In 1998, when I was editing the Notebook section of Time, I had to find someone to compose a 300 word eulogy for Tammy Wynette, the great country singer who had died that week. I decided to approach a fledgling short story writer named Roseanne Cash; of course, it didn’t hurt that Cash was a brilliant country singer who came from a musical family and who had a number of hits of her own, or that (as I guessed) she had known Wynette since childhood. Cash wrote a moving eulogy that included a number of personal touches, and I had the satisfaction of giving a neophyte some encouragement. Last night I was happy to see Cash, now the author of a bestselling memoir Composed, speak at the Ossining Public Library last night. Among the many interesting things she said was that she didn’t read books about musicians“They make me nervous. I don’t like seeing movies about musicians either. They always get something wrong. I did like the movie Ray, although if you talk to Ray‘s kids, I’m sure they found something wrong. 
Feel free to extrapolate.” (Obviously a reference to Walk the Line.) Asked to name the musicians she’d like in her dream band, she chose her husband John Levanthal as lead guitarist, John Lennon as rhythm guitarist, Rick Danko as bassist, and the Motown drummer Larry London. London, in fact, has been a member of her touring band; she says he once told her “Your ass is like Diana Ross‘s.” Of Lennon, she said “He had tremendous artistic integrity. He knew he was an artist from Day One, a visionary, and he behaved that way.” The best moment came when she was discussing her song “Sleeping in Paris.” She told us about finding a sheaf of her school assignments that her mother had saved. One was an assignment about similes and metaphors, and one of the metaphors she composed was “A lonely road is a bodyguard,” which is a pretty poetic and impressive line for a tweenager to conjure. Cash told us she took the metaphor and included it in the lyrics to the song, which she proceeded to sing a capella in her strong, beautiful voice: “I’ll send the angels to watch over you tonight/ And you send them right back to me/ A lonely road is a bodyguard/ If we really want it to be/ There’s fascination behind every window/ But I know you really care for me/ And soon we’ll be sleeping in Paris/ And we can set those angels free.” She then read a passage from Composed, which was quite lovely and I’m sure I have failed to write down fast enough. Calling the line “a nod to my little girl self,” Cash said “This one line in this one song is how I know who I am and that I survived.” Lovely.
