Rosanne Cash Talks About Her Aptly Titled New Memoir, 'Composed'

Following a weird soliloquy in which Imus detailed his courageous battle with cancer and then said that he didn’t used to sneeze while doing cocaine, Rosanne Cash (and probably the entire audience) was grateful for the transition to talking about her memoir Composed.

Despite what many people think, Cash, a daughter of Johnny Cash, grew up not in Memphis or Nashville, but in Southern California.

“We bought Johnny Carson’s old house in Encino when I was three years old,” she told Imus. Though she doesn’t remember much about living there, she recalled being filmed for a show called “Here’s Hollywood,” and developing what she called “a strong suspicion of journalists” from that point onward.

Cash wanted to be a writer from a very young age, she told Imus, but it wasn’t until she was 18 years old and joined her father on tour that she realized she wanted to be a songwriter.

“I thought being a songwriter was an honorable profession,” she said. “I didn’t really have a need to be on stage, or I didn’t think I did.”

So she started writing songs, some of them not very good. But when she showed them to her father, she told Imus, “He said, ‘That’s wonderful!’ like any good parent would do.”

Initially reluctant to sing on stage, Cash grew into it, but admitted it was difficult not to feel overshadowed by her very famous father, who was tremendously supportive of all his children.

“He thought everything his kids did was interesting and great,” she said, adding, “He was just like that. It was really encouraging. Even when I was terrible, he was really encouraging.”

Though Composed was published last week, Cash has been working on it for ten years, and called the decision to write a memoir at all an accidental one. “I was writing a lot of essays, and I wrote this essay about music and family, and it got chosen for this compilation called Best Music Writers 2000,” she said.

Her editor soon commented that this essay was the beginning of a memoir. “I said, ‘I’m too young!’” Cash, who is 55, recalled. “And he said, ‘Write several volumes.’”

Her goal in writing Composed was to be revealing without hurting people. “I’m not a bitter person,” she said. “I really find celebrity tell-alls appalling. I wanted to do this with dignity and integrity.”

In other words, she had no intention of settling scores. “That’s something we can’t relate to, of course,” Imus noted.

-Julie Kanfer