My dad was Johnny Cash – this is the relatable reason he was jealous of Elvis | Music | Entertainment

Love is a Burning Thing and no one burned brighter than Johnny Cash and his wife of 35 years June Carter. Now their only son, John Carter Cash, has co-created a musical paying homage to the first couple of country music. Their story is one of music’s greatest love stories and the musical is told through John’s eyes.

The Ballad of Johnny and June, featuring all the hits from Ring of Fire to I Walk the Line, opens for a nationwide tour of the UK next month and the Daily Express caught up with John at home in Tennessee with final rehearsals for the show underway.

“As the only child of Johnny and June together I do feel a huge responsibility to protect their legacy and for the musical to be a correct representation of their relationship,” he explains. “My parents weren’t without their issues like all families, and they both fought addiction, but theirs was a great love story and I grew up in a house of love.”

From the mid-Fifties through to the late Sixties, Cash was one of the biggest stars in country music, but he was also one of its most tormented, with drinking and amphetamine addictions spiralling out of control as life on the road took its toll.

“My father dealt with addiction to drugs and pills but there was never any physical violence growing up,” says John. “They were gentle, wonderful people, not dark people.”

How own ‘character’ in the musical acts as the narrator breaking the fourth wall and the words spoken are his own. “I also picked the songs,” he says. “There are the big hits of course like Ring of Fire and I Walk the Line, which was my dad’s favourite, and also Big River which he loved and my personal favourite, A Singer of Songs, which is a really poignant one for me.”

The song, which features lyrics about not being a saint or saviour, is often cited as a reflection of how Cash viewed himself and his life’s work. As the son of Country music royalty John knows only too well the pressures of growing up a “nepo baby” and the struggle to come out from the shadow of his world famous parents.

He was friends with singer Roy Orbison’s sons growing up (and still is), is close to Jacob Dylan, Bob’s son, and knew the late Lisa Marie Presley well too. “There is a pressure growing up as that second generation of famous musicians,” says John, who has won numerous awards for his work as a music producer and recording artist. I have felt it all my life and, since my parents died, there is the added pressure to protect and maintain their legacy.

Of course the name Cash opens the door but if you haven’t got anything to back it up, and aren’t prepared to work hard, then it means nothing and you won’t get anywhere. “My parents knew a lot of great people and they gave me lots of connections but you don’t win a Grammy without working hard and having something to give yourself.”

Nevertheless his childhood was peppered with impressive celebrity encounters – a day at the beach with Paul McCartney, meeting Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, and artists Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol to mention just a few. John never met Elvis, even though both parents had worked and toured with him during their careers and his mum June “always got a sparkle in her eye at the mention of him”.

“They never dated and I don’t think they ever even kissed as she was married then [to American country music singer Carl Smith] but she obviously liked him,” chuckles John. “My dad greatly admired him of course but there was a little jealousy of Elvis.”

John almost met the King of Rock and Roll himself when he was performing his concerts in Las Vegas in the Seventies towards the end of his life. “I remember once when I was young in the Seventies we were supposed to go and see Elvis play,” he recalls. “But at the last minute, my parents got a note to him to say the boy was sick – that was me – and so they wouldn’t be coming. Maybe they thought it would be too much hassle for Elvis to have to host them or maybe dad was afraid mum would see him and get that sparkle in her eye again!”

The Ballad of Johnny & June, which opens in March in the UK, takes Cash fans right inside the soaring highs and shattering lows of Johnny and June’s love story. It begins with Johnny as a small-town musician and storyteller and June as the comedienne from the first family of country music. By the time they met, Johnny had four daughters (Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy and Tara) with his first wife, Vivian Liberto, whom he was married to for 12 years.

Their marriage broke down due to Johnny’s alcoholism and his growing relationship with June. June meanwhile had a daughter Carlene with her first husband Carl and another, Rosie, with her second husband, Edwin Lee ‘Rip’ Nix, a businessman.

Johnny and June finally wed in 1968 and John, their only child, was born in 1970. By the time they got together Cash wasn’t just a country icon – he had crossed genres and generations. His famous prison concerts at Folsom and San Quentin were broadcast around the world. Ring of Fire and I Walk the Line became global hits, and his collaboration with June reignited both their careers.

Although their marriage was marred by illness and addiction, John remembers a mostly happy childhood filled with music, books, theatre trips (“they took me to see plays and musicals from the age of four”) and plenty of love.

Now 55, John, who lives in Tennessee, just 30 miles from where he grew up, has shaken off the nepo baby tag and has long established himself in several fields.He has released solo albums, produced artists from Sheryl Crow, Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson to Emmylou Harris and Elvis Costello, written books and loves to paint.

Like his famous parents he and his third wife, Ana Christina, have just recorded a couple of duets together. And his five children from his marriages are inevitably turning out to be rather musical – carrying on the family tradition. With his blended family, it seems John is very much his father’s son and admits he too has had problems with alcohol in the past. But he says: “I’m borderline diabetic, something else I inherited from dad and so I haven’t teared up a binge since 2015.”

John’s mum June died in 2003 at the age of 73 due to complications from heart valve replacement surgery in a Nashville hospital and his father followed four months later with complications from diabetes. “It was so hard to see dad mourn mum,” he says. “My sister Rosie died that year too and I wasn’t drinking and so got through it all sober – it was certainly a tough time.”

Contrary to reports that he and his sisters fought over the rights to their father’s music, John says the reality was more complicated and today there is no bad blood between them. Rosanne Cash regularly hosts the Sunken Lands Songwriting Circle, formerly part of the Johnny Cash Heritage Festival, in Arkansas, an annual event benefiting the preservation of the Historic Dyess Colony: an agricultural resettlement project in Mississippi County, Arkansas, created to provide a fresh start for destitute farmers during the Great Depression and famously Johnny Cash’s boyhood home. “My sisters are involved in their own various projects to remember my parents legacy but this musical is my way of keeping their memory and music alive,” John adds.

He hopes to come to the UK to see the musical, which stars American musical theatre star Christopher Ryan Grant as Johnny and Christina Bianco as June. John himself is played by Ryan O’Donnell and he admits it is strange to see his family up on stage again. He performed with his parents from infancy until Cash retired from touring in 1997 when John was 27.

“I think my parents would be proud of the musical and happy at the way they are portrayed,” he adds. “I was there for their ups and downs and had a ringside seat at their love story and I am sure the fans in the UK are going to love it.”

The Johnny Cash Musical: The Ballad of Johnny and June tours the UK and Ireland from March 2 to September 19. For more information, visit johnnyandjunemusical.com