Many artists of his generation, especially in country music, don't get the recognition they deserve until after they're gone. At best they get lip service. What did that mean to him in those last ten years with the Rick Rubin albums and the reissues to have not just a commercial resurgence, but a critical one as well?
He wouldn't stop, and it was his persistence that created all that and made it come back around. It was his wonderful musicians that made those records possible. I think it was inevitable. He had this unstoppable persistence in his spirit that was going to create these things.
I loved Walk The Line but I have one question about it. The story of your father's spiritual discovery at Nickajack Cave is well-known as the moment in which he decided to give up drugs, but it was left out of the movie. Why?
That was a low point in his life, and he had many lows besides that. I think it's hard to film in a dark cave. If you look for more about my father's faith, for more about the true reasons for his redemption and his reprieve from drug use in the late-1960s through the early-70s. If you look for a number of other things, you will be greatly lacking, like an accurate portrait of his relationship with my grandfather. It's just not there.
But if you look for one thing, a beautiful story of a love affair, and you take the film on its own for what it is and what it stands for, it does that one thing beautifully. That is the film that my parents set out to create. That was their vision and their hope, that there would be a film created that would tell the story of their love, how it formed, and how it endured. And in that, I have to say that I'm 100% happy.
You can hear this interview in its entirety at Wings For Wheels.
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