Guy Named Sue
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Yesterday, a week to the day since Bob Johnston left us, I was sitting with Otis Gibbs in front of a camera, talking about Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard and country's outlaws, for a programme he's doing. We talked a bit about Cash's prison albums - which Bob Johnston, who was at that time the head of Colombia Records in Nashville, not just enabled but produced.
Then, just as I was scrolling through a file of old interviews, I found this one I'd done with Bob back in 2008 for a magazine in France, I think. I'd forgotten all about it because it wasn't filed with all the other interviews we'd done over the years. This one was about Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan and a famous bootleg Bob recorded of the two of them, the Nashville Sessions.
So here it is,"Is it rolling Bob" Johnston on Dylan, Cash and the Nashville sessions
A lean old man in jeans, corduroy jacket and cheap, wire-rimmed glasses is perched on the side of the bed of a motel on the outskirts of San Francisco. He has the door open to let the air in; you can hear the freeway traffic hum by. Though a couple of weeks from his 76th birthday, he still has a full head of untidy hair - red-brown and grey, almost shoulder-length - and a matching beard. He looks like a man heading out to a bar, but he's actually about to go to a business meeting with a major film director. He's describing it to me in a thick Texan accent, punctuated by frequent laughter and even more frequent cussing and digressions into stories that touch on some of the best-known names in rock before returning to the subject at hand.
Bob Johnston is still the maverick with the "fire in his eyes" that Bob Dylan described in his autobiography Chronicles. "He should have been wearing a wide cape, a plumed hat, and riding with his sword held high", Dylan wrote. "Johnston disregarded any warning that might get in his way. "
"Dylan was right", Johnston says. "I wouldn't even talk to the record [company] people and I wouldn't let them fuck with any of my artists." Artists who included Dylan - Johnston produced seven of his greatest albums, including Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline - and Johnny Cash. Johnston is the man to thank for Cash's legendary live prison albums, At Folsom and At San Quentin .
And there was an album Johnston recorded with Dylan and Cash together which was not released, except as a bootleg. Over the past 40 years it's appeared under various titles, though best known as The Nashville Sessions. Johnson recorded it in 1969, the same year he produced Dylan's Nashville Skyline and Cash's At San Quentin . Which is why we've come here to talk.
*How long had you known both Cash and Dylan prior to these Nashville sessions?*
I came to CBS, I think in '65 and I might have done one thing with him , but in '67 we did Folsom. Dylan. I knew Dylan since Highway 61 , which came to me from Tom Wilson [the CBS producer Dylan had fallen out with].
*What are your memories of first meeting Dylan?*
It was in Columbia Studios. I went up to him and said, 'Hi, I'm Bob Johnston' and he said 'I'm Bob too' and we shook hands. He was the nicest person. He said Tom Wilson had done 22 takes and shit and I told him that was dumb. I said, 'All these fuckers want to do is get their part better and I said, fuck them. You ought to get one take - you know what you want; you don't have to do all that shit and work like that.' And he was like Jack Benny, with his thumb under his chin, thinking, and then he went out there and did one take.
*How about your most vivid memory of meeting Cash?*
In '67, when I took over the office in Nashville, he came in and he said, 'I'm Johnny Cash'. I said, 'I know who you are.' He said, 'I've got an idea' and he told me and he said, 'I don't guess you'll like it either'. He said that in 1956 he went to Sam Philips at Sun and said he wanted to do a record in prison. Sam told him it would ruin his career and he would drop him off the label if he ever mentioned it again. So he waited until '60 and then he went to CBS and they told him the same thing. So he waited until '67 and told me, and I picked up the phone, called Folsom and Quentin, and I got the warden of Folsom on the line. I said, 'Warden, can Johnny Cash come up and make a record with you people?' And he said, 'My God, when?'
A week later I got a call from Cash and he said, 'I can't do anything because if CBS found out what we're going to do, they said they'd close the office and fire you and drop me and I'd never record again.' And he said, 'Do you have any ideas?' and I said 'Yeah, I'd buy the biggest goddam suitcase I could find!' (laughs) And four months later I took him to Folsom without their permission and it sold seven million, was number one.
*When you did the Nashville recordings, how well did Dylan and Cash know each other?*
Well Johnny Cash gave Dylan his guitar at that festival, Newport - he told me about that. And I remember I got a letter from Cash and it talking about him being with Dylan, and Dylan saying he wanted to get a particular song and Cash said, 'Johnston is the only one down there who can do anything. Call him and he'll get it probably for you.' Because I always did exactly what the artist wanted to do.
*Would you say it more a case of Cash wanting to work with Dylan or Dylan wanting to work with Cash?*
I don't think it was either one. Dylan was at the studio recording [Nashville Skyline ] and I got Cash to come in there at night and didn't tell them. Dylan was there and they just started talking and said, 'What you are doing here?' 'Nothing man, I'm just going to record tonight'. And they went out to get something to eat and said,
let's go Bob' and I said 'No, I'll stay here.'
And while they were gone I built a nightclub in the studio - put up lights and microphones and had stands and all that shit out there - and they walked in, looked at me, looked at each other and walked out there, got their guitars, tuned them.
*How did they know what to play?*
We started requesting songs. And two and a half hours later I said something and Dylan said, 'We're finished'. And we sat around and heard it and I said, 'Well that will never happen again'. And I mixed it.
*Who's the 'we' - who was in there with you?*
There was just Cash and Dylan out there with their guitars and, in the studio with me, June [Carter] and Mother Maybelle [Carter] and the engineer and maybe a couple of people but that was all. I was never uptight about letting people into my sessions, but I would never, ever let anybody from CBS in.
*What did June and Maybelle make of all this?*
They didn't know about Dylan, I don't think, being from country [music], and they didn't have anything to say about Dylan, but June was calling out songs [requests] too. And Johnny and Bob just did what they wanted and just played. It was a wonderful time. Because there wasn't anybody in there to tell them what to do.
*Listening to the bootleg, it sounds like Dylan was more shy about singing with Cash than Cash was with Dylan.*
Dylan was a little shy around Cash. But Johnny was always singing out and Dylan was trying to do harmony and he didn't know where Johnny was going. So he was watching what he was doing. He was just trying to get the harmony parts right and all. But he was really enjoying it, it wasn't like he was having a hard time or anything - they would look up at me in the room out there and laugh, and Johnny would wink at me, which was what he always did when something happened. And we started requesting stuff and I thought, 'Well they'll do a couple of songs'. I didn't know they were going to do two or three hours. It's quite amazing. And I just kept the tapes rolling.
*Though it appeared casual, did you get any sense that they were aware that what they were doing that might come out on record and, if it did, would be historic?*
No. It was totally casual. They didn't care what they were doing. They were laughing, June and Maybelle were laughing, we were out there raising hell, I had a couple of beers. It was just remarkably fun.
*How about you: did you have any sense of the import of having a counter-culture rock icon working with an icon from the country music establishment in an era when they were mutually-abhorrent genres?*
I never let my head go into that place. I have always believed in music. I have always tried to put everybody together that I could.
*After the playback did Dylan and Cash discuss what they might do with it?'
No. They came in, shaking their heads and laughing. Then after [we heard it], June said, 'Well it's time to go' and Johnny walked out the door with her, and Dylan just walked out. Man! They knew what they had done. They'd done a remarkable thing. They thought it would be out. *I* wanted it to come out. But [record company boss Clive] Davis and all of those people wouldn't let it come out, But that's going to be a huge album one of these days.
*Why would CBS object to Dylan and Cash doing something together when they were both on the same label?*
I'll tell you why. I went down to Nashville [a few years ago] and talked to the head of CBS down there, because I thought that maybe I could get that bootleg thing out again. He heard three or four sides I played and said, 'See there? They're not together'. I said, 'I don't understand what you mean'. He said, 'Johnny sings "Give me my 45" and Dylan's singing, "Won't you give me my 45. You'll have to splice that and do all that shit. They have to be together.' And I started laughing and got my stuff together and after I told them to go fuck themselves, I walked out in the fresh air and I was glad I wasn't back with the company again.
*Only one song from the sessions was ever officially released - their duet Girl From The North Country on Dylan's Nashville Skyline? Who's idea was that? Yours? Dylan's?*
I think it was everybody's. They heard it and said, 'That's a beautiful one there.' Dylan said yeah and Johnny said yeah - everybody did - and I think that was the only one that both of them wanted out. And I thought it would be the carrier into the Dylan-Cash record - which it would have been had they released that record.
*How did you get that song past CBS, since they're clearly 'not together' on that song too!*
I just put it on there. I never said anything to CBS, So they didn't know what was coming out. I gave them wrong titles, I gave them wrong lists.
*When they finally found out, did CBS try to remove it?*
I wouldn’t let them. I mixed those things and then I went out and worked them.
*Wasn't there any response from fans, after Nashville Skyline came out, asking if there were any more Dylan-Cash songs?*
There was a flood of that at the time, but they wouldn't do anything and I couldn't make them let me put it out. And then I saw the bootlegs. The first one I got was in Iowa in 1969 and then I saw bootlegs all over the world.
*Did they ever put up any objection to you taking Dylan to Nashville to record instead of New York?*
When I first walked into the studio with Dylan [for Highway 61, there was [Dylan's manager Albert] Grossman and I think [CBS boss] Walter Yetnikoff. And I said 'Bob, you've got to go to Nashville some time, they've got no clocks, I've got a great bunch of musicians' and he put his thumb to his chin, like Jack Benny, and said 'hmm' and he left. And then they came over to me and said, 'If you ever mention Nashville to Dylan again, you're fired.' I said 'Why? They said, 'Because it's a bunch of goddam hillbillies down there, nobody wants them. Just remember that. If you mention it to him again you're fired.' I said 'Yes sir, I'll always remember.' And about six months later I took him to Nashville and did *Blonde On Blonde*.
*Can you give us any insights into Dylan's warm, country, crooning voice on Nashville Skyline. Did he adopt it for the songs he'd written or from being around Cash?*
I don't know, because it was always different. If you'll notice, Highway 61 was different to Blonde On Blonde. And John Wesley Harding is totally different. Nashville Skyline - man, he put on a white suit and Mormon hat and he was ready to go to war! He sang all those songs in there and I was going 'Goddam!'
*When he sang that way on John Wesley Harding, did you ask him 'What's with the new voice?'*
No, I always accepted everything that he did. I always told him that it wasn't anybody's business what he did. I He just does what he fucking wants to. Every once in a while he would come over and say, 'What do you think?' and I'd go, 'Who fucking cares?' and he'd walk off. Sometimes he was mad, sometimes he would kind of laugh. But that was it, what the fuck difference did it make what I thought? I'm the producer, he's the artist. I just did all I could to make sure that none of those business people could get in there telling him what to do. Nobody ever got in that goddam studio. We'd lock the doors and turn the lights out until they were gone.
*Though the Nashville Sessions were unreleased, in 1969 you were behind three epochal albums: the Dylan and Cash albums we've discussed and Leonard Cohen's masterpiece *Songs From A Room". Did you feel there was something special about the last year of the Sixties?*
I had 27 artists at one time - The Byrds, Patti Page, Don Williams, who was the biggest country artist in the world, Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel - it was *Highway 61* and *Sounds Of Silence* , then *Parsley, Sage* and *Blonde On Blonde*. Dylan used to ask me, 'What did you do with Paul [Simon] last night?' and Paul would ask, 'What did you do with Dylan?' I would work with Dylan until 12 [midnight] and then 12 until daylight I'd work with Simon and then get a limo and sleep for an hour and a half and then fix breakfast for my kids and come back in. I had 18 things in the goddam charts all at one time (laughs). So I don't think 1969 was a special year.
*You're immortalised on Nashville Skyline in Dylan's question "is it rolling Bob?" Does that sum up your production style?*
Well I just let the tapes roll. If the artist knows what they're doing, you've got to stay out of their way. So that's what you do.
Yesterday, a week since Bob Johnston left us, I was sitting with Otis Gibbs in front of a camera, talking about Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard and country's outlaws, for a programme he's making. We talked a bit about Cash's prison albums - which Bob Johnston, then the head of Colombia Records in Nashville, not just enabled but produced.
Then, just as I was scrolling through a file of old interviews, I found this one I'd done with Bob in 2008 for a magazine in France, I think. I'd forgotten all about it. It was about Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan and a famous bootleg Bob recorded of the two of them, the Nashville Sessions.
Bob Johnston on Dylan, Cash and the Nashville sessions
Interview © Sylvie Simmons
A lean old man in jeans, corduroy jacket and cheap, wire-rimmed glasses is perched on the side of the bed of a motel on the outskirts of San Francisco. He has the door open to let the air in; you can hear the freeway traffic hum by. Though a couple of weeks from his 76th birthday, he still has a full head of untidy hair - red-brown and grey, almost shoulder-length - and a matching beard. He looks like a man heading out to a bar, though he's actually about to go to some business meetings, with some major film directors and producers - a project he's not yet at liberty to discuss, but it sounds good as he describes it to me, in his thick Texan accent, punctuated by frequent laughter and even more frequent cussing.
Bob Johnston is still the maverick with the "fire in his eyes" that Bob Dylan described in his autobiography Chronicles. "He should have been wearing a wide cape, a plumed hat, and riding with his sword held high", write Dylan. "Johnston disregarded any warning that might get in his way. "
Says Johnston, "Dylan was wonderful to me in his book, but he was right. I wouldn't even talk to the record [company] people and I wouldn't let them fuck with any of my artists." Artists who included Dylan - Johnston produced seven of his greatest albums, including Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline - and Johnny Cash - he was the man behind Cash's live prison albums At Folsom and At San Quentin .
And there was one legendary album Johnston made with Dylan and Cash together which was never released, except as a bootleg. Over the past 40 years it's appeared under various titles, though best known as *The Nashville Sessions*. Johnson recorded it in 1969, the same year he produced Dylan's Nashville Skyline and Cash's At San Quentin . Which is why we've come here to talk to him.
*How long had you known both Cash and Dylan prior to these Nashville sessions?*
I came to CBS, I think in '65 and I might have done one thing with him , but in '67 we did Folsom. Dylan. I knew Dylan since Highway 61 , which came to me from Tom Wilson [the CBS producer Dylan had fallen out with]."
*What are your memories of first meeting Dylan?*
It was in Columbia Studios. I went up to him and said, 'Hi, I'm Bob Johnston' and he said 'I'm Bob too' and we shook hands. He was the nicest person. He said Tom Wilson had done 22 takes and shit and I told him that was dumb. I said, 'All these fuckers want to do is get their part better and I said, fuck them. You ought to get one take - you know what you want; you don't have to do all that shit and work like that.' And he was like Jack Benny, with his thumb under his chin, thinking, and then he went out there and did one take.
*And your most vivid memory of meeting Cash?*
In '67, when I took over the office in Nashville, he came in and he said, 'I'm Johnny Cash'. I said, 'I know who you are.' He said, 'I've got an idea' and he told me and he said, 'I don't guess you'll like it either'. He said that in 1956 he went to Sam Philips at Sun and said he wanted to do a record in prison. Sam told him it would ruin his career and he would drop him off the label if he ever mentioned it again. So he waited until '60 and then he went to CBS and they told him the same thing. So he waited until '67 and told me, and I picked up the phone, called Folsom and Quentin, and I got the warden of Folsom on the line. I said, 'Warden, can Johnny Cash come up and make a record with you people?' And he said, 'My God, when?'
A week later I got a call from Cash and he said, 'I can't do anything because if CBS found out what we're going to do, they said they'd close the office and fire you and drop me and I'd never record again.' And he said, 'Do you have any ideas?' and I said 'Yeah, I'd buy the biggest goddam suitcase I could find!' (laughs) And four months later I took him to Folsom without their permission and it sold seven million, was number one.
*When you did the Nashville Sessions, how well did Dylan and Cash know each other?*
Well Johnny Cash gave Dylan his guitar at that festival, Newport - he told me about that. And I remember I got a letter from Cash and it talking about him being with Dylan, and Dylan saying he wanted to get a particular song and Cash said, 'Johnston is the only one down there who can do anything. Call him and he'll get it probably for you.' Because I always did exactly what the artist wanted to do.
*Would you say it more a case of Cash wanting to work with Dylan or Dylan wanting to work with Cash?*
I don't think it was either one. Dylan was at the studio recording [Nashville Skyline ] and I got Cash to come in there at night and didn't tell them. Dylan was there and they just started talking and said, 'What you are doing here?' 'Nothing man, I'm just going to record tonight'. And they went out to get something to eat and said,
let's go Bob' and I said 'No, I'll stay here.'
And while they were gone I built a nightclub in the studio - put up lights and microphones and had stands and all that shit out there - and they walked in, looked at me, looked at each other and walked out there, got their guitars, tuned them.
*How did they know what to play?*
We started requesting songs. And two and a half hours later I said something and Dylan said, 'We're finished'. And we sat around and heard it and I said, 'Well that will never happen again'. And I mixed it.
*Who's the 'we' - who was in there with you?*
There was just Cash and Dylan out there with their guitars and, in the studio with me, June [Carter] and Mother Maybelle [Carter] and the engineer and maybe a couple of people but that was all. I was never uptight about letting people into my sessions, but I would never, ever let anybody from CBS in.
*What did June and Maybelle make of all this?*
They didn't know about Dylan, I don't think, being from country [music], and they didn't have anything to say about Dylan, but June was calling out songs [requests] too. And Johnny and Bob just did what they wanted and just played. It was a wonderful time. Because there wasn't anybody in there to tell them what to do.
*Listening to the bootleg, it sounds like Dylan was more shy about singing with Cash than Cash was with Dylan.*
Dylan was a little shy around Cash. But Johnny was always singing out and Dylan was trying to do harmony and he didn't know where Johnny was going. So he was watching what he was doing. He was just trying to get the harmony parts right and all. But he was really enjoying it, it wasn't like he was having a hard time or anything - they would look up at me in the room out there and laugh, and Johnny would wink at me, which was what he always did when something happened. And we started requesting stuff and I thought, 'Well they'll do a couple of songs'. I didn't know they were going to do two or three hours. It's quite amazing. And I just kept the tapes rolling.
*Though it appeared casual, did you get any sense that they were aware that what they were doing that might come out on record and, if it did, would be historic?*
No. It was totally casual. They didn't care what they were doing. They were laughing, June and Maybelle were laughing, we were out there raising hell, I had a couple of beers. It was just remarkably fun.
*How about you: did you have any sense of the import of having a counter-culture rock icon working with an icon from the country music establishment in an era when they were mutually-abhorrent genres?*
I never let my head go into that place. I have always believed in music. I have always tried to put everybody together that I could.
*After the playback did Dylan and Cash discuss what they might do with it?'
No. They came in, shaking their heads and laughing. Then after [we heard it], June said, 'Well it's time to go' and Johnny walked out the door with her, and Dylan just walked out. Man! They knew what they had done. They'd done a remarkable thing. They thought it would be out. *I* wanted it to come out. But [record company boss Clive] Davis and all of those people wouldn't let it come out, But that's going to be a huge album one of these days.
*Why would CBS object to Dylan and Cash doing something together when they were both on the same label?*
I'll tell you why. I went down to Nashville [a few years ago] and talked to the head of CBS down there, because I thought that maybe I could get that bootleg thing out again. He heard three or four sides I played and said, 'See there? They're not together'. I said, 'I don't understand what you mean'. He said, 'Johnny sings "Give me my 45" and Dylan's singing, "Won't you give me my 45. You'll have to splice that and do all that shit. They have to be together.' And I started laughing and got my stuff together and after I told them to go fuck themselves, I walked out in the fresh air and I was glad I wasn't back with the company again.
*Only one song from the sessions was ever officially released - their duet Girl From The North Country on Dylan's Nashville Skyline? Who's idea was that? Yours? Dylan's?*
I think it was everybody's. They heard it and said, 'That's a beautiful one there.' Dylan said yeah and Johnny said yeah - everybody did - and I think that was the only one that both of them wanted out. And I thought it would be the carrier into the Dylan-Cash record - which it would have been had they released that record.
*How did you get that song past CBS, since they're clearly 'not together' on that song too!*
I just put it on there. I never said anything to CBS, So they didn't know what was coming out. I gave them wrong titles, I gave them wrong lists.
*When they finally found out, did CBS try to remove it?*
I wouldn’t let them. I mixed those things and then I went out and worked them.
*Wasn't there any response from fans, after Nashville Skyline came out, asking if there were any more Dylan-Cash songs?*
There was a flood of that at the time, but they wouldn't do anything and I couldn't make them let me put it out. And then I saw the bootlegs. The first one I got was in Iowa in 1969 and then I saw bootlegs all over the world.
*Did they ever put up any objection to you taking Dylan to Nashville to record instead of New York?*
When I first walked into the studio with Dylan [for Highway 61, there was [Dylan's manager Albert] Grossman and I think [CBS boss] Walter Yetnikoff. And I said 'Bob, you've got to go to Nashville some time, they've got no clocks, I've got a great bunch of musicians' and he put his thumb to his chin, like Jack Benny, and said 'hmm' and he left. And then they came over to me and said, 'If you ever mention Nashville to Dylan again, you're fired.' I said 'Why? They said, 'Because it's a bunch of goddam hillbillies down there, nobody wants them. Just remember that. If you mention it to him again you're fired.' I said 'Yes sir, I'll always remember.' And about six months later I took him to Nashville and did *Blonde On Blonde*.
*Can you give us any insights into Dylan's warm, country, crooning voice on Nashville Skyline. Did he adopt it for the songs he'd written or from being around Cash?*
I don't know, because it was always different. If you'll notice, Highway 61 was different to Blonde On Blonde. And John Wesley Harding is totally different. Nashville Skyline - man, he put on a white suit and Mormon hat and he was ready to go to war! He sang all those songs in there and I was going 'Goddam!'
*When he sang that way on John Wesley Harding, did you ask him 'What's with the new voice?')
No, I always accepted everything that he did. I always told him that it wasn't anybody's business what he did. I He just does what he fucking wants to. Every once in a while he would come over and say, 'What do you think?' and I'd go, 'Who fucking cares?' and he'd walk off. Sometimes he was mad, sometimes he would kind of laugh. But that was it, what the fuck difference did it make what I thought? I'm the producer, he's the artist. I just did all I could to make sure that none of those business people could get in there telling him what to do. Nobody ever got in that goddam studio. We'd lock the doors and turn the lights out until they were gone.
*Though the Nashville Sessions were unreleased, in 1969 you were behind three epochal albums: the Dylan and Cash albums we've discussed and Leonard Cohen's masterpiece *Songs From A Room". Did you feel there was something special about the last year of the Sixties?*
I had 27 artists at one time - The Byrds, Patti Page, Don Williams, who was the biggest country artist in the world, Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel - it was *Highway 61* and *Sounds Of Silence* , then *Parsley, Sage* and *Blonde On Blonde*. Dylan used to ask me, 'What did you do with Paul [Simon] last night?' and Paul would ask, 'What did you do with Dylan?' I would work with Dylan until 12 [midnight] and then 12 until daylight I'd work with Simon and then get a limo and sleep for an hour and a half and then fix breakfast for my kids and come back in. I had 18 things in the goddam charts all at one time (laughs). So I don't think 1969 was a special year.
*You're immortalised on Nashville Skyline in Dylan's line "is it rolling Bob?" Does that sum up your production style, just lettting it roll?*
Well I just let the tapes roll. If the artist knows what they're doing, you've got to stay out of their way. So that's what you do.
© Sylvie Simmons
