[Music]
>> Johnny Cash: I've always hung out with
long-hairs.
I've always hung out with people of that
ilk. I'm one of the originals.
I had sideburns down to my chin in '50-
For a while there I did. When I started my
own TV show in Nashville in '69,
I had a group called The Who on as guests
and I forget which one of them said,
"Thank god we got somebody on television with
long hair," talking about me.
Only it wasn't all that long.
>> [Music]
>> Barney Hoskins: Do you really need to tour
so much?
Do you need to work so hard and drive yourself
so hard?
>> Johnny Cash: For my soul I do. Yeah, for
my soul. It's a gift.
My mother always told me that any talent is
a gift of God and I always believed it.
If I quit, I would just live in front of the
television and get fat and die pretty soon.
So I don't want to do that. You know I just
hope and pray I can die with my boots on.
I've been in hospital beds and I don't want
to end it up there.
[Music]
I went through a period that I didn't want
to sing those old songs again.
I finally decided that I was really cheating
them and myself.
And I started singing all the old ones with
gusto and lust. Like I loved them.
Those songs, I Walk the Line and Folsom, Sunday
Morning Coming Down, Ring of Fire.
They're part of me. They're an extension of
me when I get in front of that microphone.
They're a part of me going through that mic,
you know, to that audience.
They feel it and they know it if I feel it.
They'll turn it right back to me, the appreciation.
That's what it's all about.
That's what performing is all about, is sharing
and communicating.
[Music: Johnny Cash "Folsom Prison Blues"
>> Barney Hoskins: Do you think... Could you
have ever been a preacher?
Were you ever tempted to-?
>> Johnny Cash: No. I think in my world of
religion,
you're called to preach or you don't preach.
Called by God to preach. I never been ordained
by God to preach the Gospel.
I have a calling, it's called to perform and
sing.
I think gospel song is a ministry in a way,
you know. Gospel music.
Gospel music is so ingrained into my bones,
you know.
I can't do a concert without singing a gospel
song. It's what I was raised on.
It was the thing that inspired me as a child
growing up on a cotton farm,
where work was drudgery and it was so hard
that when I was in the field I sang all the
time.
Usually gospel songs because they lifted me
up above that black dirt.
[Music: Johnny Cash "Do Lord"]
>> Barney Hoskins: I was going to ask you
how the pain is in your jaw these days.
>> Johnny Cash: It's pretty severe.
>> Barney Hoskins: Really? All the time? Constant?
>> Johnny Cash: Almost all the time, yeah.
>> Barney Hoskins: How do you-?
>> Johnny Cash: Except when I'm on stage.
>> Barney Hoskins: Really?
>> Johnny Cash: Yeah.
>> Barney Hoskins: That's miraculous that
it just leaves you. Power of music I guess
>> Johnny Cash: Yeah, I pray for that and
it works. It doesn't alter or hinder my performance.
>> Barney Hoskins: It must be a struggle to
have to take pain killers at the same time,
to be able to regulate them-
>> Johnny Cash: I don't take them. I can't
take them. It's like an alcoholic.
He can't drink. I can't take pain pills.
>> Barney Hoskins: You must be very brave to-
>> Johnny Cash: No. I'm not very brave
because for five years I didn't try to take
the pain. I fought it.
I had a total of 34 surgical procedures on
my left jaw.
Every doctor I've been to knows what to do
next, too.
To relieve me of pain, I don't believe any
of them.
I'm handling it. It's my pain. I'm not being
brave either.
I'm not brave at all after what I've been
through, I just know how to handle it.
[Music]
>> Barney Hoskins: When you look at yourself
in the mirror
do you feel like an American icon when you
look at yourself in the mirror?
>> Johnny Cash: God, what a question. Shit.
I see the pimples on my nose and I see the
fat jaw
from the pain where it's swollen or thinning
hair or whatever.
Icon? No. I don't see him.
He's not in my mirror.
>> Barney Hoskins: You don't see the John
Wayne of rock and roll?
>> Johnny Cash: No. ... Thanks anyway.
[Music: Johnny Cash "Ring of Fire"
>> Barney Hoskins: Do you look back now and
think, "Wow, dressing in black was one hell
of
a smart career move?"
>> Johnny Cash: No, I never thought about
it.
>> Johnny Cash: How does it help me? I don't
know.
>> What good's it do? I'm so uncomfortable
wearing colors in public. I really am.
>> Even denim. If I've got a day off in a
town, I want to go out for a walk I'll put
on denim.
But almost everything I've got the black on.
>> Barney Hoskins: I was interested to know
whether you ever talked about gospel music
with Elvis?
>> Johnny Cash: Oh yeah. That's all we talked
about.
Well that wasn't all, we talked about girls
too.
Yeah, Elvis and I, a lot of shows we would
sing together in the dressing room
and invariably we'd go to black gospel. We
knew the same songs.
We grew up on the same songs.
