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[crewman] We're rolling.
[Johnny Cash] Today is Sunday morning.
Okay, I-I'm gonna have to think about it,
see what I can think of to say that hasn't been said before.
I sing because I'm happy
I sing because I'm free
His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me.
I guess probably the lessons of life is what brings humility,
and that's the lessons of pain and suffering.
In that cave in Chattanooga,
I was as far away from God
that I had ever been, could ever be.
[announcer] One of the truly great names in music,
a stylist, a legend in his own time,
Mr. Johnny Cash.
- [cheers] - Hello. Well, I'm Johnny Cash.
[Cash] I don't know what the Seven Deadly Sins are,
but I've been guilty of all of 'em.
[audience cheering]
[Cash] And I got so...
strung out on the amphetamines that, uh...
that nothing really mattered anymore.
There's no lonelier place on Earth for a man to be
than separated from God.
I went into this cave,
and kept walkin', and crawlin', and climbin' 'til my light had run out.
Every fiber of my being totally exhausted.
And I lay there in the darkness...
the end of the line.
I lay there to die...
[machine clacks, whirs]
[echoing thud]
[Marty Stuart] Johnny Cash was my hero.
The world called him "Johnny."
June called him "John."
His mama and daddy called him "J.R."
And that's who he was to me, J.R.
Some viewed him as a rebel.
To others, he was a saint.
And that's the story here.
But to truly know the man,
we need to go back to the beginning.
Arkansas was the end of the world--
rural, untamed, empty.
This is where people came at the end of the line.
This was their final ground.
[John Carter Cash] My father was born in 1932,
down in south central Arkansas.
He came from a land where people were tough
and life was hard.
[Joanne Cash Yates] Walking back in this home...
is so bittersweet for me.
There was such love in this house,
and tears,
and hard work.
Remembering is, uh...
sweet and it's very heartbreaking.
Very emotional for me.
They were given the house,
and the land, and a mule,
and 40 acres to farm.
[Stuart] Arkansas summers were brutal.
There was not only no air conditioning,
there was no electricity, there was no running water.
And so this was the lot
that the Cash family was in the middle of,
throughout the Depression, and after.
[Joanne] Life on the cotton farm was hard, hard work.
We would pick cotton
with long canvas cotton sacks,
day by day, exhaustion at night.
[Stuart] Every member of the Cash family worked,
including Mother Carrie.
Old or young,
the family was often out there ten hours a day
working the cotton fields, day after day after day.
[Joanne] And we'd sing all day to pass the time away.
Before we knew it, the day'd be over.
[group singing] ♪ Jesus is calling... ♪
[Joanne] And then we'd come home at night,
and my mother would sing gospel music around the piano.
Johnny would lead and we'd all join in.
We went to bed, get up the next day and do it all over again.
[John] Through that all,
singing the songs of his mother's hymnal
with his family in those fields,
my father fell in love with music.
[Greg Laurie] The Biblesays,
"Train up a child in the way that they should go,
and when they're old, they'll not depart from it."
That doesn't mean that we won't veer off the path at times,
or make some bad decisions,
but it means, there's a spiritual foundation in our life.
Carrie Cash laid that foundation in the life of Johnny Cash.
And those were the seeds his mother sowed into his life.
[Joanne] We'd lay on Mama's linoleum floor.
Jack would read The Bible,
and Johnny would write songs and sing.
[Stuart] The story goes that he would lay in bed at night
and listen to the radio.
Music was the young boy's escape.
J.R. was a dreamer. And he was artful.
[Cash] My father always told me I was wasting my time
listening to them ol' records on the radio.
I said, "But it sounds good. I like it."
He said, "It's gonna keep you from making a living.
You'll never do any good
so long as you got that music on your mind."
[Stuart] Family patriarch Ray Cash
was the portrait of a hard-hit, struggling farming man.
As with so many artful kids,
the relationship that J.R. shared with his father, Ray Cash,
was difficult, to say the least.
He had to live up to what his father's expectations were.
His father would believe in him, sometimes,
and then he would fall short.
[Laurie] And I think when you have a father
who is not communicative,
and is not embracing, and is not affirming,
it affects you.
[Cash] It's strange that my dad never hit me a lick.
On the other hand, he never hugged us.
He never, ever came close to even telling us he loved us.
[Stuart] Ray would not give him any affirmation or affection.
And so when Ray would sink into the oblivion that he would,
it would be J.R.'s brother, Jack, who stepped up.
[Cash] Jack was my best friend,
and my big buddy,
my protector, my mentor.
I really admired him.
[Joanne] They were inseparable.
Went swimming together.
They'd fish together. They'd work hard together.
Him and Johnny would get into scuffles
and then they'd hug each other. True brothers.
It was a friendship. It was a kinship.
But my dad aspired to be like him.
[Stuart] Jack was the Golden Child of Dyess
that everyone aspired to be.
[Stielper] He would go to school.
After school he would stay and pick up a few cents
working odd jobs to help pay the bills.
He was kind. He was gentle.
He read his Bible every day and was very godly.
[Cash] He'd already told us that he'd been "called to preach," you know?
It was that faith that Jack had
that my father looked up to.
[Cash] Jack, he'd love to hear me sing.
He told me that I was supposed to do that with my life.
Johnny said, "I'm gonna sing. I know I'm gonna sing."
And Jack said, "I know I'm gonna be a pastor."
[interviewer] Okay, so let's talk about Jack's accident.
[Stuart] It was a Saturday morning in 1944.
Johnny and Jack woke up in their shared bed,
like they did every other morning,
not knowing that this would be their last.
Jack worked part-time after school and on weekends
at a local wood mill, cutting fence posts.
He happily volunteered to make a few cents
to help pay the family bills.
He said, "Mama, I have a feeling I shouldn't go today."
And Mama said, "Well, don't go.
Go fishing with J.R."
[John] My father was begging Jack to stay with him and to go fishing.
"Please stay with me. Go fishing."
[Joanne] And he said, "No, I'm gonna go make $3. We need it for the groceries."
So he told Johnny, "I'll meet you at the blue hold
and we'll fish when I get through."
And so they both went their separate ways
and Jack went to the sawmill.
And he was sawing some fence posts...
and as he pushed the fence post,
it jerked him into the saw.
[Cash] Here comes my father in a car with a preacher.
Daddy took a bloody brown sack,
he pulled Jack's clothes out of that bag,
and showed me where the table saw had cut him
from his ribs down all through his stomach.
And that was the first time I ever saw my dad cry.
[Stielper] He was cut from his neck to his groin.
And survived,
even though it tore him open very badly.
[Joanne] And Johnny was sitting at his bedside, holding his hand,
and he looked at Daddy, and he said,
"Daddy, will you meet me in Heaven?"
Daddy dropped down on his knees and gave his heart to the Lord,
and so did the doctor.
[Stuart] As Jack lay in his hospital bed,
he had clear visions of the other side.
He said, "Mama, do you hear the angels?
Do you hear them singing?"
And Miss Carrie Cash said, "No, son, I don't hear them."
He said, "They are so beautiful.
Heaven is so beautiful."
[Joanne] Jack called me "Janna."
He said, "Janna, tell me bye."
And I was scared.
And I said, "No, I don't want you to go anywhere."
[voice breaking] I wish I had.
But I couldn't.
And that's when he left us. He went to Heaven.
My father lost his best friend that day.
[Laurie] Having experienced the loss of a son in a tragic accident,
I can understand the devastating grief
that comes at you like a tidal wave.
When you lose someone and they die unexpectedly,
it impacts your life in such a significant way,
you can actually measure your life from before and after
that traumatic event happened.
[thunder rolling]
[Stuart] Jack was buried on a Sunday.
The next day, the entire family
was back out in the fields, picking cotton.
[Joanne] We didn't take days off.
You just didn't have time to grieve.
My mother would work behind us,
and I'd look back and she'd be down on her knees,
weeping, saying, "Why? Why?"
[Stielper] On her worst day,
in the mud, on her knees,
after burying her son.
And we'd go help her up and try to console her.
[Stielper] And Carrie said,
"I'll get up when God tells me to get up."
[Stuart] That is what J.R. took with him, as he grew up.
When Jack died, there was an enormous void.
And J.R. seemed more determined than ever
to do something important with his life,
almost in tribute to his hero, his brother, Jack.
When times were tough, Johnny knew what his roots were.
He started out wanting to be a gospel singer.
[Joanne] I was standing here with Mama,
and Johnny was standing right out there,
by that iron hand pump.
And all of a sudden, his voice lowered.
And she said, "What is that?"
I said, "That's J.R." And she called him in,
and she asked, "Was that you singing?"
And he said, "Yes, Mama."
He said, "I'm gonna sing."
And I saw Mama put her hand on Johnny and she said,
"You have a calling of God."
And so Mama took Johnny to a voice teacher,
and she listened very intently.
And she said, "Well, you can leave now."
And Johnny said, "You mean I'm no good?"
And the voice teacher said,
"You have a gift from God that I wouldn't dare touch."
[Stuart] The biggest goal of a dreamer from Dyess, Arkansas
was to get out.
And so J.R. ended up doing
what many young men from the South and elsewhere did.
[Cash] I joined the Air Force.
College was another hope that was almost unattainable
for a cotton farm boy.
[Joanne] He was a Morse Code interceptor,
and would take in the Morse Code from the enemy
and make it into English,
so our forces could find out what to do.
[Cash] I think it's during that three years
that I really began seriously thinking
about a career in the music business,
'cause it's really all I lived for.
[Stuart] J.R. was briefly stationed in San Antonio, Texas.
And it's there he fell deeply and totally in love
with a pretty girl named Vivian Liberto.
They spent a couple of weeks dating
and then the next three years, while he's in Germany in the Air Force,
the two of them exchanged countless letters.
Those letters show a man so hopelessly in love.
Much of his poetry and his gift with lyrics
is refined in these letters.
He poured his heart out to Vivian, and she to him.
[Cash] We got married right away.
Got a very cheap car,
and a old apartment in a rundown part of Memphis.
[Stuart] To some, Memphis was the Promised Land.
Memphis was just over the Mississippi River bridge,
but it was another world.
[lively country music playing]
♪ The Mighty Mississippi gonna take me down... ♪
[Stuart] There were so many cultures all colliding in that town.
It was wild. It was exciting.
It was a landscape filled with creativity and diversity.
[Cash] I started trying to get on the radio,
but I had to go to work and make a living,
trying to sell appliances and home improvements.
[Stuart] And the next thing you know, Elvis has recorded
for Mr. Sam Phillips down at Sun Studios.
This little nondescript, squat building at 706 Union Avenue
- was fast becoming the center of a new style of music. - [phone ringing]
[Cash] I started calling Sam Phillips.
I never could get him.
Called once, I said, "I'm John Cash, I'm a gospel singer."
He couldn't see me.
[Stielper] Mr. Phillips puts him off.
He calls, leaves messages, he sits on the curb.
[Cash] So one morning, I found out what time the man went to work.
I went down with my guitar and sat on his steps until he got there.
Sam is walking into the office and he accosts the man.
[Cash] I said, "I'm John Cash. I'm the one who's been calling.
And if you'd listen to me, I believe you'll be glad you did."
And he said, "Come on in."
[Stielper] And he started singing some covers of gospel songs.
Sam said, "I'm just as saved as the rest of you boys are.
But I can't sell gospel music.
I wanna hear you in your voice."
[Cash] He said, "Come back tomorrow and bring some musicians."
So I went down to a garage where my brother, Roy, worked.
[John] He met Marshall Grant and Luther Perkins,
two amateur musicians, just as my dad was.
[Cash] The next day was our first session.
We went in, and he turned on the recorder the whole time I was there.
[microphone connecting]
[John] The music that he made with The Tennessee Two
was this brilliant, beautiful racket.
[music playing]
[Stuart] The sound was unique,
and it was something that people had just never heard before.
[Cash] I developed a pretty unusual style, I think.
If I'm anything,
I'm not a singer, but I'm a song stylist.
My music had to be simple and stay simple,
and uncomplicated and unadorned.
I thought it was fabulous.
[John] Dad, he wanted to have a drummer in the band,
but he didn't wanna hire a drummer.
[Joanne] Johnny put a dollar bill in the strings of the guitar
and made that boom-chicka-boom sound.
You listen to what sounds like a snare drum that's not.
- That's my dad. - [imitates sound]
[Rick Scott] No, they were not over-schooled or over-taught,
and so naturally it was gonna come out raw and beautiful.
[Cash] I think Sam Phillips
saw the originality in my difference,
and he'd had a lot of success
recording people that sounded different.
[song ends]
I never gave up my dream to sing on the radio.
And that dream came true in 1955.
♪ Hey porter! Hey porter! ♪
My first introduction to Johnny Cash was through my dad.
I was a little girl, and this Johnny Cash comes along
and puts out the song, "A Boy Named Sue".
And we laughed and laughed and laughed over that song.
One of my friend's older brother played me this song.
I think I was, like, 15, 16, something like that.
And I heard it for the first time,
I said, "Yo, this dude fire!"
I would listen to eight-tracks all the time with my stepdad
of Merle Haggard and George Jones,
and Johnny Cash was one of the eight-tracks that he had.
So I heard a lot of that music growing up.
♪ And ask everybody that ain't asleep ♪
I remember specifically having a CD stuck
in the CD player of one of my work trucks
when I first got out of high school.
And I couldn't switch to radio or anything.
I just had to listen to Johnny Cash
over and over and over again.
And that's where I really fell in love with Johnny's music.
[Don Reid] I'd listen to him on the radio when I was a kid.
He was growing and developing
and he was just a bigger-than-life character.
I listened to Johnny Cash,
and nobody would go, "Johnny Cash?" They'd go, "Cool."
There was not one person that didn't respect Johnny Cash.
♪ 'Cause I smell frost on cotton leaves ♪
♪ And I feel that Southern breeze ♪
[Wynonna Judd] My first experience, 1983, cassettes.
Imagine me trying to take a drink from a fire hose.
That's listening to Johnny Cash.
This voice that I hear is memorable.
I can't get it out of my head.
It's a raw voice.
It's almost like a rebel voice.
♪ I need nobody to tell me... ♪
[Stuart] I remember "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash"
comin' out of the speakers of my little record player in my bedroom,
and I was mesmerized by that sound,
and I didn't know what I was listening to.
I just knew it had me and wouldn't let me go.
[Joanne] And I remember one day "Hey Porter" and "Cry, Cry, Cry" came on.
And Mama said, "That's J.R.
J.R. singing on the radio. Isn't that wonderful?"
And she had tears.
- ♪ All right ♪ -We all did.
[Cash] Along about three months later,
Elvis Presley asked me to go on tour with him.
And from that time on, I was on my way.
And I knew it, I felt it, and I loved it.
[John] Immediately he was thrust on the road,
his young wife Vivian at home.
[Joanne] They would travel in a big, long, black Cadillac.
We did not let Johnny drive the car.
Johnny was the world's worst driver.
Even though he owns the car, he rides, we drive.
[chuckling] That's the way that worked.
[Cash] We were really having fun with our music,
and every day was a gold mine.
[Stielper] It was real, it was raw.
And this was the Johnny Cash
that people were falling in love with.
There's two kinds of people, those that know and love Johnny Cash,
and those that will.
His style was, he would write conversationally.
He would write the way people talk.
[Judd] He just spoke of common, everyday life.
Real words for real people in the real world.
[Cash] I was kinda stunned when I would see the record sales.
I thought at first it was all hype, but then every record I released,
I knew I was gonna sell a quarter of a million.
Poetry. It was poetry, man.
Let's welcome Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two!
[cheers and applause]
["I Walk the Line" begins]
♪ I keep a close watch on this heart of mine ♪
[Stuart] When Johnny Cash and The Tennessee Two were on tour,
working shows with all the other bands,
musicians were talking about their latest conquests,
their girlfriends on the side.
J.R. said, "Not me. I walk the line."
♪ I keep my eyes wide open all the time ♪
[Stuart] "I Walk the Line" is a song of steadfastness,
and fidelity, of love to his wife, Vivian.
♪ Because you're mine, I walk the line ♪
[rhythmic clapping]
[Joanne] And he was telling her that it didn't matter.
Those were just fans.
'Course it didn't turn out right, but that's what he told her.
[Stuart] When Vivian saw the effect John's singing had
on his audience of adoring girls,
it was not what she had signed up for.
He was embarking on this life where the audiences were craving him.
In simple terms, he was fast becoming a superstar.
[Western] She was a housewife.
She wanted her husband. She wanted her family.
Vivian had seen the rise of Elvis Presley
with all the girls and all the accolades.
She didn't want that.
[Stielper] While she absolutely loved Johnny Cash until the day she died,
she's got four children.
He's out on the road.
[John] And Dad wanted to be on the radio.
He said when he got into music, it never occurred to him
that he was gonna have to be traveling day after day for years,
that that was going to become his life, was the road life.
[Stuart] Being "Johnny Cash"
was something that he really never thought about or planned,
but it was inevitable.
[honking, traffic noises]
As the song says, "The road is crushing,
and it goes on forever. It's endless."
[Cooper] The thing about it is, when you're in a garage with your friends
and you're learning songs,
you never realize at some point you're going to be on the road
for four years without a break.
[Cash] Boredom had a lot to do with it. It's very boring out there on the road.
That two hours on the stage is all we live for.
The rest of the time is really a drag.
[Mansfield] Being on the road is this separate reality.
You're so isolated, in a way.
[Reid] It is not a normal life.
There's nothing normal about being in show business.
[Stuart] You do two, maybe three shows a night.
And then you drive yourself hundreds and hundreds of miles
through the night on dangerous roads.
And you've got to do it again the next night.
[Allen] You got 6,000 people in the audience
waitin' on you to come out and sing a song,
and it gets to the point where you wanna shut it off.
You don't wanna feel anything, so you drink,
or you get high,
or you find yourself with multiple women or whatever.
Anything to kinda get rid of the feeling, and once the feeling's gone,
it's anything to get the feeling back.
[Stuart] Week after week, hundreds of shows a year,
the white line always wins.
Johnny Cash!
[audience cheering]
[Stuart] A fellow musician slipped him a pill,
saying, "This will keep you going."
So Johnny took it, thinking, "This is God-sent."
[country music playing]
We really did not think that amphetamines were a problem.
[commercial voice] Poor George.
He's having a long headache.
[commercial voice 2] Is this the way you feel in the morning?
[sheep bleating]
What's the best way to reduce?
Eat plenty or starve yourself?
[Stuart] Doctors were prescribing these pills by the billions.
They were prescribed to housewives.
They were marketed to college students.
They were marketed to people to help them lose weight.
They were marketed to truck drivers
to help them on the road.
It was like taking a pill for your heart or for your blood pressure.
It wasn't, like, a bad thing.
And nobody really thought too much about it.
A lot of people in the South, "If it's a prescription, it's okay."
[Stuart] He wasn't sniffin' cocaine.
He wasn't shooting heroin.
He was taking prescribed pills
because doctors told him that they were medicine.
[Scott] When you're on the road that many dates a year,
there's all these things pulling at him.
And after a while, you just-- you need a little help.
[chuckles] You know?
That's when all of a sudden,
"Well, I better take a downer to go to sleep."
"Oh, now I better take some speed to wake up."
And now you're on a whole rollercoaster.
[Stuart] Well, if one works, two must be even better.
But then after five, and ten,
you need to find a way to slow it all down.
[Cash] I was just like everybody else.
I took drugs to get up,
and I took drugs to go down, make me feel better.
[Scott] And then before you know it,
you're poppin' pills left and right like candy.
You know, it's just a vicious, vicious cycle.
[Cash] I was taking the pills for a while,
and then the pills started taking me.
You know, so that's when it starts spiraling out of control.
[Joanne] The pills give you a high,
and you feel like you can do anything.
But when they wear off,
you feel worse than you did
before you took 'em.
[Cash] When I started drinking beer along with the amphetamines,
I'd drink about four or five a night,
but I got up to 12, 14.
Sometime I'd misjudge how high I was, you know?
And I'd get on stage and I was a wreck.
[Stuart] All the drugs made him forget
that people were counting on him.
[Western] Thousands and thousands of dollars of promoters' money
were at stake if he didn't show up,
and he didn't show up for a bunch of dates.
[Stielper] The Statler Brothers, who were in his band,
he took them to California and met Vivian and the girls,
and said he was going out for cigarettes.
Four days later, he wasn't back. He forgot.
[Western] At the Olympia Theater in Paris, France, instead of playing the show,
he took off with Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and just partied all over town,
while 2,000 people are sitting in seats
for a Johnny Cash show that never happened.
A lot of people lost money
and he was kind of lost himself.
[Laurie] He was a mere shell of the man he once was.
Those aspirations to be a gospel singer,
they're in the rearview mirror.
[Cash] It was kind of a scatter-brained period for me.
You know, it affects everything in your life
when you're on mood-altering drugs.
Everything in your life is, uh,
is not right.
[Stuart] In the midst of all this, his health is disintegrating.
He lost so much weight, he looked like a cadaver.
[Stielper] And on the charts, he's invisible.
Desperation kind of starts setting in, here.
And so, next thing you know, there you are,
going down the tubes without realizing you are,
and so is your marriage, and so is your family,
and so is everything else in your life.
[Stuart] J.R. and Vivian are in a difficult time.
I think the change of Johnny's personality
was something else,
and then, of course, the real change came
when he just fell madly in love with June Carter.
She became a member of the show cast,
and was working all the show dates with us.
But it all started with an automobile ride
from Oklahoma City to Dallas.
And June did not have a ride,
so Marshall Grant had told her was,
"June, we've got six people in that car already."
And Johnny said, "Well, she can sit on my lap. It's only three hours."
So, that was the beginning.
[Stuart] June was married to someone else, just as he was.
Both of them later described it
as being something that they simply could not stop.
It was not something to be proud of,
and he wasn't proud of it.
Which only added fuel to the fire for the amphetamine thing,
because it was tearing Johnny apart.
[Stuart] J.R. was quoted saying
he would stop taking the pills for a time,
and his conscience would return.
He would go home,
and it became obvious the toll that fame, fortune, and pills
were taking on his family.
And then the guilt would overwhelm him.
And the only way that he could ease that guilt
was to take another pill.
J.R. genuinely loved Vivian, and June,
and his heart was torn in two directions.
He couldn't seem to find his way.
It was a volatile situation, to say the least.
[Stielper] That is something that is so difficult to reconcile.
And he couldn't do it.
As a result of this situation,
June sits down and writes, "[Love's] Ring of Fire".
Cash hears it and he says, "That's about me."
[John] And Dad wanted to record it himself.
["Ring of Fire" playing]
♪ Love is a burning thing ♪
♪ And it makes a fiery ring ♪
[Stuart] Now, in addition to the stability of "I Walk the Line",
J.R. has got the fire, the passion,
the raw power of "Ring of Fire."
And this man is not just singing about it,
he was living it every single day.
♪ I fell into a burning ring of fire ♪
♪ I went down, down, down and the flames went higher ♪
[Stuart] The conflict in his head just fueled that despair he felt.
Less than two months later,
"Ring of Fire" is the biggest song in the world.
And it cements his place in country music.
It also tied him for eternity to June Carter.
[Stielper] She and he continued careening
through the mid-60s,
while he desperately tried
to hold on to the stability that Vivian gave him.
[John] In the 1960s,
the insanity of his addiction put great strains on his relationship
and kept him away from his children.
[Western] Johnny's family situation
was struggling, to say the least.
And so, an extremely difficult time
to come home to that house in California.
And one day in 1965, Johnny did not come home.
[Stuart] In 1965, at the end of a long tour,
J.R. was supposed to go home.
Instead, he got off at the airport in El Paso, Texas.
[plane engine whirring]
[Western] Vivian called and said, "Where's Johnny?
He was supposed to be home yesterday."
[Stuart] He decided that he was gonna go across the border into Mexico.
[honking]
He went and found a drug dealer,
and bought over 1,100 Benzedrine and Dexedrine pills.
[shutter clicking]
[siren wailing]
Unbeknownst to him at the time,
the police were keeping an eye on this drug dealer.
But when they saw Johnny Cash in the crosshairs,
they tracked him very carefully until he got to the airport,
opened the guitar case, and found the pills.
[shutter clicking]
[Joanne] The guard said, "You can get the pills out
or we'll tear your guitar apart."
So Johnny got the pills out, and he was arrested, and it hurt.
It hurt, not because it bothered us,
as much as we hurt for him,
because we knew that he was right in the midst of his downward spiral.
And we were praying daily that God wouldn't take him.
[Laurie] The drugs, the immorality,
the bad decisions were all catching up.
[Scott] Johnny Cash was very self-destructive.
Self-destructive behavior will either get you through it,
see the light, or kill ya.
[Cash] We were all young and wild and crazy.
- [Kurt Loder] How crazy were you? - I was crazy as you can get.
I mean crazy-crazy.
[John] There were quite a few times in his life that he nearly died,
and would have been possibly by his own folly.
[brakes screeching]
Car wrecks. He caught a vehicle on fire in California
and burned down many acres of a forest there.
He did a lot of bad things during those drug years.
[Harry Reasoner] The Grand Ole Opry banned you at one time.
[Cash] Well, I don't know how bad they wanted me in the first place,
but the night I broke all the lights on the stage...
[people clamoring]
...they said they couldn't use me anymore, so.
[Western] Really tough on all of us to stand there and watch it happen,
because you can't help somebody like that
unless they want the help.
And at that particular time, he didn't want any help.
If that was gonna be a subject of conversation, just forget it.
[Cash] There's one thing about, uh...
someone addicted to pills, alcoholics, you know,
they're very selfish.
You know, they don't care about anybody but themselves
and the way they happen to feel right now.
And that's all I cared about, all I talked about,
how I feel, what I want for me, you know?
We saw him at his worst.
We saw him when we didn't know
if he was gonna be able to-- to make the show the next day,
or rather he was gonna continue his career.
[Scott] Well, it must've been just overwhelming for the man.
All these wonderful accolades comin' at him,
but all this terrible stuff comin' this way.
I mean, if there's ever a devil and a god on each shoulder,
there had to be.
The light and darkness thing is something that we all have.
There's a mean dog and a good dog in all of us.
And what you try to do, and you're always trying to do is,
feed the good one as much as you possibly can.
The one that's gonna win is the one that gets fed the most, right?
So I think the thing about Johnny that made that even more obvious,
he was always trying to feed the light.
But he wore the darkness and the light on his sleeve.
[Joanne] He was two people. And he'd be the first to tell you that.
He said, "Johnny is a nice guy.
But sometime Cash gets into trouble."
[Stuart] John R. Cash came to the end of himself
in October of 1967.
[John] His addiction had really wore him down.
My mother had told him that she wouldn't talk to him,
she wouldn't spend time with him.
He was at a point where she had no choice,
and she had shut him off.
[Stielper] He is in Chattanooga, Tennessee when his lawyer calls
and tells him that his divorce was finalized.
She remarried just a week later.
He was full of despair.
[Stuart] His life was seemingly in shambles.
His addictions had taken their toll on his career,
his body, and his family.
And he was estranged from his kids.
[John] He had some land down there,
and on that land there was a cave called "Nickajack Cave".
But my dad kept sinking deeper and deeper into a depression.
[Stuart] There were these great conflicts that seared his soul.
[flashlight clicks]
[Joanne] He was really down at his lowest point,
and he took a flashlight,
and he said he was gonna crawl back in there
as long as his flashlight would burn.
[John] And in the darkness, laid down,
and basically, gave up his life,
gave up everything.
[hisses]
[Cash] I kept walkin' and crawlin' and climbin' 'til my light run out,
every fiber of my being totally exhausted.
And I lay there in the darkness,
the end of the line.
I lay there to die.
[John] But he woke up in the darkness of that cave
and felt that loneliness and the emptiness
and realized where he'd put himself.
[Cash] And it was like this feeling came over me that, uh...
that He wanted to speak to my heart.
"You do not control your destiny,"
that "It's My will that you do not die now."
[Joanne] God said, "I'm not through with you, by any means."
He said, "I'll show you the way out. Come on."
[Cash] Then the urging came over me to get up and start crawling.
I don't have any idea how long I crawled.
[Joanne] Johnny said there was some sort of light
that guided him to the entrance of the cave.
[John] For hours he crawled on the ground.
He didn't have a flashlight. He didn't have anything.
[Cash] But then finally I felt the wind.
Before long I saw light, the entrance to the cave.
The hand of God had led me.
[Crow] He faced himself, he faced his temptations,
he faced his worldliness.
[Stielper] And God's love brought him back.
[Scott] He crawled out of Nickajack Cave alive.
[Stuart] He saw the light.
He was given God's grace.
He came out wanting to be right with God.
Doesn't mean he was perfect with God,
but he wanted to be right with God.
[Cash] I was losing my voice.
I had stopped composing.
I didn't have any heart for what I was doing.
And I realized that, uh,
that God didn't want me to live that kind of life.
He had to put himself into that darkness
before he would appreciate the light.
And that's what happened, is that he came out a different man.
[Allen] And when he finally did give up those things that were weighting him down,
the thing that helped him do that
was his faith in God Almighty.
[Laurie] And in that cave, he hears the Lord say,
"What are you doing here?"
This reminds me of a story from The Bible,
a similar experience that involved the prophet Elijah.
Here is this prophet of the Lord,
who's depressed and discouraged
and he goes into a cave and while he's in that cave,
God said, "What are you doing here?"
Johnny came out of that cave a different man.
Now he was a man on a mission.
[Mansfield] All that success, all the partying,
all the money, all the fame, it's not real anymore.
And you start realizing what is real.
We saw him at his lowest.
But, that is where he remembered that God was on his side.
[Laurie] You know, Jesus doesn't say,
"Clean up your life and come to me."
He effectively says,
"Come to me and I will clean your life up."
[Judd] At that moment of despair,
he chose to get back up.
[Scott] There is a light.
And if you'll hang in there long enough,
you will get through the tunnel.
And that's exactly what Johnny Cash did.
[Cash] I came back from Nickajack Cave
and June, she said, "You're dying, you know?
You'll die if you don't get off of the amphetamines and the sleeping pills."
And I said, "I know it. I will."
And she said, "I'll tell ya what I'll do.
I... I wanna save your life.
And I'll be here at this house every afternoon.
And that way you can stay straight and look forward to seeing me.
And we'll get this thing whipped."
[John] When he reached out to people that could help him,
my mother was there.
[Cash] I was on self-destruct
and she saw what I was doing to myself
and she helped bring me back up out of it.
[June Carter] I thought he was gonna die.
He was just skin and bones. I worked with him.
There was something that just wouldn't let me give up.
[Judd] He's detoxing and there's June.
I can just see her, like,
"You'll have to come through me."
Call it old-fashioned.
Call it tough love.
That's what you do.
Without question, June Carter saved the life of Johnny Cash.
She helped him to get off the pills, and she stood by his side.
[Cash] And June, her mother and daddy,
and all my family and friends were downstairs,
sleeping in sleeping bags, and it kept me going.
They were praying together.
And the Lord brought him through that.
[Cash] It was the spirit of the love of God
that made a survivor out of me.
And not only a survivor, but a sustainer.
[bells tolling]
[John] My father had a moment
where he went back to the cross.
[Joanne] The Lord was drawing him back to himself.
He was on his road back to the Lord.
So Joanne invited her brother, Johnny, to church.
Joanne's life had been changed by Christ in this church.
She wanted it to happen for her brother.
[Joanne] I could see him
just drinking in the pastor preaching.
When I finished my message that morning,
I gave an altar call and I said, you know,
"If you want to find Christ,
if you want to do the right thing with the Lord,
put up your hand."
So his hand went up.
[Laurie] Johnny stood up and made a public profession,
and walked forward and said, "I'm gonna follow Jesus Christ."
A public profession means you're saying,
"I believe, and I don't care who knows.
In fact, I want others to know."
And then a person coming to Christ may pray
what we sometimes call "a sinner's prayer",
and it goes along these lines.
"Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner,
but I know that you're the Savior
Who died on the cross for my sin
and rose again from the dead. I'm sorry for my sin.
I turn from that sin,
and I choose to follow You from this moment forward."
Johnny prayed a prayer like that,
and his life was changed for time and eternity.
And the good news is, anybody can pray that prayer,
and they too can have the hope that Johnny Cash had.
[Joanne] Johnny and June and all the girls were down at the altar.
Johnny told me,
"I think it's about time I led my family back to Jesus."
[Rev. Snow] I watched the man cry his heart out down there in that altar,
and all of 'em together, every one of 'em.
And when they opened up their hearts to the Lord,
it changed everything.
[Reid] He came to us and he said,
"Guys, I know this has been rough out here."
He said, "I just wanna tell you all, I'm gonna clean up."
And from that point on, he rededicated his life in many different ways,
and redoubled his efforts into spreading the word of Christianity.
[Reid] It's a scary sight.
It's towering above ya.
And we all walk in there that morning,
and hear the clang of the metal doors
closing behind you.
[Cash] Through the pain,
throbbing melody draws compassion
and care and concern
for myself and for my fellow man.
[Stuart] Johnny Cash had found a new purpose and focus.
He wanted to say and do something with his music,
and more importantly, his life.
His pastor, Floyd Gressett, came to him
and asked if he'd be interested in a prison outreach program.
[Cash] He preached up there every fourth Sunday of the month,
and he knew all those people, the officials and--
And he set up this prison concert.
[Stuart] He didn't wanna just get up and do a regular Johnny Cash show
at Folsom Prison.
He wanted to touch men's hearts
and to capture it on tape.
[Cash] I knew if I could ever get a live recording at a prison,
it was gonna be a great album.
[Stuart] He took June Carter,
The Statler Brothers, and Carl Perkins,
and they went into Folsom Prison.
[June] And we would like to continue with the Johnny Cash Show
and bring to you the man that you've actually come to see.
He seems to have a lot of things in common with you.
- Mr. Johnny Cash! - [cheers and applause]
["Folsom Prison Blues" playing]
♪ I hear the train a-comin' ♪
♪ It's rolling 'round the bend ♪
♪ And I ain't seen the sunshine
♪ Since I don't know when ♪
♪ I'm stuck in Folsom prison ♪
♪ And time keeps draggin' on ♪
[Stuart] J.R. was very sensitive
to those who were down on their luck.
He knew that he had faced the same kinds of troubles and situations
that had led many of them there.
He wanted to get the feelings of the men on tape
and let them know that somebody cared.
♪ ...don't ever play with guns" ♪
♪ But I shot a man in Reno ♪
[McGraw] There was a hopelessness,
a nobleness, and there was a dark side.
And you could feel all of those things, and you could feel
all those emotions toward the character that he was singing about.
[Allen] A lot of people throw money at the forgotten.
They feel good from their safe, gated-off world.
What made Johnny special was, he actually spent time kickin' it with these people.
Johnny didn't discriminate.
That's Johnny Cash in a prison singing to the inmates,
and I think that's probably where he felt most comfortable.
[Cash] The reaction I got, it was far and above anything
I had ever had in my life.
The complete explosion of noise and reaction
that they gave me with every song.
But they felt like they could identify with me, I suppose.
Those guys in prison went,
"It's Johnny Cash. We can trust him."
[Crow] You see these people hanging on every word,
and you can see the hope in their eyes
and the vulnerability in their eyes.
[Laurie] I think they felt he was one of them.
And in many ways, he was.
He had had his struggles
with a lot of the same issues those prisoners struggled with.
They saw his humanity.
They saw his authenticity.
And really, they were seeing his faith.
He could relate to them
by who he had been and how he had struggled,
and how he always kept coming back to Christ,
and how there was hope in that for him.
[Mansfield] And he found, I think,
almost like his own ministry in that.
There's no filter.
There's just Johnny,
giving you his guts and his glory.
[audience cheering]
Folsomis recorded in January and again, you know, a little... some ambivalence--
Is this gonna be commercial? Is it gonna-- is it gonna sell?
Well, in March, he marries June.
[soft music playing]
The love that they developed for each other
was one of the greatest saving graces for each of them in their lives.
My mother saw my father's kindness.
She saw who he was on the inside.
She knew him, I think, better than he did
'cause she saw him through it all.
[Stielper] They finished up some dates on the road,
and then, in May,
they went on a honeymoon to the Holy Land.
And he tells the people at Columbia Records
that he wants to make an album in the Holy Land.
"We're not doing that," they said. He said, "Fine."
He took a little handheld microphone,
and he and June went and they visited the sites.
And he comes back home,
and Folsom Prisonis the number one album in the country.
And he's king.
["Folsom Prison Blues" playing]
[Laurie] Johnny Cash sold more than six million records in 1969 alone,
besting The Beatles, Elvis Presley,
The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix,
Janice Joplin, Led Zeppelin,
and every other musical act in the world.
It wasn't even close.
He said, "I'm gonna be the biggest thing in the business."
And with that statement, he was.
The album of the year, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison.
[cheers]
After he got back, you can bet your butt that they put out his next record,
whatever it was that he wanted.
And that was The Holy Land.
And he got a Top-10 record,
and a number one single from a gospel album.
That had never happened!
[Laurie] Johnny's gotten his priorities back in order.
He's returned to the faith of his brother, Jack.
And Johnny is putting Jesus Christ
first in his life again.
[Stuart] AfterFolsom Prison,
ABC came calling to do a summer television show.
[cheers and applause]
Hello, I'm Johnny Cash.
- [music playing] - And I'm glad to see ya, David.
[Stuart] Just as he did with everything else in his career,
Johnny Cash turned the concept of variety shows upside-down.
Glad to have ya.
[Stuart] He wanted the show to be filmed at the Ryman,
the mother church of country music,
and the home of The Grand Ole Opry,
the same stage he first met June Carter.
[Scott] The impact of the show itself, it was a catapult,
not only for John and his show,
but for a lot of other artists.
[Laurie] Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton,
as well as luminaries from country music
and the gospel world.
[Stielper] In fact, there are over 70 people
who were on The Johnny Cash Show
who are currently in either the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame,
or the Country Music Hall of Fame.
[Stuart] But one of the things that really drove ABC executives crazy
was the fact that John R. Cash rebelled
against the tightly-scripted corporate TV show concept.
At the beginning of the show,
you see a more tentative Johnny Cash.
They told him how and where to stand,
what to sing and say.
[Reid] So they were always on his back,
and sometimes he was told,
"Don't do this" or "Don't sing that song"
or "Don't say that word."
You knew he was gonna do it, then.
All you had to do was tell him not to do it.
[Cash] I was 17 years old.
I came in the back door of the house singing,
♪ Everybody gonna have religion and glory ♪
Well, you see, I'd been a real high tenor up to then.
And I didn't know that my voice had dropped.
And my mother turned around.
She said, "Who was that singing?" I said, "That was me."
And she said, "Keep it up." So I did.
♪ Everybody gonna have religion and glory... ♪
John's faith showed up on the television show
because that was his roots.
He even did a gospel special!
[Stuart] He wanted to do and say something more with his life.
He had messages that he wanted to share.
And that was when his faith stepped out into the light.
So as Johnny is performing this song,
right here on this stage at the Ryman Auditorium,
he has Billy Graham read a scripture.
Who does that?
♪ Everybody gonna have religion and glory ♪
♪ Everybody gonna be a-singin' that story ♪
♪ Everybody gonna have a wonderful time up there ♪
[Joanne] And Johnny made a statement one time to the network,
that if you don't want God, country, faith, and family,
you don't want me, because that's not what I do,
it's who I am.
- ♪ A wonderful time up there. ♪ - Yeah!
The people at ABC were aghast.
"What in the-- is he doing?
People don't watch these shows."
[Reid] For him to say, "Hey, I wanna close the show with a gospel song."
And that was kind of, "Well, are you sure you wanna do that?"
And he held out, "Yeah, I'm gonna do that."
Now he would do that.
Boy, he'd put his foot down.
[Jessi Colter] The one show that I remember specifically is,
I wanted to sing "I'd Rather Have Jesus."
And they said, "We don't want that."
But Johnny says, "Then if you don't want Jessi singing that song,
that we won't do the show."
[Reid] You know, he didn't like somebody to tell him
he couldn't do something, or "this is not gonna work."
Then he would prove, "Yes, it will work. Watch this."
And he would do it.
[Cash] Well, here lately,
I think we probably made the devil pretty mad
because on our show we've been mentioning God's name,
we've been talking about Jesus.
But, I'll be ready for him.
In the meantime, while he's coming,
I'd like to get in one more good lick for Number One.
The TV show is where we see him introduce "Man In Black."
♪ Well, you wonder why I always dress in black ♪
[Stuart] A journalist once asked, "Tell me about your closet."
J.R. replied, "It's dark in there."
Black was so much more than the clothing that he wore.
It represented something for him. It told a story.
♪ ...that I have owned ♪
♪ I wear the black for the poor and the beaten-down ♪
♪ Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town ♪
I remember the first time I heard it, I went,
"He sealed the deal right there,
for he will forever be 'The Man in Black'."
♪ But still is there because he's a victim of the times ♪
[Laurie] This was Johnny Cash speaking to college students from Tennessee.
♪ Or listened to the words that Jesus said ♪
[Laurie] "This is what I want people to know of me."
♪ About the road to happiness through love and charity ♪
I wear all black because of him.
Because I just was enamored, he has a presence.
Some people just have that "it" thing, and he has it.
[Stuart] When you mention Johnny Cash,
people will immediately think of a guy that helped people who had no voice.
He stood for things that nobody else seemed to care about
or had the authority to stand on and talk about.
When Johnny Cash wrote "Man In Black"
and made the decision to put that suit on
and wear it for the rest of his career,
he looked darkness in the eye and said,
"Not only will I take you on, but I will wear you.
And I will win."
♪ ... everywhere you go... ♪
[Stuart] That was the image that people remembered.
They remembered him standing up on stage with his manifesto,
speaking of the Lord, and speaking of the downtrodden.
Johnny wanted people to know what he believed,
and why he believed it.
He had no embarrassment whatsoever about his faith in Jesus Christ
and wanted others to share it, as well.
Television series probably would've lasted longer
if he hadn't a fought ABC so hard.
[Stuart] The Johnny Cash Show was on fire.
He had big plans to take his show to the Holy Land,
but ABC had other plans,
and cancelled his show before he had that opportunity.
[Cash] When I professed my faith in Jesus Christ
on network television, and in my concerts,
it turned a lot of people off.
You see, the whole thing about being a Christian
is being willing to give up the world.
And that's what I was doing.
[projector clicks, whirs]
[Stuart] So he said, "All right.
I'm gonna put my money where my soul is."
And he went and did it himself.
He put a half a million dollars of his own money
to create his film, theGospel Road.
Now come along with me in the footsteps of Jesus.
[Laurie] Johnny was no stranger to the silver screen.
In fact, throughout his career,
he was in dozens of shows and movies,
but Johnny wanted to make a film about Jesus Christ.
Jesus was to suffer much criticism
for his association with people of questionable character.
"He dines with publicans and sinners," they said.
And to that Jesus replied,
"It's the sick that need a physician,
not the healthy."
John walked up to me one morning, early,
'cause we always had to be out there for sunrises,
and he said, "I wanna get baptized."
And I baptized Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash in the Jordan River.
That was one of the highlights of my life.
[Laurie] The Bible likens baptism to a burial service.
Think of a happy funeral.
The old you is going into the water.
The new you is coming out.
Baptism is an outward showing of an inward doing.
The old Johnny Cash was immersed,
a new Johnny Cash was emerging,
one committed to his faith,
one committed to scripture study,
one committed to telling others about Jesus.
He made a great effort to show his faith to the world.
And that was his dedication,
that was his reaching out with his faith and doing what he believed in.
[Stuart] J.R. was quoted as saying,
"My record company would rather I be in prison than in church"
In many ways, that's true.
His rebel persona was easier to sell.
People found his constant struggles
and his willingness to bare his humanity intoxicating,
but Johnny Cash was always a rebel.
In his early years,
his rebellion took him on a journey away from his family and faith.
But now, his rebellious spirit
was bringing him back to his faith.
[Laurie] The Gospel Road was not well-received.
In fact, it was a financial disaster,
and almost bankrupted Johnny Cash.
But his good friend, Billy Graham, stepped in
and used his platform to take it to the world.
The Gospel Roadwas made by my friend Johnny Cash
and his lovely wife June as a labor of love,
so that they, too,
could share with the world the Gospel.
Without your prayers and without your support,
we could not continue.
[Graham] ...in their lives. We need your...
...importantly, to remind the church
that the old-time Gospel is relevant to this generation!
[wild cheering]
[Laurie] Billy Graham, though he was
the most famous evangelist in all of the world,
had his own prodigal son, Franklin.
And Franklin was rough around the edges.
And Billy was not connecting to his son.
And then one day,
Billy noticed that Franklin was listening to Johnny Cash music.
[Franklin Graham] I think my father was trying to find a way
to connect with me in a different way,
and he thought, "Well, if I could meet Johnny Cash,
that would impress Franklin."
And so, I think it was '69 they met,
and had a dinner at Johnny Cash's home.
And I was impressed. [chuckles]
[Laurie] So what started as an attempt by Billy to help reach his son,
ended up in a deep and lasting friendship between Billy and Johnny.
[wild cheering]
[Graham] Johnny was at a place where he needed a person in his life
that would be like a mentor to him, spiritually.
My father felt very comfortable in Johnny's presence,
and Johnny felt very comfortable in my father's presence,
because both grew up on farms,
they both grew up poor.
And so, there was a lot in common.
They were both southern boys who grew up with respect for their elders
and listening to the same music.
[Graham] They called each other often,
they vacationed together,
studied scripture together.
They were very, very clo-- I mean, absolutely best friends,
because they found that they could really be real,
you know, where John didn't have to sing
and Billy didn't have to preach.
[interviewer] Does he ever preach to you?
[Cash] To me? No. We talk about life.
We talk about everything, whatever's happening.
He's always anxious to give me
any spiritual advice when I ask him.
But, no, he's not that kind of person.
A very human person, very humble.
Billy has been a great inspiration to me.
And his friendship has been something I've leaned on
from time to time over the years.
[Laurie] And in some ways,
Billy Graham was that brother that Johnny had lost.
Johnny could bare his heart to Billy,
he could ask questions of Billy.
Billy loved Johnny, was not judgmental of him,
and helped give him the spiritual guidance
that, had he lived, Jack might've given him.
[Joanne] Their friendship was very precious,
and it brought Johnny closer to the Lord.
[Laurie] Johnny once said to Billy,
"If there's anything I can ever do for you, just let me know."
Billy said, "Well, as a matter of fact, I have a Crusade coming up
and I was wondering if you would come and sing."
Johnny quickly agreed.
[Dr. Yates] That's just the way John was.
If he's your friend, he's your friend at all times.
He doesn't think about his career or anything else.
He just, "Oh, that's my friend.
He wants me to do this. I'm gonna do it."
[Joanne] It didn't matter to him what the music industry
thought about him being with Billy Graham,
because that was where Johnny's heart was, with the Gospel.
- [cheering] - And I'm proud and honored
and thrilled and flattered to present tonight
my very good and warm friend in Christ,
Johnny Cash.
[Cash] I spend a lot of my time
working with drug addicts and alcoholics.
And only someone who has had such a problem
can have complete love and compassion
and understanding for such people.
I love drug addicts. And I love alcoholics.
If some lost, lonely person somewhere out there
in a dirty bed and a dark room
can see the light of Jesus Christ in me,
then that is my reward.
[Graham] Johnny was there to help my father evangelize.
People came to hear my father,
but when they heard Johnny Cash was coming,
it gave them an opportunity to bring certain friends
that probably wouldn't come.
And it's the kind of people
that my father wanted to preach to.
It was almost eight years ago
that we renewed our total commitment to Jesus Christ.
And I just wanted to say, in case anybody had any doubt,
that I'm a Christian, and I'm awfully proud to say so.
[cheers and applause]
[Graham] Johnny came to 30 of my father's Crusades.
[soft music playing]
[John] I went to Billy, and I wanted to know more
about his friendship with Dad, what made it so special.
And he just said, "We were brothers in Christ.
We found something we believed in together."
And I will never forget that. It was such a simple summation.
But it really told the truth of their relationship.
[Stuart] J.R. didn't say, "I'm forsaking everything in the secular world."
The great evangelist Billy Graham told him not to do that.
Billy Graham said, "No. This is exactly where you need to be.
You need to speak to the world."
[Dr. Yates] He was just on fire for Jesus.
He wanted to do something for God that would last.
And you have to understand John, he wanted to do it right now.
That's just the way he was.
[Laurie] In 1977, John was ordained a minister.
[Dr. Hamon] And privileges appertaining thereto.
Thank you, Dr. Hamon. Thank you very much.
Think about this. The Reverend Johnny Cash.
That's what he was now.
He was an ordained minister of the Gospel.
That doesn't go with the image many people have of Cash.
And it's my privilege, as a Christian, to study the Word of God.
But I accept the degree as recognition of the fact
that I am in the Word of God and trying to grow in it.
[Laurie] You know, it's an interesting thing.
Johnny's brother, Jack, wanted to be a pastor,
and Johnny wanted to be a singer.
But now, Johnny Cash was realizing Jack's dream,
and he was both a preacher and a singer.
It was not a renunciation of his career,
but certainly, the focus distracted him from his commercial career.
It was a price that he was willing to pay.
I am a professional entertainer. That's what I am.
If I have a calling, that's what it is.
But I'm called to be a Christian entertainer,
to be a Christian before the world.
You see, entertaining is communicating,
just like a preacher's job is to communicate.
But I communicate through the spirit of the song,
the meaning of the songs, the words.
[Stuart] In the late '70s and the '80s,
you would think John R. Cash is at the top of the world.
He should've been.
He gets inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Country Music Hall of Fame
- welcomes Mr. Johnny Cash. - [applause]
I'd like to say to all the new entertainers
that are coming on the scene, to the young artists, the singers,
do it your way.
Don't let yourself get caught in a bag.
And I'd like to also say this to all the new artists,
that, if you're concerned about competition,
don't write me off yet,
because my dad, Ray Cash, is sitting here tonight.
He's 83 years old, and if God lets me live that long,
that's 35 more years that I'm gonna be out there singing country songs.
- [audience laughing] - [static]
[Stielper] During that time, Ray is getting sick.
He is having to come to terms
with that relationship.
[Laurie] Johnny always wanted the approval of his father, Ray.
So when Johnny began to be successful,
he took his mom and his dad.
He took them to the White House when he was invited by President Nixon.
Johnny was always trying to impress his father.
And he said, "My father never told me he loved me."
- [Cash] There. You gonna find-- - [laughter]
[Stielper] During the time that Ray was dying,
that was a very difficult time.
And you listen to Rainbow, the last Columbia Record,
he sounds tired.
There's no other word to say that he was tired.
[Stuart] He's gone from constant chart-topping hits
to nothing on the charts in just a few short years.
That's a strange place
for one of the biggest-selling artists in the world to be.
Johnny was on top for such a long time.
And then, one day,
Columbia Records dropped him.
[Stielper] It was devastating.
He felt betrayed and lost.
You're like a train going forward, you know,
and now you have no track?
[Stuart] The label he had been with for 28 years,
and whose doors he kept open, was saying,
"We don't want you anymore. You're not needed."
He suffered for his faith. He didn't have to.
He could've kept that to himself.
He did it because he thought that that's what people needed,
to hear from somebody who had lived a life like he had,
a life of confusion, a life of trouble.
[Stielper] He was very disappointed and lost for a while there.
The critics had kind of turned away from him.
He was not happy with that position.
The crowds at his shows are shrinking.
Radio air play is virtually non-existent.
[Stielper] It was a humiliating experience auditioning for 25 year olds
when he had already been
in the Country Music Hall of Fame for six years.
And that left John kind of back to where he was with those producers
who didn't know him and didn't get him and didn't want to.
And just wanted product
and "let's just get the next Johnny Cash record out."
And he stopped caring and going into the studio,
and he had nothing to say anymore.
They didn't wanna listen to him, and he didn't wanna tell them anything.
[Joanne] He thought his career was over.
[Stuart] While he was doing one of his regular shows in Southern California,
this character with a big beard came backstage,
and the man's name was Rick Rubin.
And that was the beginning.
[Cash] I got hungry to be back in the studio,
to be creative, to put something down for the fans to hear.
And about that time that I got to feeling that way,
my manager came to me and talked to me about a man called Rick Rubin.
[John] Rick came back after the show and said basically to my father,
"I wanna make the music with you that you've always dreamed of making.
Let's focus on you.
Let's make this album the most beautiful music you've ever made."
[Cash] When I said, "What're you gonna do with me
that nobody else has been able to do to sell records with me?"
And he said, "Well, I don't know that we will sell records."
He said, "I would like you to go with me
and sit in my living room with a guitar and two microphones,
and just sing to your heart's content
everything you ever wanted to record."
I said, "That sounds good to me."
[Stuart] The next ten years, from 1993 to 2003,
by some, was claimed the Second Coming, some, the Third Coming,
some said it was the Fourth Coming with Johnny Cash.
[John] He went into the studio with Rick Rubin
and the first American Recordingsalbum
was just my father with his guitar.
Johnny Cash was that good.
He could just sit down with a guitar and sing,
and it was powerful.
[John] You can hear the intimate story of the song.
You can hear the beauty of my father's voice.
[Cash] And if I didn't like the performance on that song,
I would keep trying it until it felt...
that it was coming out of me and my guitar and my voice as one,
that it was right for my soul.
[Stuart] Under the guidance of Rick Rubin,
Johnny Cash took it all the way back to the sound that he had in the beginning.
Just the man and song and guitar. Authentic.
That authenticity spoke to an entirely different generation of people
who had never heard of Johnny Cash before.
It also spoke to a generation of Johnny Cash followers
who longed to see him ride the top of the sunrise one more time.
But while everyone was looking at John, June slipped away.
[Joanne] June went through a heart valve replacement surgery,
but the next night, it, uh, it fails.
It was hard. It was real hard for John.
As you get older, you lose so many friends.
And every time you lose a friend,
you feel a little piece of your own life has been lost.
[John] And when my mother passed away, Dad came to me and he said,
"You know, I was more in love with your mom than I ever had been."
[Stuart] When people would come in to try to comfort him,
he was comforting them even more.
He understood the race had been run well,
and that she was in a better place.
He was still teaching us about life
up until the very last day he was on this Earth.
- [Larry King] Are you bitter? - Bitter?
- Yeah. Angry? - No.
You know, you're a young guy. You're only 70.
No, I'm not bitter. Why should I be bitter?
I'm thrilled to death with life.
- So you have no regrets? - No regrets.
And no anger at, "Why did God do this to me?"
Oh, no. No.
I'm the last one that would be angry at God.
He was steadfast in that.
He did not waver in that.
He took what God wanted him to bear, and he did.
[Cash] I have unshakable faith. I've never been angry with God.
I've never turned my back on God, so to speak.
I never thought that God wasn't there.
See, He's my counselor. He's my wisdom.
Only good things in my life come from Him.
- Looking back at all that you've done... - Ahem.
...do you have any regrets about what you've done?
I used to, but I forgave myself.
When God forgave me, I figured I'd better do it, too.
Where do you think we go, afterwards?
Where do we go?
- When we die, you mean? - Yeah.
Oh.
Well, we all hope to go to Heaven.
I ask him, I said, "You mad at anybody?"
He said, "I'm not mad at anybody."
And I said, "Do you got any forgiveness
you've not yet been able to do with anybody?"
He says, "No. I've forgiven everybody
and I hope everybody's forgiven me that thought that I should."
Everything inside me felt peaceful
after that conversation, that he settled up.
He was in good standing.
[Stuart] The final triumph for him was the masterpiece called "Hurt".
That was a big moment.
I think what was shocking for a lot of people was how frail Johnny was,
but at the same time, how he still maintained
that strength that we knew him for.
But more than that, what struck me
was the bravery that he was willing to let it all hang out.
[intro to "Hurt" plays]
♪ I hurt myself today ♪
♪ To see if I still feel ♪
When he was recording, I say, "You sure you wanna do this?"
I said, "It's heavy. It's dark."
You know? He said, "It's real."
It just was true. It was true.
He was wearing his humanity on his sleeve
for everyone to see.
That's where art is at its most impactful,
is when it strikes someone
and they have to ingest it,
digest it enough to understand
"how does this make me feel?" and "where am I in this"?
[John] Dad was excited. He was just like a kid.
He was just like, "Man, this is great! It's gonna be a big hit!
Everybody's gonna love it!"
The guy was as willing to show up real as it gets.
[McGraw] To expose himself that way,
at the age that he was, and after the career that he's had,
it was just all things at once.
♪ And you could have it all ♪
♪ My empire of dirt ♪
This is so honest that it's devastatingly beautiful.
[McGraw] I mean, it makes you emotional just thinking about it.
Every artist wish they could have
sort of a swan song like that.
[John] But we have to realize something.
He didn't necessarily see it as a swan song.
He saw it as just an accurate statement about his life
and who he was and where he'd been.
♪ I would keep myself ♪
♪ I would find a way. ♪
[soft music playing]
[birds singing]
[Stielper] He was always the realist. He was always the artist.
He always wanted truth, all the way until the end.
[Joanne] Johnny asked me what I thought about the song.
I said, "I think it's the greatest song in your whole career,
because you poured out your life.
The good, the bad, and the ugly."
[Allen] In an unusual way, "Hurt" was a gospel song, too,
because it set up what he wanted to say,
the way he looked at things.
[Schneider] I think there was something in Johnny's mind that said,
"I have to leave people with a thought."
It makes perfect sense
that that was the last song we remember Johnny for.
[Joanne] He grew old full of grace and full of strength, spiritually,
which kept him as long as it did physically.
[Stuart] But "Hurt" was kind of, I suppose, the beginning of the end.
Didn't wanna admit it,
but I saw that light fading in his eyes a little bit.
He was getting tired.
[Stielper] Family would come and visit
and those visits, they had an air of finality to them.
He does not expect that he's going to live.
He called me over to his house one day, just close to the end.
And he said, "Baby, sit down. I gotta talk to you."
And when he said that, I knew it was serious.
He said, "I wanna ask you a question."
He said, "If you walked on the shores of Galilee
and you looked up and you saw Jesus walking toward you,
and you knew He was gonna say just one thing to you,
what do you think He'd say?"
Well, chills went all over me. I didn't know how to answer it.
I said, "Well, I would hope He'd say
I'm doing what He called me to do,
and that He's pleased with that."
And Johnny looked at me and he said,
"He would say to you, 'Feed my sheep.'"
I said, "Yeah, He would.
What do you think He would say to you?"
And he said, "Oh baby, that's easy."
He had tears rolling down his face and he said,
"Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy-laden
and I'll give you rest, for my yoke is easy
and my burden is light."
Johnny had many burdens that he carried throughout his life.
There's the burden of losing his brother Jack in a tragic accident,
the burden of the failure of his first marriage,
the burden of the bad decisions he had made throughout his life and his career,
and the people that he had hurt.
But here's Jesus saying, "Come to me,"
and as another translation puts it,
"I will refresh you with rest."
[Joanne] Johnny was telling me, "I'm going home.
You do what God calls you to do.
I'm going home. It's okay."
[Stuart] I went over to his house
and I was about to go on the road,
and I just wanted to go check in on him, hug his neck, tell him I love him.
And I had recorded a song of his called "The Walls of a Prison"
that I wanted to play for him.
And so, I played it for him and I sat at his feet.
He put his hand on me and said, "Excellent, son."
He said, "You got it."
I knew he didn't wanna hang out too long,
so we talked a minute, and before I left the room,
he said, "Is there anything in this room you want?"
I said, "Just your love." He said, "You got that."
And as I was about to leave,
he was sitting in his wheelchair with his back to the window
and the late afternoon light was coming in.
And I had my camera all in my bag.
And I said, "J.R., let me take your picture."
And there was, like, four frames,
and the first three he just kinda looked like this. I said, "J.R."
He reared up and he looked like an old president.
- [shutter clicks] - And when I got the negatives back,
I went, "There's the picture."
Before I left the room, I said, "How's your spirit?"
He said, "Good." I said, "You got plenty of rope left?"
He said, "I got plenty of rope." I said, "All right.
I'll be home in 10 days," whatever it was.
I didn't think it would come while I was gone on that trip. But it did.
[news announcer] It's the death of a legend, our top story this half hour.
Johnny Cash is gone.
The country music world is saying goodbye
to the legendary Man in Black.
[Stuart] I was on the way home from a concert on the East Coast.
And at three in the morning,
somebody pulled the curtain back in the bus and said,
"Johnny Cash died."
[thud]
I cried and cried and cried,
I felt the cutting of the pain,
and then I quietly said goodbye,
"so long, in Jesus' name.
Dark bird, watch you fly
Dark bird, to another sky
And I'll bet you were a sight, when you hit that cloud of love
And flew out the other side
In the form of a dove
Dark bird."
[Joanne] I know we'll see him again. I know we'll see him again.
And that's my blessed hope.
That was a hard time. It's hard.
I can live in a world without "Johnny Cash,"
but I miss my brother.
I sure do miss him.
[Laurie] On his tombstone, Johnny Cash had Psalm 19:14 written down,
which says, "Let the words of my mouth
and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight, O Lord."
You know, David, in his Psalms, would write about his doubts,
his struggles, the challenges that he faced,
and he would cry out to God.
Well, Johnny wrote about those things, too.
He sang about trains and murder and betrayal.
But he also sang about faith, hope, and redemption.
To me, Johnny Cash is the face of Redemption.
All of us who are believers, have sinned,
we've all needed that redemption. I know I have.
He showed us the way to go.
He gave us an example.
[John] Even though my father didn't necessarily
always live every step correctly and true,
he knew the truth, he believed the truth,
and he could speak the truth.
[Allen] And just because you have faith
doesn't mean you always make the right decision.
But what it does guarantee is, you'll have that foundation,
something that, when you do fall, something that will catch you.
And it's easy to point to someone like a Johnny Cash,
and say, "Oh, that guy took drugs."
Well, we all screw up, every last one of us.
But God gave him the strength, God gave him the grace,
and good people around him to encourage him.
[Stuart] He tried, to his last breath
to live right and do the right thing.
But he was a human being along the way.
[Shane] Johnny's story is-- If that's not proof that there is hope,
then I don't know where else we can find it.
[cheers and whistling]
[John] The strength to get up and keep going, it took more than energy.
He didn't have any energy. It was faith.
[Joanne] I have had many people come to me saying,
"I'm born-again because of Johnny Cash,
because of his life and his stand for Christ."
He gave them something to believe in,
hope that there's a better way.
I don't think that you can find a musician over the last 50 years
that hasn't been influenced in some way by Johnny Cash.
[Laurie] The Bibletells us that the Christian life is like a race.
There were some stumbles and falls,
but the key is, he ran his race to the end,
and he finished well.
That's what I love about Johnny Cash,
is the fact that he's willing to say,
"You know, I'm just a guy."
[Scott] I think a lot of people are realizing
what a great man he was and what a good man he was,
and that he was a Christian throughout it all.
[John] He would want people to see his story
and find a way to strengthen their own life,
to show love.
[uplifting music playing]
[Stuart] He was a man after God's heart,
and that's who John R. Cash from Arkansas was.
[instrumental music playing]