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1-800-TRY-CASH - interview with Johnny Cash - Interview

Country's coolest highwayman, Johnny Cash, once again rides rock's rails on his transcendent new album, Unchained, Here he talks with his daughter Rosanne Cash, who is herself no stranger to walking the line

Johnny Cash's legend is like a Panavision epic. From California orange groves to Kentucky coal dust, the romance of his music - along with his seductive gravel-bed voice - takes in the sweep of American life through the lens of an honorable drifter. But the weight of Cash's awesome history is not the only force driving his masterful new record, Unchained, just released on American Recordings. Covering songs by such youngbloods as Beck, Chris Cornell, and Tom Petty (Petty and his Heartbreakers back Cash throughout the album), as well as performing his own, he is a canny interpreter of rock, turning Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage" into smokestack lightnin', and Beck's "Rowboat" into an Indigo-shaded lament.

Here, Cash, sixty-four, undertakes a duet without Instruments by talking with his daughter, musician and author Rosanne Cash. The conversation is something of a prelude to a special appearance the two will later make to benefit St. Luke's School in New York City, where one of the youngest members of the Cash clan is a pupil.

ROSANNE CASH: Hi, Dad.

JOHNNY CASH: How are you, honey?

RC: Good. So tell me, if you were to step back and take an overview of your new record, what would you say?

JC: Well, I would say it's probably the most comprehensive thing I have ever done in terms of stretching out and covering a broad spectrum of what I like in music. I've chosen songs from real '40s country, '50s rockabilly, '60s stuff, and more recent things as well. And not just country, songs from rock 'n' roll too.

RC: At a time of life when most people are stultifying and getting rigid in their sense of themselves, you've got this rebirth going on. How did that happen?

JC: Well, I got a producer [Rick Rubin] who was really interested in me and my work, and not in trying to [make me] sound like everybody else in town. He said, "Let's sit down with a guitar, and you sing to me for days the things you want to record." It was the most freedom I've had since I started on Sun Records [in 1955].

RC: Do you think music has the power to heal?

JC: Oh yeah, that more than anything else. I can be in pain, go onstage, and my pain disappears.

RC: Why do you think that happens?

JC: Doctors have said it's because of adrenaline. As far as I'm concerned, it's a power that comes to you from God.

RC: Here's a question that my friends and I discuss: Which do you think we'll have first - a black male president or a woman president?

JC: [clears throat] The way things are going right now, I'd say it's pretty even. But if I had my bets, I would say that a black man will be first and then a woman, because this country is, I think, more prejudiced against women than black men.

RC: I would agree.

JC: A lot of black people wouldn't agree with that, but in the South, where I live, you know how it is. The girls graduating from high school, if they don't have a connection somewhere, then they got to go down and try to get a job that pays minimum wage sacking groceries. Then there's the question of teenage pregnancy. You know, the boy gets the gift pregnant and skips out 90 percent of the time. He leaves her to fend for herself, and then what's the government gonna do for her?

RC: Are you a supporter of Planned Parenthood and sex education in schools?

JC: Yes I am. That education is a part of life, and a part of the love thing that you need to know about.

RC: Dad, what did your mom teach you about women, either spoken or unspoken?

JC: I grew up in the '40s, in the country, in a Southern Baptist family. I think I was taught that there are good women and bad women. I also found out that sometimes bad women are good women, and good women can be bad, just like men. I learned that at an early age.

RC: How important is fashion to you?

JC: It's not really important.

RC: What's your feeling about clothing in general? I mean, do you have any feelings about it?

JC: I don't know. I put on the same old black business shirt this morning when I got ready to go. I'm sitting there with that on and black socks. And I don't wear underwear, so all I got on is black.

RC: [laughs] So we can safely say that your sense of fashion has not changed.

JC: Rosanne, you know, you open my closet door, it's dark in there.

RC: Do you remember a time before you wanted to be a musician?

JC: I can't. Before I ever started school, I would sit with my mother and she'd teach me to sing along with her. That's what she called "seconding" to her. My voice was high until I was eighteen, so I could do that. And I remember singing as I walked across the fields carrying water to the workers. When I'd get to them, they'd kid me about it. They'd say, "We heard you singing all the way from the spring."

RC: Were you a melancholy young man?

JC: Yeah, I was very shy.

RC: Do you think you kept the work ethic you learned growing up working in the fields?

JC: Maybe. But on the other hand, I really hated that work.

RC: So you don't feel guilty when you take a vacation?

JC: [laughs] No, I don't. When I do take one, I deserve it. [I'll say,] "Why isn't there a Ritz-Carlton in that town?"

RC: What do you like most about traveling?

JC: The performances. But also, every new motel is an adventure. And, of course, you check and see if you got all the conveniences, like a hair dryer -

RC: Right you love those amenities.

JC: Oh, yes, I love a piece of chocolate on my pillow.

RC: Turndown service is the height of civilization.

JC: I love that. And I love big, thick feather pillows.

RC: Are you a collector by nature?

JC: I used to be. I have a collection of Roman coins. I like touching something that Jesus Christ or Caesar might have touched.

RC: Did you plant a garden this year?

JC: I'm working in my little vineyard. Remember the arbor that your Grandpa and Gramma Cash had in California?

RC: I sure do.

JC: I took cuttings from that, and brought them back to Tennessee in a suitcase and stuck 'em out. This year I had about a half a bushel of grapes. I'm thrilled to death with my little grape arbor.

RC: [with admiration] Oh, Dad! That's great. Well, we better stop.

JC: O.K. I really have enjoyed this talk with you.

RC: I've enjoyed it, too. I love you, Dad.

JC: I love you. Bye-bye.