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They've been showing a lot of Johnny Cash bio's on TV and I love the story of when he won a grammy or CMA a few years back he took out a full page magazine add with a picture of him flipping the bird, captioned with a thinly veiled attack on the state of country music - his way of saying "bite me" country music radio!!
The man was a rebel!!!
Here's a copy of an article about it:
By Karen Thomas, USA TODAY
Country.Com March 25, 1998
Johnny Cash may be ailing, but his fighting spirit isn't diminished. His full-page ad in the March 14 Billboard magazine has country music reeling. The ad, touting Cash's Grammy win for his Unchained album, features a 1970 photo of Cash performing at San Quentin prison in California. In it, a glowering Cash is making an obscene hand gesture at the camera.
The ad's message, placed directly above Cash's middle finger: "American Recordings and Johnny Cash would like to acknowledge the Nashville music establishment and country radio for your support."
Country music has become a "trendy scene," says Cash's producer, Rick Rubin, who placed the ad. "We hope it will open the eyes of the country community and hopefully they'll say, 'The guy did win . . . and he's making records considered the best in country and maybe we should readdress the situation.' "
Cash, 66, who suffers from a Parkinson's-type ailment, was unavailable to comment. He and wife June are in Jamaica. He and many older artists have expressed disappointment about radio's reluctance to play their new music and the focus on the pop-tinged sounds of younger artists.
"They're being more vocal now," says Radio & Records music editor Steve Wonsiewicz. But radio "is not dumb," he adds. Programmers and corporations "do a lot of testing to find out what kind of music they should play. If there was a huge demand for their music, it would get played."
Cash's ad (costing about $20,000) "made me laugh out loud," says country legend George Jones.
"John speaks for all of us," says Willie Nelson, who says he has cut out the ad and hung it in his tour bus "so everyone who comes in has to see it."
Jones says he's running his own ad in Billboard in coming weeks for his new single,Wild Irish Rose. The page will be filled with balls, he says - baseballs, basketballs, etc. along with the song's title. The copy will read: "If radio had any, they'd play this record."
But while the ads are funny, Jones says, "it's very serious. All of us older artists feel that way. Radio gives us one of the biggest insults there is when they don't play our music."
The time has come "for us to speak up about it," he adds. "If no one is going to stick upfor us, we'll have to do it ourselves."
Cripple but free; I was blind all the time I was learning to see<i></i>
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