Johnny & June

Sunday, July 9, 2017 No tags Permalink

“I want a love like Johnny and June
Rings of fire burning with you
I wanna walk the line, walk the line, ‘til the end of time”


I grew up listening to Johnny Cash.  Let me rephrase that: I grew up hanging around my dad all the time, and my dad listens to Johnny Cash. Johnny’s version of Nine Inch Nails “Hurt” was on the radio this morning and I started thinking about his older music.

In a 1981 Mike Douglas interview, June Carter Cash explained, “He asked me to marry him in front of 7,000 people, but I would have liked it if he had gotten down on his knees and proposed to me, you know, but that wasn’t the way it was. It was a great big production…” Johnny continued the story, “We had just sung a song called ‘Jackson’, and I stopped the show and said, ‘Will you marry me?’ on the microphone. She said, ‘Go, sing another, sing another, sing another!’ I said, ‘I’m not gonna sing until you answer me. Will you marry me?’ And she says, ‘Sing a song. Sing a song.’ She turned her back, you know, trying to get somebody in the band to play some music or something. [It] kept going until she finally said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Okay, next song.’ So, we set it up. We got married March 1, 1968.”

“There’s unconditional love there. You hear that phrase a lor but it’s real with me and her. She loves me in spite of everything, in spite of myself. She has saved my life more than once. She’s always been there with her love, and it has certainly made me forget the pain for a long time, many times. When it gets dark and everybody’s gone home and the lights are turned off, it’s just me and her.” (Johnny Cash, Rolling Stone)

“We’re soulmates, friends and lovers and everything else that makes a happy marriage. Our hearts are attuned to each other, and we’re very close. I’ll get up every morning at five o’clock and make the coffee, then start pacing the floor, wanting her to get up. But I’ll let her sleep for a couple of more hours. If she smells the coffee, she’s up.”
Johnny Cash about June Carter Cash

Proving he was not only a talented performer and songwriter, in 1994 Cash composed a love lto his wife June on the occasion of her 65th birthday. Cash wrote, “You still fascinate and inspire me. You influence me for the better. You’re the object of my desire, the #1 Earthly reason for my existence.”

Cash, who had been married to June for 26 years at the time, continued in the letter, “We got old and got used to each other. We think alike. We read each others [sic] minds. We know what the other wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit. Maybe sometimes we take each other for granted. But once in a while, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met.”

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