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Johnny Cash: The Life Robert Hilburn. Little, Brown and Company, 2013.
Robert Hilburn, longtime music critic for the Los Angeles Times (1970-2006), has produced a biography of Johnny Cash that is likely to be as definitive a biography of "the man in black" as we are to see. Hilburn knew Cash well and was the only journalist present at Cash's legendary Folsom Prison concert in 1968. He knows and has interviewed many people who were close to Cash, and he has access to deeply personal letters between Cash and family members and friends. Although Hilburn deeply respects the man and his music, Johnny Cash: The Life is not a hagiographical work. He gives the reader Cash, warts and all. His book belongs on a shelf with Peter Guralnick's biographies of Elvis Presley and Sam Cooke.
The broad outlines of Cash's life are well known to Cash fans and to many members of the general public even if they are not fans of Cash or of country music. Hilburn fills in these broad outlines with often chilling details. He makes clear that Cash had an addictive personality. Most notably he was addicted to cigarettes (from an early age), sex, and drugs (primarily amphetamines and more potent pain killers). In some ways, Cash's life reads like a cliche of the road life of musicians. The road can be a killer, and it can lead to bad habits. Cash was not immune.
Cash was married to two women, Vivian Liberto Cash and, more famously, June Carter Cash. Vivian and Johnny met in San Antonio when she was seventeen and...