The Dark Stories About Johnny Cash’s Life Most Fans Ignore

Johnny Cash’s 71 years were packed full of sadness, rebellion, redemption, and honest truth. It would have been enough for several lifetimes. He was born J.R. Cash on February 26, 1932, in a rural area of Arkansas. He also came from a poor family and had deep mental scars from a young age. His older brother Jack died in a terrible accident when he was only 12. This event haunted him forever and made it hard for him to get along with his father, as famously shown in Walk the Line and jokingly poked fun at in Walk Hard.

Cash became famous with a voice that sounded like it held the weight of the world. This was true even though he struggled with addiction and personal problems. His version of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt,” which came out just before he died in 2003, was like a gut-punch goodbye, putting all of his pain into a few haunting minutes.

Most people know about his wild youth, his run-ins with the law, and his battles with drug abuse. But behind the image of the criminal and the black-clad icon was a man who was rough, flawed, and always interesting. Even Cash fans who have known him for a long time might not know all the bad parts of his story.

He Set a Blaze That Nearly Wiped Out an Entire Species

Johnny Cash may have sung about a “Ring of Fire,” but in 1965, he ended up causing a real one—though there was nothing romantic about it. On June 27 of that year, while camping in California’s Los Padres National Forest with his nephew Damon Fielder, Cash’s drug and alcohol use led to a massive disaster. According to the Los Angeles Times, the two men had been arguing throughout the trip. Fielder was frustrated with his uncle’s heavy drinking and pill-popping. That night, Cash was inside his camper and decided to start a fire—reportedly to keep warm.

The fire quickly got out of control, eventually scorching more than 500 acres and killing 49 endangered California condors. Only four of the birds were left alive. Fielder later claimed Cash was too high on amphetamines to stop the fire once it started.

Cash, of course, told a different story. In court, he blamed the blaze on a faulty exhaust pipe in his camper, saying, “I didn’t do it, my truck did and it’s dead, so you can’t question it.” He showed little remorse and was quoted as saying, “I don’t care about your damn yellow buzzards.” He was found guilty and fined $82,000 for the damage.

His Struggles Didn’t End After Walk the Line

If you’ve seen Walk the Line, you probably remember how things wrapped up on a high note—Johnny Cash’s legendary Folsom Prison concert, his heartfelt proposal to June Carter, and the two walking off into happily-ever-after territory. But the real story didn’t end there. In a 2007 interview with Reuters, their son, John Carter Cash, pulled back the curtain, saying that while his parents’ marriage looked perfect on the surface, “the suffering continued and it worsened, if anything, throughout the years.”

According to The Culture Trip, Johnny did get clean in 1970, but he relapsed several times over the years. He went back to rehab in 1977, only to fall off the wagon again in 1989 and once more in 1992. The publication noted that he “[struggled] with addiction” right up until his death in 2003.

In his book Anchored in Love: The Life and Legacy of June Carter Cash, John Carter Cash shared more about the ups and downs of his parents’ 35-year relationship—one marked by love, yes, but also by repeated battles with substance abuse. As he told Reuters, they shared a “long-lasting” love, “even though it may [have been] through long suffering.”