Johnny Cash's Tennessee Home Burns Down

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070411/people_nm/cash1_dc_1

Wed Apr 11, 11:07 AM ET

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) - The Tennessee home of late country icon Johnny Cash burned down on Tuesday as renovations were under way for its new owner, Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, a local newspaper reported.

Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash, lived together in the three-story, wooden lakeside house in Hendersonville, Tennessee, about 20 miles north of Nashville, from 1968 until they died within months of each other in 2003.

The Hendersonville Star News quoted a fire official as saying the blaze probably started when fumes from a wood preservative used in the renovations were ignited by a spark.

The house was featured in the Grammy-winning video "Hurt," in which a dying Cash surveyed his wild life. His eldest daughter, Rosanne Cash, eulogized it in the song "House on the Lake" on her latest album "Black Cadillac."

The couple's heirs sold the house to Gibb in early 2006, and he reportedly planned to use it as a vacation home during hurricane season in his adopted hometown of Miami. The Hendersonville Star News said the renovation was in its final stages, and it quoted a friend as saying he planned to move in during the summer.

Gibb said at the time of the purchase that he was honored to buy the house and was determined to preserve it to honor the Cashes' memory.
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I am so saddened by this. It seems like all the good in this world is being eradicated. His home was a national landmark.

http://www.videocodezone.com/videos/j/johnny_cash/hurt.html

June, Johnny, and now their home. Everything is impermanent.

It should have been left alone. It is so sad to see it all gone, but perhaps maybe it was a sign that the spirits there did not want it changed.

Now it's gone forever :cry:

I loved Johnny and June. I still can't believe they're gone.

If I had bought it I would never have touched it let alone lived in it. Why can't people just leave things alone? This was a part of our history and deserved respect. And I still can't believe they are gone either.

that home was intended to be Johnny and June's home - and theirs alone.

Its destruction is sad and ironic in a poetic sort of way. Sad because it is a reminder that we have lost them and their gifts. Ironic because the destruction may ultimately serve to help keep their legacy alive - and feed the aura surrounding them. Poetic because she wrote and he sang of a "burning ring of fire."

:hi:

"I fell into a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down,
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire... the ring of fire."

Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash were class acts, who were passionate about each other, music, and many issues. Sadly, we have lost them both and I hope that this story will remind people of their work and their legacy.