John R. "Johnny" Cash[2]
(February 26, 1932 September 12, 2003), born J. R. Cash,
was an
American singer-songwriter, actor,[3]
and author,[3]
who has been called one of the most influential musicians
of the 20th century.[4]
Although he is primarily remembered as a
country music artist, his songs
and sound spanned many other
genres including
rockabilly and
rock and roll especially early
in his career as well as
blues,
folk, and
gospel. Late in his career, Cash
covered songs by several
rock artists, among them the
industrial rock band
Nine Inch Nails[5][6]
and the synthpop band
Depeche Mode.[6][7][8]
Johnny Cash was known for his deep, distinctive
bass-baritone voice;[9][11]
for the "boom-chicka-boom"
freight train
sound of his
Tennessee Three backing
band; for his rebelliousness,[12][13]
coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor;[9]
for providing free concerts inside
prison walls;[14][15]
and for his dark performance clothing, which earned him
the nickname "The Man in Black".[16]
He traditionally started his concerts by saying, "Hello,
I'm Johnny Cash."[17][18]
and usually following it up with his standard "Folsom Prison Blues."
Much of Cash's music, especially that of his later career,
echoed themes of sorrow, moral tribulation and redemption.[9][19]
His signature songs include "I Walk the Line", "Folsom Prison Blues", "Ring of Fire", "Get Rhythm" and "Man in Black". He also
recorded humorous numbers, such as "One Piece at a Time" and "A Boy Named Sue"; a duet with
his future wife,
June Carter,
called "Jackson"; as well as
railroad songs including "Hey, Porter" and "Rock Island Line".[20]
Cash, a devout but troubled
Christian,[21][22]
has been characterized "as a lens through which to view
American contradictions and challenges."[23][25]
A Biblical scholar,[3][26][27]
he penned a
Christian novel entitled
Man In White,[28][29]
and he made a
spoken word recording of the
entire
New King James Version
of the
New Testament.[30][31]
Even so, Cash declared that he was "the biggest
sinner of them all", and viewed himself overall as a
complicated and contradictory man.[32][33]
Accordingly,[34]
Cash is said to have "contained multitudes", and has been
deemed "the
philosopher-prince of American
country music".[35][36]
Early career
In 1954, Cash and Vivian moved to
Memphis, Tennessee, where
he sold appliances while studying to be a radio announcer.
At night he played with guitarist
Luther Perkins and bassist
Marshall Grant. Perkins and
Grant were known as the
Tennessee Two.
Cash worked up the courage to visit the
Sun Records studio, hoping to get
a recording contract. After auditioning for
Sam Phillips, singing mostly
gospel songs, Phillips told him that gospel was
unmarketable. It was once rumored that Phillips told Cash
to "go home and sin, then come back with a song I can
sell," though Cash refuted that Phillips made any such
comment in a 2002 interview.[56]
Cash eventually won over the producer with new songs
delivered in his early frenetic style. His first
recordings at Sun, "Hey Porter" and
"Cry! Cry! Cry!", were released
in 1955 and met with reasonable success on the country
hit parade.
On December 4, 1956,
Elvis Presley dropped in on
studio owner Sam Phillips to pay a social visit while
Carl Perkins was in the studio
cutting new tracks, with
Jerry Lee Lewis backing him on
piano. Cash was also in the studio and the four started an
impromptu
jam session. Phillips left the
tapes running and the recordings, almost half of which
were gospel songs, survived and have since been released
under the title
Million Dollar Quartet.
Cash's next record, "Folsom Prison Blues", made the
country Top 5, and "I Walk the Line" became No. 1
on the country charts and entered the pop charts Top 20. "Home of the Blues" followed,
recorded in July 1957. That same year Cash became the
first Sun artist to release a
long-playing
album. Although he was Sun's most consistently
best-selling and prolific artist at that time, Cash felt
constrained by his contract with the small label. Presley
had already left Sun, and Phillips was focusing most of
his attention and promotion on Lewis. The following year
Cash left the label to sign a lucrative offer with
Columbia Records, where his
single "Don't Take Your Guns
to Town" became one of his biggest hits.
In the early 1960s, Cash toured with the
Carter Family, which by this
time regularly included
Mother Maybelle's daughters,
Anita,
June and
Helen. June, whom Cash would
eventually marry, later recalled admiring him from afar
during these tours. In the 1960s he appeared on
Pete Seeger's short lived
Rainbow Quest.[57]
He also acted in a
1961 film entitled
Five Minutes to Live,
later re-released as Door-to-door Maniac. He also
wrote and sang the opening theme.
Outlaw image
As his career was taking off in the early 1960s, Cash
started drinking heavily and became addicted to
amphetamines and
barbiturates. For a brief time, he
shared an apartment in Nashville with
Waylon Jennings, who was
heavily addicted to amphetamines. Cash used the uppers to
stay awake during tours. Friends joked about his
"nervousness" and erratic behavior, many ignoring the
warning signs of his worsening
drug addiction.
In a behind-the-scenes look at
The Johnny Cash
Show, Cash claims to have "tried every drug there
was to try."
Although in many ways spiraling out of control, Cash's
frenetic creativity was still delivering hits. His
rendition of "Ring of Fire" was a
crossover hit, reaching No.
1 on the country charts and entering the Top 20 on the pop
charts. The song was written by June Carter and
Merle Kilgore. The song was
originally performed by Carter's sister, but the signature
mariachi-style horn arrangement was
provided by Cash, who said that it had come to him in a
dream.
In June 1965, his truck caught fire due to an overheated
wheel bearing, triggering a forest fire that burned
several hundred acres in
Los Padres National
Forest in California.[58][59]
When the judge asked Cash why he did it, Cash said, "I
didn't do it, my truck did, and it's dead, so you can't
question it."[47]
The fire destroyed 508 acres (2.06 km2),
burning the foliage off three mountains and killing 49 of
the refuge's 53 endangered
condors.
Cash was unrepentant: "I don't care about your damn yellow
buzzards." The federal government sued him and was awarded
$125,172 ($863,091 in current dollar terms). Cash
eventually
settled
the case and paid $82,001.[60]
He said he was the only person ever sued by the government
for starting a forest fire.[47]
Although Cash carefully cultivated a romantic
outlaw image, he never served a
prison sentence. Despite landing in
jail seven times for
misdemeanors, each stay lasted
only a single night. His most infamous run-in with the law
occurred while on tour in 1965, when he was arrested by a
narcotics squad in
El Paso, Texas. The officers
suspected that he was
smuggling
heroin from Mexico, but it was
prescription narcotics and amphetamines that the singer
had hidden inside his guitar case. Because they were
prescription drugs rather than illegal narcotics, he
received a
suspended sentence.
Johnny Cash
and his second wife, June Carter
Cash was later arrested on May 11, 1965, in
Starkville, Mississippi,
for trespassing
late at night onto private property to pick flowers. (This
incident gave the spark for the song "Starkville City
Jail", which he spoke about on his live At San Quentin
prison album.)
In the mid 1960s, Cash released a number of
concept albums, including
Ballads Of the
True West (1965), an experimental double record
mixing authentic frontier songs with Cash's spoken
narration, and
Bitter Tears
(1964), with songs highlighting the plight of the
Native
Americans. His drug addiction was at its worst at this
point, and his destructive behavior led to a divorce from
his first wife and canceled performances.
In 1967, Cash's duet with Carter, "Jackson", won a
Grammy Award.
Johnny Cash's final arrest was in
Walker
County, GA where he was taken in after being involved
in a car accident while carrying a bag of prescription
pills. Cash attempted to bribe a local deputy, who turned
the money down, and then spent the night in a
LaFayette, GA
jail. The singer was released after a long talk with
Sheriff Ralph Jones, who warned him of his dangerous
behavior and wasted potential. Johnny credited that
experience for saving his life, and he later came back to
LaFayette to play a benefit concert that attracted 12,000
people (the city population was less than 9,000 at the
time) and raised $75,000 for the high school.[61]
Cash quit using drugs in 1968, after a spiritual
epiphany in the
Nickajack Cave, when he
attempted to commit suicide while under the heavy
influence of drugs. He descended deeper into the cave,
trying to lose himself and "just die", when he passed out
on the floor. He reported to be exhausted and feeling at
the end of his rope when he felt God's presence in his
heart and managed to struggle out of the cave (despite the
exhaustion) by following a faint light and slight breeze.
To him, it was his own rebirth. June,
Maybelle, and Ezra Carter
moved into Cash's mansion for a month to help him conquer
his addiction. Cash proposed onstage to June at a concert
at the
London Gardens
in London, Ontario, Canada on
February 22, 1968; the couple married a week later (on
March 1) in
Franklin, Kentucky. June
had agreed to marry Cash after he had 'cleaned up'.[62]
He rediscovered his Christian faith, taking an "altar call" in Evangel Temple, a
small church in the Nashville area, pastored by Rev. Jimmy
Rodgers Snow, son of country music legend
Hank Snow. Cash chose this church
over many larger celebrity churches in the Nashville area
because he said that there he was treated like just
another parishioner and not a celebrity[citation needed].
Folsom
Prison Blues
Cash felt great compassion for prisoners. He began
performing concerts at various prisons starting in the
late 1950s.His first ever prison concert was held on
January 1, 1958 at San Quentin State Prison.[63]
These performances led to a pair of highly successful live
albums,
Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison
(1968) and
Johnny Cash at San Quentin
(1969).
The
Folsom Prison record was
introduced by a rendition of his classic "Folsom Prison
Blues", while the
San Quentin
record included the crossover hit single "A Boy Named Sue", a
Shel Silverstein-penned
novelty song that reached No. 1 on the country charts and
No. 2 on the U.S.
Top Ten pop charts. The AM versions of
the latter contained a couple of profanities which were
edited out. The modern CD versions are unedited and
uncensored and thus also longer than the original vinyl
albums, though they still retain the audience reaction
overdubs of the originals.
In addition to his performances at U.S. prisons, Cash also
performed at the
ster ker Prison in Sweden in
1972. The live album
P ster ker ("At ster ker")
was released in 1973. Between the songs, Cash can be heard
speaking Swedish, which was greatly appreciated by the
inmates."The Man
in Black"
From 1969 to 1971, Cash starred in his own television
show,
The Johnny Cash
Show, on the
ABC network.
The Statler Brothers
opened up for him in every episode; the Carter Family and
rockabilly legend
Carl Perkins were also part of
the regular show entourage. However, Cash also enjoyed
booking more contemporary performers as guests; such
notables included
Neil Young,
Louis Armstrong,
Kenny Rogers and The First Edition
(who appeared a record four times on his show),
James Taylor,
Ray Charles,
Eric Clapton (then leading
Derek and the Dominos),
and Bob Dylan.
Cash had met with Dylan in the mid 1960s and became closer
friends when they were neighbors in the late 1960s in
Woodstock, New York. Cash
was enthusiastic about reintroducing the reclusive Dylan
to his audience. Cash sang a duet with Dylan on Dylan's
country album
Nashville Skyline and
also wrote the album's
Grammy-winning
liner notes.
Another artist who received a major career boost from
The Johnny Cash Show was songwriter
Kris Kristofferson, who was
beginning to make a name for himself as a
singer/songwriter. During a live performance of
Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin'
Down", Cash refused to change the lyrics to suit
network executives, singing the song with its references
to marijuana intact: "On a Sunday
morning sidewalk / I'm wishin', Lord, that I was stoned."[64]
By the early 1970s, he had crystallized his public image
as "The Man in Black". He regularly performed dressed all
in black, wearing a long black knee-length coat. This
outfit stood in contrast to the costumes worn by most of
the major country acts in his day:
rhinestone suit and
cowboy boots.
In 1971, Cash wrote the song "Man in Black", to help
explain his dress code: "We're doing mighty fine I do
suppose / In our streak of lightning cars and fancy
clothes / But just so we're reminded of the ones who are
held back / Up front there ought to be a man in black."
He wore black on behalf of the
poor and
hungry, on behalf of "the prisoner who
has long paid for his crime",[65]
and on behalf of those who have been betrayed by age or
drugs.[65]
"And," Cash added, "with the
Vietnam War as painful in my mind
as it was in most other Americans', I wore it 'in mournin'
for the lives that could have been.' ... Apart from the
Vietnam War being over, I don't see much reason to change
my position ... The old are still neglected, the poor are
still poor, the young are still dying before their time,
and we're not making many moves to make things right.
There's still plenty of darkness to carry off."[65]
He and his band had initially worn black shirts because
that was the only matching color they had among their
various outfits.[47]
He wore other colors on stage early in his career, but he
claimed to like wearing black both on and off stage. He
stated that, political reasons aside, he simply liked
black as his on-stage color.[47]
To this day, the
United States Navy's
winter blue
service uniform is referred to by sailors as "Johnny
Cashes", as the uniform's shirt, tie, and trousers are
solid black.[66]
In the mid 1970s, Cash's popularity and number of hit
songs began to decline, but his autobiography (the first
of two), titled Man in Black, was published in 1975
and sold 1.3 million copies. A second, Cash: The
Autobiography, appeared in 1997. His friendship with
Billy Graham led to the
production of a film about the life of
Jesus,
The Gospel Road, which
Cash co-wrote and narrated.
He also continued to appear on television, hosting an
annual Christmas special on
CBS
throughout the 1970s. Later television appearances
included a role in an episode of
Columbo (Swan Song).
He also appeared with his wife on an episode of
Little
House on the Prairie entitled "The Collection" and
gave a performance as
John Brown in the
1985
American Civil War
television mini-series
North and South.
He had a returning role as Kid Cole on the CBS series Dr.
Quinn Medicine Woman in the mid-1990s.
He was friendly with every United States President
starting with
Richard Nixon. He was closest
with Jimmy Carter, who became a very
close friend.[47]
He stated that he found all of them personally charming,
noting that this was probably essential to getting oneself
elected.[47]
When invited to perform at the
White House for the first time in
1972, Richard Nixon's office requested that he play "Okie from Muskogee"
(a satirical
Merle Haggard song about people
who despised youthful drug users and war protesters) and
"Welfare Cadillac" (a Guy Drake song which denies the
integrity of
welfare recipients). Cash declined to
play either and instead selected other songs, including
"The Ballad of
Ira Hayes" (about a brave
Native-American
World War II veteran who was
mistreated upon his return to
Arizona), and his own compositions,
"What is Truth?" and "Man in Black". Cash wrote that the
reasons for denying Nixon's song choices were not knowing
them and having fairly short notice to rehearse them,
rather than any political reason.[47]
However, Cash added, even if Nixon's office had given Cash
enough time to learn and rehearse the songs, their choice
of pieces that conveyed "antihippie
and antiblack" sentiments might have
backfired.[67]
Highwaymen
In 1980, Cash became the
Country Music Hall of Fame's youngest living inductee
at age forty-eight, but during the 1980s his records
failed to make a major impact on the country charts,
although he continued to tour successfully. In the mid
1980s, he recorded and toured with
Waylon Jennings,
Willie Nelson, and
Kris Kristofferson as
The Highwaymen,
making two hit albums.
During this period, Cash appeared in a number of
television films. In 1981, he starred in
The Pride of Jesse
Hallam, winning fine reviews for a film that
called attention to adult
illiteracy. In
the same year, Cash appeared as a "very special guest
star" in an episode of the
Muppet Show.
In 1983, he appeared as a heroic sheriff in
Murder in Coweta County,
based on a real-life Georgia murder case, which co-starred
Andy Griffith as his nemesis.
Cash had tried for years to make the film, for which he
won acclaim.
Cash relapsed into addiction after being administered
painkillers for a serious abdominal injury in 1983 caused
by an unusual incident in which he was kicked and wounded
by an ostrich he kept on his farm.[68]
At a hospital visit in 1988, this time to watch over
Waylon Jennings (who was recovering from a
heart attack), Jennings
suggested that Cash have himself checked into the hospital
for his own heart condition. Doctors recommended
preventive heart surgery, and Cash underwent
double bypass
surgery in the same hospital. Both recovered, although
Cash refused to use any prescription painkillers, fearing
a relapse into dependency. Cash later claimed that during
his operation, he had what is called a "near death experience".
He said he had visions of
Heaven that were so beautiful that he
was angry when he woke up alive.
Cash's recording career and his general relationship with
the Nashville establishment were at an all-time low in the
1980s. He realized that his record label of nearly 30
years, Columbia, was growing indifferent to him and wasn't
properly marketing him (he was "invisible" during that
time, as he said in his autobiography). Cash recorded an
intentionally awful song to protest, a self-parody.
"Chicken in Black" was about Cash's brain being
transplanted into a chicken. Ironically, the song turned
out to be a larger commercial success than any of his
other recent material. Nevertheless, he was hoping to kill
the relationship with the label before they did, and it
was not long after "Chicken in Black" that Columbia and
Cash parted ways.
In 1986, Cash returned to Sun Studios in Memphis to team
up with Roy Orbison,
Jerry Lee Lewis, and
Carl Perkins to create the album
Class of '55. Also in 1986,
Cash published his only novel, Man in White, a book
about
Saul and his conversion to
become the Apostle Paul. He also recorded Johnny Cash
Reads The Complete
New Testament in 1990.
American Recordings
Johnny Cash
sings a duet with a Navy lieutenant c.1987.
After
Columbia Records dropped Cash
from his recording contract, he had a short and
unsuccessful stint with
Mercury Records from 1987 to
1991 (see
Johnny Cash discography).
In 1991, Cash sang lead vocals on a cover version of "Man
in Black" for the
Christian punk band
One Bad Pig's album I Scream
Sunday.
His career was rejuvenated in the 1990s, leading to
popularity among a younger audience not traditionally
interested in country music. In 1993, he sang the vocal on
U2's
"The Wanderer" for their
album Zooropa. Although he was no longer
sought after by major labels, Cash was approached by
producer Rick Rubin and offered a contract
with Rubin's
American Recordings label,
better known for
rap and
hard rock.
Under Rubin's supervision, he recorded the album
American Recordings
(1994) in his living room, accompanied only by his guitar.
That guitar was a Martin dreadnought guitar one of many
Cash played throughout his career.[69]
The album featured several covers of contemporary artists
selected by Rubin and had much critical and commercial
success, winning a Grammy for
Best Contemporary Folk Album. Cash wrote that his
reception at the 1994
Glastonbury Festival was
one of the highlights of his career. This was the
beginning of a decade of music industry accolades and
surprising commercial success.
Cash and his wife appeared on a number of episodes of the
popular television series
Dr. Quinn, Medicine
Woman starring
Jane Seymour. The
actress thought so highly of Cash that she later named one
of her twin sons after him. He lent his voice for a
cartoon cameo in
an episode of
The Simpsons, with his voice
as that of a coyote that guides
Homer on a spiritual quest. In
1996, Cash enlisted the accompaniment of
Tom Petty and the
Heartbreakers and released a sequel to American
Recordings,
Unchained, which won a
Grammy for
Best
Country Album. Cash, believing he did not explain
enough of himself in his 1975 autobiography Man in
Black, wrote another autobiography in 1997 entitled
Cash: The Autobiography.
[edit]
Last
years and death
In 1997, Cash was diagnosed with the
neurodegenerative disease
Shy-Drager
syndrome, a form of
Parkinson's disease. The
diagnosis was later altered to
autonomic neuropathy associated
with diabetes. This
illness forced Cash to curtail his touring. He was
hospitalized in 1998 with severe
pneumonia, which damaged his
lungs. The albums
American III: Solitary
Man (2000) and
American IV: The
Man Comes Around (2002) contained Cash's response
to his illness in the form of songs of a slightly more
somber tone than the first two American albums. The video
that was released for "Hurt", a cover of
the song by
Nine Inch Nails, fits Cash's
view of his past and feelings of regret. The video for the
song, from American IV, is now generally recognized
as "his epitaph,"[70]
and received particular critical and popular acclaim.
June Carter Cash died on May
15, 2003, at the age of 73. June had told Cash to keep
working, so he continued to record and even performed a
couple of surprise shows at the
Carter Family Fold outside
Bristol, Virginia. At the
July 5, 2003 concert (his last public performance), before
singing "Ring of Fire", Cash read a
statement about his late wife that he had written shortly
before taking the stage:
|
|
The spirit of June Carter
overshadows me tonight with the love she had for me
and the love I have for her. We connect somewhere
between here and heaven. She came down for a short
visit, I guess, from heaven to visit with me tonight
to give me courage and inspiration like she always
has. |
|
Cash died of complications from diabetes less than four
months after his wife, at 2:00 a.m. CT on September 12,
2003, while hospitalized at Baptist Hospital in Nashville.
He was buried next to his wife in
Hendersonville
Memory Gardens near his home in
Hendersonville,
Tennessee.
His stepdaughter, Rosie (Nix) Adams and another passenger
were found dead on a bus in Montgomery County, Tennessee,
on October 24, 2003. It was speculated that the deaths may
have been caused by carbon monoxide from the lanterns in
the bus. Adams was 45 when she died. She was buried in the
Hendersonville Memory Gardens, near her mother and
stepfather.
On May 24, 2005, Vivian Liberto, Cash's first wife and the
mother of Rosanne Cash and three other daughters, died
from surgery to remove lung cancer at the age of 71. It
was her daughter Rosanne's 50th birthday.[71]
In June 2005, his lakeside home on Caudill Drive in
Hendersonville was put up for sale by his estate. In
January 2006, the house was sold to
Bee Gees vocalist
Barry Gibb and wife Linda and
titled in their Florida limited liability company for $2.3
million. The listing agent was Cash's younger brother,
Tommy Cash. The home was destroyed
by fire on April 10, 2007.[72]
One of Cash's final collaborations with producer
Rick Rubin, entitled
American V: A
Hundred Highways, was released posthumously on
July 4, 2006. The album debuted in the #1 position on the
Billboard Top 200 album chart for the week ending
July 22, 2006.
On February 26, 2010, what would have been Cash's 78th
birthday, the Cash Family,
Rick Rubin, and Lost Highway
Records released his second posthumous record, entitled
American VI: Ain't No
Grave.
[edit]
Legacy
From his early days as a pioneer of
rockabilly and
rock and roll in the 1950s, to
his decades as an international representative of country
music, to his resurgence to fame in the 1990s as a living
legend and an
alternative country icon,
Cash influenced countless artists and left a large body of
work. Upon his death, Cash was revered by the greatest
popular musicians of his time. His rebellious image and
often anti-authoritarian stance influenced the
punk rock movement.[73][74]
Among Cash's children, his daughter
Rosanne Cash (by first wife
Vivian Liberto) and his son
John Carter Cash (by
June Carter Cash) are notable
country-music musicians in their own right.
Cash nurtured and defended artists on the fringes of what
was acceptable in country music even while serving as the
country music establishment's most visible symbol. At an
all-star TNT concert in 1999, a diverse group of artists
paid him tribute, including
Bob Dylan,
Chris Isaak,
Wyclef Jean,
Norah Jones,
Kris Kristofferson,
Willie Nelson,
Dom DeLuise and
U2.
Cash himself appeared at the end and performed for the
first time in more than a year. Two tribute albums were
released shortly before his death;
Kindred Spirits contains works from established
artists, while
Dressed
in Black contains works from many lesser-known
artists.
In total, he wrote over 1,000 songs and released dozens of
albums. A box set titled
Unearthed was issued posthumously. It included
four CDs of unreleased material recorded with Rubin as
well as a Best of Cash on American retrospective
CD.
In recognition of his lifelong support of
SOS Children's Villages,
his family invited friends and fans to donate to that
charity in his memory. He had a personal link with the SOS
village in
Diessen, at the
Ammersee Lake in
Southern Germany, near where
he was stationed as a
GI, and also with the SOS
village in Barrett Town, by
Montego Bay, near his holiday home
in Jamaica.[75]
The Johnny Cash Memorial Fund was founded.[76]
In 1999, Cash received the
Grammy Lifetime
Achievement Award. In 2004,
Rolling
Stone Magazine ranked Cash[77]
#31 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All
Time.[78]
In a tribute to Cash after his death, country music singer
Gary Allan included the song "Nickajack
Cave (Johnny Cash's Redemption)" on his 2005 album
entitled
Tough All Over. The song
chronicles Cash hitting rock bottom and subsequently
resurrecting his life and career.
The main street in
Hendersonville,
Tennessee, Highway 31E, is known as "Johnny Cash
Parkway".
The Johnny Cash Museum is located in
Hendersonville,
Tennessee.
On November 2 4, 2007, the Johnny Cash Flower Pickin'
Festival was held in
Starkville, Mississippi.
Starkville, where Cash was arrested over 40 years earlier
and held overnight at the city jail on May 11, 1965,
inspired Cash to write the song "Starkville City Jail".
The festival, where he was offered a symbolic posthumous
pardon, honored Cash's life and music, and was expected to
become an annual event.[79]
JC Unit One, Johnny Cash's private tour bus from 1980
until 2003, was put on exhibit at the
Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame + Museum in 2007. The Cleveland, Ohio museum
offers public tours of the bus on a seasonal basis (it is
stored during the winter months and not exhibited during
those times).
