives in New York were as excited as the musicians in Nashville. Holiff didn’t have to browbeat them to promote the record in the pop market. Even Billboard went along for the ride. In its May 4 edition the publication declared that in “a real enthusiastic performance, Cash sings this story saga emotionally over a sharp backing that has a Tex-Mex trumpet sound.”

  “Ring of Fire” entered the pop charts at number seventy-two on June 1 and rapidly climbed to number seventeen. In the country field, the single spent seven weeks at number one. To take advantage of the momentum, Law and Cash quickly put together an album of selected recordings that hadn’t appeared on LPs before, including “The Big Battle” and “Tennessee Flat-Top Box.” Cash also slipped in two gospel numbers, “Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)” and “Peace in the Valley.” Thanks to the massive radio airplay for the single, the album, titled Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash, spent more than a year on the pop charts, giving Cash his first gold record, signifying at least 500,000 sales.

  Cash was again Columbia Records’ golden boy. Holiff went back to other labels with a much stronger hand, but he couldn’t get a better deal than Columbia was offering: a five-year pact that guaranteed Cash $500,000. The promotion-minded Holiff also got the label to throw in six full-page ads a year in the music trades to support Cash’s releases. To the outside world, Cash was back on top of his game. To those close to him, however, his personal life was still alarming.

  George Jones, who had quite a reputation himself for erratic behavior on the road, said that Cash far surpassed him in terms of trashing hotel rooms. In fact, he wrote in his 1996 autobiography, he learned during a stop at a Midwest Holiday Inn in the early 1960s that Cash had broken so many pieces of furniture in the chain’s motels that he knew exactly what each item cost.

  Jones got into an argument with Cash at the motel and accidentally broke a lamp. Cash noted matter-of-factly, “One broken lamp. That’ll be forty-five dollars.”

  Jones then pulled down some drapes. Cash said, “That’ll be three hundred dollars.”

  The singer then ran into the bathroom, took the porcelain top off the toilet tank, and smashed it in the bathtub: “One commode top, a hundred seventy-five dollars,” John said.

  When Saul Holiff confronted Jones with a bill for the room damages, Jones was amazed that all of Cash’s predicted costs were accurate right down to the penny.

  II

  “Ring of Fire” could be heard on jukeboxes, on the radio, and on home record players almost everywhere in America—except one hillside home in Casitas Springs. Vivian had once stood by the radio for hours hoping to hear one of John’s records, but she now avoided music stations. The pain of this single was even greater than usual. During one of his rare visits home, Vivian maintained, John told her that he had written a song while drunk and on pills, called “Ring of Fire,” which was about “a certain female body part.” What really riled Vivian, according to her account, was that he said he wrote it while fishing with Merle Kilgore on Lake Casitas but gave his songwriting credit to June Carter because “she needs the money and I feel sorry for her.” The authorship of the song, however, was resolved when Kilgore later confirmed that he and Carter wrote it.

  There was one place where Vivian couldn’t avoid the song: Cash’s return date at the Hollywood Bowl on June 22, 1963. Once again, Holiff teamed with radio station KFOX to send out a star-packed lineup in support of Cash. While the fans at the Bowl cheered “Ring of Fire,” Vivian wished she could be anywhere else, but it was one of her rare chances to see her husband. “If she had not been such a devoted mother and had gone on the road with him, then the marriage would not have failed,” her sister Sylvia says. “But she wasn’t going to have somebody else raise her children back at home. Besides, she kept holding to the dream that Johnny would eventually realize what he was giving up and come back to his family.”

  At the end of the night, Vivian’s actions were more telling than words. She didn’t even go backstage. She didn’t want to risk another humiliation. To make matters worse, Cash was in horrible shape that night, his voice little more than a rasp. She headed back to Casitas Springs with the children.

  Cash’s drug addiction was becoming dangerous enough that Marshall Grant felt especially anxious. It was tough enough trying to cover for Cash when he failed to show up for a concert, but it was even more draining to see the destruction Cash was causing in his personal life, and he felt horrible when Vivian would call him on the road, begging him to do anything he could to make sure Johnny came home during tour breaks.

  “I asked him countless times at the end of a tour, ‘John, why don’t you go home and see the kids and spend some time with Vivian?’ Most times,” Marshall remembered, “he wouldn’t go home, but even when he did, he seldom stayed long. He might stay overnight for a day or two, but then he’d jump into whatever vehicle was available and head into the desert, sometimes for three or four days at a stretch.”

  Rosanne Cash shared Marshall’s despair. “When I was six years old [in Encino], it was like my daddy had always come home,” she says. “But when I was eight [in Casitas Springs], somebody else came home. He was distracted and depressed and antsy. He had this little office in the house. He’d go in there, close the door, and put on records all the time. He’d stay up all night.”

  Because of the suffering of Cash’s family, Grant found himself resenting June Carter, especially after she began demanding that Cash get a divorce. But he knew Vivian was wrong when she claimed that June encouraged Johnny’s drug-taking so that he wouldn’t feel guilty about leaving his family.

  In fact, Grant’s view of June had changed dramatically by the time they played the Hollywood Bowl in 1963. She had come to him weeks earlier to ask how they could work together in fighting the pills. Grant had already been telling hotel desk clerks to forward to him packages addressed to Cash so he could intercept pill shipments. He and June eventually became allies in that effort, and Grant admired her for it because he knew how angry Cash could get when anyone came between him and his drugs.

  Marshall began to realize the depth of June’s growing devotion when he saw that she was willing to risk her place in John’s life by forcing him to confront his addiction. He would later say, “June is the hero in any story you want to write about Johnny Cash.”

  The turning point in June’s relationship with Marshall had been the previous December in Albuquerque, when no one could get John to leave his hotel room to head to El Paso for the next show. As everyone else stood around, June stormed into Cash’s room and shouted, “Lay there, star!”

  “He came out of that bed madder than I’d ever seen anyone,” she said later. “I was embarrassed, scared, and expecting to be fired, but we were on our way to the airport.”

  Thinking her days with the Cash troupe were over, Carter sat at the airport wondering what to do next in terms of her career. Just then, Cash walked up to her and handed her an Indian peace pipe he had bought for her in the souvenir shop.

  Grant was impressed again when June took the lead in searching Cash’s room for drugs. One reason Cash and Carter had separate rooms on the road was for the sake of appearances, but another was that Cash didn’t want anyone going through his hiding places, which ranged from his guitar case to old socks to the insides of toilet tanks. If June found any pills, she’d flush them down the toilet, and then had the nerve to tell Cash what she had done. According to Marshall, on occasion June would even encourage Johnny to go home between tours to see his children. She thought it would help lighten his sometimes dark moods.

  Despite Vivian’s suspicions, Cash was not always in June’s arms between tours. Often he would just go off on his own, trying to escape. There were also times when the tension between John and June got so intense that they needed to take a break from each other, and John would sometimes turn
to other women for comfort. There was constant uncertainty.

  “It was tough not knowing where he was, what he was doing, whether he was hurt, or if he’d hooked up with some of the undesirable people he sometimes ran with and was lying dead in the gutter somewhere,” said Grant. “We couldn’t help him if we couldn’t find him.”

  Don and Harold Reid, who would later tour with Cash as members of the Statler Brothers vocal quartet, recall that Cash felt so much torment about his family and June that he once went to the airport ticket counter at the end of a tour and asked for a ticket on the next flight. When asked where he wanted to go, he said, “Wherever the next plane will take me.” Harold Reid felt sorry for him. “You could see his head and his heart were fighting inside.”

  III

  At the center of all this turmoil, Cash continued to find a refuge in his music; it was the one part of his life he felt he could control. On the endless nights between tours when he would often drive out in the desert or simply crash in a town where he knew no one could track him down, he’d think about his music, searching for themes that fit his interests and beliefs. Even though it was “Ring of Fire” that had saved his Columbia contract, he returned again and again to the music that most pleased him—especially Ride This Train and the gospel collections.

  In his moments of isolation, he continued to draw comfort and strength from the underdogs of the past, the characters in movies and books about the Old West, both the heroes and the outlaws. Like them, he felt happiest when there were no boundaries to fence him in. As his addiction deepened, he went back to piecing together the concept album celebrating the Old West.