ReMastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black

Pat Buchanan has a voice in this. Isn't that enough to tell you this production was pointless? Nixon was a paranoid, vindictive a-hole, and good ole Christian Pat was a chief advisor. Surprised yet?

Johnny Cash was great. His family and closest colleagues tell us how great he was in the most hyperbolic terms possible. Are you now surprised?

Guess what. You're more than halfway through the production and nothing has happened thus far.

This was an exercise in futility. Not interesting. Unsurprising. Tedious. Perhaps another ReMastering is in order.

It's a one hour Documentary on NETFLIX. So what? It's the story of what, to me, was an under reported event at a time when, in my lifetime, America had never been so divided.

For a number of years, the Country had been at War in Viet Nam but, unlike World War Two and Korea, was rapidly becoming divided between the Pro-War and Anti-War Factions. This resulted in often violent demonstrations around America.

Meanwhile, there were further Demonstrations associated with The Civil Rights Movement that, often as well, involved division and violence.

Today, when I hear that 'America has never been so divided,' I'm puzzled.

So...what does this have to do with 'Tricky Dick and The Man in Black'? To me...after seeing it. Everything.

Cash is okay in all sequences, but the gossip around, always ready to explain the "good" side of politics. Ironically, the Nixon adviser is the most decent, and the "biographer" is the most disgusting. After all the Cash family was poor, but he will feel the need to explain how they had no hope without FDR giving them government handouts.

Like many Cash admirers,today I chiefly listen to his final masterpieces ,produced by Rubin (the "American " series, eight works , all deeply moving and poignant.)

This doc is absorbing ,because, before the famous concert in the White House, it shows both sides of a country torn apart between the conservatives and the angry youth who took to the streets and was mistreated (some were killed) by the police .It's difficult to pinpoint Cash's attitude in these days : a patriot to the core , who supported any president's politics but who had a rebellious mind too : his concerts in jail and his fight for the Indians leave not doubt about it (as his "Apache tears "album testifies) . And to this list of honors, one can add another one: he refused to sing the mediocre reactionary " Okie from Muskogee" -which Phil Ochs ironically performed in his last concert in Carnegie Hall -and wrote a song I had never heard before ("What is truth?" ) : it took a lot of nerve and bravery to sing such words which was not really those people in their Sunday's best 's cup of tea. This song should be considered a Cash classic.

Cash ,like of most of the great artists ,was a man of contradictions ; aren't we a bit like him?

For my money, of those I've seen, this was the best to date of the Netflix "Remastered" musical documentaries and all the more unlikely down to being about a country artist, which is about my least-favoured type of popular music. But then again, even I can see that Johnny Cash isn't your average country artist. I prefer to think of him as "rebel country", sure he could do the Grand Old Opry, God-fearing stuff if he was of a mind to, but he definitely appeared to be his own man and you have to admire him for that.

This well-made programme focused on a concert Cash was invited to play at the White House for the then sitting president Richard Nixon, who thought he could play to the what he believed to be the inherently conservative, i.e. Republican, country and western-loving "silent majority", by having Johnny sing and play for him. Not long before, after Nixon had made his televised broadcast to the nation promising an honourable end to the Vietnamese War, Cash had impulsively concluded his live network TV show with a ringing endorsement of the president's lofty aim.

Sensing an opportunity to lead the narrative with Cash as his unwitting agent, Nixon, himself more a classical than country music fan and his aides set up the gig in front of an exclusive, hand-picked audience. All Cash had to do was effectively roll up and roll over with the administration even trying to have him sing, by presidential request, two hoary Conservative anthems "Okie From Muskogie" and "Welfare Cadillac". Would Johnny play ball?

Let's just say I was delighted with the outcome and that my admiration for the man in black rose immeasurably as a consequence, especially when you think that only a couple of years later, Elvis himself famously (or infamously, depending on your point of view) docilely shook Nixon's hand in a further attempt by the Pres to ingratiate himself with a well-known singer's fan-base.

You've got to wonder how many artists would have displayed the integrity Cash did when it would have been so easy to comply. Sometimes the documentary over-reaches itself when it seeks to meaningfully juxtapose the fall-out from the White House show with bigger events happening elsewhere, especially the Kent State killings, but with this one act, Mr Cash reportedly made Nixon squirm in his privileged seat and I for one, having recently completed a weighty Nixon biography and listened to a podcast on his presidency, both of which attempt to reclaim his political legacy by minimising his obvious faults and almost airbrushing Watergate out of his history as if it was to coin a phrase, "a little local difficulty" was pleased to see that Cash could see through the whitewash and was enough of his own man to ask the president the telling question "What is Truth?".

You'll not be surprised to learn that this episode doesn't rate a mention in either the book or podcast referred to above.