Quite the read l find the stories from the man in black interesting.
Did you know that Johnny Cash was once banned from the Grand Ole Opry for showing up drunk and smashing out the stage lights? Kinda reminds me of a scene from the biopic Walk The Line.... Well that actually happened one night in October, 1965.... Opry manager Jim Denny had his doubts about whether Johnny Cash was a good fit for the Grand Ole Opry from the time he made his debut nine years earlier.
Here's words from the Man in Black himself on that particular night.
Johnny: "He looked at my black clothes and long hair and sideburns and said, 'What makes you think you belong on the Grand Ole Opry?'.... So I said 'Well, I've got a record in the top ten best-sellers,' which I think was 'Folsom Prison Blues'... I said 'I think they'd like to hear me."
Johnny won over the crowd, and the Opry, that night with his debut performance, and continued to be a regular on the Opry stage for the next decade.
However, by the 1960s, Cash's drug and alcohol abuse had worsened and his performances were more and more erratic. He would take amphetamines when he wanted more energy, and barbiturates when he needed to go to sleep.
That night in 1965, a drunken Johnny Cash took the stage, but when there was a problem with his microphone, he took the mic stand and dragged it across the stage, smashing out all of the stage lights and sending shattered glass all over the audience members in the front row.
His bass player Marshall Grant recalled being told after the show: "Get him out of here, and don't bring him back."..... Johnny Cash continued to talk about that night.
Johnny: "I don't know how bad they wanted me in the first place, but the night I broke all the lights on the stage with the microphone stand, they said they couldn't use me anymore. So I left and used that as an excuse to really get wild and wound up in the hospital with my third time I broke my nose."
Johnny Cash left the Ryman that night and borrowed June Carter's car, a brand new Cadillac. But as he sped through Nashville into a thunderstorm and messed up on pills and booze, he crashed June's car into a utility pole ... Johnny broke his nose and teeth on the steering wheel ....Cash described period of time as the lowest point of his life... After a series of arrests in 1967, and being desperate of losing June, he agreed to clean up his act. After all, he had The Carter Family clan in his corner. And June, her mother Maybelle Carter, and father Ezra moved in with Johnny Cash for a month to help him clean up his act. And it worked. All in all, I think June literally saved his life.
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