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Page 1
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He was a little dark, right from the beginning ...
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Page 2
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The man in black has some advice for today's rappers ...
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Page 3
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"I was on amphetamines really, really bad ..."
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Artists On Cash
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Bono, Tom Morello, Kid Rock, And More On Johnny Cash...
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Cash On 'Hurt'
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Johnny Cash Says Unlike Most Videos, 'Hurt' Wasn't Too Painful ...
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"I was on amphetamines really, really bad," he says. "I was totally insane. I felt like I had definitely lost my way."
It was June Carter who finally took him in hand, leading him back to religion and sobriety. Free of their former spouses, they married in 1968, and moved into the house on Hickory Lake, where they stayed married for the next 35 years. They also turned a cabin on their property into a recording studio, so they could keep working together, too.
June is gone now. She died in May, at the age of 73. In the void she left, Johnny bears up with extraordinary grace under the ravages of diabetes, asthma and glaucoma. He gets around most comfortably in a wheelchair.
And yet, he says he has a lot to look forward to right now. The video for his autumnal version of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt" is nominated for six MTV Video Music Awards, and despite his infirmities, he dearly hopes to be on hand to see what it wins. Then, right afterward, he's scheduled to fly out to Los Angeles to begin work on American V, the fifth album of his singular 10-year collaboration with the eclectic producer Rick Rubin.
He doesn't have to do any of this, of course. There's nothing left to prove. He keeps going, he says — keeps making music — because it's one of the last things his late wife insisted that he do.
"She told me in the hospital, 'Don't worry about me ... go to work.' Three days after the funeral — everybody said, 'You're crazy,' but three days after the funeral, I was in the studio. And I stayed in the studio for two weeks."
Still at it, even though he's already a presiding eminence of American popular music: not exactly rock, not completely country, just ... Johnny Cash. He knows his own time will be up sooner rather than later, but he seems completely at peace.
"Oh, I expect my life to end pretty soon," he says. "You know, I'm 71 years old. I have great faith, though. I have unshakeable faith."
And despite all the ups and way-downs of his long life, Johnny Cash says he has no regrets.
"I used to," he says, "But I forgave myself. When God forgave me, I figured I'd better do it, too."
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Photo: VH1
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