Ring of fire

Nashville (Tennessee), April 11 (Reuters): The Tennessee home of late country icon Johnny Cash burned down yesterday as renovations were under way for its new owner, Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, a local newspaper reported.

Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash, lived together in the three-storey, wooden lakeside house in Hendersonville, Tennessee, about 32 km north of Nashville, from 1968 until they died within months of each other in 2003.

The Hendersonville Star News quoted a fire official as saying the blaze probably started when fumes from a wood preservative used in the renovations were ignited by a spark.

The house was featured in the Grammy-winning video Hurt, in which a dying Cash surveyed his wild life.

His eldest daughter, Rosanne Cash, eulogised it in the song House on the Lake on her latest album Black Cadillac.

The couple’s heirs sold the house to Gibb in early 2006, and he reportedly planned to use it as a vacation home during hurricane season in his adopted hometown of Miami. The Hendersonville Star News said the renovation was in its final stages, and it quoted a friend as saying he planned to move in during the summer. Gibb said at the time of the purchase that he was honoured to buy the house and was determined to preserve it to honour the memory of Johnny and June Carter Cash.