Rosanne Cash: Long, hard road for Johnny Cash’s daughter
Q: You’ve lived in New York for decades but I was surprised to learn your dad enjoyed the city.
A: My dad contained multitudes. I think it surprises a lot of people that he loved New York. He had an apartment on Central Park South for a long time, and he would sometimes just come up to go to bookstores, to read, to go to the theater. He took me to my first Broadway play when I was a teenager.
Q: What was that?
A: “Applause,” based on “All About Eve,” and you know who was the star: Lauren Bacall. From then on, I was in love with Broadway. Late in his life, I took him to see a Neil Simon play. We sat in the front row, and every actor, when they came on stage, would see Johnny Cash and have this startled look on their face.
Q: In 1990, you put your heart and soul into “Interiors,” but it didn’t get the response you’d hoped for. How did that lead to 1993’s “The Wheel” and all that came after?
A: I thought “Interiors” was the best work I had done, the most real. It was the most me at that point in my life. I produced it myself. I was really proud of it, and then they (Columbia Records) didn’t like it. They didn’t want it. They said there’s no hits on it.
I was so disheartened and actually really depressed. I thought, I’m going to call Dad, which was unusual. I wish to God I had asked for more advice from my parents, but I didn’t. I had the hubris of youth. I called Dad, and he said, “Move to New York,” because he knew that I loved New York. And eventually I did.
Q: It seems you’ve made the records you’ve wanted to make, rather than what record companies or fans have wanted from you.
A: If you examine the marketplace and go, “I’m going to create that,” then it’s not really art, is it? And it’s not really authentic.
Q: As a young woman you assisted your father during his tours – what did you learn from him?
A: I learned a lot. I learned about respect for your audience. He said, “Never forget the town you’re in,” because it’s easy to do when you’re in a different city every day. Never forget that your audience has used their discretionary income, gotten a babysitter, whatever, to come to see you.
Q: Did you ever wish you had more of your father’s time and the attention he was giving to his audiences?
A: Of course. When I was a child, I didn’t want to share him. Who are these people? They don’t deserve this much of him. I do. And then when I got older, and the years that he was just shockingly famous, then we could never go anywhere without him being bothered. I was resentful of that too.
He was never resentful, or if he was, he was never unkind. I remember him renting an entire roller skating rink so we could roller skate in private. By the way, he went roller skating too.
Q: Does sharing so much of your life make you feel vulnerable?
A: Some songs, people don’t know where I use poetic license and what’s from my own experience.
Q: Your album “The List” came from a list of 100 songs your father felt you should know. Was that list handed down like the great books of our time?
A: Exactly. At first, I did not want to make that record. It was like something I had been resisting for a long time, to make a real country record. I didn’t want to make a record of covers.
And John (Leventhal, her husband) said to me gently, “You know, if you’re going to make a record of covers, this is the only one to do.” I saw that. I thought, everybody has co-opted my family story. If I don’t plant a flag and tell what actually happened, according to me, then it’ll continue to be co-opted. This is part of my family legacy. If I don’t honor it, who will?
Q: You lost your voice for more than two years just before the turn of the millennium — did you know it would come back?
A: At first I thought, oddly, oh, well, this is a relief. I don’t have to worry about my voice again if I can’t sing again. I wanted to speak again, obviously. But if I can’t sing again, it’s not that big a loss. I see myself as a writer, primarily, and then (later) when I couldn’t sing, I felt this profound sense of loss.
I thought, oh man, after years of self-criticism, it’s really not worth it. My voice is my voice. It’ll never be like Emmylou (Harris)’s. I’ll never have that high, crystal sound, but it’s legitimate, and I should stop criticizing myself so much. Then it came back. I had to rebuild it. I had to go to a vocal therapist.
Q: You also survived brain surgery in 2007. Did that make you feel like you got a second chance?
A: Yes, but it took me a little while to get there, because I was in a lot of pain for a long time. I thought, I’m never going to get my life back. It’s going to be like this forever. I didn’t even want to listen to music, much less perform it.
But after I got through that and started getting my energy back and getting free from pain, then I was grateful. My neck bothers me a lot because they broke the top vertebra — they broke it on purpose to get into my brain — but to have neck discomfort is a pretty small price to pay.
Michael Shapiro’s latest book, “The Creative Spark,” won the 2021 Independent Publishers award. Contact him via his site: www.michaelshapiro.net.
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