DISGRACELAND - Johnny Cash: Pills & Playing With Fire

Episode Date: May 28, 2019

Johnny Cash took no shit. He was a total original. Could maneuver that big baritone around a ballad or a rave up like nobody’s business. He also burned down a national forest, crashed cars, overdosed, was arrested for drug trafficking, and was obsessed with June Carter. Their love affair is one for the ages. Through it all, Johnny maintained his sense of empathy and his big heart. His story is unlike any other. Listen to Disgraceland to hear how Johnny Cash played with fire both figuratively and literally.This episode was originally published on May 28, 2019. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. Stories about country singer Johnny Cash are insane. He was busted for drug smuggling. Burned down a national forest. Crashed Cadillacs. Fueled himself daily with speed, tranquilizers, and beer.

And was rebellious to his core. He took little to no lip from anyone, fought relentlessly with authority, cops, judges, prison wardens, and for the underdog and against social injustice. once, even famously getting into it with the Ku Klux Klan. He was also daring and big-hearted and most everything he did, daring to dream big in love and in life and fearless in pursuit of his art and the woman he loved, June Carter.

Johnny Cash constantly played with fire. He was a walking time bomb, a human wrecking ball of self-destruction, seemingly always one false move from death. But Johnny Cash made great music. That music you heard at the top of the show. that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Flaming Mellow Flutes BK1.

I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to hello goodbye by the Beatles. And why would I play you that specific slice of two-faced cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on January 13, 1968. And that was the day that Johnny Cash stepped onto the stage at Folsom Prison

and created one of the most important. during musical statements of the 20th century. A statement that were it not for his willingness to play with fire likely would have never happened. On this episode, Two-Face cheese, mellow flutes, drugs at the border, playing with fire, and the man in black, Johnny Cash. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgraceland. The gunman's hand was steady, cool under pressure.

Johnny Cash respected that. The steel from the pistol was cold. Johnny wanted it to stay that way. He could feel it as the gunman pressed it to the back of his neck. Johnny wasn't scared, though. As usual, he was cool, steady, just like as a sound. Not because he was some sort of TV tough guy, and not because he was distracted by drugs or drink,

but because he had faith. Faith in three things. His Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the love of his life, his wife, June Carter Cash, and the power of music. He dedicated his life. life to all of them. Most recently to his wife, sitting next to him at the moment in their home, bound by strong rope, with their eyes averting contact with their homes invaders, resolute, as was

their normal disposition. And for the past decade or so, Johnny had dedicated a large portion of his creative and personal efforts to Christ, churning out numerous recordings to evangelize the good word, and declaring that, quote, being a Christian isn't for sissies. It takes a real man to live for God, A lot more man than to live for the devil. If you really want to live right these days, you've got to be tough. But Johnny happily preached another kind of gospel as well, a gospel of country music. On his long-running music variety television show on ABC,

that he hosted and produced, bringing to the stage and thus the living rooms of millions of Americans, country musicians he adored and respected, like Merle Haggard, Timmy Wynette, Marty Robbins, and many others. As well as the folk rock musicians he admired, like his friend, Bob Dylan and Johnny Mitchell. Johnny's faith was calming.

It was everything. Even back then, back in the 60s, when his life was anything but calm. The gunmen were desperate in playing with fire, but Johnny knew that the demands they were making on him and his family would somehow work themselves out. Johnny Cash knew about desperation, and he knew about playing with fire.

He closed his eyes, took a long, quiet, deep breath, and let his mind bring him back a couple years. In 1964, Johnny Cash, was a well-known and respected performer. His musical style was completely his own. To date, there's never been anyone who's come close to sounding like him. His was a hard driving but effortless sound, honest, at times humorous, and totally authentic.

Johnny Cash's music deftly balanced the energy of rockabilly with seasoned country music, and it was all anchored into something spiritual with the gravitas afforded him by his voice, a deep, sophisticated sounding baritone. When you heard Johnny Cash, you knew. It was Johnny Cash. He performed upwards of 200 shows a year. His albums and singles on Sun and Columbia Records were well known to country and pop fans alike.

His 1963 single, Ring of Fire, topped the country charts at number one for seven weeks and cracked the top 20 pop chart. His reputation as a hard-drinking outlaw, constantly battling his demons in song, along with his signature, Man in Black style, made him unmistakable, and one of the most popular entertainers in the country.

country. But despite his star status, Johnny Cash was a serious drug addict and alcoholic, who popped up to 100 pills a day, mostly amphetamines and barbiturates, and chased them with full cases of beer, the result of which made him legless, incoherent, and totally unreliable as a performer to his fans and as a husband to his wife and as a father to his four daughters at the time. But the bad behavior did have the benefit of making him a totally reliable narrator, authentic to his core and with the absolute authority to deliver lyrics that are bold and direct and right up in your face, just like Johnny Cash. The drugs, the drink, and the violent, dangerous mishaps that went along with his particular brand of boldness meant that Johnny Cash was playing with fire.

Just like the lyrics to his 1964 song, Bad News, said, there's no mistaking who or what he was, a fast-moving bad, bad man. The judge knew this. He could sense it sitting across the courtroom from Johnny. Johnny had been in front of many judges up until this point and had little interest in what they had to say. And Johnny took the criminal rap in stride. Things always seemed to work themselves out. He'd live another day, breathe the air of a free man and make his way to the next gig, or through the next pile of pills, or to the bottom of the next case of cold ones, whichever came first. So Johnny had no problem getting lippy with the judge.

Besides, the charges were bullshit. killing condors, endangering protected wildlife, destroying property, federal property, shit. Regarding the fire that did all the damage Johnny was now being charged with, the one that burned down 500 acres of Los Padres National Forest in California, and killed a reported 53 endangered condors, the judge asked Johnny, did you start this fire? Johnny shot back to the judge. No, my truck did, and it's dead, so you can't question it.

Johnny meant it. At least he thought he did. Truth be told, he couldn't remember who or what started the fire. But he was sticking to his story, that his truck's wheelbearing overheated, cracked, and leaked oil onto a tire, which threw it onto the forest dry grass, and that that's what started the fire. However, the most reasonable explanation

accounts for Johnny picking up his nephew Damon for a fishing trip. Johnny was half in the bag when he arrived, and by the time they hit the forest, Johnny was blitzed. Damon bailed to get in some fish. fishing and left his uncle to get his head right. Johnny set up camp and lit a fire to keep warm, but blitzed on pills and beer was unable to control the flames

when they quickly began to spread, like wildfire. The smoke was reported, and in no time, over 100 firefighters descended, including healy jumpers and five airtakers. After a couple hours, the fire spread,

covering acre upon acre of forestland. 400 firemen from all over the state were called in to battle and eventually stopped the flames. In the process, an eventual 500 acres was destroyed, as were 53 endangered in protected condors nesting in a refuge in the nearby CESP wildlife area. Johnny was near legless in court, hacked to the gills with pills to fend off the reality of the situation.

The judge asked, do you feel bad about what you did? Johnny replied with a thick tongue. Well, I feel pretty good right now. But how about driving all those condors out of the refuge, the judge asked? You mean those yellow buzzards? I don't give a damn about your yellow buzzards. Why should I care? Johnny Cash cared about little at the time.

He didn't care about the judge or the judge's questions, nor did he care about his family or his fate, or even his career. He didn't care about his fans or his music. He didn't care about condors or yellow buzzards, and unlike the rest of the world at the time, he didn't care about the Beatles either. Why should he? He was Johnny Cash.

The gig in Dallas that night was unmembrose. Johnny was supposed to bounce out afterward on a flight to L.A., but he bailed. Instead, he flew to El Paso. From there, it was only a short 30-minute drive south on Route 45, over the U.S. border to Juarez, Mexico, where they kept the good pills. And Johnny Cash needed those pills. The cabby drove like a maniac, just the way Johnny liked it. And there was no time to spare.

He needed to score and get high or else's moods would get the best of him. The road from El Paso, Texas to Juarez, Mexico was a dusty passing blur of sunstrokes and roadkill. A vision right at home in the drug-addled cobweb brain of Johnny Cash in October 1965. The volume on the cabby's radio was jacked, downtown by Petula Clark blasting back at maximum volume. Johnny was annoyed and about to say something when the song ended and within seconds the cat was overtaken by the sound of John Lennon's singing, Help. His unmistakable voice, repeating the title word over and over again in the chorus. The final call for help, dragging Johnny suspiciously into the Beatles' verse with curious ears. What the hell was this?

The song was enthralling. Paul McCartney's bass bounced from the one to the five. In a way that was very familiar to Johnny. As were the low bass notes struck by George Harrison on the rhythm guitar. Dumb, don't, drum, it was all country music. Johnny felt a tinge of resentment, but Ringo swung like a motherfucker, and Johnny was hard-pressed to do anything but loved the song. The rhythm sealed it for her, just like it always did.

The song was infectious, and that big acoustic guitar humming along, bold and up in your face. Johnny knew that sound, too, the sound of a Gibson, J-180. The model made popular by the Everly Brothers, a little smaller than the J-200 Johnny slung, but country nonetheless. Either way, he had to hand it to the Beatles. There was way more going on in this tune than anything else than the radio at the time. Just like countless numbers of previously recorded country songs, Help was jammed with insecurity and desperation,

but it was funneled through a completely new pop songwriting paradigm. The sound, the production, it was alive, and it came screaming out of the speakers. Sure, the country influences were there, but combined with the modern production and the naked emotion, the whole sound was totally new. Johnny, blitzed, as usual, wasn't sure if his head was fucking, with him or not? Was Lenin literally crying out for helping the track? On the record? Over the radio? The thought was gone almost as quickly as it came, kind of like the song. It was over in two

minutes and 30 seconds, followed quickly by Sam the Sham and the Faro's excellent willy-bully. One, two, three, four. Johnny let the song bounce through him in unison with the rock and the roll of the early model de Soto custom carrying him over the bumpy road to Horace Mexico. Despite Sam the Sham, Johnny couldn't get his head off of the Beatles. He'd met them a couple months earlier at the Cow Palace up near San Francisco, and frankly, could have cared less. He found them, at the time at least, to be comical, but also smug and awash in the glory of their own bullshit.

Johnny was there because, frankly, he didn't have anything better to do that day. June Carter of Carter family country music royalty fame was off playing shows somewhere else, no longer on the road with Johnny and his band, port of Johnny's act, and Johnny was at loose ends without her. Their secret affair was, next to getting high, his main priority in 1965. And at the Cow Palace that night, backstage and waiting, like a chump alongside folk singer Joan Baez to meet the Beatles, Johnny Cash, perhaps because of Baez's undeniable beauty, had June Carter on his mind. She was beautiful, kind, supremely talented,

both as a musician and as an artist. She was one of those rare types of people whose talent doesn't affect their ego. June Carter, despite her obvious gifts and celebrity, was at once endlessly interested, as well as being endlessly interesting. And she understood Johnny Cash on a molecular level. It was the type of understanding that can possess and propel a man.

Their attraction for one another was next level. It was chemical, scientific. June Carter's sexuality singed Johnny Cash. At a show with June back in August up in Toronto, Johnny overcome with his desire for his not-so-secret-secret girlfriend, called her a sex machine from the stage. Wasted again on booze and pills, Johnny left the stage, dropped down onto all fours and began howling at June

and following her around while attempting to lick her ankles. It was the kind of public breakdown. The had it happened in the Internet age, would likely have been a career killer. But because it happened in 1965, resulted in only a short mention in the Toronto Star, admonishing Johnny for his act being inappropriate for children. Married or not, Johnny was obsessed, to the point of distraction. Johnny Cash was once again playing with fire.

June Carter was a world wrecker. Pills were ever necessary. It may have been Mexican radio, but it was owned by the little lads from Liverpool. After Woolly Bulley, it was right back to the Beatles again. George Harrison's intro riff to ticket to ride pierced the static on the cab speakers and pulled Johnny's head out of June Carter's pants for the moment. Ringo's staggered but steady beep banged on through when Johnny was held fixed again by John Lennon's lyrics,

melancholy, blue and full of sex, just like Johnny. Johnny knew Lennon was talking about sex. It was all right there, in the air, in his head. Damn it, he missed June. The pills would help, and they always did. And right now, Johnny Cash was. staring at a suitcase filled with them. His enterprising cab driver had returned from a shady horace bar

with enough dexedrine and tranquilizers to put an entire audience of grand old opera fans out to pasture, which, after being banned from the opera back in 56, was a fate Johnny would have relished seeing come to fruition. But enough about the past. The future was now, and Johnny Cash was Mooy-Jonesing, so he threw a handful of pills to the back of his throat, chased him down with a warm bottle of beer

and began stuffing the rest of his newly-bring. procured stash into his guitar case. He was flying back to the States. He had to get back to June ASAP. And the De Soto, despite the cabby's lead foot, wasn't going to cut it. Johnny's drug-slinging cabby made his way to the airport in El Paso, but not before being made by a couple of cops. Johnny was searched on suspicion of heroin possession.

The cops didn't find heroin, but they did find Johnny's pills. 68 dexigine, 457 Econol. Johnny Cash was busted. and thrown in jail. Perhaps out of shame or more likely out of fear of being locked up for a long stretch, Johnny Cash straightened himself out for a moment anyway. He put June Carter on the shelf and began a period of reconciliation with his wife, Vivian, if for no other reason appearance's sake.

The judge would most likely go easy on a family man when disthinking, especially one who was doing his best to clean up his act and to pull himself out of the scandalous ring of fire that had come to define him in the newspapers. It worked. At his arraignment, Johnny appeared clear-eyed and gained weight. His wife was at his side, standing by her man, and there was no smart ass in Johnny's answers to the judge like there had been back during the Los Padres wildfire incident.

Johnny's lawyers went to work, and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge. The judge went easy on him, a $1,000 fine, and a 30-day suspended sentence, in effect, leaving Johnny to get his life and career back in order. But Johnny Cash could not leave well enough alone. reckless, stubborn, hellbent. He was like a moth to a flame. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Johnny Cash was dead on the floor, and it was all Ronnie Hawkins's fault.

Ronnie Hawkins, the hard-driving Canadian rockabilly Hellraiser, singer of the Hawks, the man who told his young guitarist Robbie Robertson and his pitch to get him to join his band, you won't make much money, but you'll get more pussy than Sinatra. Had it seemed drunk and drugged his friend, Johnny Cash into an early grave, pretty much to the surprise of no one. Despite Johnny's attempt at sobriety and fidelity a couple months prior, he was back to his old ways.

Pills, booze, June Carter, he was a man possessed, bent on self-destruction, and Ronnie Hawkins was the perfect wingman for such a mission. Following a semi-disaster show earlier in the evening, the two set about to party. At some point, Ronnie took off. and Johnny fell into his stupor. He was found the following morning, faced down on the floor of his motorhome in the parking lot of the Toronto Four Seasons,

without a pulse. And at the time in the music industry, Johnny Cash was a liability. Promoters knew he'd pack him in, but they figured he was 50-50 on whether or not he'd show up sober enough to play. His manager, Sal Halif, was doing everything he could

to outrun Johnny's ever-deteriorating professional reputation, managing the fallout from the bus, in El Paso, the trials surrounding the fire at Los Padres, the long string of canceled concerts due to Johnny's drug and alcohol use, and of course, covering up the car crash in Nashville, the one where Johnny totaled June Carter's Cadillac. Saul had a scramble to keep the details of the crash, and Johnny and June's affair under wraps and out of the newspapers. Somehow, Saul's hustle always kept it so Johnny Cash would live at the end of the day. But on that morning in Toronto on March 19, 19th,

they both seemed out of options. Johnny Cash had no pulse, and no one had any answers. Where were his pill stash? What should they do? Who should they call? Where should they go? They could go to the hospital, but that would mean making the overdose public

and thus driving the final nail into the coffin that was Johnny Cash's career at the moment. And they could say, fuck it, and try to revive Johnny themselves, and head to the next show. But that was in the States and Rochester, New York. So that meant crossing the border and subjecting Saul and the rest of Johnny's entourage to a custom search

and risking the discovery of what was believed to be an ample supply of Johnny's illegal drugs and thus jail for the lot of them. Either way, they were screwed, so they said fuck it. The show must go on, and they headed to the border. They endeavored to bring Johnny back to consciousness, slapping him about the face, yelling at him, pounding his chest until by some stroke of dumb luck they were able to generate some signs of life, minimal as they were, twitch of the eyelid, a moan,

a labored cough. It was enough for them to press on. And they stashed a prone Johnny Cash under a pile of dirty laundry and miraculously made it through customs without being searched. Soon enough, they were able to fully revive Johnny. They made it to Rochester in time for the show. And with Johnny's heartbeat now ticking again at a normal pace, and with the benefit of a couple hours of forced sobriety, Johnny Cash waltzed onto the stage and delivered a transformative performance. It was nothing short of a miracle. It was inspired. just like Johnny's love for his touring mate, June Carter. That year, in 1966, Johnny's wife Vivian filed for divorce.

A request Johnny was happy to oblige. Also that year, June Carter formerly divorced professional badass Edmund Rip Nix, a former football player, race car driver, and cop. Johnny and June were finally able to be with one another. Not that anything had really stopped them before, but now they were able to be out in the open about it. And now, with June's support, or more likely with the prospect of some sort of real future with June, the woman of his dreams, Johnny Cash took a sincere swing at sobriety, and it stuck. With a clear head, his next move was to take his career to the next level. He needed a hit. Popular music was evolving at a fevered pitch. Dylan had gone electric. The Beatles were going psychedelic.

And if Johnny Cash didn't make some sort of new musical statement, he was going nowhere. He had an idea, a collaboration of sorts, with murderers, rapists, bank robbers, in an assortment of men just like himself. Bad, bad men, who used to move fast, but weren't going nowhere. A captive audience of bag men, second story men, wheel men, confidence men, men out on the margins, men with no direction home, men who played with fire, fulsome prison men. Johnny's record label, Columbia Records, wasn't having a lot of. any of it. But Johnny went through with the plan to record a live show for an album release

that's storied prison he'd written about in his 1955 Sun Records release, Falson Prison Blues. Since then, Johnny had been written to from countless prisoners who identified with not only his music, but with his fast-living, sometimes criminal behavior. Just like them, Johnny Cash had stripes. Johnny also had empathy. He felt for the prisoners. He knew what they were up against, and he knew the energy he'd bring to a live show for them would be transformative, and thus worthy of getting down on tape. Against Columbia's wishes, Johnny went ahead with the project. The proof is in the performance.

What you hear on record on Johnny Cash's at Folsom Prison is unlike any other pop music live record. The excitement from the audience, the result of a truly impassioned performance by Johnny Cash in his band, the Tennessee 3, plus Carl Perkins on guitar and June Carter on backing vocals, is palpable. and infectious. During the set, Johnny was Johnny.

He was inspired and inspiring. He cajoled the inmates. He paraded June, a beautiful woman on stage, the likes of which some of the men in the audience hadn't seen in the flesh in years. In Cocaine Blues, a song where the main character snorts a mountain of Coke and kills his cheating wife after a bad night in Horrors, Mexico.

Johnny changed the lyric, I shot my woman down to, I shot that bad bitch down. Unsurprisingly, The prisoners went nuts. There he was. The Man in Black, Johnny Cash, in a maximum security prison,

surrounded by machine guns and felons, with the woman he loved, skirting danger, risking it to make the album that would define him. The results were undeniable. The record went to number one on the country charts, but more importantly, and totally on brand for the Man in Black,

it hit number 13 on the pop charts. Upon its release, the album was hailed critically, and to this day has become a cultural landmark of sorts, a piece of music that is much more than a piece of music. It's social commentary. It's a fast thrill. It's a swing in the face of authority. It's pure Johnny Cash. It redefined him as something more than just another hard-living country artist and reignited his career, exactly as he talked. A couple months after the Folsom performance, Johnny proposed to June on stage in front of 7,000 people at the London Ice House in London, Ontario. June said yes, finally, after multiple

previous proposals from Johnny, and the two were married in a fever on March 1st, 1968. Things finally leveled out for Johnny Cash in the 1970s. Not that it wasn't without its ups and downs, both professionally and personally, but compared to the 1960s, the 70s was a decade of relative calm and balance. Johnny and June, despite being creatures off the road, anchored themselves into domestic bliss. When not out on the road, they split their time between their home in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and their Cinnamon Hill home in Jamaica, an old sugar plantation property built in 1747 near Montego Bay. And it was where they sat, listening to their housekeeper recite Grace on an idyllic Christmas Day in 1981,

along with their 11-year-old son, John Carter Cash, the boy's friend Doug Caldwell, Johnny's sister, Reba, and her husband, Chuck. The sound of the bandits invading their peaceful holiday home was at first more surprising than frightening. A loud and out-of-place clang from the front entryway had the guests searching each other's faces for answers across the dinner table. Then, hurried feet marching furiously through the adjacent rooms and toward the room the guests were seated in sent their heart rates from pulse to pound. And finally, shouting, out of place in the Cash Carter home. No one shouted. But there it was, loud, angry, and desperate commands

careening off the interior walls of the home in the familiar Jamaican patois. Nobody move. Where are the jewels? Give us the cash. Three armed robbers, locals, menacing, hungry, at their wits ends, all armed, one with a gun, another with a knife, and a tall one with a twitch and the junkie gaze. He held a hatchet in his hand. The one with the pistol grabbed 11-year-old Doug Caldwell

and thrust the barrel of the gun into his temple. Some of the guests gasped, others averted their eyes. The smell of urine was now apparent. Johnny played it cool. What do you want? He calmly asked the assailants. Everything, where the boy dies, replied the bandit. Johnny said nothing, sat there in his chair, expressionless.

He knew these men. Boy is really desperate. He could see it in their eyes, addicted. He could also see himself from a few years earlier and recognized that were it not for a few fateful turns in the road that his reality could easily have been more like his junkie assailants. So he knew what to do. Play it cool. Give them what they want. With that ain't enough, wait for it. With time, they'd let down their guard. It was human nature. And when the opportunity presented itself, pounce, grab a chair and swing it hard into the grill, the tall one with the twitch,

level him and snatch his hatchet and hope and pray that outnumbering the other two in the ensuing melee would save your family. But it never happened. The bandits gave up pressing Johnny and his guests. They were content with the 50 grand in cash and jewelry they'd taken from the house, along with the keys to Johnny's Range Rover and split. And they didn't make it far. After local authorities were alerted, the threesome was located at the Montego Bay Airport onward to Miami to fence the stolen jewelry, and they were arrested, taken into custody and never seen or heard from again, apparently the victims of swift, cold Jamaican justice, colonial style. In the end, Johnny Cash was more upset by the fate of his assailants. Men, who he reasons, were unjustly punished for a crime

against him, the punishment for which he had no agency, than he was upset by the traumatic events of that day. The way Johnny Cash saw it, it was pure luck that he hadn't met a violent end sooner himself. Car crashes, wildfires, drug overdoses, angry, badass husbands. He'd been playing with fire for years up to that point. And even in his sober domestic years, the home in Jamaica at Cinnamon Hill was risky living. In comparison to the vast majority of Jamaican locals who existed in poverty, Johnny Cash, despite his down-home salt-of-the-earth disposition, lived as an ostentatious American rock star and a big expensive house with a pretty wife, famous. friends hired servants and

luxury vehicles, all with little to know obvious or effective security. Playing with fire and a bird, burned, burn, burn. I'm Jake Brennan. And this is Disgraceland. Disgrace land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with

Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership.

Members can listen to every episode of disgrace land ad free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at DisgracelandPod. and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at Disgraceland Pod.

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