Country icon Rosanne Cash is interviewed in the new issue of Guitarist and discusses her involvement in “the family business”, alongside the release of two new Gibson signature guitars, based on her father Johnny Cash’s SJ-200 and her own J-185.
Amid the discussion, she describes her father’s contrasting attitude to guitars and guitarists – pointing to the ready accessibility they had as children to even his most valuable instruments and his honoring of Bob Dylan as evidence of his thinking.
Cash says Johnny’s original SJ-200 (made for him by Gibson during at the height of his initial success in the late-’50s) was a familiar sight around the house as a kid.
“It was like, ‘Oh, that’s my dad,’” says Cash. “That guitar is inseparable from my idea of who my father is.”
Echoing the sentiments of her recent conversation with Guitar World – in which, she explained Johnny “wasn’t precious in any way; no matter how valuable the guitar” – Cash tells Guitarist, “He had no sense of being territorial about his guitars when we were kids. You were always welcome to play his guitars.”
Instead, he viewed guitars as tools and preferred to place his respect with the players who used them – be that his own children, or even other artists he admired.
“In fact, there’s a tradition in country music,” says Cash. “Where an older musician – in order to give respect to a younger musician – would give them his guitar. So I remember my dad gave Bob Dylan one of his guitars.”
The exchange is thought to have involved a Martin acoustic guitar and happened when the two players met at Newport Folk Festival in 1964.
Cash Sr. was already a vociferous supporter of the songwriter, and the feeling was mutual, as Dylan later recalled in Martin Scorcese’s documentary No Direction Home.
“Johnny Cash was more like a religious figure to me,” said Dylan. "And there he was at Newport you know standing side by side. Meeting him was a high thrill of a lifetime and just the fact that he had sung one of my song was just was unthinkable.”
Blues musician and music critic, Tony Glover, recalled the event in the same film.
“Johnny Cash and June Carter came by after Bob had put a couple or three tunes on tape for him on some portable machine,” says Glover.
“Johnny called him out in the hall and Bob came back in a few minutes later and he says, ‘He gave me his guitar.’ Bob Neuwerth was saying, ‘Wow! That's an old country tradition – if somebody gives you their guitar that's a big honor...’”
Elsewhere, in the Guitarist interview Cash says it was again the meaning behind the instruments, as opposed to the tools themselves, that had her approaching the Gibson project with some trepidation.
“I thought, ‘Do I really want to do that?’ You know, did it seem like encroachment?” says Cash of the signature builds.
“[And I thought] ‘In this point in my life, it’s not like I’m a kid and just starting out and trying to co-opt something.’ It just made sense. My dad and I are the only father and daughter in the Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame. And I thought, ‘Well, this is something like that.’ The generations go on, and we have a family business.”
To read Rosanne Cash’s full interview, pick up issue 521 of Guitarist over at Magazines Direct.
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