The song was recorded on March 25,1963 and became one of the biggest hits of Cash's career, staying at number one on the country chart for seven weeks. It was certified Gold on January 21, 2010, by the RIAA and has also sold over 1.2 million digital downloads
Although "Ring of Fire" sounds ominous, the term refers to ‘falling in love’; which is what June Carter was experiencing with Johnny Cash at the time. Some sources claim that Carter had seen the phrase ‘Love is like a burning ring of fire,’ underlined in one of her uncle’s Elizabethan books of poetry. She worked with Kilgore on writing a song inspired by this phrase as she had seen her uncle do in the past. She had written: "There is no way to be in that kind of hell, no way to extinguish a flame that burns, burns, burns".
Cash's first wife, Vivian Liberto, offered a different conception of ‘Ring of Fire’ in her book ‘I Walked the Line’. She contended that June Carter Cash was not a co-writer of the song: "To this day, it confounds me to hear the elaborate details June told of writing that song for Johnny. She didn't write that song any more than I did. The truth is, Johnny wrote that song, while pilled up and drunk, about a certain private female body part. All those years of her claiming she wrote it herself, and she probably never knew what the song was really about." Liberto claimed that Cash decided to give Carter co-writer status because ‘She needed the money’.
After hearing Anita's version, Cash claimed he had a dream where he heard the song accompanied by ‘Mexican horns’. Cash stated, "I'll give you about five or six more months, and if you don't hit with it, I'm gonna record it the way I feel it." Cash noted that adding trumpets was a change to his basic sound. When the song failed to become a major hit for Anita, Cash recorded it his own way, adding the horns from his dream.
Cash's daughter Rosanne has stated, "The song is about the transformative power of love and that's what it has always meant to me and that's what it will always mean to the Cash children."
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I am less of a believer in coincidences than a disciple in macro/micro reproductive systems. I cannot consider it merely ‘coincidental’ that the rotation and cycles of the earth, moon and all the planets directly affect the lives of man and woman, and are often mirrored in some form, thereby creating a link between the Creation and Life on Earth. There are patterns in the galactic system which are replicated patterns on the earth below.
Because of three successive important hospital visits, I have this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, I occasionally feel my body passing through an eternal 'Ring of Fire.'
Geographically, ‘The Ring of Fire’ is a major area in the basin of the Pacific Ocean where many earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur. In a large 40,000 km (25,000 miles) horseshoe shape, it is associated with a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and volcanic belts and plate movements. It has 452 volcanoes (more than 75% of the world's active and dormant volcanoes). It is said that about 90% of all major volcanoes in the world are here. ‘The Ring of Fire’ is sometimes called the circum-Pacific Belt.
I would like to stretch my vivid imagination and see a relationship between the horseshoe-shape of ‘The Ring of Fire’ and the shape of the female reproductive organs, and make an intergalactic connection between the birth of the stars in the heavens and the birth of a new-born infant on Earth; along with the stars in the lovestruck eyes of man and woman ‘on fire’ with the overwhelming passion and temptation of the flesh to consume all.
Love and peace Bill xxx