The home of late country music legend Johnny Cash in Nashville, Tennesee, burned to the ground on Tuesday in a fire likely fuelled by renovation materials, according to local media reports.
The huge lakeside house in Hendersonville, a suburb of the country music capital, went up in flames on Tuesday afternoon as it was being heavily renovated by the new owner, Bee Gees star Barry Gibb, said the Hendersonville Star News.
Pictures showed only the fireplace left standing of the mostly wood-built, 18 room house with a round bedroom on Old Hickory Lake, which Cash’s wife June Carter called their ”Camelot”.
According to the Nashville Tennesseean, the house was the scene of numerous legendary jams with Cash, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, and newer-generation country stars like Vince Matthews and Larry Gatlin.
Cash died in 2003, and the house was sold last year to Gibb for $2,5-million, who was refurbishing it to use as a vacation home.
”That house had a really strong scent of Johnny and June. It was built on rock. It had to be a strong house to have survived right there at the lake,” neighbour Barbara Orbison, widow of Roy Orbison, told the Tennessean.
”If you thought about Johnny and June, you thought about that house. I guess it will be forever their house,” she said.
Hendersonville Fire Chief Jamie Steele told the Star News the fire was probably started when a spark from an unknown source ignited wood preservative fumes. – Sapa-AFP