Johnny Cash - The Life by Roger Hilburn

There was much more to the man in black than his stage persona revealed. This well-written and thoroughly-researched biography by LA Times journalist Robert Hilburn traces Cash's development from youth to old age and ill health with remarkable sensitivity and warmth.

The central focus is the evolution of Cash as a musician. From a boy who loved to sing gospel songs with his mum - to a man strumming his guitar with air force pals - on to starting a garage band and eventually after thousands of miles touring across America, a spell of super-stardom before the inevitable fall.

Hilburn goes into detail about most of the songs ever written by Cash and quotes many of the lyrics at length. This really brings his subject to life and it's a joy to read song texts penned by Cash. If you know the songs you will certainly hear his voice and music in your head as you read. Seeing the lyrics on paper it's clear that Cash is a storyteller and poet of great style and wit.

Here are the top 5 new things I learnt about Cash reading this book:

1. His Christian faith played a huge part in his life. He regularly read the Bible and even wrote a book about St John. Despite this he almost never went to church.

2. He wrote Walk the Line for his first wife Vivian. He tried to remain faithful to her and was terrified of separating from her. In the end, it was she who filed for divorce.

3. His return to the music charts with the album American Recordings in 1994 owed a great deal to the inspirational work of music producer Rick Rubin who reinvented Cash at the height of the grunge movement.

4. He was in an incredible amount of pain and on a cocktail of about 40 pills a day as he recorded his last albums with Rubin. Sometimes he was so out of breath that his voice was reduced to a whisper. Engineers had to piece his last songs together from hundreds of takes.

5. Cash was a terrible driver and was in many car accidents. Once he crashed a camper van in the middle of a national park. He ended up by causing a wildfire in which scores of endangered eagles were killed. He got off with a hefty fine.

Of course the book also covers the drug addiction and the famous prison concerts with panache, but there is so much more to Cash and therefore the book than that. An added richness is the cultural context which Hilburn lucidly paints from the 1950s to the beginning of the 21st century.  This book sits not only within biography but within the historiography of 20th century music - doing Cash justice as one of America's biggest musical icons of the last century.

Drive On from the album 'American Recordings' (1994) is one of the lesser known songs by Cash that I discovered whilst reading the book. He was a prolific artist.