Remembering Johnny

Emmylou Harris

I was doing a show with Neil Young in Nashville just after Johnny died. Before the show, Neil was telling me how sorry he was about Johnny. And at the end of "Rockin' in the Free World," Neil played "Taps" on the guitar. It was beautiful. John seemed so completely American — if I might say that in a time of such turmoil that I'm not sure we know who we are as a people. He seemed to be the voice of truth in everything he did. There was nothing unnatural about John Cash — this was not an act. He rose to the occasion on The Man Comes Around in a way that was astonishing. And the video they made of "Hurt" puts all those bare-navel, soft-porn videos to shame. It shows videos can actually have a profound effect on us, and it took Johnny Cash to once again show that. It's come full circle, because when he first came on the scene with that power, he was all that rock & roll could be.

Mark Romanek (Video director, "Hurt" )

The sadness in the video is genuine — Johnny said that "Hurt" was the best anti-drug song he'd ever heard. The rage you see when he pours the wine on the table or starts to weep is a direct result of having lost people to addictions — and almost having lost himself. But he was playing a role. On set, when we yelled, "Cut," a very different, very funny, much more energetic Johnny Cash emerged. When we were shooting the piano scene, he said, "Maybe you want June to dance naked on the piano there." June said, "Oh, John!" and the crew broke up. He was playful with June — the degree to which they were in love with each other was palpable after all these years. Johnny was also extremely generous — he autographed about thirty-five vinyl copies of The Man Comes Around as a parting gift to the crew, who were in awe. That had never been done by any of the forty artists I've worked with.

Sheryl Crow

I sang at John's funeral, and I cannot lie: It was very hard. There was a real sense we had turned a corner. Because there can never be another Johnny Cash. I grew up in a place where people were very God-fearing, land-loving, and John represented the salt of the earth to me. He spoke for every man and personified the human struggles that we all go through. He was almost biblical, because he walked this earth and experienced all a man could suffer. Yet he still rose up out of the ashes with this great strength and gave voice to that strength for all of us.

Steve Earle

Johnny Cash was one of the few people who wrote me when I was locked up — he sent me a very encouraging letter saying how everybody was pulling for me, that he and June were praying for me and that he would see me when I got out. I saw him again when I helped put together the band for his song on the Dead Man Walking soundtrack. When I got to the studio, nobody was there but John and the engineer. I walk in and there's this old-fashioned picnic basket sitting in the middle of the pool table — you know, gingham tablecloth, the whole bit. John's got his hand in that picnic basket, and he looks up and says, "Steve, would you like a piece of tenderloin on a biscuit that June made this morning?" I was really hungry, so I said, "Yeah," and he said, "I knew you would." We could've talked about our shared demons — I'd been clean probably a year and a half — but he knew that sometimes it's better to leave some things private and just talk about tenderloin and biscuits.

Tom Petty

The first time I met John was in 1982. I was with Nick Lowe, who was his son-in-law at the time, and we were in Nashville. John invited us to have a meal at his place out on the lake. We arrived, but we were disappointed, because John had taken ill that morning and had gone to the hospital with pneumonia — him and June. But the meal was still going to go on. We sat at this long, elaborately set table. Just as the meal was about to begin, someone said, "Tom, John's on the phone and would like to talk to you." So I went to the phone, and we talked for, God, about half an hour. Then after dinner, he and June spoke to every single guest by phone as they left the house and asked if they had a good time.

When John came out to Los Angeles to make Unchained, me and the Heartbreakers kind of became his band. I still view that as the best work we ever did. One of my favorite stories is being at this studio in downtown Hollywood — which is kind of a weird neighborhood — when John came in with June. He was laughing, so I said, "Hey, where you been?" He said, "June and I thought it would be fun to just sit on that bus bench across the street for a while. I met the most interesting people over there." I said, "You're kidding me." I was trying to picture the look on these people's faces as they came to wait for the bus, and there's Johnny and June. This guy was friends with presidents, and he was friends with people at the bus stop.

Reporting by Anthony DeCurtis, Matt Diehl, Austin Scaggs and David Wild

[From Issue 933 — October 16, 2003]