>> Johnny Cash: I've always hung out with long-hairs.

I've always hung out with people of that ilk. I'm one of the originals.

I had sideburns down to my chin in '50-

For a while there I did. When I started my own TV show in Nashville in '69,

I had a group called The Who on as guests and I forget which one of them said,

"Thank god we got somebody on television with long hair," talking about me.

Only it wasn't all that long.

>> [Music]

>> Barney Hoskins: Do you really need to tour so much?

Do you need to work so hard and drive yourself so hard?

>> Johnny Cash: For my soul I do. Yeah, for my soul. It's a gift.

My mother always told me that any talent is a gift of God and I always believed it.

If I quit, I would just live in front of the television and get fat and die pretty soon.

So I don't want to do that. You know I just hope and pray I can die with my boots on.

I've been in hospital beds and I don't want to end it up there.

[Music]

I went through a period that I didn't want to sing those old songs again.

I finally decided that I was really cheating them and myself.

And I started singing all the old ones with gusto and lust. Like I loved them.

Those songs, I Walk the Line and Folsom, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Ring of Fire.

They're part of me. They're an extension of me when I get in front of that microphone.

They're a part of me going through that mic, you know, to that audience.

They feel it and they know it if I feel it.

They'll turn it right back to me, the appreciation. That's what it's all about.

That's what performing is all about, is sharing and communicating.

[Music: Johnny Cash "Folsom Prison Blues"

>> Barney Hoskins: Do you think... Could you have ever been a preacher?

Were you ever tempted to-?

>> Johnny Cash: No. I think in my world of religion,

you're called to preach or you don't preach.

Called by God to preach. I never been ordained by God to preach the Gospel.

I have a calling, it's called to perform and sing.

I think gospel song is a ministry in a way, you know. Gospel music.

Gospel music is so ingrained into my bones, you know.

I can't do a concert without singing a gospel song. It's what I was raised on.

It was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm,

where work was drudgery and it was so hard

that when I was in the field I sang all the time.

Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt.

[Music: Johnny Cash "Do Lord"]

>> Barney Hoskins: I was going to ask you how the pain is in your jaw these days.

>> Johnny Cash: It's pretty severe.

>> Barney Hoskins: Really? All the time? Constant?

>> Johnny Cash: Almost all the time, yeah.

>> Barney Hoskins: How do you-?

>> Johnny Cash: Except when I'm on stage.

>> Barney Hoskins: Really?

>> Johnny Cash: Yeah.

>> Barney Hoskins: That's miraculous that it just leaves you. Power of music I guess

>> Johnny Cash: Yeah, I pray for that and it works. It doesn't alter or hinder my performance.

>> Barney Hoskins: It must be a struggle to have to take pain killers at the same time,

to be able to regulate them-

>> Johnny Cash: I don't take them. I can't take them. It's like an alcoholic.

He can't drink. I can't take pain pills.

>> Barney Hoskins: You must be very brave to-

>> Johnny Cash: No. I'm not very brave

because for five years I didn't try to take the pain. I fought it.

I had a total of 34 surgical procedures on my left jaw.

Every doctor I've been to knows what to do next, too.

To relieve me of pain, I don't believe any of them.

I'm handling it. It's my pain. I'm not being brave either.

I'm not brave at all after what I've been through, I just know how to handle it.

[Music]

>> Barney Hoskins: When you look at yourself in the mirror

do you feel like an American icon when you look at yourself in the mirror?

>> Johnny Cash: God, what a question. Shit.

I see the pimples on my nose and I see the fat jaw

from the pain where it's swollen or thinning hair or whatever.

Icon? No. I don't see him.

He's not in my mirror.

>> Barney Hoskins: You don't see the John Wayne of rock and roll?

>> Johnny Cash: No. ... Thanks anyway.

[Music: Johnny Cash "Ring of Fire"

>> Barney Hoskins: Do you look back now and think, "Wow, dressing in black was one hell

of a smart career move?"

>> Johnny Cash: No, I never thought about it.

>> Johnny Cash: How does it help me? I don't know.

>> What good's it do? I'm so uncomfortable wearing colors in public. I really am.

>> Even denim. If I've got a day off in a town, I want to go out for a walk I'll put

on denim.

But almost everything I've got the black on.

>> Barney Hoskins: I was interested to know

whether you ever talked about gospel music with Elvis?

>> Johnny Cash: Oh yeah. That's all we talked about.

Well that wasn't all, we talked about girls too.

Yeah, Elvis and I, a lot of shows we would sing together in the dressing room

and invariably we'd go to black gospel. We knew the same songs.

We grew up on the same songs.