My father was a man of love. He always loved me to death. He worked hard in the fields, but my father never hit me. Never. I don't ever remember a really cross, unkind word from my father.
Johnny CashRead
They're powerful, those songs. At times they've been my only way back, the only door out of the dark, bad places the black dog calls home.
Interpretation
Songs can provide comfort and a means of escape during difficult times.
In this quote, Johnny Cash reflects on the profound impact that music has had on his life, particularly in moments of struggle and despair. He personifies the 'black dog' as a metaphor for depression or difficult times, suggesting that music has served as a lifeline that helps him navigate through dark experiences, providing solace and a sense of hope.
In practice
Sharing this quote during a speech about the therapeutic effects of music.
My father was a man of love. He always loved me to death. He worked hard in the fields, but my father never hit me. Never. I don't ever remember a really cross, unkind word from my father.
I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they're no good. I don't throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight.
Six foot six he stood on the ground He weighed two hundred and thirty-five pounds But I saw that giant of a man brought down To his knees by love
That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.
There's no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.
If you aren't gonna say exactly how and what you feel, you might as well not say anything at all.
Without Tony Allen, there would have been no Afrobeat.
With the Beatles, we'd been very spoiled because we had George Martin who worked for the record label we were going to be signed to. That was very fortunate, because we grew together.
The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning.
Nobody could have predicted the effect of John Bonham's drum introduction on 'Good Times, Bad Times,' because no matter what he'd played in before, he'd never had the chance to flex his muscles and play like John Bonham.
I'd say three years ago we played in my hometown of San Antonio for 55,000 people at the Alamodome and walking out there with a crowd like that is just, you're excited, you're scared. There are just so many emotions going on. I still get nervous for things like that until after I sing about the first one or two songs, then I settle down.
I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question, which is how do we make people pay for music? What if we started asking, how do we let people pay for music?
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