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Former BeeGee buys Johnny Cash's home
• Singer Barry Gibb plans country album with his sons in Nashville
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By
The Minx, Music Biz eidtor
Saturday,
13 January, 2007
Singer-songwriter Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees and his wife Linda recently purchased Johnny and June Carter Cash's former home in the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville, Tennessee, and are currently restoring it.
The couple plan,"to bring it back to its original pristine condition. Johnny and June were there for 35 years, and a lot of things needed to be done. All the wood has been restored to its original condition."
"This place will always be the spiritual home for the Cashes," Gibb said in a written statement. "My wife, Linda, and I are determined to preserve it, to honour their memory. We fell in love with it. It's an incredible honour for us. We plan to use the home to write songs because of the musical inspiration."
The house on Old Hickory Lake served as the Cashes' home for 35 years. The property, which includes a 4.6-acre lakefront lot, was placed on the market in June 2005 with an asking price of $2.9 million but reportedly sold for $2.3 million. The home was sold by Robert L. and Catherine C. Sullivan, the estate trustees, as part of the directives left by the Cashes.
When the property was listed, real estate agent Tommy Cash, the singer's brother, said it would be sold "as is" and would include seven pieces of antique furniture, including the couple's bed. Built in 1968, the house includes seven bedrooms, five full baths and an outdoor swimming pool.
The Gibbs first saw the house in Cash's "Hurt" video — "we have always loved the house"— so when Linda saw its sale featured on Entertainment Tonight, she yelled at Barry to turn on the TV. "We both on the spot said, 'We've got to go after this house,' " he said. "It became the inspiration for everything. Do you realize how many hit songs have been written in that 4- or 5-acre area, including Roy Orbison next door? The inspiration, being surrounded by the musical atmosphere that has been there for 35 years, we just had to do it."
He never met Johnny but fell in love with him in the 1950s, and Johnny's song "I Still Miss Someone" remains among his favourites today. "If you listen to some of our records, you can hear the influence of Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison."
He can also sense the Cashes' spirit in the house. "You feel like someone is watching," he said. "You feel like there is a presence in the house of both Johnny and June. I still haven't seen a tall man wearing black clothes yet, but I am very much into it and hope that I do."
Braxton Dixon, who built the house, has helped the Gibbs with renovations. "It's taken some time to get the work moving, to start, because when we first came into the house what needed to be done was pretty overwhelming." They are keeping what few pieces of Cash furniture that were left behind.
"It's going to be nice. We'd like to use it as our second home. I would like to come here and write songs. I am planning on making a country album. That is really who I am."I am a country artist, always have been a country artist, and this is my chance to get some self-expression out because the group is no longer the group." (The Bee Gees disbanded after the 2003 death of his brother, Maurice.) "So life is a little different, and I would like to do that”.
"When you are in a group all of your life, you are glued together and everything you do has to be something you all agree with or it doesn't happen. So there was always a little bit of concession between the three of us. At this point, I don't have to ask someone else whether or not I can put this song on the album. It's the first time in my life that I get to do this, so what the (heck.)"
He and his sons have about 10 song pieces and about three completed country songs. "But you know what was necessary? It was necessary to come here and meet the people that I'm meeting tonight and find out how much enthusiasm there is for me doing a country album. You have to hear it yourself. If people want it, then I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it anyway, but I would like to know that there are people here who will help me do it.”
Barry Gibb produced Kenny Rogers' 1983 album, Eyes That See in the Dark, that contained Rogers' duet with Dolly Parton on "Islands in the Stream," a song written by the Gibb brothers. The Bee Gees charted one country single, "Rest Your Love on Me," that peaked at No. 39 in 1978.
On The Lam 2007
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