A Mad Biker's Ongoing Tale

Monday, September 29, 2003

It’s hard to describe the loss you feel at a friend who’s been there for you every step of the way. Through tears cried from pain and rapture, through teeth clenched at the ignorance of others and the stupidity of oneself, Johnny Cash was this to me. I knew he was ailing and I knew he would go, but when a three-word news link on my mail server made me aware that it had indeed happened, my pulse stopped. With crushing finality, I knew the world had lost one of its most sympathetic and comforting presences – and that for me, the daily search for reason which life demands became a little harder.

Johnny’s was the first voice I heard outside my family raised in steely pride for the common man, the repentant outcast, the habitual sinner – often all the same person. His was the tongue of everyman and woman, the voice of humanity. There was no sorrow he couldn’t understand, no soul he couldn’t penetrate, no joy he hoarded. He personified the Human Quest as the sagacious prophet who knew the Answer as well as a few hundred reasons to ignore it. And I was confident he’d run off with me at a moment’s notice to find a few more. His was the most human voice to ever grace, effortlessly, vinyl or disc. It was my voice, even when – especially when – I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. So it will ever remain.

There are a good number of musicians and songwriters who express the kind of unabashed sentiment that was Cash’s stock-in-trade. His pen is potent and legendary, having authored well over 500 alternately haunting and soothing tunes. Yet in point of fact many of the songs he made his own were written by others, especially in his later years… “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” “A Boy Named Sue,” “Highwayman,” “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” “Spiritual,” “One,” “Down There by the Train,” “Hurt,” etc, etc….. But it didn’t matter who wrote them, it mattered who laid them into your brains, embedded them into your souls. No one else sold them home with the kind of authority he delivered. He made you feel every word because every word was offered with utter conviction. Perhaps only Jimmy Rodgers and Hank Williams ever did the same…which is why their legions of fans have iconified, even deified, the two men. Cash belongs on that same plateau… as well as with Lennon and Marley. But none of them had that voice.

That voice…. Gift of the angels yet torn from the devil’s grasp. Cash made me know it was alright to make mistakes… even the big ones… as long as I didn’t allow those mistakes to take control of my life. Always fight, always help the ones who need it (‘cause they’re making a slew of their own mistakes), never compromise, never sell out, never give less than everything. I could hear it all in every syllable. What could be more rock ‘n roll, more unrepentantly independent?

Two of his best songs – “25 Minutes to Go” and “Mercy Seat” – are about the precious last few minutes of condemned men on Death Row…… horrifying ruminations. Cash immerses you in every bead of sweat as it carves a deep groove into their horrified faces. In the first, sung near age 30, he ends up swinging from the gallows, filled with rage and dread; in the second, sung near 70 years, his temperment is resigned and coolly defiant. At first. Or listen to “Hurt”… the song everybody’s currently talking about. Every note, every gesture, is filled with every second of Cash’s life. How anyone could sing, let alone record, songs like these is more than I can imagine.

His heart was big enough to take in all the ills of the world. His soul vacuous enough to indulge in all the ills of the world – and create a few of his own along the way. The Man in Black taught me about life… after my parents, this guy graced my soul with a resonance that I will take to my grave.

Nick Cave said it best: “God isn’t making any more” people like Johnny Cash. Williams, Rodgers, Lennon and Marley all left long ago. Cash was the last of the breed. Believe it – the world will never be the same. Kris Kristoferson once named him “the father of our Country,” and later solidified the Rushmore imagery by comparing him to “Lincoln with a wild streak”. Myself, I recall a line from “Desperadoes Waiting for a Train,” a melody he uplifted along with Kristoferson in the musical supergroup The Highwaymen. It was about a hero-worshiping lad who becomes a wizened cowpoke’s sidekick. Over the decades that follow he watches him age until at last he knows Death is rapping at the door. “To me he was one of the heroes of this county/ So why is he dressed up like those old men?”

The Man in Black’s face and voice betrayed his every thought and second thought, his every breath, his every heartbeat, his every tear and peal of laughter. They aged with him, towards the end at a startling rate. The body and all those physical trappings grew old, yes, but heroes never die. This desperado’s train finally arrived, and he rode it to all the glory he deserves. I just wish I wasn’t standing here on this platform watching it go. May we all aspire to be just a little bit like the Cash.

posted by mark 9:14 PM

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The life and times of my big road excursion, pedaling 3435 miles from the Jersey Coast to San Francisco. And all points thereafter.

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