Little known facts about Johnny Cash: interviews, photos, personal life and childhood years

It's called of human contradictions - and it's hard to argue with that. He was one of the greatest performers ever created. country musicHe was a man who spoke often and lovingly of his family, but he destroyed his first marriage with his own hands. He was a man who spoke often and lovingly of his family, but he destroyed his first marriage with his own hands. He also tested his second adoring spouse, June CarterHe was a man of deep religious faith, but at the darkest moment of his life. All of this-- Johnny Cash.

In spite of everything, people genuinely loved and cared for him, for at heart he was a a good man with great talent and an infinite capacity to be kind to others. In his life, he experienced many things: the loss of dear people, a difficult childhood marked by poverty and hard labour... He may have been a walking contradiction, but his life consisted of spectacular highs and incomprehensible lows. And now. Top 5 Surprising Facts about Johnny Cash.

A difficult childhood

The future country legend was born 26 February 1932. Arkansas, USA, and was the fourth of seven children. The family was very poorand by Cash's own recollection:

"We had no windows in our house. In the winter, my mother would hang up blankets or anything else she could find..."

The Depression hit the Cash family hard, but when Johnny was three, they moved to the Dice Colony in northeast Arkansas, taking part of the federal agricultural programmeThe family farmed 20 acres of cotton and other crops. When he was five years old, Johnny started working in the fields with his parents and siblings. By the age of eight, he was already picking with them. cottondragging a heavy canvas sack, which by the end of the day contained 200 or more pounds of cotton! The musician noted:

"It wasn't difficult: you just parked the van at the end of the row and walked up to it. But the work was tiring: my back hurt, my hands were always in cuts... We just worked and worked and worked - such are my memories of my childhood!"

The first painful loss

One day, when Johnny was 12 yearsHe remembered one terrible day for the rest of his life: it was the day he begged his older brother Jack's to go fishing with him, but he refused and went to work part-time. Jack worked with a table saw - $3 for one day's work. Cash went fishing alone that day, but, he recalls, he was very boringand soon he was on his way home. There he ran into his father, who was in a panic: there had been an accident at work and Jack had been seriously injured by a saw - he was between life and death... Jack lay in a coma for a week before passing away. Little Johnny helped dig Jack's grave ...

Later, when he became a star, Cash would write in his autobiography the following:

"After Jack died, I too felt as if I had died... I had no other friend. I have always, all my life, felt his influence and presence - he became my guardian angel! From time to time I see him in my dreams, and he always comes when I have a difficult choice to make - he helps me not to make mistakes and foolishness, guides me to the right path...".

Fighting inner demons

Before fame, Cash was a quiet and peaceful man. When he married Vivian Libertohe got a job and they started a family. But with the advent of music, their marriage began to fracture... Largely because of Johnny's constant travelling, which became more and more were changing his personality. He developed a serious addiction to alcohol and substances, and developed an addiction to attractive, "daring" women he met on the road. His eldest daughter remembered:

"The time spent on the road made his stay at home unbearable. It got to the point where someone else came home instead of my dad. Substances were always at work. He was up all night. He and my mum fought. It was so sad... Sometimes my mum would put us kids in the car and go looking for my dad who was drunk..."

In 1966, Vivian filed for divorce. As for Cash, his drunken adventures continued for quite some time - even when he married the John Carterhe still occasionally returned to his old addictions...

Forest fire

Johnny Cash had camper (motorhome), which he named "Jesse.", and in late June 1965, he and his nephew took "Jesse" to the national forest Los Padres for camping and fishing. Cash, sitting at the wheel, was taking substances all the way, drinking whiskey and swerving now and then.... Damon (nephew) was so annoyed with his uncle that he refused to fish in the same spot as Cash after they parked and set up the camper. What happened next was cause for discussion, with Cash saying that oil from a cracked bearing dripped onto a hot wheel that set the grass under his truck on fire. Damon, on the other hand, thought that a drunken Cash had spent a box of matches making a fire to keep warm.

It's not so important what exactly caused it, as an out-of-control fire soon raged around them, necessitating the deployment of a rescue helicopter to get them out of the forest. The fire eventually burned over 500 acres on three mountains and chased away 49 of the 53 endangered condors living in a refuge on the ground! As a result, the musician was fined a total of $125,000. for this offence.

He was in a lot of trouble with the law

Cash has been arrested on numerous occasions for offences usually involving with substances - either for their acquisition or for antics under their influence. Here are just a few glaring examples of this....

Once Cash was detained at an airport and locked up overnight for rowdy behaviour, the next time he - when he was arrested - was so drunk that he slammed the cell door in anger and... broke my toe. But the highlight of his drunken adventures was when he rode on a Cadillac Eldorado through the woods, drove into some rural area and knocked on the door of a house for a long time. The result was another arrest, which once again brought him a night in jail.