He has a favorite chair at the circular wooden table in the modest kitchen of his Tennessee mansion where he spends much of his time, and he prefers it here with the lights out. When I first arrive he makes me a cup of tea in the microwave, and we face each other as people generally do, fully illuminated, but after a while he asks me whether I'd mind. He flicks a switch behind him, and sinks into shadow. 
 
 The last few months, he's been living here alone. At the end of August he left the Los Angeles house where his family moved four years ago after his daughter Miley was cast in the Disney teen drama Hannah Montana, the show that would launch her as the pop-culture sensation of her day. He returned to the hundreds of acres of prime Tennessee countryside he had bought with cash in the early '90s in the wake of "Achy Breaky Heart," the song that launched him as the pop-culture sensation of his day. In late October he filed for divorce from Miley's mother, Tish. It's been a tough year, and it keeps getting tougher. This is exactly where he was sitting five days earlier when he opened a link on his Mac PowerBook and—alongside millions of voyeurs with far less at stake—watched footage of Miley smoking a bong and talking some kind of crazed nonsense in celebration of her eighteenth birthday.1 This is where he was when he tweeted his response: 
 
 Sorry guys. I had no idea. Just saw this stuff for the first time myself. Im so sad. There is much beyond my control right now 
 
 · · · 
 
 "My kids learned to color on this table. There's been a lot that's went around this table. Waylon Jennings sat right there in that chair and showed Miley the chords to 'Good Hearted Woman.' Sitting in that chair. This table's a bit like life. It's a circle. And I believe everything in life is a circle. You come into this world a little teeny wrinkled-up fetus..." 
 
 This is how Cyrus begins. The first hour I barely speak. After a long soliloquy about the table, he fetches his guitar and tells me he's written a complete new album in the last three weeks. "Not by choice," he says. "The one I wrote this morning is called 'Feels Like Goodbye.'" It's unexpectedly stark, simple, and beautiful, its opening lines an unacknowledged, desolate, distant echo of the song that paid for this house in the first place: 
 
 Cold wind's blowing 
 
 Sat here knowing 
 
 My heart's about to break 
 
 When he finishes, he fetches a black-and-white photo of his father's gospel group, the Crownsmen Quartet, and tells me how his father ended up dying of mesothelioma from working in the steel mill, and about his Pentecostal-preacher grandfather and the Sunday-morning church music of his youth, and describes how shameful it felt back in Kentucky in the '60s to have parents who got divorced, to be forced to confess in school that he had a half-brother and half-sisters and stepsisters and no telephone. "There was always that misfit-ness," he says. He points to the picture that sits next to his father's on the dresser, of Geronimo, and reminisces that as a child he used to spend hours running through the woods on his own, pretending he was the legendary Apache leader. Soon he is telling me his whole origin story: how he wanted, and expected, to become the catcher for the Cincinnati Reds until he won a radio competition for concert tickets while he was working in a Kentucky tobacco warehouse, and how Neil Diamond paused during the song "Holly Holy" to say, "I don't care if you're white or black, rich or poor, man or woman, if you believe in your dreams and you live for the light and God's love, you can be anything you want to be in this world," and how at that very moment Cyrus felt as though hands were covering his entire body and he heard a voice he took to be God's telling him that he had to buy a guitar. And how he spent the next decade failing in Nashville and in Los Angeles, unable to fit in either, until on the verge of giving up he talked his way into the record contract that led to the hit single "Achy Breaky Heart" (a song he didn't write) and the accompanying Some Gave All, the best-selling album of 1992 (most of which he did write). I suspect it is a story that has become more mythic in retelling, with all its magical last chances and desperate down-on-one's-knees prayers, and not every minute detail of his account chimes with other, messier contemporary versions of his rise, but there seems little chance of, or point in, stemming his flow. 
 
 After a while, he circles back to the subject of circles themselves: of birds' nests, and of tornadoes, and of this table between us, and of himself. "I'm right back where I started—I'm still just sitting here writing bar-band music," he says, and strums me another. These new works will have to wait their turn, however. First Cyrus has an album of patriotic songs, I'm American, an idea directly sparked by a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009, and for which he has also rerecorded the title track of his first album, the story of the Vietnam veteran who told him, "All gave some, but some gave all." 
 
 That is ostensibly why he is giving this interview—though he's just been told the album won't come out until Memorial Day—and for a long time I'm unsure whether the protracted near monologue that has greeted me indicates an unwillingness to engage with recent problems or is his way of getting to them in his own time. More the latter, it turns out. He is talking about money when the conversation swerves. 
 
 ______________________________ 
 
 1. The Miley Cyrus birthday bong scandal of December 2010: in which her representatives quickly let it known that she was smoking the legal high salvia, although it's tempting to suspect that they would say that, wouldn't they? ||||| Billy Ray Cyrus Blames 'Hannah Montana' for Family Problems 
 
 Email This It's been a tough, scandal-filled year for 
 
 
 
 In a lengthy profile, Cyrus told reporter Chris Heath that he blames the Disney show 'Hannah Montana' for the current trouble in his family, which includes his 
 
 
 
 "I hate to say it, but yes, I do. I'd take it back in a second," he said of the show, which shot Miley to stardom. 
 
 
 
 He also claims he's been made the "fall guy" for whenever negative news surrounds his family, referencing his daughter's Vanity Fair cover shoot controversy, in which the teenage star was photographed with just a sheet covering her. It's been a tough, scandal-filled year for Billy Ray Cyrus . The singer recently opened up to GQ magazine about his relationship with daughter Miley and revealed some regrets about the show that made her famous.In a lengthy profile, Cyrus told reporter Chris Heath that he blames the Disney show 'Hannah Montana' for the current trouble in his family, which includes his divorce from wife Tish."I hate to say it, but yes, I do. I'd take it back in a second," he said of the show, which shot Miley to stardom.He also claims he's been made the "fall guy" for whenever negative news surrounds his family, referencing his daughter's Vanity Fair cover shoot controversy, in which the teenage star was photographed with just a sheet covering her. 
 
 "Every time the train went off the track ... her people, or as they say in today's news, her handlers, every time they'd put [the blame on] me ... I took it because I'm her daddy ... OK, nail me to the cross," he told GQ.Cyrus said he worries about the people surrounding his daughter and helping her make career decisions."I'm scared for her," he said. "She's got a lot of people around her that's putting her in a great deal of danger. I want to get her sheltered from the storm."His revelations come in light of Miley's recent drug scandal. A video was released last December showing the 18-year-old smoking salvia from a bong.Cyrus tweeted about the incident shortly after the video hit the web."Sorry guys. I had no idea," the concerned father wrote. "Just saw this stuff for the first time myself. I'm so sad. There is much beyond my control right now."When Cyrus approached his daughter's handlers about the incident, he was told it was "none of his business."The singer has reportedly been estranged from Miley since the incident, describing their communication as "good enough to know it could be a lot better."
– Billy Ray Cyrus is not happy. He's getting divorced, his daughter is doing bong hits on video ... where did it all go wrong? Hannah Montana, he tells GQ. The magazine's long profile paints a depressing picture: Chris Heath spoke to Cyrus mostly in shadow (he likes to have the lights out), just five days after he first saw the infamous bong-hit video. Highlights ... or, as it were, lowlights: On Hannah Montana: "It destroyed my family. I'll tell you right now—the damn show destroyed my family. ... I'd erase it all in a second if I could." On Miley: "Every time something happened in Miley's career, every time the train went off the track, if you will—Vanity Fair, pole-dancing, whatever scandal it was—her people, or as they say in today's news, her handlers, every time they'd put me... 'Somebody's shooting at Miley! Put the old man up there!' Well, I took it, because I'm her daddy, and that's what daddies do. 'OK, nail me to the cross, I'll take it...'" Why he didn't go to her 18th birthday party: "Because they were having it in a bar. It was wrong. It was for 21 years old and up. Once again all them people, they all wanted me to fly out so that then when all the bad press came they could say, 'Daddy endorsed this stuff...' I started realizing I'm being used." On his parental failings: Cyrus says he's never been able to discipline his children and that he tried too hard to be a friend. "I should have been a better parent. I should have said, 'Enough is enough—it's getting dangerous and somebody's going to get hurt.'" On Miley's future: He brings up Kurt Cobain, Anna Nicole Smith, and Michael Jackson as others for whom the "world was just spinning so fast." Does he really think Miley is in a situation like theirs? "I don't know. I'm her daddy so maybe I'm a little sensitive to it, but now's a real good time to make sure everything's OK," he says. But he is "scared for her. She's got a lot of people around her that's putting her in a great deal of danger." Click for more from the profile.