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‘A Complete Unknown’ explained: What happened to Johnny Cash after the movie?

Fri 24 January 2025 2:30, UK

In the very finite prism through which A Complete Unknown offers an insight into Bob Dylan’s shot towards fame, another familiar rock and roll character appears in the fray. Some may not have realised prior to seeing the film what a pivotal role Johnny Cash, the Man in Black, played in the earliest period of Dylan’s musical tenure, but as his biopic explains, we basically wouldn’t have the songwriting god still going strong to this day if it hadn’t had been for Cash’s guidance on his nascent sonic spirit.

After Cash advises the budding musician to take on a certain electric style and with the credits set to roll as Dylan cruises off into the sunset, the film leaves us wondering what exactly happened to the man with the words of wisdom from that point forward. To be fair, in certain respects, the answer is pretty obvious – he became an international superstar, of course – but this still seems a long way off from when Dylan left him for dust in 1965.

It’s worth remembering that by the mid-1960s, Cash was already a blazing star in his own right with the likes of now iconic hits such as ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and ‘I Walk the Line’ having garnered him country success throughout the ‘50s.

However, the road he endured in the rest of his career wasn’t always straightforward, and where A Complete Unknown leaves audiences hanging is the direction in which Cash went down next.

So, what did Johnny Cash do after the events of the film ended?

After all, despite what Hollywood might wish to slick over, the latter half of the 1960s wasn’t exactly the rosiest of times for Cash. Although he continued to churn out records – most notably 1965’s Orange Blossom Special, which featured no less than three covers of Dylan’s songs – by only two years later, he was in the tightest grip of a drug addiction for which he would periodically have to seek rehab for over most of the remainder of his life.

However, soon after also came his chance at romance, when he met country star turned lover June Carter and then married her in 1968. Throughout the rest of the lifetime they were together, Cash and Carter became the rock and roll equivalent to the power couples of today, eventually passing away just four months apart in 2003 after Cash famously claimed the only thing keeping him alive after Carter’s death was his music.

That sense was clear for Cash; music was just as much a survival instinct as breathing oxygen. Spawning an almost inconceivable 130 albums over the course of his career – scooping no less than 21 Grammys from this, some awarded as far as 15 years after his death – the Man in Black became synonymous not just for his choice of stage outfit but as one of the all-time greats across the country and rock canons, being honoured in the Halls of Fame for each in 1980 and 1992 respectively.

Even in the last throws of his life, he still possessed the power to master the hits, especially in his iconic cover of Nine Inch Nails’s ‘Hurt’. He was the epitome of a star who burned so bright that we’ll never see his like again.

But what about his friendship with our favourite plucky musical maestro? In actual fact, Cash and Dylan remained firm partners throughout the rest of their stratospheric rises and beyond, with both sticking their necks out on the line for each other in various moments when times got tough. A Complete Unknown may have charted a beginning, but it leaves us with a whole other musical world to explore, especially in the pair’s iconic TV duet of ‘Girl from the North Country’ just four years after the film concludes. We’d definitely like to see that hitting the silver screen. A sequel, anyone?