JOHNNY CASH
1932 - 2003
“I keep you on my mind both day and night”
It seems almost spooky watching the MTV Video Music Awards on its first airing on terrestrial television and hearing various artists dedicate awards to Johnny Cash. At the time of the awards, of course, Cash was in hospital, but an unusually bitter poignancy is added to what is usually a tacky, publicity-seeking event in the light of later events - Cash’s death on September 12th due to diabetic complications.
That even such pop superstars as Justin Timberlake proclaim Cash’s genius during their acceptance speeches gives some measure of Cash’s wide-reaching influence. To the younger generation, perhaps, Cash if one of those people that one grows up with without even noticing it. One of those people who can never fade out of your life, because they are always there in records, in magazines, creating the mistaken impression that they simply can’t die.
Music, of course, has a great impression on a child, creating thoughts and feelings that can often not even be explained by by the adult in later years. My housemate remembers being scared of Cash’s “I Walk The Line” as a child, although she cannot remember why. I myself remember, years ago, reading an interview with the man and, although it was not until years later that I realised that this was the same person who had sung “A Boy Named Sue”, a song I had sat in my bedroom listening to on a crappy old tape recorder with a schoolfriend, there was something about him that impressed me.
These, then, are the true heroes. The ones who seem to have been with you all of your life, who have ploughed through problem after problem and kept on battling, through addiction and illness - close to death many times but pulling clear by the skin of his teeth. It is inevitable, perhaps, that death must claim him at last. Inevitable, but by no means less tragic. The world has lost a truly great musician and a great man and, although his music lives on, the opening chords of his melancholic rendition of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” will now be enough to make us cry.
