My Father and the Man in Black2012

Johnny Cash:
It seems that Saul, and everyone else, misunderstands my reason for not wanting to perform there. Every time I worked Las Vegas, the environment contributed to tearing me down. I'm not ready to come to Vegas. When I do, I intend to set the town afire, instead of letting it burn me up. I and only I will know when I am ready. [Original Source: Johnny Cash to Joe Dale CC Saul Holiff; May 18, 1971]

Saul Holiff:
We went out to do the Glen Campbell show and I pitched Johnny the idea of playing Las Vegas. We were supposed to go to Australia in March, but he cancelled that for various reasons. I suggested that now was the time to play Vegas. And he said "yes." [Original Source: Saul Holiff Audio Diary, December 1971]

Saul Holiff:
[On route to Las Vegas] "The trip I'm embarking upon has many ramifications. I'm now entering my eleventh year with Johnny. I feel a definite build-up of hostility on his part. He's challenging me endlessly, reversing himself, putting me in an embarrassing position, not advising me of different details, doing the old number on me, of keeping me guessing, making me feel as if I'm calling the shots and then suddenly pulling the rug out from underneath me again, and again, and AGAIN. I have been doing all the work I possibly can do - which is practically nothing. Seem to have lost the desire. [Original Source: Saul's Audio Diary, March 1972]

Saul Holiff:
[On returning from Las Vegas] "I don't want to be the richest man in the cemetery. I want desperately to start spending more time with my family, and I want desperately to start enjoying the things that I worked so GOD-DAMNED HARD for in 10 years, and taken such incredible abuse, and such humiliation so often. I wanna salvage my soul; he robbed it, he robbed me of my soul and now I think he's trying to save it for me - through his fundamentalist Christianity jazz. I find it VERY offensive. And here I am, inundated with it; the VERY thing that I've always objected strenuously to; so I know that the rupture is on the horizon. But if money is a security blanket, we're able to, frankly, phase down into semi-retirement, or for that matter, retirement." Stopped taking tranquillizers... started drinking again. I don't know which is worse. [Original Source: Saul's Audio Diary, April 1972]