Soon after that he had his own hit television show.įrom the moment he took his first Benzedrine tablet in 1957 until his attempted suicide in Nickajack Cave 10 years later, Johnny Cash’s musical output was more fertile and prolific than at any other period in his career. His arrogance was rebuked by his faith, and he started scraping and crawling, crablike, until he staggered out of the cave hours later exhausted and confused.
His wanted the thick, sinister intestine of his country to digest him finally, to dissolve him away.
The Man in Black had spent 10 years in a hellish cycle of addiction and self-mortification, and he wanted to formalize his separation from God by crawling as far into the cave as he could, waiting for death to overtake him without God as witness. In October 1967 Johnny Cash was huddled deep inside the cold dark Nickajack Cave waiting to die.
