In October of 1965, The Man in Black was liquored up and ready for another performance at the iconic Grand Ole Opry. Little did he know, it would be his last for awhile…
Johnny Cash made his Opry debut in 1956 (he met the love of his life that night as well) and for the next decade was a regular performer, but things were always a bit testy given he didn’t really conform to the Nashville style of the day.
Back in the 1950s and early ’60s, artists were expected to be clean cut, have trimmed hair, and act in a hyper-professional way because that was the model for having radio success. Just take a look at this video of Willie Nelson singing “Funny How Time Slips Away” back in the day and you’ll see that they were shoving everyone in the same box, regardless of their personality and individual style.
As you may expect, Johnny wasn’t too keen on following all the rules and the Opry brass was wary of his involvement. Johnny himself recalled this in Robert K. Oermann’s book Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain: Tales of Romance and Tragedy:
“He looked at my black clothes and long hair and sideburns and said, ‘What makes you think you belong on the Grand Ole Opry?’
So I said ‘Well, I’ve got a record in the top ten best-sellers,’ which I think was ‘Folsom Prison Blues.”
I said ‘I think they’d like to hear me.’”
Obviously, the people loved Johnny Cash so the Opry kept him around, that was until one fateful night, when one of the most iconic men in country music history was banned from its most iconic venue.
By that time, Johnny was in the throes of drug and alcohol abuse. Amphetamines to wake up, barbiturates to wind down, booze whenever he damn well pleased, yeah, it wasn’t great. He showed up to the Ryman Auditorium drunk and things devolved from there. There was a problem with his mic so he took the stand and dragged it across the stage, smashing the floor lights and sending shattered glass flying all over the audience members.
Some may have taken that as a wake up call but not Johnny; he used the ban as an excuse to party harder:
“I don’t know how bad they wanted me in the first place, but the night I broke all the lights on the stage with the microphone stand, they said they couldn’t use me anymore.
So I left and used that as an excuse to really get wild and wound up in the hospital with my third time I broke my nose.”
That same night he took June Carter’s car, a brand new Cadillac, and sped through Nashville, in a thunderstorm no less. Mixing bad road conditions with pills and booze only leads to one result: a car accident. He broke his teeth and nose when the car slammed into a utility pole, but just when you think things couldn’t have been worse, June Carter’s husband (she and Johnny wouldn’t get together for a few more years despite the undeniable feelings they had for each other) was the one who showed up to investigate the accident… Talk about mortifying.
Years later, with the support of June Carter, he cleaned up his act temporarily and the two were married after she left officer Rip Nix. He did wind up relapsing quite a few times, but in the end was able to come out on top with stories to tell.
The Opry issued him a lifetime ban that night, but it only lasted until 1968 (hard to deny the draw of Johnny Cash). Johnny Cash would go on to host his own show at the Ryman Auditorium, The Johnny Cash Show, beginning in 1969, and they wound up making a bit out of the incident where Johnny stomped out a few bulbs during a later performance.
While performing “A Boy Named Sue,” Johnny smashed out a few lightbulbs, paying homage to the stunt that got him banned from that very building, but also… it got the crowd FIRED UP.
Check it out:
