Johnny Cash and the Queen

It's Johnny Cash's birthday.

I interviewed him a few times over the years, then in the late summer of 2003 I spent the best part of a week with him at his house in Hendersonville, interviewing him and writing a book that came out with a boxed set "Unearthed".

We were sitting outside in the front yard, Cash was in a wheelchair, drinking Coca Cola, and the yard was noisy with birds that surrounded all the ornate bird feeders and bird houses that June Carter Cash had put just about everywhere.

The conversation had turned to poetry. Cash said he was writing a poem that he was trying to turn into a song. It was taking a long time, he said. He had around 40 or 50 verses written, most of which he'd discarded. It's a pity that Leonard Cohen wasn't there or they could have empathized over a stiff drink! It was inspired by a dream, he said, so I asked him what the dream was about.

JC: " I had a dream that I was in Buckingham Palace and I walked in and there she sat on the floor - which she probably doesn't do at all. But she had a friend there and they were laughing, they had their knitting needles and I walked up and she looked up at me from her knitting and kind of gasped and said, 'Johnny Cash, you're just like a thorn tree in a whirlwind'. And I woke up and I thought, what does that mean? That's got to be a meaningful dream. But nothing came to me, no revelation, on what that dream meant. So I thought about it for a long, long time - this dream was seven years ago - but the idea of this dream kept coming back around and I kept thinking about it. So finally I thought, maybe it's Biblical, so I got a Concordance down, a chain reference system of the Bible, and started looking for it and I found it in the book of Job, about a thorn tree in a whirlwind."

SS: So it was in the back of your mind somewhere. Your grandfather was a minister?

JC: "Yes he was, so I was brought up reading the scriptures. So I guess I did have it in there somewhere!"

SS: Have you ever met the Queen, or just in your dream?

JC: "No I haven't. Can you fix me up?."