Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings Once Shared an Outlaw Bachelor Pad, It Was About as Rowdy as You’d Expect

Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings sharing an apartment on the outskirts of Nashville might sound like a setup for an outlaw country joke, but in the mid-1960s, that was simply the reality for the two musicians trying their best to pursue their craft while dealing with marital strife, industry rejection, and substance abuse. The pair’s bachelor pad in Madison, Tennessee, was a short-lived but memorable experience that they joked about in later interviews.

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Can you guess how they split chores up?

Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings Bonded Over Hard Times

Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings had both experienced tremendous highs and lows, personally and professionally, by the time their paths crossed in the mid-1960s. Jennings had achieved moderate success as Buddy Holly’s guitarist. But of course, that gig came to an end on “the day the music died” when Holly died in a tragic plane crash. Jennings had some relatively popular songs as a solo artist while living in the Southwest, but he was eager to relocate to the country music capital of the world: Nashville, Tennessee.

Meanwhile, Cash was already a country music icon in his own right. He had established himself as a commercially successful artist with songs like “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Hey Porter,” and “Walk the Line.” Still, Cash wasn’t necessarily coasting through life. The woman for whom he had written that last song, his first wife, Vivian Liberto, had divorced Cash, who was pining over his future second wife, June Carter. Amid his separation from Liberto, Cash settled into an apartment close to Nashville (and, importantly, the Carter family).

It was at these personal and professional crossroads that Cash and Jennings found each other. The outlaw country musicians were fast friends, and falling into a routine with one another came easily in their Madison, Tennessee, apartment.

Their health and the apartment’s door frames? Well, those ended up taking quite the beating.

The Roommates Were About As Rowdy As You’d Expect

As if two rough-and-tumble bachelors with little to lose living together wasn’t enough of a recipe for trouble, the mid-1960s also marked the height of each musician’s substance abuse issues. Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings were both addicted to pills and amphetamines at the time, although they would later proudly profess that neither of them provided drugs to the other. “We hid it,” Cash said in a later interview. “We thought we were hiding it from each other.” Jennings, sitting next to him on the couch, added with a smile, “See, I knew he couldn’t handle it. So, I had to protect him.”

When they weren’t writing, playing, or on a pill bender, Jennings and Cash split their household duties (fairly) equally. Cash was the cook of the two, making biscuits for the pair in his signature black suit. “My job was cleaning up the apartment,” Jennings explained. “He got the best deal, ‘cause we didn’t eat but every two weeks.”

During a 1983 appearance on Late Night with David Letterman, Jennings said they also spent a lot of time kicking down doors. When Letterman asked Jennings why he would kick doors off their frames, Jennings glibly replied, “To get in the other side of the door.” The country star explained that both he and Cash were deep sleepers (we’ll let you decide whether that was because of the booze and pills or not), and if one roommate locked the door while the other was out, they’d have to kick the door down to get in.

“Another thing, too,” Jennings added. “There ain’t nothing feels better than that door giving under your foot.”

If we had to guess, we’d say that they didn’t get their security deposit back.

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