At various times, Berman and Paycheck each landed in Nashville, where Berman survived an overdose in 2003, but otherwise came from vastly different places. Paycheck, born Donald Eugene (“Donny”) Lytle in Greenfield, Ohio, was playing talent shows by age nine and hopping freights across the country by fifteen; he’d eventually earn his GED in one of his many stints in jail, the last time after his gunshot grazed the head of a man who’d offered to cook him turtle soup. “What do you think I am, a country hick?” Paycheck allegedly said before he fired a shot. He’d changed his name legally to Johnny Paycheck in the mid-Sixties, adopting the name of a heavyweight boxer, and started spelling it PayCheck in his later years.
