Johnny Cash: Fade to Black

Last night, I dreamed of Johnny Cash. He was sitting at the edge of my bed with a guitar, strumming and humming no tune in particular. Then he stopped, looked at me and said, “You got to play, son.” I woke with a start.

I remember when Cash died in September, 2003. It was strange that it hit me so hard. He had, after all, been ill for quite some time. I remember him being diagnosed with Shy-Drager Syndrome, a mysterious, degenerative nervous ailment. That turned out to have been a misdiagnosis, though he was still plagued with diabetes, and bouts of pneumonia which hospitalized him for long stretches. And, of course, the massive drug and alcohol abuse which characterized his early life had taken their toll as Johnny slid from middle into old age.

In the spring of 2003, his wife of over three decades, June Carter Cash (who wrote his most famous song, Ring Of Fire about their tempestuous romance) passed from the earth, leaving Johnny without his best friend and closest companion. It is a cliched truism that, when one lifelong partner dies, the other often follows in rapid succession. When two hearts beat together for so long, they can no longer beat independently, and so it proved for Mr. and Mrs. Cash.

I was raised in rural Colorado, with naught but country music to grace my ears through my early youth. I detested it so, the sad sameness of it all, the poverty of its vision. Country musicians made music seem so small. Then I heard Johnny.

Johnny was the antithesis of the other country artists who sounded so tinny from my parent’s eight track. Johnny was ten feet tall and loud as hell. It seemed like he was letting more of himself come out through his songs, all of himself – his voice dripped with a sepulchral dignity that allows for no affectation.

I remember hearing Long Black Veil for the first time. My God, I thought. If a ghost could sing about his betrayal, his love…it would sound just like this.

And the whirlwind, is in the thorn tree…

A few years before he died, Johnny had a dream that he was in Buckingham Palace, meeting the Queen of England. In that dream, she looked at him and said, “Why Johnny Cash, you’re like a whirlwind in a thorn tree!” He woke up, the phrase ringing in his head; he remembered it was a passage from Job.

The phrase refused to let him go, and he began to write. A song took shape from that dream, and over the next few years, he worked and reworked it hundreds of times. It became When The Man Comes Around, the title track for what would be his last album.

That song is Johnny Cash’s finest original creation, an extraordinary epilogue for a long and large life. Like any great piece of art, it is impossible to describe. It is country, gospel, folk, rock & roll – it is all of these things, and none. It is scary and comforting, ecstatic and foreboding. Sorrow and joy live side by side in the rhythm; Jesus playing guitar with Satan’s pick.

The whirlwind, is in the thorn tree…

I used to listen to Johnny Cash with my Grandpa. Grandpa loved Johnny, which always mystified me a little. Grandpa was so sunny, so cheerful, and Johnny was, well, so very dark. Unfailingly, unflinchingly dark. Dark enough to make The Man In Black the patron saint of Goth rockers from Mr. Reznor, to Nick Cave, to U2’s Bono (who has no small dark streak in his own soul).

And it is no wonder, really; Johnny’s voice fairly drips with impending doom, the famous quiver in the upper register hints at Apocalypse just around the corner. Johnny’s voice is a big, booming cave, vast and dark, sheltering both Preachers and Sinners, Angels and Devils, Lovers, and Murderers – long, long predating the ridiculous posturings of gangsta rap, Johnny boasted in song that one time he shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

So I was always a little surprised that Grandpa loved Johnny Cash so much. And when I first heard When The Man Comes Around, I knew that Grandpa would have loved it, too.

Johnny departed from this realm amidst a strange career resurgence. Producer Rick Rubin, known for his work with metal acts like Metallica, had picked Johnny up, dusted him off, and presented him to a new generation. The collaboration produced the critically acclaimed American Recordings albums, of which When The Man Comes Around is the best.

Johnny and Rubin especially received accolades for their haunting rendition of Trent Reznor’s Hurt, the video for which was nominated for a half dozen MTV video awards. It did not win the coveted “Best Video,” but winner Justin Timberlake, in a moment which led me to believe all was possibly not lost with the younger generation, proclaimed in his acceptance speech what everyone knew: Johnny was robbed.

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The video for Hurt is a shocking piece of film. A montage of images spanning Johnny’s entire career show his descent into frailty in all-too-vivid detail. It is sad, truly sad, to see a great man, any man, sink so before your eyes. Grandpa made that descent over four years, but in my mind, it seems just like that video; sped up and slowed down at the same time, forever wrapped up in a few painful moments.

In the years since Johnny has been gone, there has been much buzzing about the man and his work. It seems we are just beginning to realize that Johnny was perhaps a little too comfortable hanging out with the inmates of Folsom Prison, where his most incendiary concert was recorded. It seems a lot of people are only now realizing the depths from which Johnny sang.

Maybe most people don’t realize why they love Johnny Cash. I don’t think we should worry about it too much. We don’t need to ask what Johnny’s songs mean, or why they call to us like they do. The intellect may strip away lyrics and melodies, in search of ‘why’, but that is a fool’s quest. The only meaning that matters is embedded in the music itself, in the trademark boom/chick/boom rhythm that beats like the Mother Heart we hear in the womb. To appreciate this, we need, thank God, no intellect. Just a soul.

Johnny Cash died on September 12. It would have been Grandpa’s 81st birthday.

I remembered something as I woke from my dream last night. Years ago, I was troubled by which direction I should take, what I should be. I asked my Grandpa what he thought I should do. “You got to play, son,” he said.

And maybe that’s why I woke with a start last night. In the years since Grandpa died, in the years since Johnny died, I have done everything but.

Matt Patterson is a columnist and commentator whose work has appeared in The Washington Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, and Pajamas Media. He is the author of “Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story.” His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.