JOHNNY CASH & THE SIMPLE THINGS IN LIFE

by
Richard O'Donnell

"Hello, I'm Johnny Cash," says the man dressed in black, his guitar swung around his shoulder, draped behind his back. A genuine Country Western star that was as much about rock and roll as Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, and he even dug Bob Dylan too. That was John R. Cash, the man that flips his guitar around, starts strumming, and breaks through the hoots and hollers singing Folsom Prison Blues.

Wish I could have been there, heard that landmark concert in the big house. Yeah, that would be a moment to remember. Would've been nice to watch Johnny's father Ray "eye" him from the wings or survey Cash introduce Glen Sherley, asking him to take a bow. He was the inmate who penned Greystone Chapel, the song Cash finished the concert with, and which was sadly omitted from the film.

Cash struggled with inner demons, sure, just like every other artist in the world. No big deal really. He's just one of the many in that regard, but his music, his lyrics, his baritone intonations, and as important, his revelation to make his family the band that backed his image up onstage, that's the story there to tell. The Carter Family, Country Western royalty that included daughter June were present when Cash swaggered onto that Folsom Prison stage in front of thousands of incarcerated cons. So were Marshall Grant (bass), W.S. Holland (drums), Carl and Luther Perkins (electric guitar), and The Statler Brothers doing vocals. Wow. But most of that was wiped away, the excuse of the 90-minute window, Hollywood's favorite lie.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Cash all subtle and complex; I've got no problems there. And Reese Witherspoon as June was enough to make me drool, but the truth, the truth just wasn't in the spotlight. Give us less of those fictitious conversations and more of his in-studio incantations or ripping it up onstage or hanging with the band eating tenderloin on a biscuit June cooked-up. Take us there, to the simplicity of a rebel's life, and his need to make the band his family up onstage. There's the story of Johnny Cash my father used to tell.

My dad was your average blue collar Joe. He had a handsome twelve-string guitar hanging on the wall. A tall lanky, square-jawed rebel that loved to sing that Country Western. Not to mention the stacks and stacks of Nashville in our livingroom. LPs like Willie Nelson's Stardust, Roger Miller's King of the Road, Tammy Wynette's Stand By Your Man, and Dolly Parton's Just Because I'm A Woman were just a few of the stereophonic viny's in our house. But it was Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison that dad listened to all the time. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Eve my old man listened to that scratchy-old, fizz a-poppin' record croon The Green Green Grass of Home. He'd look at me and wink, drink his Miller Highlife, and nod his head in appreciation for the man dressed black on black. For like Johnny Cash, my father believed in the uncomplicated life. He left the intricate alone.

I got a sense my daddy wasn't by his lonesome. I think Cash touched a lot of men across America. Regular guys that understood his primal insolence to the bone. For after a bullet ripped a president's skull and Vietnam claimed the lives of many sons, everything was questionable. With that much anarchy about, a more tangible way of life was prayed for. That's what my dad and his buddies desired most. Make it yesterday, dear Lord.

So the movie Walk The Line missed the horseshoe (no "almost" in that game), and spiffed a story up that was way better black and white. But damn, that's what Hollywood does. A system run by bankers and get-rich-quick kids that toss minimal all to hell.

But I believe that Johnny Cash knew deep inside his soul, that life was getting way too complicated, way too thorny for the average Joe. So when he stepped onto that stage one cold day in January, 1968, to sing his ever-lovin' heart-out, he was recording for the everyman, a simpler way to go.