Johnny Cash performs in Los Angeles, October, 1997.
Story & Photo by Pete Brooks
In Bob Dylan’s recent Newsweek cover story, when asked where he stood these days on God and religion, the former born-again Christian said, “I find it in the music. . . . Songs like ‘Let Me Rest On A Peaceful Mountain’ or ‘I Saw The Light’ — that’s my religion. I’ve learned more from the songs than I’ve learned from any (rabbis, preachers, evangelists). . . . I believe the songs.”
If it’s all about the songs, then, the trick usually is finding them.
Well, I found a bunch of ‘em a couple weeks ago at the Johnny Cash show at the House of Blues in L.A.
These days, it could be argued that artists like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash are anachronisms. Still doggedly exploring areas such as faith and regret and sin and redemption, while all the hot new releases find all the hot new artists exploring nothing much outside the bounds of their own perfectly preserved bodies.
Literally as long as I can remember, I’ve loved Johnny Cash’s voice — and his songs. It’s only as I’ve grown older that I’ve come to admire the man for his integrity and his courage as well as his craft.
For instance, this is a man who, at the height of the Vietnam war, released an entire album of songs specifically embracing old-fashioned, flag-waving patriotism — as well as pledging total commitment to all our boys actually fighting over there.
If you’re telling the truth, you can have it both ways, because truth has a way of being a little ambiguous. When you’re looking at something straight-on, you see it all — the cracks and crevices as well as the beauty.
That’s Johnny Cash. All cracks, crevices and beauty.
Sandwiched between the opening “Ghost Riders In The Sky” and the final tune of the evening, the venerable and goofy “Boy Named Sue,” Cash touched on all the phases and themes of his 40-plus-year career in his show at the House of Blues.
Mixing the requisite classics with a generous batch of new chestnuts, the most welcome tunes (to this reporter) were the obscure ones that I hadn’t heard live before. It seems Cash always has a few of those lined up, and this show included several songs from “Live at Folsom Prison” and a greater number of gospel tunes than usual.
Among the new tunes were a couple written by such hip, happenin’ young artists as Beck and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, and even one by the generally-respected Tom Petty. Obvious pandering to Gen Xers? Sure. But if Cash is cool with that, I can be, too. Besides, he nailed them all, especially “Rusty Cage” by Cornell.
The last time I saw Johnny Cash in concert, he said “Nowadays, they seem to be making country music for people who hate country music.” As if to emphasize that point, midway through the show on both occasions, Johnny gave the stage over to his wife, June Carter, for a mini-set and a history lesson.
Together with their son, John Carter Cash, stepdaughter Rosie Carter and step-granddaughter Tiffany Lowe, the Carter Family put on a five-song set of train songs and hymns that was wonderfully ancient and creaky and vital and alive all at the same time. The shame of it is, this kind of music is in danger of becoming as obsolete as the trains and spiritual devotion they sing about. Are you listening, Garth Brooks?
After that, Cash came back out for a few more songs and then it was all over. Too soon, the way it always is.
How do you sum up a Johnny Cash concert? I think Pete Seeger said it best when Cash received his Kennedy Center Award in Washington, D.C. last year. Seeger said, “Johnny, you didn’t just sing about the ring of fire, you were there. When we hear your music, it touches our hearts, and our conscience. When we hear it, we look at you, and we know: There goes a man.”
©1997, Gazette Newspapers
