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Woe, Johnny
By briantologist | September 12, 2003
Johnny Cash, who I say with very little hyperbole was The Greatest American Recording Artist Ever, has departed this smelly world. He was 71.
Johnny Cash came to mean far more to me than most musicians I listen to. Every wire service obituary you’ll read today will tell you how much he cared about prisoners, about the soldiers in Vietnam, and about other people generally forgotten and fucked by The Man. And they’re right.
But he backed up his talk. He went and sang at prisons, and cut some kick-ass live albums at two of them (Folsom and San Quentin). On “Live at San Quentin,” after he plays the song “San Quentin,” which he wrote for the occasion, and which contains the line “San Quentin, you been livin’ hell to me,” the prisoners get so stoked about it that they ask him to play it again, immediately. So he does, and it’s there, on the uncut version of the live album. He was willing to go the distance for these guys, is what I mean here.
I think it’s partly his music, and partly my admiration for craggy old men, that make me love that guy like I do. But at the core, it’s that, as said before, the guy spoke and lived what he believed and vice versa. In a public way, that puts these useless “singers” we’re pelted with today to something far beyond shame.
I’m sure in the days to come we’ll hear a lot of really sincere sentiments from the pop star community, like Justin Timberlake saying Johnny was fa real, and shit like that. I like to think their inherent lack of worth will serve to underscore the power of the fucking rock-solid music that Johnny left behind.
As for me, I’m off to buy a black shirt. It’s up to the rest of us now to carry off a little of that darkness on our backs. Rest in peace, Johnny. Say hi to June for us.
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