Rosanne Cash walks into the Nashville offices of CBS Records in a black beret, fingerless gloves, stylishly baggy black wool pants and a belt with a buckle that is the black-and-white face of a clock six inches in diameter.
Looking a little out of breath, she says her husband, singer-songwriter-pro ducer Rodney Crowell, has made the ride into town exciting by continually intentionally making the car slide across the last ice of the Tennessee winter, just to hear her protest.
”I hate it,” she summarizes in the tone mothers employ to speak of sons eating earthworms.
One of Nashville`s more popular though lesser-seen female singers, Cash has always been a study in contrasts, and today her appearance constitutes one.
From within all the winter wool, her face and hands emerge deeply tanned. She and Crowell have just returned from a two-week Hawaiian vacation.
”It was beautiful,” she recalls. ”We saw tons of whales, went deep-sea fishing, took a helicopter ride around Kauai.
”We`ve only had maybe two vacations alone in seven years–because we`ve always had kids (including Crowell`s daughter, Hannah, from a previous marriage)–so it was perfect.”
It wasn`t her first visit to Hawaii. She and Crowell went there on their honeymoon, and she ”got pregnant” there with each of her two daughters, Caitlin and Chelsea. A CBS Records executive, she confides with a laugh, sent her a package of artificial protection as a going-away present this time.
It was an amusing joke, but it also seems somewhat pointed: CBS doesn`t need any more demands on Cash`s time than are already there. Her last album,
”Rhythm & Romance,” was released 2 1/2 years after its predecessor,
”Somewhere in the Stars.” Although she signed her first CBS contract seven years ago, she has recorded just four LPs in all, and she tours about as frequently as she records.
All of which prompts a question: Is she a reluctant star?
”I`m reluctant about some things,” she replies in a voice that is perhaps so popular because it sounds forceful, vulnerable and sincere all at the same time. ”I`m reluctant about getting caught up in the . . . mechanism. There`s a certain myth (of stardom) and a certain formula (of stardom) I don`t buy.
”I really believe in an individual approach to life, so I just follow my instincts, and my instincts tell me it`s not good to be away from small children for lengthy tours. My dad wasn`t around too much when I was a kid, and I just don`t want to do that to my kids. So I don`t.
”I also don`t feel it`s good artistically to knock out an album every nine months.”
She concedes her attitude toward touring may also have a little to do with stage fright, which has plagued her since the beginning of her career.
Although she has matured and become more confident since then, and although the terror has subsided ”some,” ”there`s still a period right before (going onstage) when I get–ugh–sick.”
She might agree to go on the road for one of her infrequent tours in late spring and early summer. She says her manager is trying to close a deal in which she would open for pop star Jackson Browne–but she`s ”not real keen on the idea.
”I like performing and I love to travel,” she explains, ”but doing it one night at a time isn`t my idea of a lot of fun.”
She smiles.
”I remember a miserable tour when I was about three months pregnant with Chelsea, and I had morning sickness, and both the toilet and the shocks on the bus were broken. There was this constant jarring, smell and nausea for the whole time.
”I have fond memories of the road.”
At the moment, she`s doing something she likes better: staying home with the children and writing songs for her fifth album–at a characteristically deliberate pace. She has one song finished and four others ”half-done.”
Part of the slowness of pace has to do with the difficulty of writing when the children are around. She says she does most of it ”after they`ve gone to bed” and on the one day a week when all three attend school.
Another reason for the slowness is probably that her songs are so intensely personal, much more so than those of most song craftsmen.
”To me,” she says, ”writing is an internal journey–more for my own sake than anybody else`s. To say, here`s a person who`s not finished, and here`s where she was when she made this record: that`s what I`m striving for.”
Cash`s artistic vision of life, reflected in rainbows of dress modes and hair colors, changes from album to album. The common denominator in them is a feeling of sweet pain. And no wonder.
Born nearly 31 years ago into the developing stardom of her father, Johnny Cash, she soon moved from her native Memphis to Southern California to endure paternal absence and then parental divorce. In adulthood, she has followed him into country music, into drug use and, more than a year ago, into drug treatment.
The daughter`s drug treatment was prompted by the father`s commitment to the famous Betty Ford treatment center in California a couple of years ago
–but in a different way than many might suppose.
”Part of my family and part of the people from the drug treatment center,” she recalls, ”made an intervention in his life; they just came in and said, `We`re taking over–you`re going into treatment.` It was a very intense thing. They overpowered him.
”They asked me to come and be part of the intervention, and I said okay, but I really didn`t want to do it. I went, and the people from the drug treatment center sat us all down at this table and told us what they wanted us to say to him. And I just couldn`t do it.
”They sent everybody out of the room and said, `Why can`t you do it?` I was upset, and I said, `I`d feel like a hypocrite. I can`t go in there and tell him all this stuff you want me to say, because I have a problem myself.` So they jumped on me. They started asking me all these questions and said,
`You need to go into treatment or you`re gonna die.`
”So I went home to Rodney, thinking he would say, `Aw, that`s a load of bull—-.` I told him what they said, and he said, `I think that`s a good idea.` ”
One song on ”Rhythm & Romance,” titled ”Halfway House,” came out of the treatment experience, she says. The next album will contain others. One titled ”Fly into the Night” is about Crowell and ”what he was” to her during that time, which was ”everything.”
Although she hasn`t raised the issue yet with CBS Records, she hopes the company will let her coproduce her next album with Crowell, who–after a stint at Warner Bros.–recently was signed to a CBS recording contract himself.
She also hopes the album will include a new song or two she expects to cowrite with him, but–beyond noting that 2 1/2 years is too long an interval between LPs–she makes no forecast as to when it will be finished and released. It will certainly be the product of a person who is continually changing–and willing to admit it.
”I`m afraid of committing to a definite persona or point of view,” she philosophizes, ”because I`m more interested in change and progress, and I want to allow myself the freedom to move on.
”I don`t want to shut down, give myself a defined parameter and say,
`This is where I`m gonna be the rest of my life.` But changing all the time also implies making a lot of mistakes, occasionally making a fool of yourself. ”I don`t like to do that in public, but I guess I`ve bought myself the kind of ticket where I have to.”
