aoife

Lester Bangs said, "We will never agree on anything the way we agreed on Elvis."

I think it's even more true of Johnny Cash.

Who else can Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake, and teenage American MTV fans agree upon with most of their parents? What other musician would make that seventy-something man go out to his car today and bring me in a burned compilation all his own and hand it to me, the tattooed girl behind the counter at the bike shop?

I can't give you an unbiased review of a movie about Johnny Cash. I'm the girl with "I walk the line" tattooed on her foot in Cash's handwriting, copied from a picture of a guitar he'd signed.

I can tell you that it was a completely worthy, satisfying experience and that I'm going to have to see it again. Maybe more than once. Joaquin Phoenix was great, and Reese Witherspoon changed my opinion of her. That Johnny and June reaffirmed my belief in love. Real, serious life-changing love. Better than just any love-story on film, because Johnny and June were for real.

I went back and re-read June's liner notes on the "Love" disc this morning and it almost made me cry again.

Johnny Cash is remembered as a 'badass,' as boundcreature commented to me. I sleep under a monster poster of him flipping off the camera, and "Cocaine Blues" is one of my favorite Cash songs. But (as you can tell from the tattoo) it's not just the rock'n'roll attitude that I love. I respect a man who had sympathy for everyone and spoke for many who had no one else, someone who could write about love and God with the same feeling as he wrote about crimes he'd never committed. He was a Christian in the best sense of the word, and today's so-called religious right could damn well learn something from Johnny.

Elvis put sex in our music, but Johnny Cash WAS American music. And a movie about him couldn't possibly cover everything. But they picked a story that couldn't help but resonate, and told it well.

*edit--new picture of my new tattoo. it's not a good one, but whatever.