Johnny Cash: The Life (46 page)

Back in the States, John and June played a few concerts in the South before flying to Los Angeles to appear on Glen Campbell’s TV show, where John was happy to see Nashville singer-songwriter Jerry Reed on the program too. Earlier in the year, Larry Butler had brought him a spiritually tinged Reed song, “A Thing Called Love”—and Cash grabbed hold of it. To flesh out the arrangement he envisioned, Cash brought Butler to the Evangel Temple to hear the church choir.

“I could tell he really wanted to use [the choir], but he left it totally up to me,” Butler said. “He was man enough to let me do my job as producer. I remember us sitting in the church watching the choir with all these big hairdos, which were the thing back in the day. At one point John leans over to me and says, ‘You know, they sure got a lotta hair in this choir.’ I couldn’t help but break out laughing.”

Delighted with the final recording, which did feature the choir, Cash decided to release it in January as his next single. It went to number two in the country field but pretty much flopped on the pop charts. Still, the message—again—was something Cash believed in, and he was impressed enough by Butler for finding the song that he decided to make him his new producer.

While in Los Angeles, Cash finalized a contract that would take him back to Las Vegas for the first time in nearly a decade. Instead of playing one of the second-tier downtown hotels, he would be headlining at the town’s biggest and most prestigious showroom—the same two-thousand-seat room at the hotel, by then renamed the Las Vegas Hilton, where Elvis Presley regularly headlined.

It was hard to find entertainers with enough drawing power to fill the massive showroom twice a night, and Hilton executives had been trying to lure Cash for nearly a year, but he had bad memories of Las Vegas and didn’t like the idea that he was encouraging his fans to gamble. David Victorson, the hotel’s entertainment director, and Marty Klein, who was Cash’s agent for television and other special appearances, worked out a deal that finally appealed to Cash. He would play the Hilton during Easter week. Cash would be bringing his religious message to the heart of America’s so-called Sin City.

Though terms weren’t publicly announced, he presumably got the Vegas superstar rate of $100,000 a week. The key for Cash was Klein’s assurance that the Hilton would put no restrictions on his show. He was free to play as much gospel music as he wanted. Almost immediately, Cash began to design a special show for the occasion, just as he had done for Folsom and for the White House. As soon as he got back to his hotel, Cash phoned Billy Graham to tell him the news.

Cash had begun recording the music for the
Gospel Road
soundtrack album in October 1971, but work started in earnest at a session in January 1972 when June laid down the vocal on “Follow Me,” a John Denver ballad of devotion that was to be used in one of Mary Magdalene’s scenes. Cash would go back into the studio with Larry Butler nearly a dozen more times over the next six months to record the instrumental segments as well as such songs as Gatlin’s “Help Me,” Kris Kristofferson’s “Burden of Freedom,” and Joe South’s “Children.” It was by far the most ambitious series of sessions that Cash had ever done. “John didn’t do
The Gospel Road
because he wanted to be a movie star,” Butler said. “He wanted to send a message through that movie; he wanted to tell what he thought really happened in the Holy Land.” He brought that same drive into the studio.

Between sessions the Cash troupe went back on tour, drawing nearly 10,000 fans for a benefit in Nashville, 12,000 in Bloomington, Indiana, and 9,500 at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He and June also did Reverend Snow a favor by guesting at the February 11 opening night of a new gospel show Snow would be hosting every Saturday night following the Grand Ole Opry. They also did a few dates in Europe before returning to the States to prepare for the important Las Vegas opening on March 30.

Despite the hotel’s hard work in persuading Cash to play the main showroom, the Las Vegas Hilton booking was not considered a coup by rival hotel executives in town. Shows were designed to lure gamblers to the hotel casinos. The most prized entertainers were those, like Frank Sinatra at Caesars Palace or Dean Martin at the Riviera, who tended to draw high rollers. Country music bookings were usually limited to downtown hotels or, on rare occasion, the lounges of the more prestigious hotels on the Strip. Even if Cash could fill the huge showroom, many Vegas executives believed that the fans would just watch the show and then leave rather than spend hours at the dice or blackjack tables.

Representing Cash, Marty Klein stressed to the Hilton brass that Cash’s audience ranged far wider than that for traditional country music. After all, he was selling more records than Elvis Presley and Barbra Streisand combined, both of whom had headlined the Hilton showroom. Klein, whose clients had also included Steve Martin and the team of Rowan and Martin, would prove a steady, wise voice for years in overseeing Cash’s career in Vegas and in films. By the afternoon of the opening show, even some Hilton executives were expressing concern as they looked out the windows of the high-rise hotel and saw a sea of RVs in the parking lot. Weren’t the Cash fans even going to stay at the hotel?

In his performance, Cash defied Vegas showroom clichés. He didn’t open the show with a comedian (which even Elvis did), didn’t feel compelled to use an orchestra (which Elvis also did), and ignored the mainstream hits that were considered essential in many showrooms around town (such as “The Impossible Dream” and “For Once in My Life”).

The heart of the show was the gospel music he packed into the final third of the set, both familiar numbers, including “Peace in the Valley,” and songs that would be featured in
The Gospel Road,
including “I See Men as Trees Walking.” The evening’s biggest surprise—and most controversial element—was the use of film slides from the movie projected on a screen during the final numbers.

For the finale, Cash sang the bright, optimistic, evangelical “A Thing Called Love” as he walked to the edge of the stage and shook hands with dozens of members of the audience. He then left the stage to another standing ovation. It was a bold and triumphant performance.

There were reports around town the next day that some members of the audience had complained about the show’s heavy spiritual component—and even whispers that Hilton executives had gently asked Cash to tone things down. But the show continued through the week unchanged. In the end, everyone was happy. Campers or not, Cash fans did spend their money in the casino, though they favored slot machines over roulette wheels. Bottom line, the only thing the hotel execs wanted to know was when Cash could return.

For all the celebration in Nashville that Cash had opened the door for other elite country artists on the Strip, there was little attention given to another event in March that would have a profound impact on both the future of country music and Cash’s place in it. If anything, the power brokers along Music Row considered the three-day Dripping Springs Reunion festival in the hill country near Austin, Texas, a black eye for country music. After all, the Woodstock-type show for country fans was a financial disaster.

The promoters needed to draw at least 25,000 fans a day to earn back their $250,000 investment, and their hearts sank when only 600 people showed up the first day at the 241-acre site. That was four people per acre. By Sunday the crowd had grown to 7,500, but it didn’t help much. The three-day attendance was less than 20,000. The Nashville powers were not surprised. How did the promoters ever think they could draw 75,000 people with a show that headlined Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings? Nelson hadn’t had a Top 10 country hit in ten years, and Jennings, too, was an erratic seller.

Not that anyone in Nashville was rooting for the festival to succeed. Nelson had turned his back on the town after coming to feel that the executives at RCA Victor Records didn’t understand how to market him, and they kept trying to change his singing style. (“What’s with that odd, jazz-like phrasing?”) He returned to his native Texas, where he put together a dance-minded show that combined honky-tonk and western swing, and found a receptive fan base wide enough that rednecks and longhairs were dancing side by side. Jennings, Cash’s old roommate, was working more within the Nashville tradition, but he, too, was frustrated with the country music establishment and envied the freedom that he saw his pal enjoying.

While Jennings wasn’t willing to give up his Nashville base, he was intrigued when he found that Willie’s odd fan coalition responded strongly to his hard-edged honky-tonk-rock style. He was all for it when the promoters—noticing the success of Waylon and Willie in the Lone Star State—proposed the idea of a festival appealing to both country and rock fans. To fill out the bill, the promoters booked such mainstream country acts as Roy Acuff, Buck Owens, Bill Monroe, and Tex Ritter. But the emphasis was on this new, maverick strain of country music epitomized by Willie and Waylon.

That new movement was based on a foundation built largely by Cash, all the way down to the independent “outlaw” image created by his sixties lifestyle and Folsom attitude. Dylan, Haggard, and Kris Kristofferson, of course, all helped make country music much more acceptable in the rock community. The promoters behind the festival hadn’t considered trying to book Cash because they figured he was far too big—and therefore costly—a star for them to afford.

The low turnout at Dripping Springs was eventually blamed on poor promotion. After spending their budget on talent and staging, the backers had hoped to spread the news by word-of-mouth, but it never happened. Even some Austin residents who attended the festival didn’t even know about it until they happened to drive by the site that weekend.

As Cash hit the road again in April, he was drawing more people in just two shows—nearly ten thousand in Buffalo and just over fourteen thousand in the New York City area—than that whole Dripping Springs Reunion lineup. But momentum was beginning to shift in country music. During Willie’s and Kris’s sets especially, there were signs of an unlikely bonding taking place between country and rock fans over songs that spoke about yearning for individuality in a society that was encouraging ever greater conformity. While the only thing Nashville execs seemed to focus on was the poor attendance, those who’d performed at the festival, especially Nelson, saw it as a historic weekend, and he began talking almost immediately about staging what would become a series of Fourth of July picnics that would eventually draw ninety thousand fans a day. The festival also helped establish Austin as one of the nation’s most important musical centers.

Within three years, Nelson, though just a year younger than Cash, and Jennings, just five years younger, would be considered by DJs and fans to be the rising “new” voices of country music. As unthinkable as it must have seemed in light of his Las Vegas and TV triumphs, Cash would have to battle the perception that he belonged to country music’s past. In fact, the changing of the guard had already begun.

MARSHALL GRANT CONTINUED TO FOLLOW
the music trade papers religiously, and he was taken aback when he picked up a copy of
Billboard
in January 1973. Where there had been as many as seven Cash albums on the weekly list of country best-sellers during the height of the TV show’s run, there was now just one album on the list bearing the name Cash, and it was by John’s younger brother Tommy—
The Best of Tommy Cash, Volume 1.
The drought reminded Grant of the dark days in the 1960s, when John’s chart presence faded because he couldn’t get it together for sessions. But Cash was now straight and going into the studio regularly with producer Larry Butler. So what was wrong?

The first place to look for an explanation was the music. The title song, “Man in Black,” released back in the summer of 1971, was a signature-level work, but little else on the album had been worth a second listen. In hindsight, Cash should have paid attention to the warning signals when the album failed to stir much interest. With no defining mark aside from the religious undercurrent,
Man in Black
was the first of what would be a series of generic Johnny Cash albums.

Considering how plain and predictable the contents were, it would have been altogether appropriate to think of it simply as Johnny Cash’s “1971” album. In the same sense,
A Thing Called Love
was merely his “1972” album.

Cash was drawn to the spiritual tone of the title song, written by Jerry Reed, but Cash’s version was overblown. In Reed’s version, which appeared on a 1968 album,
Nashville Underground,
“A Thing Called Love” was an intimate parable, focusing more on Reed’s vocal than on any instrumental flourishes. Cash’s version shifted the tone of the song from the sound of the Nashville underground to the garishness of prime-time TV. From the opening assault by the Evangel Temple choir to the cascading strings, the embroidery stripped the songs of any hint of the personal. At his best, Cash spoke on a direct, one-to-one level to his audience, but now he seemed to be shouting out to the millions in the TV market.

Despite its radio-friendly arrangement, the “Love” single fell flat in its bid for pop airplay, as did Cash’s version of a catchy but otherwise uneventful “Kate” by Marty Robbins. Both singles rose to number two on the country charts, but that was little consolidation for the folks at Columbia Records, who continued to watch with dismay as Cash’s sales shrank. Whereas the
Folsom Prison
album had stayed on the country charts for ninety-two weeks—nearly two straight years—the
Love
album fell off after just twenty-four.

But Cash wasn’t even fazed. The cheering crowds who greeted him each night on the road were enough to encourage him. Plus, his artistic triumphs in the 1960s had led him to trust his own musical instincts; they would eventually, he believed, pull him through any sales slump. More important, there continued to be a gradual shift in Cash’s personal agenda.

Ever since Dyess, three musical styles had formed a triangle of influences that framed his highly personalized brand of country and folk music: Jimmie Rodgers’s tales of everyday life, the emotionalism of the blues, and gospel music. But the changes in his personal and professional life in the wake of
Folsom
and the TV show had made gospel music his major concern. He was slowly beginning to value the message in his music over the quality. His underlying question was: “Is this something people should hear?”

Gradually, his passion for music was shifting entirely toward his spiritual expressions—whether on screen or on record. Though he would never put it in such crass terms, secular music was ever so slowly becoming just his day job.

As Elfstrom stayed busy in New York editing the
Gospel Road
film through 1972, Cash continued between tours to work with Butler on the music for the soundtrack. Butler had become valuable enough as producer and tour pianist that Cash hired him away from Columbia to be general manager of the House of Cash studio. Johnny’s relationship with Butler fell somewhere in between those he’d had with Don Law and with Bob Johnston. Like Law, Butler was wholly supportive of Cash’s ideas, though he played a greater role than the Englishman had in shaping the musical arrangements in the studio. He didn’t, however, follow Johnston’s lead in pushing for the defiant edge that had defined Cash’s most memorable music.

In between
Gospel Road
sessions, Cash and Butler also returned to a project Cash had begun shortly after his White House performance in 1970. During their conversation about the
Apollo 13
flight, the president had urged Cash to put some music on tape so astronauts could play it on a future space mission. Rather than use the Tennessee Three, Cash opted for a more personal approach when he went into the studio in December 1970. Accompanied only by Norman Blake on guitar, he recorded a few songs along with linking dialogue—a miniature version of
Ride This Train.
He turned to several songs he had previously recorded, including “Mister Garfield” and “Mean as Hell,” to create a portrait of the American spirit. After a couple of days, Cash started thinking of the album in more ambitious terms—as something he would release on Columbia. This led him to set it aside until he could devote more time to it. Released in September 1972 under the weighty title
America: A 200-Year Salute in Story and Song,
the album generated some interest at Columbia headquarters. The hope was that it would tap into Cash’s new role as a national icon, but the package didn’t even match the chart success of
A Thing Called Love.
The LP was another sign of lax judgment—an unfocused and unfulfilling mix of history, folklore, commentary, and songs. The idea of tackling two hundred years of American history in less than thirty-five minutes was probably doomed from the start. Cash ended up jumping from a song about Paul Revere to one about heroes of the Alamo to a musical version of the Gettysburg Address to a reprise of his own song “The Big Battle.”

When Cash started doing concept albums in the 1960s, there was a sense of daring and edge, a great young musician on a gallant quest to remain true to his artistic impulses. His choices were equally intuitive and painstakingly planned. Whatever the sales figures had been, the quality of the work was undeniable, and his artistry grew. He had proved himself time and again, never even considering making the compromises that might have brought him a mass audience for the concept albums sooner. In those ambitious works, Cash threw himself into his music because it was the only shelter from the emotional storm around him. The strength of those works empowered him with the self-assurance that is both essential and dangerous in an artist. When he was in a creative groove, there was no need for second-guessing. But the lack of critical reflection and outside input eventually catches up with even the greatest of artists. No one is invincible—not Elvis, not Sinatra, not Dylan, and not Johnny Cash.

That the
America
album was released at all suggests that nobody was protecting Cash from himself. Butler was too laid-back and deferential; no one at Columbia wanted to take on a legend despite the widespread misgivings about their star’s direction, and Holiff, who should have been the last line of defense, had stopped confronting Cash altogether. Their relationship was hanging by a thread.

If Cash harbored private doubts about the state of his recordings, there continued to be plenty in his life to reassure him about the importance of his music. On June 19 he was cheered by 100,000 people when he was the featured performer at a Campus Crusade for Christ weekend in Dallas that was described by honorary chairman Billy Graham as a “religious Woodstock.” Later that month he was awarded the Audie Murphy Patriotism Award at a Spirit of America festival in Decatur, Alabama. Most of all, Cash was getting ready to unveil his prized film.

The Gospel Road
had its first public showing at the Tennessee theater in Nashville on October 23. “It’s my life’s proudest work,” Cash told the motion picture editor of the
Nashville Tennessean
the day before the showing. “I want my friends to see the picture before I decide what to do with it.” As expected of a hometown audience, the response was wildly enthusiastic. But there was still a lot of work for Cash to do. He had to find a distributor for the film so he could begin recouping his $200,000 outlay. He also had to put the finishing touches on the soundtrack album.

Because of his focus on the film project, Cash’s secular career continued to take a secondary position, which led to the once unthinkable day in January 1973 when Grant couldn’t find a Johnny Cash album anywhere on the country charts. For some time Cash had been displaced at the top of the charts by Charlie Pride, whose generally cheerful but otherwise unremarkable records were sculpted by none other than Jack Clement. Pride’s albums didn’t generate much attention in the pop field, but they topped the country charts for thirty-two weeks in a row in 1972.

Cash returned to the country charts in February with
Any Old Wind That Blows,
an album he had put together the previous fall, but it was another listless compilation that could be described simply as Cash’s “1973” album. Nothing on the LP would become a permanent part of his repertoire.

Finally, the
Gospel Road
film was ready for its formal release.

With Holiff again on the sidelines, Lou Robin stepped forward. His corporate partner, Hal Landers, had talked 20th Century–Fox into paying Cash $200,000, the amount of his initial outlay, for the rights to distribute the movie. On February 14 the official premiere of
The Gospel Road
was held in Charlotte, North Carolina, with Billy Graham serving as honorary chairman. The following night, Cash showed the movie in Memphis, as close as practicable to Dyess. Again, understandably, the audiences loved the film.

When the album, a two-record set, was released two months later, Columbia took out a full-page ad in the music trades reprinting Cash’s comment about its being his proudest work. Unlike the relatively aimless secular work he was doing,
Gospel Road
was inspired and uncompromising. He could have made it more accessible by limiting it to a one-record album built around the generally excellent songs, including the Statler Brothers’ “Lord, Is It?” But Cash wasn’t interested in shortcuts. Just as with
Bitter Tears
and
Ballads of the True West,
he wanted to tell his full story, and he didn’t let anything stand in the way.

High principles aside, a double album containing mostly spoken dialogue was a hard sell, and the collection managed to get only to number twelve on the country charts while not registering in the Top 200 of the pop charts.

The film had even more trouble finding a broader audience. John waited anxiously for good news, but Fox wasn’t able to supply any. The plan had been to release the film initially in the South, where the studio hoped it would create enough word-of-mouth to spark strong box office results. The studio would then slowly move the film into the rest of the country. But Fox found it couldn’t even get bookings in the South for so heavily religious and unorthodox a movie. Billy Graham came to the rescue. His organization bought the rights from Fox to show the film for free in thousands of churches across the country. At least, Cash told himself, the film would be seen. That lifted his spirits enough for him to think about producing a second film, this one on the life of Saint Paul, but he eventually decided to write a book about the apostle instead.

With the album and film project complete, Cash took a pause. It felt as if a chapter in his life was over—the first chapter, he sometimes said. His long struggle had been rewarded. He had his family, his faith, his career. Once again he felt redeemed.

Even though Christopher S. Wren’s biography of him had been in the stores for only two years, Cash wanted to write his own account, stressing the role of God in his life. It would be, in some ways, a companion piece to
The Gospel Road,
titled
Man in Black.
“You’ve told the world about your beliefs,” Billy Graham said to him. “Now tell them about how those beliefs shaped your life.”

Despite the near-constant volatility, the Cash-Holiff relationship endured in the 1960s because the two men needed each other. But that mutual need waned quickly in the 1970s. Thanks to Cash’s superstardom, Holiff had made a fortune. But he was drained from the years of emotional combat. Also, as he told Lou Robin, he thought Cash’s career had peaked and it was going to be downhill from then on. He feared that Cash would start popping pills again, and he couldn’t imagine reliving that agony. At the same time, Cash saw that Robin, along with Marty Klein, was starting to do most of the work anyway, and Robin was a lot easier to deal with than Holiff. Everything didn’t have to be a battle.

There was another problem for Holiff, a ticklish one revolving around Billy Graham and
The Gospel Road.

The relationship between artists and managers is a delicate one, built around much the same kind of commitment and trust as a marriage. The only thing missing (usually) is sex. Artists want to feel that a manager cares about them as people, not just as cash cows, so any hint of distance or indifference can lead to a messy divorce. As much as John valued Saul, it was only a business relationship.

The seeds of the breakup began in the early 1970s, when John and June noticed that Saul wasn’t showing up at the Billy Graham Crusades. When they asked him about it, Holiff said he needed to keep an eye on regular concerts to protect their interests. The Crusades were benefits put together by the Graham organization. He didn’t feel a need to be there. The topic was dropped, but the Cashes were disappointed by his answer. They took it as a sign of a lack of interest.

Tensions between the two sides escalated when John and June began talking about
The Gospel Road.

Holiff was cool to the project, pointing out that it’d be hard for Cash ever to recoup his money because of the difficulty of finding a mass audience for the film. When Cash mentioned his millions of record buyers and TV viewers, Holiff—reasonably—warned that he couldn’t count on all those fans also wanting to see a gospel movie. Even though Holiff was on the set in Israel for part of the time, he still didn’t embrace the project, causing Cash to turn to Robin to put together the logistics in the Holy Land.