Johnny Cash and 500 Baby Chickens: A Music Industry Rite of Passage

Participating in pandemonium, high-risk hijinks, and nefarious acts is a rite of passage in the music industry. Now, it is even more of a rite of passage if one does it in a hotel while on the road. There are countless stories of musicians trashing hotels. Keith Moon crashed a car into a hotel pool, Ozzy Osbourne smothered human waste on the wall of a room, and Keith Richards reportedly fired a gun in one of his hotel rooms to force unwanted guests out. Needless to say, it seems every musician has their own hotel story. So, of course, Johnny Cash has one too.

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Johnny Cash is known for a lot of things. Though one of the primary characteristics associated with the Man In Black’s popular image is his rambunctious ways. On a darker note, Cash struggled with drug addiction and alcoholism, which surely fueled this way of life and also landed him in jail a handful of times. Though before his boisterous boyish ways became a problem, he pulled one fairly low-stakes yet hilarious prank on a hotel in Omaha, Nebraska. And unlike the rest of the musicians previously mentioned, it doesn’t involve human waste, destruction, or weapons, just baby chickens. Yes, baby chickens.

Johnny Cash’s Memorable Stop in Omaha, Nebraska

In the early years of his career, Johnny Cash notably traveled with his band The Tennessee Three, which was comprised of Cash, Luther Perkins, and Marshall Grant. During this point in his career, Cash was just another liquor-fueled high-energy 20-year-old dude. But, also, a traveling musician, so those things were of course amplified to a higher level.

Given that his vocation was full of opportunities for hijinks, Cash, Perkins, and Grant garnered the reputation of destroying hotel rooms by lighting off fireworks, throwing TVs out of windows, and whatever else they seemingly could imagine. Well, their imaginations once ran wild while in their five-story hotel in Omaha, Nebraska.

While staying in that Omaha, Nebraska, hotel, Cash and the boys bought 500 baby chickens from a local hatchery. Subsequently, they went back to the hotel room and released 100 of the baby chickens on each of the hotel’s five floors, according to Rolling Stone. The three certainly faced some consequences, though it is unclear what they were. Nevertheless, in the grand scheme of music industry hotel pranks, this is relatively harmless. Though still totally hilarious.

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