Johnny Cash: Forever Words produced by John Carter Cash and Steve Berkowitz is out now via Sony Legacy Recordings
“Hearing those words, ‘They’re telling me I’m gonna perish/like the flowers I’m gonna cherish’ while Nelson plays I Still Miss Someone...” John Carter shakes his head as he continues to recite: “Nothing remembered of my fame/nothing remained of my name/the trees I planted still are young/the songs I sang will still be sung.”
“That shows the strength of human spirit, because he knew he wasn’t long for the world,” he says. “Then to follow that track with To June This Morning... because that was dated February 1970, when my mother was eight months’ pregnant with me.
“It speaks about her coming down the stairs when she was carrying quite a burden.”
Each artist stayed true to their signature sound, he notes, but agrees The Walking Wounded, with his sister, Rosanne, on vocals, does sound like a Cash song.
He offered her others, but he knew this was something special. “I told her, ‘Rose, this one’,” he recalls with a smile.
Wondering about the mass appeal his father’s music had, John Carter mentions how Cash could expose himself and his frailties “and you would still love him and respect him”.
“That’s part of it,” he says, “but there’s also the Man in Black, the image of cool. Five-year-olds would want to dress like him and dance around to Ring of Fire.
“There are a lot of things about my father, various things, that people connect with. He was that diverse of a person and he has a diverse fanbase.
“What’s gonna matter in 500 years? I didn’t set out with Steve to make a Johnny Cash album. This is about his life, these are the words that he wrote, so musically, to me it could go anywhere.”
Even the so-called “uneducated” could hear the genius of those words, and relate, he says.
Cash was always open. Fans, journalists and people on the street ask his son what he would have thought about Donald Trump. According to him, he would have had him round for dinner, they would have sat down and had a nice meal and they would have chatted.
“He wasn’t political,” John Carter shrugs. “He wasn’t controversial unless it was to save somebody’s ass. He hated war — he was a man of peace. He taught metoneverraisemyfistinanger and I never saw him do so.
“But he still went and sang for the troops in Vietnam when 18and 19-year-old boys were over there scared half to death.”
Honouring that stance, Cash’s family posted a powerful open letter after a neo-Nazi was spotted wearing a T-shirt bearing his name.
“(Johnny Cash) would be horrified at even a casual use of his name or image for an idea or a cause founded in persecution and hatred,” they said.
“The white supremacists and neo-NaziswhomarchedinCharlottesville are poison in our society and an insult to every American hero who wore a uniform to fight the Nazis in WWII. Several men in the extended Cash family were among those who served with honour.
“Our dad told each of us, over and over throughout our lives, ‘Children, you can choose love or hate. I choose love’.
“We do not judge race, colour, sexual orientation or creed. We value the capacity for love and the impulse towards kindness.
“We respect diversity and cherish our shared humanity. We recognise the suffering of other human beings and remain committed to our natural instinct for compassion and service.
“To any who claim supremacy over other human beings, to any who believe in racial or religious hierarchy, we are not you. Our father, as a person, icon, or symbol, is not you. We ask that the Cash name be kept far away from destructive and hateful ideology. We choose love.”
It was a reminder, John Carter says, of how Cash lived his life and what he stood for: “It’s the same thing as with the president — he (Cash) would have hated the hate, not the hater.”
Referring to another recent case, of a cease and desist order against a white supremacist radio show that had been playing Cash’s cover of I Won’t Back Down, John Carter adds: “He would not have endorsed, nor allowed, his music to be on that programme, but he would have asked them to come in and he would have read them the Bible.
“He was about peace and bringing people together.”
Aged 48, he feels his relationship with his father’s work has changed gradually from what it was in his thirties.
“It’s like communicating with him as a different person than I was when he passed away,” he says. “It’s been a healing, but also a scholarly work, and experiencing time with my best friend just by reading his words and hearing his laughter. It’s been many different things to me.” FE McWilliam Gallery & Studio Newry Road, Banbridge Until May 19
What makes a great artist? Technical ability, certainly. Subject matter, perhaps. Exposure also helps in today’s tech-media age. But what makes the reputation last? Could it be honesty?
Some art pieces you look at, you can feel the soul of the creator screaming out at you. On occasion, this happens when you follow an artist and see the linear path of his or her creativity as it develops.
Mark Shields has very quickly developed a reputation as an artist of considerable technical ability, most particularly in portraiture and still life works.
He is well-known for his portrait of the Rev Ian Paisley. In 2009, it became the first of an Ulsterman to adorn the walls of Parliament.
Now Shields is back in Northern Ireland with a new exhibition, The Inaccessible Land, which consists of work created over the past four years.
It also presents a number of distinct series that explore the tension between representation and abstraction.
Two of these I particularly like — In Principio (In the Beginning), and The Way.
The first consists of 49 charcoal drawings that originated with the motif of a perfect arch formed by the lower branches of two trees in Shields’ garden. The arch became the focus for all 49 drawings, produced over a period of seven days. Seven drawings were completed on the first day and on each day afterwards (this references the artist’s continuing interest in theology, and the opening words of The Book of Genesis). These pieces are beautiful in their purity and simplicity.
The Way is a series of simple, woodcut prints based on the Tao Te Ching, a fundamental text for both philosophical and religious Taoism.
It’s important to visit this show in order to experience an artist bravely leaving behind safety, and honestly daring to reveal his inner journey.
Elizabeth Baird