Johnny Cash |
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Thu. February 21.2002 2:58 PM EST |
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Rosanne Cash: Daddy Sang Bass |
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Rosanne Cash ( ) |
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If Johnny Cash carries a lot of iconic weight when he steps out onstage, you can imagine what he must have been like when he went home. Rosanne Cash received such info first hand. Born in 1956 to Cash and his first wife Vivian Liberto, Rosanne
VH1: How similar is your father to the brooding Man in Black image? Rosanne Cash: My father is unfailingly polite. In watching him over 40 years of fame, I’ve never seen him be rude to someone, or not give an autograph when he was asked. It’s remarkable that you could never lose your patience with that in all of 40 years. He has his limits, but he doesn’t take it out on the people wanting something of him. He just goes and spends three or four days on his farm by himself to regroup. VH1: Your dad must have been on the road a lot. What was life like? Was it Dad coming home like Santa Claus and mom having to do the work of raising the kids? Cash: That would have been a nice scenario. My dad was heavily into drugs by the time I was conscious enough to realize that he was gone all the time. When he was home I knew there was something wrong, but didn’t know what it was. He was very dark and frightening, but frightening in the way it was all turned in on himself. We were afraid he was going to hurt himself. He was constantly setting fires and having car wrecks. I felt disconnected from him and no one was saying what was going on. I don’t think anybody had the words to explain it. VH1: Can you talk about your father leaving the family and how the Cash and Carters got beyond that? Cash: When my Dad and my Mom split up I was 11, and I remember clearly thinking, "Good. Now maybe both of them have a chance to be happy." I remember feeling relieved, because the conflict was going to go away. They both had other people in the wings. June [Carter] and my dad are great together. There’s a lot of happiness on both sides now. VH1: I’ve spent some time on the road with your father in the ‘80s and was struck how there was almost a brutal honesty between the parents and children about sex and rehab and the rest of it. Cash: It got to the point where it could not be contained anymore and my dad was going to die. When he got off drugs, then it was all out in the open. By then various members of my family were also going into addiction and came out of it. Everybody was supportive. Facing it was essential to us and for the people that needed to get healing. My dad has had a rough time. VH1: Someone once remarked to me that Johnny Cash was a spiritual artist. Do you think that’s true? Cash: With perfect equilibrium he manages to contain a lot of diametrically opposed things within himself. One of them is his spirituality. He is a staunch Southern Baptist and he was brought up that way and believes in the Bible down the line. Yet he has managed to do this without being in the least judgmental of other beliefs. He really does believe in walking a certain way that’s not about church dogma but more about unconditional love. He’s done that in his whole life. He was raised on a farm working with his hands. He became a poet. His education was really limited yet he has a vast intelligence and very literate. He’s managed to be the sum of a lot of opposite parts. VH1: You toured with him for a while after you graduated from high school. What was that like? Cash: It was a phenomenal experience. To travel and see the world, then sit in the wings and watch my dad every night, was so inspiring. My dad is so timeless as a performer. He could be medieval or he could be from the future. Look at that angle of his back with the light hitting him and his guitar and what he gives to an audience and what they give back to him - he could be from the 10th century. I got to soak that in almost every night for a couple of years. I realized that his most intimate relationship is with his audience. It’s where he’s most himself. My dad has a very compelling presence. You can’t really learn that or teach it. It just is. He’s just born that way. And the audience gets it, you know? Just to observe that profoundly changed my life. But then I started to feel like, “I’m 19 years old. I don’t want to be hanging around my dad my whole life.” So I moved to London. VH1: There was a feeling that you were trying to find yourself as an artist independent of your dad. No one would ever think of you singing “Tennessee Flat-Top Box” back then. Cash: I didn’t want anything to do with my dad at all when I started my career. That’s why I went to Germany to make my first record. I wanted to get as far away as possible. Then I got very successful and I sensed this feeling from my dad I never felt before - which he admitted later on - that he was a little intimidated. I was staying away from my dad then, too. He respected that. He never pushed me. He never gave me advice either, which was great. I wouldn’t have wanted it. When I did “Tennessee Flat-Top Box,” I didn’t know he had written the song. I knew he had recorded it, but I thought, “Oh, that song’s been around since dirt!” Then I found out that he’d actually written it as well. It went to No. 1 - a big record for me. It was very exciting, but I remember feeling, “This is great, but I’m not going to identify too heavily with dad. I’m not going to make an album with him. I’m not going to do any of that stuff.” People said, “Go out on the road with him.” But I thought, “No.” Then when I moved to New York in the ‘90s I was able to let a lot of it go. I just thought, “Well, I’m getting older. So is my dad. I don’t want to keep my differences up any longer.” A few years later he came and played Carnegie Hall. He asked me to sing, “I Still Miss Someone” with him. But I felt this old resistance in me again. When I met him at his hotel in the afternoon to go the show, he asked, “Are you going to do it?” I said, “I don’t think so, Dad.” He went, “OK,” turned and walked into the other room. When I saw him turn his back, I thought, “I have to do it.” It was the sweetest moment we ever had together. It was so beautiful. VH1: His music over the past decade has become starker and starker. Is that cause and effect? Cash: No. He’s pretty much done everything and played everywhere and defined himself and then undefined himself. Now he’s redefining what’s essential about Johnny Cash. It’s pretty amazing at this point in his life that he’s having that kind of rebirth and essential understanding of himself. Most people his age are doing parodies of themselves, and he’s like back to bottom. It’s very admirable. VH1: It’s possible your dad’s done touring now. Is that a blessing in disguise? Cash: I can’t even contemplate the idea that my dad is not going to tour anymore. It’s part of his bloodstream, how he defines himself. It’s where his energy goes. It’s where his most intimate relationships are. You can’t write him off. He has so much of the phoenix in him, he’s come back from death so many times in so many ways, you can’t say it’s over. VH1: There have been so many occasions over the years when it seems like Johnny’s been real sick, and then two days later he’s back. Cash: My dad’s has enormous regenerative powers. He did die on the operating table once. When he had heart-bypass surgery, he saw the light and the whole thing and came back. He was really pissed for a few years, too, and would cry at the drop of a hat. He didn’t want to come back. Short of that, he’s been at the point of death with drugs and his career being at the complete bottom and suddenly he comes back again over and over and over. I’ve never seen anybody like that. |
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