Music: In September 2003, when Johnny Cash passed on from this life to what he firmly believed was his heavenly reward, the worldwide reaction to his death reflected the great affection in which he was held.
Although many tributes hung on his standing as a major country singer and songwriter, even those who had little time for his music or his Christian fundamentalist beliefs felt a pang of regret at his passing. This was because his appeal crossed all boundaries - musical, racial, national, religious. For more than 50 years, Cash sang for the ordinary man and in the process became an extraordinary figure in popular culture and a genuine American icon.
It was not always so and the course of life did not always run smoothly. Yet there was always something righteously noble and yet darkly mischievous about Johnny Cash.
Cast in the mould of the early American west he so revered, he was the gunslinger, the man in black, who toyed with the devil but stood four square with Jesus. He was the man who one day could have a prison full of hardened criminals eating out of his hand and the next day be sitting in prayer with evangelist Billy Graham; he was the man who would indulge a drug habit for years yet be married faithfully and devotedly to his singer wife June Carter; he was the three-time born-again baptised sinner who was loath to sit in judgment of others; he was the sagging country star cast adrift from his long-time record label only to resurrect his career and create an Indian summer of artistic bravery and often poignant self-examination. The Man in Black was no ordinary star - there was a rich layer of complexity beneath the grizzled exterior and the slightly lopsided grin.
"Cash," writes Steve Turner in this new authorised biography, "was an unusual figure in American popular music - a Christian with traditional evangelical beliefs who was revered by icons of the subculture as well as figureheads of mainstream culture. Few Christians would find themselves the subject of accolades by such diverse personalities as Snoop Dogg and George W Bush, Nick Cave and Billy Graham, Trent Reznor and Dolly Parton."
In many ways this was one of Cash's great achievements - without changing himself he found an ear in such diverse constituencies. They accepted him for what he was and he, somewhat wide-eyed, was the same with them. And in that collection of names we get a sense of what drove him: the three distinct phases of his musical life: early (country hero), middle (TV and Nashville performer) and late (grainy solo performances and critical acclaim); the two phases of his love life - his marriages first to Vivian Liberto and then to June Carter; and the difficult but constant phase of his religious conviction and his ongoing battle with his own demons.
JR Cash was born into a poor sharecropper family in Kingsland, Arkansas, on February 26th, 1932. The J stood for John and the R for Ray but because neither his father Ray nor mother Carrie could agree on a name for their third son she used the initials to indicate her preference. Life was hard in Depression-era Arkansas and in 1934 the family was forced to move to an experimental community in Dyess in the same state. Ray Cash was a small, bad-tempered racist who was tight with affection for his children. But JR got by until his much-loved older brother was killed in a mill accident. This clearly had a major effect on him and his view of the world.
Nevertheless, after finishing high school in 1950 JR joined the air force. It was while serving overseas that he started to show signs of the artist he would become. In this period he also met and married his first wife, a Texan Italian-American named Vivian Liberto. After leaving the air force in 1954 he auditioned for the legendary Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Memphis - the label that launched Elvis into the world with That's All Right (Mama). Nine months later his first single Hey! Porter! was released in June following the birth of his first child, Roseanne, a month earlier. (She would later become a major star in her own right.)
By now the name JR was in the past and the friendlier-sounding Johnny Cash was an increasing sight in neon in the theatres and bars on the music circuit. But as he travelled through America, his marriage came under pressure and by 1962 was set for terminal decline when the beautiful June Carter joined the Cash show. A member of the legendary Carter family, considered by many the soul of country, particularly bluegrass music, she and Cash struck up a strong bond immediately. By 1968 he was divorced and remarried to June and was a major figure in American music with a rake of hits behind him and a bright future in front. Through the 1970s they prospered, increasingly becoming part of the Nashville establishment - though in truth Cash remained a rough diamond, still fighting occasional battles with his demons and taking the side of the marginalised.
However, by the 1980s his record sales were slipping and Columbia, his label for 28 years, dropped him. He was still rich, comfortable and happily married, but his artistic life was waning despite occasional fillips such as The Highwaymen, his successful alliance with other legendary greybeards such as Waylon Jennings and close friend Kris Kristofferson.
His renaissance in the 1990s was a remarkable example of how the most unlikely combinations can turn out to be heaven-made. And Bono helped set the scene. In 1993, having recorded The Wanderer with U2 in Dublin in February for their album Zooropa, he met another powerful rock figure in Rick Rubin, then head of Def American, a leading alternative music company famous for its rap and heavy metal acts. By May he made his first recordings for his new label - in Rubin's livingroom.
"I have always been drawn to things that are edgy and extreme," Rubin told the author. "Johnny Cash was always an outlaw figure who didn't fit in anywhere. He was looked upon as a country artist, but I don't think that country people ever totally embraced him. He was an outsider, and I think that's what drew me to him more than anything else." (And a little self-serving though that statement is, there is also a large element of truth in it. It wasn't just Cash's drug use that set him apart from the Nashville elite, but his championing of minority causes, Native Americans, prisoners' rights etc. Paradoxically, it was these very issues that made him so attractive to the rock world.)
Rubin stripped back the production to the bare bones of Cash's rich, seasoned voice and a humble guitar. It was an inspired decision. At a stroke he reinvented Johnny Cash, the fading star, as Johnny Cash, the singular voice of hard-won experience. It didn't matter what he sang; suddenly everything seemed to carry the weight of knowledge and life's bitter-sweet lessons. American Recordings were followed by Unchained and Solitary Man and all reaped great success and acclaim.
But as his star rose again, his body began to give in to the abuse he had heaped on it through the years. He suffered a string of illnesses, some misdiagnosed, and started to lose his sight. In a way these albums came to sound like a long, dignified and emotional farewell. This was captured most harrowingly in the video for Hurt, his version of Trent Reznor's song about heroin addiction which, even the Nine Inch Nails man admitted, Cash had made his own. In a world consumed by image, Cash brought the spectre of ageing, infirmity and death to the screen with incredible dignity and presence. No wonder his family cried when they saw it.
But it was his "rock", his wife June Carter, who took her leave first when she died after heart surgery in May, 2003. Within months he too was gone.
Perhaps because he is an English journalist, Steve Turner brings a welcome element of distance and understatement to this latest biography of Cash, though it is clear he is among the converted. There are no spectacular revelations, but it is a compelling story told sympathetically and authoritatively. In addition, he has an excellent discography which illustrates the breadth of Cash's recording career. But what exactly made this man with such a limited range of abilities so extraordinary?
Bono offers the typically effusive answer: "Johnny Cash was a saint who preferred the company of sinners. It's an amazing thing. I've seen the Bible he read from. I've seen his life from various different quarters, and what I was left with was the feeling that I'd met someone with the dignity of an age we don't know. I feel it's as though I'm reading about Jacob or Moses. He was so not 20th century. He was a mythical figure. I don't know how that happens. Elvis, Johnny Cash - they were mythical figures and they led mythical lives."
Joe Breen is an Irish Times journalist