THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 2, 1995 TAG: 9502020049
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Interview
SOURCE: BY RICKEY WRIGHT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
A lot of people feel something for Johnny Cash like what Lyle Lovett talked about while inducting him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a few years ago. Lovett pegged Cash's signature ``I Walk the Line'' as a fact of life, saying he couldn't remember the first time he heard it.
Before getting back on his tour bus in Florida this past weekend, on a string of one-nighters that brings him to Chrysler Hall as part of Tidewater Performing Arts Society's current series, Cash laughed.
``Well, you know, singing songs like `Folsom Prison Blues' and `I Walk the Line' last night, I couldn't remember the first time I sung it, too.''
This man, ``a true American icon'' according to his record label and thousands of admirers, downplays the customary praise with both humility and a touch of hard-won accomplishment.
``I just get up every morning with the same old pains and struggles everybody has. But I appreciate it for my work. It really makes me feel proud that my work is something people take so much from, and all the lauds and applauds mean something.''
To many, Cash's tough visage was the face of country music in the '50s and '60s, delivering those songs and ``Ring of Fire,'' ``A Boy Named Sue,'' ``Orange Blossom Special'' and countless others on records, radio and TV. His offstage antics, fueled by an amphetamine addiction that sent him spiraling, were the stuff of legendary headlines: Johnny Cash had shattered the footlights on the Grand Ole Opry stage; set a forest fire that burned up the side of a mountain; gone to jail overnight seven times.
With detox, a religious rebirth, and marriage to second wife June Carter in the late '60s came a new wave of mainstream fame. A longtime favorite on Top 40 radio, Cash crossed over all the way with LPs cut in concert at Folsom, and then San Quentin, prisons. ``A Boy Named Sue,'' a No. 2 pop hit, and a weekly TV series fueled his fame. He was the Man in Black, a voice of conscience and integrity appealing both to the hippies and the Silent Majority.
When ``The Johnny Cash Show'' got canceled in 1971, his celebrity deflated a bit. He remained a star, though, even after being dropped by Columbia Records in 1986 after 28 years. The concerts continued to draw a mix of young and old fans, even as new releases on Mercury were widely ignored.
After engineering an early end to his contract there, Cash was without a label for the first time since before signing with Sun in 1955. American Recordings head Rick Rubin, who'd made stars of rappers and rockers like the Beastie Boys, the Black Crowes and Danzig, came calling.
``I said, `What would you do if you had me?' '' Cash recalled in a conversation with the San Francisco Chronicle last year. ``And he said, `I'd just let you sit down in front of a microphone with your guitar and your list of songs and let me hear everything that you really like, that you got burning inside to sing and record, and then we would do that.' ''
The result, also named ``American Recordings,'' received a Grammy nomination in the contemporary folk album category last month. If Cash wins that trophy, it'll be his eighth.
Two sides of Johnny Cash: the family show, and the stark, weathered voice on ``American Recordings.''
The record begins with ``Delia's Gone,'' a tale as violent as any he's ever sung: ``First time I shot her, I shot her in the side/Hard to watch her suffer, but with the second shot she died.''
Even Beavis and Butt-Head are fascinated by the number's parallels with gangsta rap. As with ``Folsom Prison Blues'' and ``Cocaine Blues,'' though, there's payback: ``All around my bedside, I hear the patter of Delia's feet.'' Or, as a new song by former son-in-law Nick Lowe has it, ``God help the beast in me.''
``I don't know, and I'm not sure if I do want to know,'' Cash says of the ultimate message of his adaptation of ``Delia.''
``I thought I could improve on the story,'' rooted in ``black blues and gospel, a levee camp holler or a Delta blues song. I collected this stuff from 1958 (on). It's a tragic song, but it's a reflection of something true.''
Truth is a common factor in Cash's songs. When he writes, ``I don't work on it, it works on me.'' And 40 years after his first single, ``there's always a lot of things to say in songs these days.''
In addition to collaborating with death-metal star and rockabilly maven Glenn Danzig, who contributed ``Thirteen'' to the record - ``When I met him, I didn't know who he was; I just knew his name was Glenn. I don't know about the things they say about him, but he's a great songwriter'' - Cash has also recently written with John Carter. Both his son and Danzig will be represented on the followup to ``American Recordings,'' which Cash says will be ``a little heavier record.'' He hopes his third disc for the company will be a gospel album - but with less live dates, about 100, in '95 than last year, there's plenty of time.
The concert he's bringing to Norfolk is dubbed the ``family show,'' with June Carter Cash and the Carter Family. ``And I'll spend about hour doin' things from the '60s and '50s with my stripped-down band,'' he promises.
With Johnny Cash so much a binding thread in American culture, it really is a family show. ``Seinfeld's'' Kramer humming ``The Rebel - Johnny Yuma'' to himself. A character named Ronnie Trash roaming Sesame Street. A little boy in Larry McMurtry's ``All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers'' gleefully yelling the refrain of ``The Rock Island Line.'' British singer Paddy McAloon mishearing the phrase ``pepper sprout'' as ``prefab sprout'' in Johnny and June's duet ``Jackson'' and naming his band for the new invention. We're all the children of Johnny Cash. ILLUSTRATION: AMERICAN RECORDINGS
[Photo of Cash]
THE CONCERT
Johnny Cash with June Carter Cash and the Carter Family
8 p.m. Friday at Chrysler Hall, Norfolk
Tickets: $20 to $25. To order, call 671-8100.
June Carter Cash will perform with her husband at Friday's Chrysler
Hall show.
by CNB