Quotes About Johnny Cash

When I started DJing years ago, I took great delight in annoying the audience. Playing Johnny Cash in the middle of a banging night.

Some of my biggest commercial musical influences would be people like Merle Haggard, George Jones, of course, Johnny Cash. People that wrote and sang their own stuff, I really admired.

I grew up in the 60s, and before the 60s, my father was into Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, so I heard those records all the time and soaked that up.

Then about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music - the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger - could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue.

I was in Screaming Trees - I wasn't really interested in playing quiet music in a live setting. But I would get asked quite often to do a show or open for somebody, and I always said no. Finally, I was asked if I would open for Johnny Cash, and Johnny Cash was one of my dad's favorite heroes. So that's why I started doing solo shows.

I love singing some Johnny Cash, which is interesting because it's in a guy's key; I love singing Elvis Presley.

I love most 70's song writers, not so much outlaw, but really those 70's guys. I'm a big fan of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, those guys.

When I was stationed in Germany, Johnny Cash was already a legend over there because he'd done some shows, then gone off to some bar straight afterwards and played just for the troops. So he was a real hero.

I think if my father was a truck driver, I would have wanted to share the beauty that was there. He just happens to be Johnny Cash.

I gave everything I ever wrote to Johnny Cash. I think he said later in some interview that he would take them home and throw them in the lake with all the other demos. I'm sure he got a million of them.

Growing up in Mississippi, the first song that I ever remember hearing, that captivated my mind and transported me from my bedroom out to the West, is a song called 'Don't Take Your Guns to Town' by Johnny Cash. That's when I was 5-years-old. And I played that song over and over again. I pantomimed it in school for show-and-tell.

It's important to realize that everybody who went into country music, and most everybody who went into rock and roll in the '50s, they had no more goal than a hit on the jukebox. Johnny Cash, from the very beginning, had a goal that he wanted to make music that lifted people's spirits.

There are thousands upon thousands of new Johnny Cash fans every year, inspired by the music, talent, and - I believe hugely - by the mystery of the man.

His belief in the power of music to convey ideas - not just entertain - has filtered down to musicians in every field, from alt-rock to hip-hop, from Bruce Springsteen and U2 to Arcade Fire and Kanye West. Popular music is different because of Johnny Cash.

Throughout the '50s, tons of unknown locals came through Sun to record their demos. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis all made their first recordings at the former Memphis Recording Service.

I was born on March 3, 1970, as Mom and Dad's stardom was nearing its peak, while The Johnny Cash Show, was airing regularly on network TV.

I don't really listen to pop-country, but I like really, really old country that's closer to folk. Like Johnny Cash, who is considered country.

Dylan's relationship with Johnny Cash was the biggest influence on Nashville in my lifetime - they opened up country music.

I haven't been familiar with hard work. It was no problem for me. But first I hitchhiked to Pontiac, Mich. and got a job working in Fisher Body making those 1951 Pontiacs.

I really thought I knew Johnny Cash. I thought I didn't need to spend a lot of time researching his life. But I wasn't within 50 miles of knowing Johnny Cash. I knew he was a good guy and a dedicated artist, but I didn't know the demons, the struggles he had in his personal life.

I've always been an outsider. When I did magic, I was the only kid. When I worked with Johnny Cash, I was completely out of place in Nashville. And when I started Def Jam, I was the only white guy in the hip-hop world.

Johnny Cash was the champion of the voiceless, the underdogs and the downtrodden. He was also something of a holy terror, like Abraham Lincoln with a wild side. He represented the best of America.

The second Sterling session saw the birth of one of Hank's trademarks, the "crack" rhythm: an electric guitar keeping time on the deadened bass strings. Without drums in his lineup, Hank used the electric guitar to emphasize the pulse. It was the sound that Johnny Cash later made into a trademark, adding a little rhythmic flourish to make "boom-chicka-boom.

There's only one music video that had an emotional impact on me, and that's 'Hurt' by Johnny Cash. That's exceptional. There is no music video I can think of apart from that one that really reaches you inside.