JOHNNY CASH – American Recordings V: A hundred highways

(CD/LP, American / Lost Highway)

I am almost too sad to review this record. Damn, I am almost too sad to even listen to this record. Yes, I am a big Johnny Cash fan, obviously. To me, and to a lot of people this man still stands taller than the biggest heroes of their childhood. (And Johnny Cash was one of my childhood heroes.) And listening to him still going as strong as he possibly can, hearing the quiver and wavering in his voice while he is still able to conjure up the old strength and spirit and size of his voice in songs, is at times almost too much too bear. Especially in the moments were you are afraid he might break underneath the burden he shouldered himself.

Johnny Cash had the bad and the good in spades, he stood up and faced what was coming to him, lived his dreams for better or for worse. Well, if you want a run down on his live read his biography or listen to “Pilgrim Chapter 33” from Kris Kristofferson. After all Johnny Cash is the only person who you believe when he talks about his faith in god just as much as when he tells you about the exploits that come with an extreme life. To be able to contain so many opposites and integrate them in one personality is what makes him such a big character.

This record is an epitaph which couldn’t be better. Like the great video to “Hurt” (which also makes me sad every time I see it) this record sums up the final phase of this man’s live, between the death of June Carter Cash and his own. Especially since it has the last song that Cash allegedly ever wrote (“Like the 309”) and the choice of songs is great and fitting the fact that Cash is dead for some years now. They struggle with mortality, love that’s lost, sickness and memories, but also always ever keep the strength and stubborn will that made Cash a living legend. A song like “Rose of my heart” might be kitschy and wallowing in that true-blue-area in every other context. Here it almost drives me to tears listening to it, imagining Johnny Cash torn and beaten by his sickness and thinking about the death of his wife while singing these simple lines which are suddenly filled with ounces of meaning. And this is true for almost every line in every song.

I had the same feeling with “When the man comes around”, especially with the final choir-song “We’ll meet again”, which is in fact nothing but a big goodbye, but here that feeling runs through the whole record.

I would be happy about a dozen more epitaphs like this instead of the commercialism of some boxed releases, but since I buy all of those as well, who am I to say. Maybe some day I will remember the death of Johnny Cash and not instantly feel that sting of sorrow (maybe if Willie Nelson, Nick Cave or Kris Kristofferson die), but that will be a few years still. After all, his life was about love and truthfulness, and about the song. It would be an act of justice if every major city in the world put up statues for Johnny Cash.