Why Johnny Matters

Perhaps Johnny Cash sang of death so much because he understood so well its origins in sin. It has become trite to note that a particular artist or movie explores the theme of redemption. What is usually meant is that there is a message of hope in the midst of despair. When Johnny Cash explored redemption, he dug down deeper than mere despair, which is, after all, a fleeting emotional state, down to the bitterroot reality of personal and societal evil. Johnny Cash was a sinner. He knew it, and wanted us to know it too. And, although he seldom said it explicitly, he wanted us to acknowledge that we are sinners too. He trusted us with his heart; he made himself vulnerable because he believed we’ll see something of ourselves in his self-revelation.

Sin, and its attendant, temptation, is the theme of Cash’s two most popular songs. “I Walk the Line,” a product of the late fifties, before he experienced divorce, drug abuse, and jail time, is an honest man’s confession of temptation and fidelity. I may be far from you, he vows, but I remain faithful. “Ring of Fire,” on the other hand, is a confession of infidelity (emotional if not physical unfaithfulness). Co-written by June Carter in 1962, it is one of the most sensuous recordings ever made. With his deep baritone nearly dripping with lust and regret, and the mariachi trumpets blaring in the background, he sings of falling down, down, down into a burning ring of fire. These two songs address sexual temptation; others in the Cash repertoire, particularly in his “outlaw” days, narrate other universal sins—theft, revenge, and, again, physical violence.

In the end there is almost always regret. In “Folsom Prison Blues,” Cash may have his narrator sound like he’s bragging about shooting that man in Reno, but he acknowledges that when he hears the train whistle sound outside the prison walls, he hangs his head and cries. Cash did prison songs so well because he somehow understood both the pain of isolation and the pain of guilt. He may decry the penal system, as he did in San Quentin, where he boasts of nearly causing a prison riot (San Quentin, you’ve been living hell to me) but he also takes upon himself the guilt of the convict and expresses it in a powerful first person ownership. For three minutes, he is the sacrificial lamb carrying the sins of his audience. Give me your sin, your pain, your guilt, your regret, he offers, and I will express it to the world. And in the confession comes a kind of absolution.

So regret becomes absolution becomes redemption. Johnny Cash knows redemption in a manner that is far from abstract. The emotional vulnerabilities expressed in his music were paralleled in his life, which he chronicled with unerring honesty in Man in Black, his 1975 autobiography and personal testimony. There he related his idolatry of career, the breakup of his marriage, and his descent into dependence upon amphetamines and barbiturates. He told of one-night stands in jail, of wrecked cars and missed days, of a failing voice and canceled concerts, of lost friends and abused relationships. Yet through it all there was a remnant who did not give up on him, a few who steadfastly offered redemption. For Cash, redemption meant liberation from his drug habit, the revival of his career, and, eventually, a public commitment to Jesus Christ, about which he was unabashed ever since.