The first time I heard Johnny Cash, it was in a U2 song, “The Wanderer”. I was still a kid, but I felt like a wanderer. His deep voice, his philosophical thoughts about God, life and death, made me understand that this Johnny Cash had been through a lot, and that I’d probably be tested too in life. That I’d go on being a wanderer.
After some years, I stopped liking U2, but kept a place for Johnny Cash. I didn’t wanna listen about being in a mall, but about this man who not only sang about the greatest cowboy of them all, but also for the man in black, who’ll wear dark colors until the world gets better. Yeah, me too I wanna wear a rainboy, and I do, even when things aren’t getting any better.
I see the greatest values in the songs of Johnny Cash, along with the biggest fears, the worst mistakes, the guilt, the dreams, of a man who goes beyond country music and gets in existencialist clouds that makes us dream of his childhood years in Dyess, Arkansas, dream about Memphis, with Delia walking around, Starkville and the forbidden flowers, El Paso, and the narcotic issue, and Nashville, the main capital of country music, where he died.
It’s not about caring or not. Anyone can care. Anyone can write a song about the world falling apart, about a heart being broken, about death, about life, about heroes. I don’t know if Johnny Cash cared, he just talked about it. He talked about the world being in shadows. He spoke from the heart after it was broken. He talked about being born and dying at the same time, about fighting your own demons and being your own hero and martyr.
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