Johnny Cash: The Life

by Robert Hilburn

  Elfstrom was equally fascinated watching Cash offstage. “He would be exhausted after the show some nights, but he was so gracious to fans in the dressing room,” he says. “He would sign autographs or just answer their questions. He would never say no to anyone. It got to be so bad, from my point of view, that I didn’t want to go to dinner with him because I knew people would come up and interrupt our meal. He would shake hands or just stand there patiently, sometimes for several minutes, while people struggled to get their little cameras to work.”

  Elfstrom found June equally appealing. “She was a queen, a real saint as far as I was concerned,” he says. “They were completely in love. They had to be touching one another all the time, very childlike. If they were hugging and kissing, I would film them, and they would smile and giggle and be shy about it.”

  After a few months of filming, the producers of the documentary started asking Elfstrom if he had gotten any film of Cash talking about the drug years, but the director ignored them. “That wasn’t what I wanted to do,” he says. “I was into cinema verité. I wanted the reality that my camera was seeing in his world at the moment. I wasn’t interested in that old sort of shotgun journalism. I didn’t care about the music world or any drugs or promiscuity unless I came across it, and the only thing I saw him drink was a bottle of beer or a glass of wine. Drugs were simply not part of his life when I was with him. In the end, I wanted to show what I was seeing: John was a poet, an artist, and a wonderful, spiritual person.”

  In the documentary, Elfstrom followed Cash along the concert trail and into the studio, where the director came into contact with one of his own musical heroes, Bob Dylan. Though Dylan has tended to avoid cameras over the years, he had no objection when Cash brought Elfstrom along to film their duet of “Girl from the North Country.”

  “It was very informal,” the director says. “You could tell they enjoyed each other’s company. John even wanted Bob to buy property down there; he was going to sell him part of his property near the lake. But it never happened. The thing I remember from the session is that they forgot the words halfway through the song—I’m thinking Cash, actually—and they had to send someone out to get the lyrics.”

  III

  John and June arrived in Israel on November 4 with a party of about thirty people, including John Carter and his nanny, and Larry Butler, a new staff producer at Columbia Records whom Cash had asked to produce the album soundtrack. They checked in to a hotel in Tiberias on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. In their search for locales, Elfstrom and Murray felt that this area, about 120 miles north of Jerusalem, offered the best opportunities. Besides such historic sites as the Jordan River, it contained an abandoned Palestinian refugee village that was used by the crew to create a feeling of the Old Jerusalem.

  “John put his whole heart into this film,” Elfstrom says. “He was up with me at 3:30 in the morning, going out to various sites, and then he’d come to my room in his pajamas at night and we’d figure out the scene for the next day. Pretty early, we decided that we couldn’t do a whole film just showing Jesus’s feet in different locations. We needed to show more.”

  That decision led to their hiring actors to portray various people, including Roman soldiers and Jesus’s disciples. Rather than professionals, they hired some of the long-haired hippies who were traveling through Israel at the time. They also turned to members of Cash’s entourage—Holiff as the Roman-appointed high priest Caiaphas, Robin as a Roman soldier, Snow as Pontius Pilate, and Cash’s sister Reba as the Virgin Mary. Elfstrom came up with the idea of June as Mary Magdalene. The chief casting problem was Jesus. John and June considered more than a dozen candidates but couldn’t agree on one. Finally, they turned to Elfstrom, who with his long hair, beard, and soft good looks indeed seemed perfect for the role. Though he had no acting experience, Elfstrom was caught up in the spirit of the movie and said fine.

  There was a sense of mission around the project, by now titled The Gospel Road, and Reverend Snow took advantage of the Jordan River to baptize John again—possibly as a blessing for the film itself.

  By the time Cash headed home a few weeks later, there were a dozen or so scenes in the can, including the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. The latter was the film’s most ambitious touch. “John came up with the idea of doing the crucifixion in lots of places to show that Christ died for people all over the world,” Elfstrom says. “We ended up doing it once at Jericho in Israel, on the waterfront in Brooklyn Heights, on the Strip in Las Vegas, by the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, and in Death Valley.”

  During the filming in the vast emptiness of Death Valley, a VW minivan filled with hippies drove up, and they stopped to watch. They got out, smoked some dope, and then returned to the van. As they sped off, the driver yelled, “Good luck with the resurrection!” The only witnesses to the Crucifixion at sunrise on the Las Vegas Strip were a huddle of drunks on the sidewalk.

  At Jericho, a photographer from a Dutch publication came on the set just as a break was called. Elfstrom was already in place on the cross, his head covered by a crown of thorns. As he waited for action to resume, someone handed him a lit cigarette. The photographer immediately started shooting away. “John saw what was happening and he personally raced over to throw him off the set. He felt the photo was desecrating his Jesus.”

  Back in the States, John and June played a few concerts in the South before flying to Los Angeles to appear on Glen Campbell’s TV show, where John was happy to see Nashville singer-songwriter Jerry Reed on the program too. Earlier in the year, Larry Butler had brought him a spiritually tinged Reed song, “A Thing Called Love”—and Cash grabbed hold of it. To flesh out the arrangement he envisioned, Cash brought Butler to the Evangel Temple to hear the church choir.

  “I could tell he really wanted to use [the choir], but he left it totally up to me,” Butler said. “He was man enough to let me do my job as producer. I remember us sitting in the church watching the choir with all these big hairdos, which were the thing back in the day. At one point John leans over to me and says, ‘You know, they sure got a lotta hair in this choir.’ I couldn’t help but break out laughing.”

  Delighted with the final recording, which did feature the choir, Cash decided to release it in January as his next single. It went to number two in the country field but pretty much flopped on the pop charts. Still, the message—again—was something Cash believed in, and he was impressed enough by Butler for finding the song that he decided to make him his new producer.

  While in Los Angeles, Cash finalized a contract that would take him back to Las Vegas for the first time in nearly a decade. Instead of playing one of the second-tier downtown hotels, he would be headlining at the town’s biggest and most prestigious showroom—the same two-thousand-seat room at the hotel, by then renamed the Las Vegas Hilton, where Elvis Presley regularly headlined.

  It was hard to find entertainers with enough drawing power to fill the massive showroom twice a night, and Hilton executives had been trying to lure Cash for nearly a year, but he had bad memories of Las Vegas and didn’t like the idea that he was encouraging his fans to gamble. David Victorson, the hotel’s entertainment director, and Marty Klein, who was Cash’s agent for television and other special appearances, worked out a deal that finally appealed to Cash. He would play the Hilton during Easter week. Cash would be bringing his religious message to the heart of America’s so-called Sin City.

  Though terms weren’t publicly announced, he presumably got the Vegas superstar rate of $100,000 a week. The key for Cash was Klein’s assurance that the Hilton would put no restrictions on his show. He was free to play as much gospel music as he wanted. Almost immediately, Cash began to design a special show for the occasion, just as he had done for Folsom and for the White House. As soon as he got back to his hotel, Cash phoned Billy Graham to tell him the news.

  IV

  Cash had begun recording the music for the Gospel Road soundtrack album in October 1971, but work sta
rted in earnest at a session in January 1972 when June laid down the vocal on “Follow Me,” a John Denver ballad of devotion that was to be used in one of Mary Magdalene’s scenes. Cash would go back into the studio with Larry Butler nearly a dozen more times over the next six months to record the instrumental segments as well as such songs as Gatlin’s “Help Me,” Kris Kristofferson’s “Burden of Freedom,” and Joe South’s “Children.” It was by far the most ambitious series of sessions that Cash had ever done. “John didn’t do The Gospel Road because he wanted to be a movie star,” Butler said. “He wanted to send a message through that movie; he wanted to tell what he thought really happened in the Holy Land.” He brought that same drive into the studio.

  Between sessions the Cash troupe went back on tour, drawing nearly 10,000 fans for a benefit in Nashville, 12,000 in Bloomington, Indiana, and 9,500 at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He and June also did Reverend Snow a favor by guesting at the February 11 opening night of a new gospel show Snow would be hosting every Saturday night following the Grand Ole Opry. They also did a few dates in Europe before returning to the States to prepare for the important Las Vegas opening on March 30.

  Despite the hotel’s hard work in persuading Cash to play the main showroom, the Las Vegas Hilton booking was not considered a coup by rival hotel executives in town. Shows were designed to lure gamblers to the hotel casinos. The most prized entertainers were those, like Frank Sinatra at Caesars Palace or Dean Martin at the Riviera, who tended to draw high rollers. Country music bookings were usually limited to downtown hotels or, on rare occasion, the lounges of the more prestigious hotels on the Strip. Even if Cash could fill the huge showroom, many Vegas executives believed that the fans would just watch the show and then leave rather than spend hours at the dice or blackjack tables.

  Representing Cash, Marty Klein stressed to the Hilton brass that Cash’s audience ranged far wider than that for traditional country music. After all, he was selling more records than Elvis Presley and Barbra Streisand combined, both of whom had headlined the Hilton showroom. Klein, whose clients had also included Steve Martin and the team of Rowan and Martin, would prove a steady, wise voice for years in overseeing Cash’s career in Vegas and in films. By the afternoon of the opening show, even some Hilton executives were expressing concern as they looked out the windows of the high-rise hotel and saw a sea of RVs in the parking lot. Weren’t the Cash fans even going to stay at the hotel?

  In his performance, Cash defied Vegas showroom clichés. He didn’t open the show with a comedian (which even Elvis did), didn’t feel compelled to use an orchestra (which Elvis also did), and ignored the mainstream hits that were considered essential in many showrooms around town (such as “The Impossible Dream” and “For Once in My Life”).

  The heart of the show was the gospel music he packed into the final third of the set, both familiar numbers, including “Peace in the Valley,” and songs that would be featured in The Gospel Road, including “I See Men as Trees Walking.” The evening’s biggest surprise—and most controversial element—was the use of film slides from the movie projected on a screen during the final numbers.

  For the finale, Cash sang the bright, optimistic, evangelical “A Thing Called Love” as he walked to the edge of the stage and shook hands with dozens of members of the audience. He then left the stage to another standing ovation. It was a bold and triumphant performance.

  There were reports around town the next day that some members of the audience had complained about the show’s heavy spiritual component—and even whispers that Hilton executives had gently asked Cash to tone things down. But the show continued through the week unchanged. In the end, everyone was happy. Campers or not, Cash fans did spend their money in the casino, though they favored slot machines over roulette wheels. Bottom line, the only thing the hotel execs wanted to know was when Cash could return.

  For all the celebration in Nashville that Cash had opened the door for other elite country artists on the Strip, there was little attention given to another event in March that would have a profound impact on both the future of country music and Cash’s place in it. If anything, the power brokers along Music Row considered the three-day Dripping Springs Reunion festival in the hill country near Austin, Texas, a black eye for country music. After all, the Woodstock-type show for country fans was a financial disaster.

  The promoters needed to draw at least 25,000 fans a day to earn back their $250,000 investment, and their hearts sank when only 600 people showed up the first day at the 241-acre site. That was four people per acre. By Sunday the crowd had grown to 7,500, but it didn’t help much. The three-day attendance was less than 20,000. The Nashville powers were not surprised. How did the promoters ever think they could draw 75,000 people with a show that headlined Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings? Nelson hadn’t had a Top 10 country hit in ten years, and Jennings, too, was an erratic seller.

  Not that anyone in Nashville was rooting for the festival to succeed. Nelson had turned his back on the town after coming to feel that the executives at RCA Victor Records didn’t understand how to market him, and they kept trying to change his singing style. (“What’s with that odd, jazz-like phrasing?”) He returned to his native Texas, where he put together a dance-minded show that combined honky-tonk and western swing, and found a receptive fan base wide enough that rednecks and longhairs were dancing side by side. Jennings, Cash’s old roommate, was working more within the Nashville tradition, but he, too, was frustrated with the country music establishment and envied the freedom that he saw his pal enjoying.

  While Jennings wasn’t willing to give up his Nashville base, he was intrigued when he found that Willie’s odd fan coalition responded strongly to his hard-edged honky-tonk-rock style. He was all for it when the promoters—noticing the success of Waylon and Willie in the Lone Star State—proposed the idea of a festival appealing to both country and rock fans. To fill out the bill, the promoters booked such mainstream country acts as Roy Acuff, Buck Owens, Bill Monroe, and Tex Ritter. But the emphasis was on this new, maverick strain of country music epitomized by Willie and Waylon.

  That new movement was based on a foundation built largely by Cash, all the way down to the independent “outlaw” image created by his sixties lifestyle and Folsom attitude. Dylan, Haggard, and Kris Kristofferson, of course, all helped make country music much more acceptable in the rock community. The promoters behind the festival hadn’t considered trying to book Cash because they figured he was far too big—and therefore costly—a star for them to afford.

  The low turnout at Dripping Springs was eventually blamed on poor promotion. After spending their budget on talent and staging, the backers had hoped to spread the news by word-of-mouth, but it never happened. Even some Austin residents who attended the festival didn’t even know about it until they happened to drive by the site that weekend.

  As Cash hit the road again in April, he was drawing more people in just two shows—nearly ten thousand in Buffalo and just over fourteen thousand in the New York City area—than that whole Dripping Springs Reunion lineup. But momentum was beginning to shift in country music. During Willie’s and Kris’s sets especially, there were signs of an unlikely bonding taking place between country and rock fans over songs that spoke about yearning for individuality in a society that was encouraging ever greater conformity. While the only thing Nashville execs seemed to focus on was the poor attendance, those who’d performed at the festival, especially Nelson, saw it as a historic weekend, and he began talking almost immediately about staging what would become a series of Fourth of July picnics that would eventually draw ninety thousand fans a day. The festival also helped establish Austin as one of the nation’s most important musical centers.

  Within three years, Nelson, though just a year younger than Cash, and Jennings, just five years younger, would be considered by DJs and fans to be the rising “new” voices of country music. As unthinkable as it must have seemed in light of his Las Vegas and TV triumph
s, Cash would have to battle the perception that he belonged to country music’s past. In fact, the changing of the guard had already begun.

  Chapter 24

  The Gospel Road and a Change of Managers

  I

  MARSHALL GRANT CONTINUED TO FOLLOW the music trade papers religiously, and he was taken aback when he picked up a copy of Billboard in January 1973. Where there had been as many as seven Cash albums on the weekly list of country best-sellers during the height of the TV show’s run, there was now just one album on the list bearing the name Cash, and it was by John’s younger brother Tommy—The Best of Tommy Cash, Volume 1. The drought reminded Grant of the dark days in the 1960s, when John’s chart presence faded because he couldn’t get it together for sessions. But Cash was now straight and going into the studio regularly with producer Larry Butler. So what was wrong?

  The first place to look for an explanation was the music. The title song, “Man in Black,” released back in the summer of 1971, was a signature-level work, but little else on the album had been worth a second listen. In hindsight, Cash should have paid attention to the warning signals when the album failed to stir much interest. With no defining mark aside from the religious undercurrent, Man in Black was the first of what would be a series of generic Johnny Cash albums.

  Considering how plain and predictable the contents were, it would have been altogether appropriate to think of it simply as Johnny Cash’s “1971” album. In the same sense, A Thing Called Love was merely his “1972” album.

  Cash was drawn to the spiritual tone of the title song, written by Jerry Reed, but Cash’s version was overblown. In Reed’s version, which appeared on a 1968 album, Nashville Underground, “A Thing Called Love” was an intimate parable, focusing more on Reed’s vocal than on any instrumental flourishes. Cash’s version shifted the tone of the song from the sound of the Nashville underground to the garishness of prime-time TV. From the opening assault by the Evangel Temple choir to the cascading strings, the embroidery stripped the songs of any hint of the personal. At his best, Cash spoke on a direct, one-to-one level to his audience, but now he seemed to be shouting out to the millions in the TV market.