Remembering Johnny

Rick Rubin (Producer, "American Recordings")

When June passed away, he became more driven about work. I spoke to him — he was in the hospital room just after June had passed, and he really sounded the worst I'd ever heard him. He said he had suffered a lot of pain in his life, and this was by far the worst he'd ever had to deal with. But the next day he said, "I want to get back into work, and I want to work every day." He booked a session for three days after June passed away. He said, "I don't want to do any of the things some people do when they lose their partner — I don't want to go out and spend a lot of money. I don't want to meet girls. I don't want to do anything of this world. I want to make music and do the best work I can. That's what she would want me to do, and that's what I want to do." Some days he'd book a session and he wouldn't be well enough to sing. Other days, he would go three or four days of singing and take a couple of days off to rest. When he was too ill to leave the house, we would move the equipment into the house and record. The last session that I did, two or three months ago, was in one of the bedrooms. The last six months, we were recording really heavy old blues-based things like "Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down" and "John the Revelator." He was humble, someone who fought to be ego-less. He strove to be the best he could at all times. And clearly, if you look at his history, he didn't always succeed. His life is like a tug of war. For the time that I was with him, the last ten years or so, I think he was on the winning side of the rope.

Jerry Lee Lewis

I did my first tour ever with Johnny Cash — way back in 1956. It was me, him and Carl Perkins, a thirty-day tour all the way through Canada, and there weren't any paved highways or anything, nothing but gravel roads. I remember what a great showman Johnny was. The way he sang was completely different, and he had a whole different style that he created himself.

John, Elvis and them were rockabilly; I was rock & roll. But we all had country in us, which manifested itself in different ways. If you break it all down to the nitty-gritty, we're all country people. We were called rebels — I guess because we were. Whatever we took a notion to, we just did it. John was religious-thinking, if not always religious-acting. One of the most ridiculous things Johnny and I ever did was steal a television set out of a hotel; there was a little bitty television up on the wall, and we got it off. Johnny wanted it for his wife; I helped him get it, because I didn't see any reason why he shouldn't have it.

I hope when his heart quit beatin' that he was ready to meet his Maker. I don't know if he was; I'm not the judge. He was a man of faith, which I think should help. I just hope he made it through the gates.

Marty Stuart

Merle and I have been touring together all summer, and the first show was the first annual Merle Haggard UFO Music Fest, in Roswell, New Mexico. You'll be happy to know that Johnny Cash went to heaven with a commemorative Merle Haggard UFO Music Fest guitar pick. John would've appreciated the gesture — most people didn't know that side of him. Every December, he and I would go to the graveyard to visit Luther [Perkins, Cash's original guitarist] and bring him a cigarette. We would lay down on the grave, smoke and talk to Luther, telling him what a lazy son of a bitch he was for lying there while we were out touring, killing ourselves to promote him.

When I was in John's band during the Eighties, we were down to playing Branson, Missouri-type shows for elderly people. Nashville was done with him. Instead of giving him the respect he deserved, they treated him like a fossil. But with the American Recordings album, his career had a rebirth just by him doing what the fuck he wanted to do. He had a brand-new audience, which put wind in his sail. He wasn't having to do his old patriotic Johnny Cash tricks for a bunch of older Americans; it was kids with tattoos and weird hair trying to find their way.

I don't think he was scared of things. I don't think he was scared of death or illness — he'd been through all that. I saw him have to go to the Betty Ford clinic after a farm animal punctured his stomach. He went back on painkillers, and with us addicts, all it takes is one pill to set us back. But I think he was scared most of losing people — he lost his mom, his dad, his wife — and of the dark force of Satan. John fully understood the power of the dark force. He'd be on his knees with a Bible in his hands, trying to cope with his demons. He believed what he read in the Bible and tried to practice it.