MO' CASH (via Mike Daley):

Alone with the Man in Black: I went to do an interview with Johnny Cash - he so moved me that I gave up my job and became a novelist (Louisa Young, September 17, 2003, The Guardian)

So there I was, sitting in Johnny Cash's front room in Hendersonville, Tennessee, about 10 or 12 years ago. He'd been with journalists most of the day and I was the last. A couple, I knew from chatting to them, were hacks with less than no interest in country music. I was worse - I was a fan.

He's looking a little tired, and a little fed up, in a polite way. The room is dim, lots of furniture, glass-fronted cabinets full of June's crystal and cut-glass collection. [...]

We get to talking about the evils of the world. I mention a song he recorded: Here Comes That Rainbow Again, by Kris Kristofferson. It's a small drama. A pair of Okie kids, a waitress and some truckers are in a roadside cafe. The kids ask: how much are the candies? "How much have you got?" the waitress replies. "We've only a penny between us". "Them's two for a penny," she lies.

A trucker notices. "Them candies ain't two for a penny," he says, and "So what's it to you?' she replied. Then when the truckers leave "She called 'Hey, you left too much money!' 'So what's it to you?' they replied."

It sounds hokey - but it's not, not the way Cash sang it, and certainly not in its first incarnation - the song is based on an intensely touching scene from Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

I mention this.

"You know that book?" he says, his face lighting up.

"I love that book," I say. "And you know that book!" Why am I surprised that Johnny Cash has read Steinbeck?

"Know that book?" he says. "I was that book." He smiles at me. It's kind of like being smiled at by Monument Valley, or the Hoover Dam. He pronounces it "Grapesawrath", like Rose of Sharon is pronounced Rosasharn.

It's remarkable how many people, professional journalists in particular, are claiming a bot of Johnny Cash's life for their own. He's become Zelig-like in death.

MORE:
-Hello. I'm Johnny Cash: The grand old man of country music died last week after a long illness. Before his death, Sylvie Simmons spent five extraordinary days with him at his home near Nashville. She is the last journalist to have talked to him (Sylvie Simmons, September 19, 2003, The Guardian)

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 20, 2003 8:11 AM