I was a freelance writer looking for a break when I heard that Johnny Cash was going to record a live album in Folsom Prison in California. I thought it would make a fantastic story, so I took it to the Los Angeles Times. They rejected it on the grounds that they didn’t want to give space to a drug user. I said in that case you’d better not cover Dylan or the Beatles. I talked them into it. I was 29 and Johnny was 36. He always said he wasn’t on drugs in Folsom Prison, but look at that face! Many country musicians did drugs then, but he was on them all the time, trying to block out his harsh childhood: his brother had died when he was growing up on a...
Read the entire article in The Telegraph UK: http://bit.ly/1qiTT3g
Watch Johnny Cash perform Folsom Prison Blues live via You Tube: