I CALL ON ROSANNE CASH

I CALL ON ROSANNE CASH

FEATURES

Jeff Nesin

by

1. The Set Up

Driving to Rosanne Cash’s home a few miles outside of Nashville I had to briefly take an interstate to a suburban road, turn off onto a country road (horses, cows, etc.), and finally onto a dirt road which winds along for a while until it ends at Rosanne’s door. Somewhere on the country road “Blue Moon With Heartache,” just then descending from the top of the country charts and my personal favorite from her second album, came on the car radio. I feared I was being set up.

It got worse. Writers are often told, usually by publicists, that the artists they have written about have read and “liked” or even “loved” the piece. This you take with as many grains of salt as you have handy. In this case I was advised that Rosanne was weary from trying to finish her new LP Somewhere In The Stars and care for her brand new daughter at the same time but, she’d be glad to see me because she remembered what I’d written about Seven Year Ache. Pass the salt.

As I got out of my car I stopped to play with the dogs for a few moments so I wouldn’t seem too ardent. When I got up Rosanne was standing in the door saying hi and holding her hands up for inspection. “Look,” she grinned, “I tried out a new nail polish in honor of your visit.” (In my review I had joked about her nails on the album cover.) You could have knocked me over with a salt shaker. Honesty may or may not be the best policy, but it is surely and resolutely hers. She was indeed worn out by the tedium of the final mixing and sequencing of Somewhere In The Stars which had been completed just the night before. We sat speaking quietly in her large and comfortable living room—Rosanne lives in the biggest warmest log cabin I’ve even seen—while she alternately nursed and rocked three-month-old Chelsea and I experimented with low-sodium journalism.

I didn’t find it at all difficult. Cash’s first LP, 1979’s Right Or Wrong promoted at first by association (e.g., sired by Johnny Cash, produced by hot songwriter husband Rodney Crowell), was soon standing on its own legs. The dark tones of Rosanne’s voice, the direct, nearly blunt presentation she made, the clear ear and « attention to detail of Rodney’s production | were surprisingly atmospheric (“I believe “ in capturing atmospheres on record. That’s 1 what I want to do most,” she now says), | and made me anxious for more .

Last year’s Seven Year Ache, as easy to 5 love as any record in recent memory, | placed high on my 10 best list and pleased a lot of other folks,, too, delivering three consecutive #1 country hits, two written by Rosanne. The title song did pretty well as a pop crossover and the handful of live dates she did, backed by Rodney’s superb Cherry Bombs, made me wish she’d come around more often. But she’s 27, smart, and she does want what she wants.

was a tough kid, If I felt deprived at all as a kid it just made me tough —it didn’t make me crawl in a corner. I had a lot of ambition.

2. What’s A Nice Girl Like You Doing In A Place Like This?

“I’m a real California kid, start to finish— went to high school there. In high school I listened to Eric Andersen—Blue River was my favorite—Tom Rush, Fleetwood Mac’s Future Games, and the Beatles. I was probably more into music than most kids I knew.

“I always came back to Tennessee for summers with my father. He was pretty famous then but that was something I had dealt with from day one and I just kept a low profile. I took his music for granted for a long time—I was most interested in the Beatles. When I began to be conscious of it I got very interested in Ballads Of The True West. It’s still one of my favorites.

“I didn’t plan to be a singer. Dad said he was going to take me and Rosey, my stepsister, on the road and so he could write us off for taxes we had to do something. We ended up being laundresses, washing his pants out in the bathtub. So we were riding along in the tour bus and they’d be working up a new song and he’d say, “Why don’t you girls sing the background on this part?” It was so simple—one line. How could we screw it up? So w^did it.”

And it was something you’d never done before? You didn’t win a grade school talent contest like Elvis?

No, I wanted to be a writer. I was writing poetry, that’s what I won a talent contest for. I didn’t want to sing.

You weren’t like the director’s kid who wants to grow up and make movies?

No, because when I was a kid I was embarrassed by the fame and the reason for the fame was the singing, so I didn’t want to get into it. I didn’t want anything to do with it. And I think that’s why I still sometimes feel insecure about my singing, because it still has that kind of fame hanging on to it. It may be all in my head, but it’s still real to me.

I hear wonderful qualities in your voice.

So does Rodney. He really likes qualities in my voice.

So do a lot of people at this point. Three number one singles don’t just happen.

There’s a quality about my voice that’s appealing, I know, but...

That’s a hell of a thing to say about yourself—like a pain that you have to endure but you will because you’re a noble woman, (much laughter) / mean, there’s a quality in Minnie Pearl’s voice that’s appealing.

You know, for the first time the other day I was thinking, “God, I’m a singer,” and I was almost shocked to think that’s what I do...but I was pleased. For the first time I was really pleased and proud that I could do it. I take it very seriously—I don’t mean to give the impression that I think it’s something to be endured. 1 think it’s a noble medium and if you link up your emotions with your voice than it can be an art.

3. The Major Leagues

“I remember when we were making Seven Year Ache—up to that time I had been kidding myself about what I could do. All of a sudden I was in the major leagues and I thought I had the abilities of a major league player and I really didn’t. I was just deceiving myself and during the making of that record I came to a crisis of identity. I spent three hours trying to get one line in “I Can’t Resist.” We’d spent two days on the song and I could not get it, absolutely could not get it. I threw my headphones down and I stomped out of the studio crying and I ran into Brian Aherne (Emmylou Harris’ producer/husband). He said, “How’s it going?” and I said “I’M NOT A SINGER. I WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE A SINGER. I DON’T WANT TO BE A SINGER.

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“All of a sudden it was like this veil has dropped in my life and I knew that I had to change. When we got home the housekeeper had quit that day, so it was like penance. I was doing the floors, all the housework and I wouldn’t go to the studio. Rodney went by himself and I kept saying, ‘I’m gonna quit this business. I’m not gonna be in it anymore.’ Finally it got to the point where it just leveled out and I could accept what I could do and learn instead of pretending that I was as good a singer as Emmylou who I had been hanging around with.”

At this point I suggest that anybody who would stand up on a stage next to Rosemary Butler, the queen of harmony singers (the memorable high voice of “Running On Empty,”), had to be something more than a well-adjusted student. Rosanne, refusing to be complimented, launches into a hymn of praise and admiration without a trace of envy or regret.

“Rosemary helped me through that crisis. She’s incredible, she adds so much, her singing is such a pure emotional channel that I’d be a fool not to use her. 1 don’t have the kind of control that I can place any phrase or round any tone or flatten it out or sharp it up. Rosemary can do it. She can flat a note a fraction of an inch—she has that kind of control. On the last tour the two of us got a tape of Maria Callas. The guys on the bus wouldn’t listen so we put it in a Walkman, plugged in two sets of headphones and rolled along.

4. Off The Road Again

Tell me about your sense of career.

I never think about it until someone asks and then I’m stuck for an answer.

Well, if anyone can be said to be doing it all the wrong way, it’s you. You’re demolishing the conventional wisdom.

That just proves there’s no right way. I kept in my mind, when I started out, what was most important to me. I’d just had a baby when my first album came out... (interrupting) And you had another after the second album came out. Surely that’s not coincidence. Perhaps, like being famous, you’re really ambivalent about having a career.

No, I’m not. I’m dead serious about it. I just am not clear about how deep I’m going to get into this because of the kids. If I’m going to be a touring whore and go out for 200 days a year my kids are going to suffer and I’m not going to allow that.

Do you feel that you were deprived when you were a kid?

Of course.

And the swimming pool doesn’t make up for that?

Hell, no. You know it doesn’t. So I’m not going to do that to my kids. If my dad had to do it again, I don’t think he’d do that to us. I know it hurts him that he wasn’t with us. I know it hurts him that he wasn’t with us when we were growing up. So you’ve got to know what’s most important to you and I think people who don’t have kids find it hard to understand. And a lot of record executives don’t have kids.

But I don’t think I’ll be making records for 20 years. I don’t think I’ll be doing that. I really want to write and I do not—absolutely do not—have the time to write now. I feel so guilty about it, but I just don’t. I want to write more songs and I want to write some prose, too.

In what spirit do you continue? Not as an entertainer...if you thought of yourself as an entertainer you wouldn’t have said ‘touring whore” before, because that’s what an entertainer does.

That was unfair of me. I don’t have to do it. I’m not here by myself with three kids to support. I don’t have to be out there working—my husband is the breadwinner. I’m fortunate.

Well, actually, he doesn’t have to be the breadwinner at this point. You’re doing quite well yourself.

5. The Men, Again

If you knew when you were little that you weren’t so happy with the world you found yourself in, then you must have thought long and hard before you re-entered it. But you did.

I was a tough kid. If I felt deprived at all as a kid it just made me tough—it didn’t make me crawl in a corner. I had a lot of ambition. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I had a lot.

Well, you’ve gone out from your father’s house and now you find yourself...

(interrupting) ...in my husband’s shadow sometimes? Well, I love him so it doesn’t hurt me. I never resent Rodney because he has helped me so much: helped me to define my abilities, my potential, and helped me to grow. I would never say that he had nothing to do with it, that I was a self-made woman. But God, yes, sometimes I wish they would just drop all that and talk about something else besides my family history.

6. The Obligatory Restaurant Scene

That night we jump in the car and head for the bright lights of Nashville in search of chow. Rodney, a presence in Music City by dint of his writing and producing, is driving and I’m sitting in back vacuuming my pockets for the last stubborn grains of New York salt. He’s open, thoughtful, and energetic—between the two of them I can’t seem to find a single affection. If I weren’t so delighted I’d feel seriously dislocated.

After being shut out at two rather ordinary looking places by long lines Rodney hops out, makes a quick call, and we slip into what must be the most elegant French restaurant in Nashville without a reservation or a hint of ‘proper attire.’ “I’m known here,” Crowell said quietly, as if he was once a busboy there. Rodney judiciously negotiates the wine list in soft, halting Houston French. As we chatter happily through dinner, people stop by the table to say hello—to Rodney; in one case to urge him to produce someone’s new session. They are invariably polite to Rosanne, but it’s clearly Rodney they’re impressed by. I’m a little disappointed by this, but not surprised. Three consecutive ‘ number one hits make a woman a “country starlet to watch” but a man’s a man for all that.

They’re so used to this that they hardly seem to notice. We continue to talk excitedly about music and their stories are illustrated by snatches of impromptu duets that make me wish I could hear them more than this once. Toward dessert, as the second bottle is drained and we’re well into Johnny Cash stories from the private family stash I suddenly blurt, “Hey, you’re Rose,” as if I’d stumbled on something really important. She looks at me blankly. “In ‘Give My Love To Rose.’ You’re the Rose.” The look turns to bemused ambivalence. “Do you think so,” Rosanne asks cautiously. “Why do you think 1 call you Rose,” says Rodney.

I love the song and, for a moment, feel closer to it and to history. Rosanne thinks it’s nice—but not that nice. Being a footnote, a walk-on in somebody else’s movie, even her dad’s, is not her idea of a life well spent. We rush back out to their house in time to say goodnight to Hannah, 5, and Caitlin, 3, and for Rosanne to feed Chelsea some winey milk. This is obviously a large part of her idea of a life well spent— but by no means all of it. When the girls are all asleep the three of us talk and. play records quite late.

7.Country Radio & The Big Beat

As Dr. Tosches says, country is the biggest music in America—far too big to generalize about anymore, the narrative music of choice. Nashville’s role in all this eludes me. Sometimes it seems exclusively concerned with commerce and then I’m sure that country music is anything the country audience can be cajoled into listening to. Petula Clark is working on a country comeback at this moment.

Then there are moments when the tradition is so palpably real that my faith is renewed. On Saturday night, suspicious of Opryland, I stay in the hotel, tune my radio to WSM and am transfixed as Martha White sponsors, Grant Turner announces, and Roy Acuff actually sings “Wabash Cannonball” and “I Saw The Light.” Not to mention birthday greetings, Bill Monroe, Hank Snow, Charlie Louvin singing with Jim & Jesse...

So the tradition endures. The night before I gave Rosanne some cavalier advice about how she could never really be part of it so she should stop worrying, but now I’m not so sure. If I were Rosanne I would want these heroes to love me, too.

I keep wondering what country is today?

Me, too. I think whatever it is has a big tall fence around it right now. I feel I’m trying to effect a change from within the parameters of whatever it is. They think that I’m trying to beat down the walls to get in—thinking that I’m rock or something. I think I’m already in.

Do you think of Somewhere In The Stars as a country record?

Yes, because I’m trying to take the next logical step toward what country music is going to be.

But how are you going to survive being on the same playlist with Olivia NewtonJohn?

How the hell is radio going to survive being so hybrid? Where’s it gonna draw its listeners? Something’s gonna break, right? But in which direction?

I hope some of it breaks in mine.

To which I would only like to add: Amen.