I don’t want to Cash in on my grandfather’s name but it’s an honour to sing his songs for the fans
Performer on playing hits at Irish concerts
THOMAS Gabriel is the eldest grandson of the legendary Man in Black, but he refuses to “Cash in” by using the famous family surname to boost his own career.
But the 46-year-old certainly won’t be shy about singing some of Johnny Cash’s songs when he plays a string of dates here next week – including Athy’s Dreamland Ballroom where the great man once performed in 1963.
Thomas has even promised to learn the lyrics to the classic song 40 Shades Of Green, written by Cash as a love note to Ireland after visiting here in 1959.
In an exclusive interview with the Irish Mirror, he said: “He absolutely loved Ireland. For a while I didn’t sing any of his songs. I would do my own thing on stage.
“But I realised a lot of people who turned up missed him and wanted to hear those songs. It’s an honour to be able to sing them. It’s carrying on a tradition because I see them as being passed down. I don’t see them as cover songs at all.”
Thomas not only sounds uncannily like his grandfather but he also had his own battles with drugs and booze addictions. He is now clean and sober for four years and is relishing this second chance at a music career.
He said: “It was all violent crimes. I had a road rage incident where I assaulted somebody. I had a lot of things that had built up and the judge got tired of seeing me.
“It all boiled down to anger and hating who I was, so therefore I hated everybody else too.”
Thomas confessed to finding it difficult living under the shadow of a legend.
He added: “I think in my case it established a false sense of entitlement. I felt as if I was allowed to say and do what I wanted.
“When I was younger I didn’t really know how to express anything except for anger.
“I walked around with a lot of guilt and self-hatred.
“I took cocaine and amphetamines – pretty much anything I could get my hands on, except opiates.
“Once I got out of prison, I spent a lot of time working on getting rid of that [anger] and establishing a relationship again with my kids. Because after being gone so long, they didn’t even really know me.”
Thomas first showed worrying signs of alcoholism when still only 13 – prompting his grandfather to drag him to his first AA meeting. He is convinced he genetically
inherited the disease from the Boy Named Sue hitmaker. He revealed: “He took me to the front door and said, ‘You go in here and listen. I’ll be back to get you’.
“He sat in the parking lot and made sure I stayed. He realised I would’ve felt uncomfortable with him sitting in there.
“I was the oldest grandchild so he was a little harder on me than most. Plus, I needed it – I got into a lot of trouble as a kid.
“He said several times that he saw a lot of himself in me.”
Thomas confessed he was once in “such really bad shape” after being fired from his job and going through a divorce, along with his drug addiction, that he ended up stealing money from his grandad.
He said: “He called me in about a week later and didn’t point blank ask me, but I knew what he was getting at.
“So, I just told him and said, ‘I’m really sorry’. But it turned out to be more of a positive thing than anything.”
Thomas said one of his biggest regrets is not getting the chance to say a proper goodbye to his grandfather on his deathbed in 2003.
Thomas had only gotten out of prison a couple of months earlier and was helping “take care of him” in his last days.
He recalled: “So, that day he’d gone back to the hospital he said, ‘I’ll be back. Take care of the house.’ “Later that evening he called and said, ‘I need you to come down to the hospital and tell you something. I want to talk to you.’
“And I’d been taking amphetamines and I’d run out. And when you run out you feel like you want to die. You’ve got no motivation, you don’t want to get off the couch.
“I couldn’t stay awake. My intention was to lay back down for an hour and sleep it off and then go see him. But I never got back up.
“And my mother called me at around 5am and said he had passed. I regretted not just putting the phone down and going [straight] to him. That’s one of the things I had to work on as well – regrets and guilt. I carried that around with me for a long time. I finally let it go.”
But what does he think Johnny wanted to tell him? He said: “I’ve thought about it a million times. I like to think that he knew he was going but we’d also had talks in the weeks before about music – he wanted me to get back into my music.
“Back in the early 90s when I was doing music, he wanted me to put a stop to it and have something to fall back on, a trade or a career. He wanted me to get back into something that I loved because I was just spinning my wheels – I wasn’t going anywhere.”