Johnny Cash: The Life

by Robert Hilburn

  The news made Grant physically ill, and he called friends in the Cash organization. Yes, they confirmed, that’s what Cash was telling people—though Cash denied it years later. “I fired Marshall because our relationship had just broken down,” he said.

  As days went by, Grant felt increasingly bitter—not so much about Cash’s charges of theft, because he didn’t think anyone believed them, but about the way Cash had “stolen me and Luther blind” over the years to support his drug habit. He was referring to Cash’s abandoning the agreement the three had made at Sun Records to share revenue equally. Grant decided to sue his old friend.

  Cash didn’t waste any time in getting back on the road after firing Grant. Within days he was onstage with Joe Allen, one of Nashville’s most respected bass players, standing in Grant’s place. It was now an eight-piece band. After years with a compact unit, Cash had slowly been expanding the group ever since he’d had the TV show. The changes began with a series of piano players, including Butler, who joined Grant, Wootton, and Holland. Then a third guitarist, Jerry Hensley, came aboard in 1974. Two horn players, Bob Lewin and Jack Hale Jr., became regulars in 1978. All of these changes made Cash and Robin decide it was time for a new name. They came up with the Great Eighties Eight.

  Between tours, Cash was in and out of the studio early in 1980 working on a new album, Rockabilly Blues, but he lacked vocal authority, and his four new songs were again subpar.

  But there was more working against Rockabilly Blues than its unevenness. Everyone’s attention in Nashville in the summer of 1980 was on the phenomenal country and pop reaction to an album that had been released in May: the soundtrack to the film Urban Cowboy. The movie, which starred John Travolta and Debra Winger, did for country music what Saturday Night Fever did for disco—it took the music into the pop mainstream. Suddenly, people who had never shown any interest in country music were buying cowboy boots and heading for the local honky-tonk to ride the mechanical bulls.

  It was the biggest thing to hit Nashville since Willie, Waylon, and the outlaw movement, and record companies went all-out to try to produce more records that could jump on the pop-flavored Urban Cowboy bandwagon. Given all the excitement, who was going to pay attention to what was, for all practical purposes, just another Johnny Cash album?

  During a tour break soon after firing Grant, John and June headed for the peaceful surroundings of Cinnamon Hill. John Carter described Jamaica as a way for his parents to “regain their center” and “renew their focus.” June loved the estate and its grounds every bit much as John. She’d sometimes dance in the yard, singing or whistling to the hundreds of birds gathered there; she claimed to have a name for every one of them.

  The atmosphere on this trip, however, was grim. Their future together was still on the line. Even if she had lived too long with Cash’s addiction for her truly to believe that things would get better, she had to hear him pledge his love and his devotion. She wanted contrition.

  For much of the week, John Carter was witness to their shouting matches. Things got so heated one evening that Cash asked his son to leave the room. John Carter tried to listen through the thick stucco walls, but he couldn’t make out the words. He felt as if his world was coming to an end when his father suddenly opened the door and invited the trembling boy to rejoin them.

  “Son,” he recalls his dad saying. “We have something tell you.”

  Braced for the worst, John Carter heard his mother shout, “We’re going to get married again!”

  The three hugged one another long and hard.

  On the next afternoon, John Carter—wearing a brand-new suit for the occasion—watched his parents stand in front of a pastor from Mount Zion Church near Montego Bay to renew their wedding vows. The youngster’s world was “one again.” His parents’ struggles, he believed, were over. Looking back on that day years later, John Carter would shrug at how innocent he was.

  There was another major piece of good news for Cash, as he continued to tour the big cities and small towns across the country, stopping only to tape an appearance on the Mike Douglas TV show or record another Christmas album. During the annual Country Music Association TV show in October, Johnny Cash was introduced as the newest member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. To celebrate, June surprised John with a brand-new Mercedes-Benz.

  Much was made in the weeks after the announcement by both the media and Cash loyalists about the fact that he, at forty-eight, was the youngest living inductee of the Hall of Fame, an impressive honor considering that membership was usually given to artists who were far past their prime. Yet the honor was tempered by that very fact, for many in Nashville considered Cash to be just that—well past his prime. Among those along Music Row too young to know much about Cash’s pre-Folsom days, it wasn’t uncommon to hear variations on the sentiment, “I didn’t know he was only forty-eight. It seems like he’s been around forever.”

  Chapter 28

  No One’s Listening

  I

  MARTY STUART WAS A NEW BREED of cat in Johnny Cash’s world, someone with more of a love of country music history and an authenticity more in line with Cash’s own feelings than anyone who worked regularly with him—and yet still young and brash enough to tell his hero when he felt Cash was wrong. This last quality may have been Stuart’s greatest contribution to Cash artistically. For most stars, even great ones like Cash, there is a thin line between support and disloyalty. They say they want to hear the truth, but they invariably gravitate toward those who offer only good news and turn a blind eye to personal vices.

  “One thing I noticed the first time I worked with John was he was surrounded by sycophants,” says producer Brian Ahern. “Nobody ever said boo to him. After we did Silver, I vowed to myself to get him out of Nashville if we ever did another album together. But Marty was different. Marty would speak up.”

  To many around Cash, Stuart, at twenty-one, came across as just a wide-eyed, starstruck kid who adored him. “To me, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison stands out as the most landmark, groundbreaking country album since the days of Jimmie Rodgers,” Stuart says. To him, Cash “was a man on a mission; someone coming up from the ashes, drawing on the sum total of everything he did from 1955 to 1968—the songwriting creativity, the search for songs, the years of touring. It was the perfect country record and it blows my mind that it was done before noon.”

  Stuart grew up looking for the same spark in country singers that Cash always sought. “Our county fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, brought entertainers to town every year, and I developed a pretty good radar for who was the real thing and who was just going through the motions by the time I was seven, eight, nine years old,” says Stuart. “My heroes were a lot of the same people as Johnny Cash’s.”

  The first time Stuart saw Cash in concert was in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1970. “The TV show was real hot and he filled up the Coliseum,” Stuart recalls. “All I remember is the stage went black and he simply walked out and said, ‘Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.’ The place went nuts. The next thing I knew I was standing right in front of the stage, looking up at him. I don’t even remember leaving my seat, but there I was. There was a fire in him onstage that made you feel he wanted to make a difference in people’s lives, and I was hooked. From that moment, I knew this is what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t have a choice.” After spending years apprenticing on mandolin and other string instruments with Lester Flatt and Doc Watson, Stuart was in Nashville in 1980 trying to figure out his next step when he learned that a buddy of his was making a guitar for Cash. As enterprising as he was talented, Stuart talked his pal into letting him tag along when he delivered the guitar to Cash at Clement’s studio in Nashville. They hit it off.

  A few weeks later, Cash had Wootton track Stuart down to ask if he’d like to sit in with the band at a show in Iowa. Stuart, who happened to be only a hundred miles away, jumped into a rental car and joined Cash onstage for a matinee performance. He already knew all the songs by heart. After
the concert, Cash asked Stuart, “Do you want to go to work for me?”

  Even though working with Cash was a dream come true, Stuart realized over the next few weeks that he felt a little deflated.

  “Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three were my Beatles,” says Stuart. “I knew every record they did, and I was a little torn to see what he had become. I was hoping to work with the guy who was at Folsom Prison and who did the benefits for the Indians, but I found myself in the middle of this kind of big family show. It wasn’t as rock ’n’ roll as I thought it would be. It wasn’t as edgy. It was closer to something like Lawrence Welk. I felt he was a little lost in his world. There was so much dragging him down. He had a lifestyle that was huge. He and June had houses upon houses; they had kids upon kids; employees upon employees; it was really a cumbersome lifestyle. I kept looking for a way to talk to him about all this.”

  Stuart found his opportunity a short time later when Cash casually asked if he was enjoying himself on the road. He was surprised when the young man replied with a mere “Pretty much.” He asked the newcomer to sit with him and explain himself. Stuart knew this was his chance, and he didn’t back down.

  “I could tell he was really interested,” says Stuart. “I told him not to get me wrong. I loved his music and I was glad to be in the band; it was more money than I’d ever made. But I also said the music wasn’t lean and mean the way I thought it would be.

  “I think he sensed in me a fighting partner. He wasn’t content being let out to pasture. He didn’t want to just be a senior-citizen flag-waver. I believe he wanted to be a rock star again. He wanted to get back where he started, and I wanted to go there with him.”

  Rick Blackburn, who had taken over as head of Columbia’s Nashville country operation in 1980, also struck up a key relationship with Cash. He spoke frankly about the challenge of selling records, something Cash appreciated; for once, Cash felt that a record company executive was truly on his side. And he was grateful when Blackburn signed Rosanne to a contract.

  “The thing I tried to stress with John was that there were factors working against him and a lot of artists of his age,” said Blackburn, a former country DJ whose background in the music business was in marketing and promotion. “Outside of the Urban Cowboy thing, country music wasn’t selling. You could have a number-one country single and it’d only mean twenty-five thousand albums. Country had to find a whole new audience, and that meant young people, because that was the big, untapped audience.

  “We’d spend hours thinking about ways to try to sell records to that audience—and don’t let anyone tell you John didn’t care about sales at this point in his life. He never gave up his vision as an artist; he made the records he wanted to make. But when he had a new record out, he would call every Monday morning so I could update him on the latest sales figures. He was still huge—he was playing Las Vegas and all—but he wanted to be on the charts again. He wanted to reach young people. He wanted to be relevant.”

  After recording a Christmas album in August, Cash guested the following month with Emmylou Harris and Levon Helm on The Legend of Jesse James, a concept album designed by English songwriter Paul Kennerly that won considerable critical acclaim but sold only modestly.

  He then turned to Jack Clement once more to help him on a pair of sessions in September designed to provide music for another CBS television film, The Pride of Jesse Hallam, in which he would also act. Cash always felt safe in Clement’s reassuring hands. “Jack has stood by me through everything, especially when life hasn’t been too inspiring,” Cash said. “Day or night, whatever my condition. I’ve always found a refuge in his presence.”

  For Cash, the films offered a break from the endless one-nighters. Even if his performances tended to be wooden, he enjoyed the challenge of acting, and he tried to find roles that were as inspiring as his music. In Hallam, he played an illiterate farmer who teaches himself to read and write so he can better raise his children after his wife dies. Cash was heartened when CBS received thousands of letters from people who had struggled with illiteracy; it reminded him of the outpouring of gratitude from fans after the Holy Land album and the Gospel Road film.

  Two days after the Clement session, on September 5, Cash went into Columbia Records’ studio with superstar producer Billy Sherrill, who had co-written a story song, “The Baron,” that the Columbia execs thought might work for Cash. In truth, Sherrill, who had never paid much attention to Cash when he ran Columbia’s Nashville office, might have preferred to give the song to a hotter artist, but Blackburn helped steer him to Cash. Country DJs welcomed anything by Sherrill with open arms. Cash went along with the project despite his resentment of the producer’s earlier coldness. Except for those few days in the studio, Cash spent most of the year on tour, including nearly two weeks in Australia in June and a week in England in October. He also found time to make Billy Graham Crusade appearances in Calgary and Houston.

  Meanwhile, Grant continued to mull over his next step. He met with his attorneys and began organizing old financial statements to try to build a case that Cash had reneged on his partnership promise. Grant finally decided to file the suit the week after Christmas; he chose that time, he said, to minimize embarrassing publicity, figuring people would be busy with their holiday festivities.

  In an action filed in U.S. District Court, Grant asked for $2.6 million in lost wages and damages resulting from alleged slanderous statements.

  Cash was angered and told his attorneys to fight the case to the end. He couldn’t believe the relationship had come to this.

  To Grant’s mind, he wasn’t suing his old friend J.R., he was suing a drug addict.

  The case was eventually settled without going to trial. Under the terms of the agreement, neither party was supposed to reveal the details. But within hours, the word around Nashville was that Cash had paid Grant just under $1 million. The two old friends wouldn’t have a meaningful conversation for more than a decade. Prompted by Grant’s suit, children of Luther Perkins, too, sued Cash, but their case was settled for a much smaller sum.

  II

  Cash went into the studio with Clement in late January 1981 to work on tracks for an album titled The Adventures of Johnny Cash. But those sessions were halted in mid-March when Sherrill needed Cash to record enough songs to fill an album built around “The Baron,” which was taking off on country radio—more, quite likely, because of Sherrill’s name than any sudden renewed interest in Cash. They cut the additional tracks in three days, using songs mostly selected by Sherrill. Cash brought Stuart along, even letting him arrange one old folk tune that the guitarist had suggested, “Hey, Hey Train.” It proved to be the most satisfying track on the LP.

  Even though “The Baron” went to number ten on the country charts, it was a record, much like Cash’s “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” that didn’t excite old Cash fans or attract new ones. The story song—about a pool shark being confronted by a young man who turns out to be his son—may have struck Sherrill as another “Boy Named Sue.” For most listeners, however, the song merely echoed the feel-good storytelling success of “Lucille” and “The Gambler,” and left Cash sounding like he was recycling Kenny Rogers. The album performed only marginally better than Silver, though the title song did lead to a 1984 TV movie, The Baron and the Kid, with Cash in the title role.

  Meanwhile Cash was off to Europe in late April. He was joined onstage in Stuttgart by Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, who did enough songs together for Columbia to release a live album titled The Survivors a year later. It was a modest attempt to capture the freewheeling spirit of the “Million Dollar Quartet” session, which was attracting lots of media attention since bootleg copies were beginning to circulate around this time. As on that celebrated 1956 day at Sun Records, Lewis, Perkins, and Cash sang songs associated with them and some gospel favorites as well. The problem with the set was that it didn’t include Elvis. It wouldn’t do any better than Cash’s other recent albums.

  What
fascinated Marty Stuart, who was touring Europe with Cash for the first time that April, wasn’t that reunion but Cash’s energy and attitude on the whole tour. He believed that John, given the right circumstances, could be relevant again in the studio.

  “All of a sudden he was a rock star again,” Stuart remembers. “He brought a higher level of energy and confidence to the European shows. People always talked about how he prowled the stage with the electricity of a panther in the 1960s, but this was the first time I saw it, and it was great being onstage with him.”

  By the end of the year he had done nearly one hundred concerts, a half-dozen TV shows, several benefits, and two Billy Graham Crusades, as well as joined Luciano Pavarotti, Itzhak Perlman, and Lena Horne in performing before President and Mrs. Reagan at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.

  On the home front, John and June had come a long way toward repairing their marriage since renewing their vows, and they returned to Jamaica for Christmas. To celebrate, they invited John’s sister Reba and her husband to join them—along with one of John Carter’s school chums. When they sat down for a dinner of roast turkey, rice and beans, and fried plantains on December 23, the family felt especially grateful. They were all at the dinner table when three men with nylon stockings over their heads burst into the room, one of them shouting, “Someone is going to die here tonight!” One was carrying a hatchet, another had a dagger, and the third waved a pistol. Apparently mistaking the school friend for John Carter, one of the intruders grabbed the boy and demanded $3 million or they’d kill him, John Carter remembered. Cash in retrospect put the amount at $1 million, but everyone agreed that the ordeal lasted four hours as the robbers ransacked the house, looking for money and jewels.