2005 is like a limping old dog that needs to be put out of its misery. This year will be remembered as a time of confusion, denial and loss, when the crisply pressed linen line between good guys and bad guys – the white hats and the black hats – frayed and crinkled. George W. Bush’s pronouncement on CNN that “you’re either with us or against us” after the Twin Towers were threaded by air liners is now a refrain of resistance. We cannot support the crazy hawks with their claws exposed ripping the civility and tolerance from the skin of society. Blood-soaked news continues to ooze from a supposedly (post) war Iraq. Xenophobia walks the streets of Australian cities. Respect and thoughtful tolerance is required for those who resist, critique and do not acquiesce to the directives of the market economy. Being an outsider is not an act of sedition, but necessity.

Outsider status is difficult to sustain in popular culture. Popularity often requires compliance, smiling on the Red Carpet, answering stupid questions from journalists, knowing the best designers and starving on the most fashionable diets. Johnny Cash never fitted into such a narrative. He sung at the White House. He sung in prisons. He sung to soldiers in Vietnam. He sung for their return. He sung for indigenous Americans. He sung ‘What is truth?’ to Richard Nixon. George W. Bush presented him with an award, but it was Al Gore who spoke at his memorial service. A follower of Billy Graham, he was also the supporter of an AIDs charity. He described himself as an independent voter who was interested in issues, not political parties. Cash was also a courageous drinker and excessive drug-taker. When he sung ‘Cocaine Blues,’ there was powder in his throat. The tussle between the secular and the sacred was not resolved through his performance of either rock ‘n’ roll or gospel.

By the time Johnny Cash started to make records he already sounded old, like his larynx had been a percussive punching bag for life’s disappointments. His brother Jack died by evisceration: a spinning circular blade chewed up his young body. Johnny was eleven. Before commencing his recording career alongside Presley, Lewis and Perkins, he had worked as a door-to-door appliance salesman, an automobile assembly-line worker and survived a three year stint in the U.S. Air Force. Cash was a Country and Western singer. But he could be – and became – so much more. Appropriately, he signed to Sun, a label that fused rhythm and blues with pop. It was an ideal context for Luther – rather than Carl - Perkins to create ‘the Cash sound,’ best associated with the boom-chicka-boom guitar picking. ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and ‘I walk the line’ were both released in 1956, staying in the American charts for most of that year. While the Perkins’ rhythm is present on both tracks, they are unique. ‘I walk the line’ commences – not with a lyric – but a husky single note. The chord progressions are odd and the bass C in the vocal line transforms the modulation of the entire melody.

Johnny Cash was concurrently authentic, serious and laughing at his mock gothic grandeur. The distinctive terrain of his music demanded rapid twists in emotion and perspective. In ‘Folsom Prison Blues,’ one of the finest and funniest lyrics in popular music emerged: ‘I shot a man in Reno / Just to watch him die.’ It is hypermasculine, violent, frightening, but also very funny. As shown by the Village People, when masculinity is pushed to excess, it becomes camp, a farce. Prison songs have always been part of country music, but they are filled with regret at a loss of love. Cash’s version of the genre was different: the killer knew he deserved the punishment.

Cash never did hard jail time, he only sounded like it. He was arrested for smuggling 1,163 pills across the Mexico border. He spent a few nights in jail for disorderly conduct. His damage was not to other people, but to himself. His amphetamine use in the late 1950s and early 1960s was of such a scale that even the Road Runner would have baulked at the speed. Instead of being incarcerated, Cash performed in prisons since 1957 and wanted to record one of these shows.

Cash’s concert in Folsom Prison on January 13, 1968 was legendary. The resultant album spent thirty months on the American chart. This success led to a renewal in his career. The following year – the queer anthem that is not one – ‘A boy named Sue’ emerged. This comedy/country/performance art record triggered a rediscovery of his back catalogue. By 1969, nine of his albums were in the pop charts. In that one year, he was responsible for five percent of all record sales in the United States.

It is the humour that makes Cash – even at his most staunchly Christian – endearing. In comparing the recordings of Cash with the most recent album from Madonna, Confessions on a dance floor, we see our current political and cultural problems at their most overt. The former material girl, even when using an Abba sample and Eurotrash rhythms, does not see the comedy of a forty seven year old woman wearing a pink leotard, beige fishnets and discoball shoes. We want to laugh with her, not at her. Really we do. But Madonna has seemingly lost the ability to see her own life and music at an ironic distance.

Madonna, in the latter stages of her career, had a great opportunity to offer commentary about the complex nature of femininity and sexuality, and how the expectations of being a woman have changed through her life. Instead, she wrote children’s books and returned to Abba and lycra. Cash was different. He continually put the guilt, blame and retribution of masculinity into his music. ‘I walk the line’ – a lyric written by Cash in fifteen minutes - sung of monogamy, fidelity and faithfulness. But his grain of voice inferred that he slipped from this standard, and often.

Johnny Cash was a man of style who transcended fashion. Rebelling against the rhinestones of country music, he wore black with an agenda. Typically, he commented on his own image and gave his clothes a direction and purpose. In ‘Man in Black,’ the jacket was layered with meaning.

I’d love to wear a rainbow everyday
And tell the world that everything’s O.K.
But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back
Till things are brighter I’m the Man in Black

It was the grinding struggle of daily life that marinated Cash’s voice. These were adult struggles encircling sobriety, fidelity and citizenship. He was a patriot who attacked the dense injustices of his nation. Johnny Cash summoned an America that the rest of world could live with, work with and respect. The uber-masculinity was undercut by the grinding relentlessness of work, exploitation and death. The America of Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash can be respected in a way that Bush the Elder and Younger could never sustain. His level of recognition and visibility over fifty years – his popularity in confronting unpopular issues – made him a rarity: a singer than not only minstrelled to disenfranchised, but through his courage shifted the trajectory of pop in the twentieth century. This man was a complex and contradictory American. Near the end of his life, he confirmed that “our government scares the daylights out of me.” He was flawed. His bass baritone voice was cracked and threadbare. But he not only asked ‘What is truth,’ but offered more answers than most.

It is appropriate that 2005 saw the release of Cash: The Legend, a four CD retrospective of 107 tracks. The timing is important: it is fifty years since he first recorded music at Sun Studios. Beautifully packaged, the discs themselves are black. The hits are included, along with duets, Cash’s personal favourites and – the surprisingly stand out compilation – ‘The Great American Songbook.’ His renditions of ‘Rock Island Line,’ ‘Goodnight Irene’ and ‘Born to lose’ are chilling and addictive. Previously unreleased material is plaited with the hit singles. The significant Sun and Columbia recordings are included, but not the material from his ‘American’ series. Not only are the discs dippable, but as an entire listening experience it commands profound respect for his voice, his songwriting, his humour and range. For long-term fans, or those discovering Cash after the publicity of the filmic biopic Walk the line, it is satisfying and revelatory.

Even this great collection of four discs does not capture the whole story. In effect, there are three Johnny Cashes. The first started with ‘Hey! Porter’ in 1955. Then an older and harder Cash emerged through the ‘comeback concert’ at Folsom Prison in 1968. The final stage was the greatest phase and the ultimate surprise.

Johnny Cash may have faded away through the 1980s, but something remarkable happened. In February 1993, he was approached by Rick Rubin, the producer of the Beastie Boys and Red Hot Chili Peppers, and cofounder of Def Jam Records. Like a postmodern Sam Phillips, he invited Cash to his house in California, and asked him to play some music. Rubin justified his commitment and belief by affirming that “It just didn’t seem like he was cherished. He’s a great man.” Cash’s voice, guitar and Rubin’s tape recorder produced thirteen songs and the American Recordings album. The music was so raw and authentic that Cash did not even use a pick on the strings. It was a movement away from Nashville and towards the Doc Marten-ed, leather jacketed post-grunge, post-house audience. Through Rubin’s influence, rap, heavy metal and country were linked through a desire to capture the life of the crushed and angry. The album went on to win the 1995 Grammy for the best contemporary folk record. This project was a Generation X marketing dream. The tough image of the old man of American music – dressed in black and accompanied by the worn voice of a life punctuated by drink and pills – transformed him into an icon. He even played Johnny Depp’s Viper Room.

The four albums he recorded with Rubin are stunning. He was fighting pneumonia and diabetes, but his re-recording of ‘Hurt,’ a Nine Inch Nails’ classic, was fresh, potent and powerful. The video for the song captured the indignities of illness and ageing. It also won a Grammy for ‘Best Short Form Video’ and was named the top music video of the past three decades by the BBC.

Johnny Cash had originally, honesty and respect. He was handsome, imposing and edgy. He was a musical innovator – who else would have added Mariachi horns to ‘Ring of Fire’? – and protective of those who shared his rebel status. Cash defended Bob Dylan from irate folkies who did not forgive him for ‘going electric.’ He was also humble and modest. Famously, he introduced himself before starting a concert: “Hello – I’m Johnny Cash.” There are very few people, faces or voices who less required such an introduction.

The man in black finally faded to black in September 2003. It was apt that he saw the new century, because he had been the great songsmith of the twentieth. He gave us music of mayhem, darkness, consequences and redemption. Even MTV termed him the “original gangsta.” But he was more than any genre or label could encase. He was bigger than country music and he was unbounded by a single nation. He sung for the broken people, the desolate and the dispossessed.