The first live gig I ever saw was Johnny Cash at the Birmingham Odeon in 1971. I was 14 and went with my dad. He wasn’t really a Cash fan. He liked light operatic tenors like Josef Locke and Mario Lanza. He once, after several drinks, was unable to bring Lanza’s name to mind. In desperation, he asked my mum for help. “I don’t remember,” she said. “Well, of course you don’t remember,” he replied. “That’s because you’re rubbish and all your family are rubbish.” At the time, it seemed unnecessarily harsh but now I can’t help thinking that, if he’d lived, he could have completely revitalised the quiz show format.
I’d got into Cash after I’d used my pocket money to buy his Live at San Quentin album, just because I liked the cover. It turned out I liked the record inside even more. There were songs about being on the run from the law, one about a train wreck in which the driver was “scalded to death by the steam”, and another about a man called Sue brawling with his estranged father.
It was recorded live at San Quentin State Prison in California and the whole atmosphere of the album was electric, with whoops of approval for any reference to casual violence and/or reform of the penal system. They loved him. Cash was in with the locked-in crowd.
The Birmingham gig was amazing as well. To my delight, Cash began the show with his catchphrase: “Hello. I’m Johnny Cash.” As catchphrases go, it’s not a complex construction but it had the advantage of being very hard to plagiarise. Cash did all his best-loved songs. Even my dad liked it.
It could be said that it was Cash who, just a few months later, started me on the rocky road to alcoholism. Hearing that I’d been to the Odeon show, my elder brother, Terry, suggested we visited a nearby pub in Smethwick to see a Johnny Cash impersonator. I’d never been in a pub before so I was a bit scared, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to relive that glorious first gig, albeit with a stand-in for the great man.
It was a rites-of-passage night for me. My brother laughed off my request for dandelion and burdock and got me a big, dark pint of beer. I didn’t much like the taste but my whole body tingled with excitement, like when you put the last piece into a jigsaw. The counterfeit Cash was good. He even did the catchphrase, thus destroying my anti-plagiarism theory. When he stepped off stage, my brother called him over. Faux Cash looked at me and said: “He’s a bit young.”
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
