by Steve Turner
"My first reaction was to run," Cash later said. "But then I got to thinking, why not? Young people especially see so much video and film that they know what's real when they see it. They appreciate the honest and open baring of emotions. And you can't have any more honesty than just taking a guitar up there and singing your songs."
His success that night helped spread the word that Johnny Cash was hot again. The gossip columns noted that members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Henry (of the Butthole Surfers), as well as actors Sean Penn, Juliette Lewis, Pierce Brosnan, Randy Quaid, and Patricia Arquette had attended. Johnny Depp had introduced him. "I think Rick's real talent with Johnny Cash was in being able to know what to do in order to make young people connect with him again," says engineer David Ferguson. "That was his big contribution, plus making Johnny feel good. Rick created a big buzz about Johnny and that really helped."
After listening to all two hundred and eighteen takes and the tape of the Viper Room concert, Rubin concluded that nothing had bettered the early performances in his living room. He then boldly gambled by using what they'd originally considered the "research" sessions as the basis for the album. "I've recently gone through all those tapes and I've heard every word and every note on them, and basically the tape machine was turned on and left rolling and Johnny just sang one song after another for several hours," says Ferguson. "The whole of the first American Recordings album came from that except for one cut I did at the cabin on 'Drive On' and the live recording of 'Tennessee Stud' and 'The Man Who Couldn't Cry' that were recorded at the Viper Room."
Released in April 1994, American Recordings was not only a testament to a great musical talent and a fine collection of songs but the first time Cash successfully integrated his faith into an album rather than added it as an appendage. Although not conceived as a concept album, the theme that emerged through the thirteen songs was that of bondage and freedom, fall and redemption. In this context, murder songs like "Delia's Gone" and "Tennessee Stud" ceased to be celebrations of male violence and revealed themselves as tales of men caught in cycles of jealousy, revenge, and guilt.
Nick Lowe's song "The Beast in Me" deftly painted a portrait of human sinfulness. It's not difficult to see why Cash identified so closely with it. The beast, or penchant for evil, is always present, and when it's not overtly displaying itself, it shouldn't be assumed it's dead. Lowe had started writing the song in 1981 with Cash in mind, but he didn't complete it for ten years. "Something clicked and I suddenly finished it in an evening," Lowe says. "It was as if someone else had come along and shown me how it went."
No song has ever come so close to identifying Cash's central dilemma. "The first time I heard Dad singing T h e Beast in Me' it just killed me," says Tara. "Even though it was written by Nick, that song to me is the essence of Dad. He had a way of being able to speak his darkness and that's what made him a great artist. His darkness was essentially everybody's darkness, the demons we all have and wrestle with."
Seen in this way, the rest of the songs divide into those that deal with an aspect of being enslaved—to the restless search, to the instincts, to the beast—and those that deal with an aspect of salvation ("Why Me," "Redemption," "Down There by the Train"). "Like a Soldier" was his personal testimony:
But the wild road I was rambling
Was always out there calling
And they said a hundred times I should have died
But now my present miracle
Is that you're here beside me
So, I believe they were roads that I was meant to ride.
Like a soldier getting over the war
Like a young man getting over his crazy ways
Like a bandit getting over his lawless ways
Every day is better than before
I'm like a soldier getting over the war.
Cash's strength as a Christian writer was his compassion born from experience. He wrote of sin, not as it affected other people, but as something with which he'd become intimately acquainted. Yet the older he became, the less he enjoyed wallowing in the details of his wrongdoing. Cash was fond of saying that the only reason he didn't carry a burden of guilt for his errors was because he figured that, if God had forgiven him, the least he could do was to forgive himself.
There were nights I don't remember
And there's pain that I've forgotten
Other things I choose not to recall.
There are faces that come to me
In my darkest secret memory
Faces that I wish would not come back at all.
In my dreams' parade of lovers
From the other times and places
There's not one that matters now, no matter who
I'm just thankful for the journey
And that I survived the battles
And that my spoils of victory are you.
Bono understood Cash as a Moses figure. "When the children of Israel start worshiping the golden calf after being delivered from Egypt, God gets really angry with them," he says. " I ' v e just delivered you,' says God. 'All you've asked of me, I've given you. This is no way to say thanks. You're returning to these barbaric ways, and I'm angry.' He tells Moses to leave them because he's going to destroy them, but the Bible then says, Moses, knowing the heart of God, went down among the people and says, 'If you're going to take them, take me.' In that moment of empathy and grace you hear everything that Johnny Cash sang about. That was his whole thing."
The packaging of the album underscored this Old Testament feeling. On the cover was a photograph of Cash dressed in a long black cloak, standing in a wheat field looking as though he was about to deliver a word from the Lord God. Directly behind him were banks of puffy clouds, suggesting an imminent deluge or at least a roll of thunder. Sitting to his right was a black dog with white markings and to his left, a white dog with black markings. Their participation wasn't planned. Photographer Andy Earl flew out to Melbourne, Australia, in February 1994 to shoot the cover in nearby Geelong while Cash was on tour with Kris Kristofferson. There wasn't enough available time to do the shoot in America.
The original plan was to shoot Cash walking along a deserted railroad that would look as though it was somewhere in America, but, as Earl explains, "It just didn't have the kind of presence that I thought the photographs needed. Then I noticed these storm clouds brewing and a field of wheat, and because he was all dressed up like a religious figure, I stood him in front. The two dogs belonged to the station master, and they were just running around, but when Johnny stood for the picture one sat on one side of him and one on the other. I just went 'boom!' and captured the moment, and it was just one of those wonderful things. None of it was planned. The whole thing just came together."
Once the shot had been selected for the album cover, the dogs took on metaphysical significance for Cash. "Their names are Sin and Redemption," he told Lisa Robinson of the New York Post. "I've got to remember that the black stripe is always there. Nobody's all good. Nobody's all bad. I guess I'm personally afraid of my dark side."1 To Rolling Stone he explained, "That's kind of the theme of the album, and I think it says it for me too. When I was really bad, I wasn't all bad. When I was really trying to be good, I could never be all good. There would be that black streak going through."2
Reviewers were ecstatic about American Recordings, thoroughly vindicating Rubin's faith in Cash and his decision to go with the home recordings. Rolling Stone called it "unquestionably one of his best albums." Billboard gushed "never has the man in black produced a work of such brilliance." To the Los Angeles Times it was "a milestone work for this legendary singer." Newsweek noted that "the alternative-rock community has been buzzing about it for months."
Cash's hip quotient increased even further. He was being chased for interviews by alternative magazines, and invitations to perform poured in from rock clubs and campuses. "He's the original rebel," said James Lien, the editor of the College Music Journal. "He has all the mystique of being the outsider and the
loner." He played an invitation-only concert at the Fez Club in New York, attended by model Kate Moss and Johnny Depp. A week later he filmed a video for the first single from American Recordings, "Delia's Gone," in which Moss played the violently murdered Delia. In Los Angeles he played the Pantagers Theater near Hollywood and Vine with Beck as his support act.
In June, Cash went to England to play the main stage of the prestigious Glastonbury Festival, a huge outdoor event held on Somerset farmland, attended by fifty thousand, mostly young, fans. He was given an afternoon spot traditionally reserved for established performers returning to the charts. Previous performers included Tom Jones (post-Prince) and Tony Bennett (postUnplugged). The announcer for the slot was Andy Kershaw, a British D. J. with a special interest in roots music who had revered Cash since childhood. When they met backstage, Kershaw detected Cash's anxiety about the performance. Cash wanted to know how many people were out there and whether they were all young. He was sweating profusely.
Kershaw was equally nervous about introducing him. He knew that Glastonbury fans could be spirited in their rejection of an act, showing their distaste with showers of empty bottles. The omens hadn't been good that afternoon—honky-tonk records played between acts had been loudly booed. Also, he wasn't sure how to word his introduction and Cash hadn't helped by telling him that he had no preferred way of being announced. In the end, he went up to the microphone and said simply, "Please welcome a giant of American music and a giant of a man—Johnny Cash."
"Fifty thousand throats roared back," Kershaw later said. "I turned slightly to my right, and the great man was already standing at my shoulder, guitar in place. . . . The applause went on and on. It came in waves, crashing over that huge stage. Again and again. Glastonbury was going daft. I stepped aside to let Johnny move to the mic. For a moment, he just stood there and looked out either in relief or disbelief. Tears were falling down those Mount Rushmore features. Tears were rolling down my face too." Cash went on to do a fourteen-song set that many thought was the highlight of a festival that featured, among others, Rage Against the Machine, Elvis Costello, Peter Gabriel, the Beastie Boys, Oasis, and Radiohead.
Cash would compare these and similar experiences with the way things had been when he started out: the huge standing audiences, the simple style of recording, the excitement of choosing material, the media buzz, the young people. There was no one else from the Class of '55 who not only had a continuous recording and performing career, but who was still breaking new ground. In February 1995, American Recordings won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
The challenge facing Rubin for the next album was to create something that built on the momentum of American Recordings but that was different. He didn't want to repeat himself by doing another acoustic album. He introduced Cash to contemporary songwriters both as a way of tuning him in to the music of a new generation and of stretching him as a singer. The lyrics were always of paramount importance, because given a song he identified with, regardless of who'd written it, Cash had the extraordinary ability to make it his own. Hearing him sing "The Beast in Me," for example, it's hard to imagine that he didn't write it—he takes such command of every word. When Glenn Danzig heard Cash's version of "Thirteen" he commented, "It's his song now. I wrote it, but it's his now."
"There are a couple of different ways to look at Johnny Cash as a recording artist," says David Ferguson. "You can make Johnny's voice and the instruments sound as one instrument, or you can take Johnny's voice and just complement it. You make the music about the voice. You color around the voice. That's basically the way Rick looks at it. Rick got him to do songs that weren't easy for him. Sometimes he gave him songs where he was singing on a different beat than he was used to singing on. It was a little more difficult for him singing on the rock'n'-roll feeling songs because when you sing on the beat it's different. His whole thing all of his life was singing with that syncopation. On the first record Johnny was basically singing Johnny songs. Then on the second album it started to get away from that a little bit. You can tell the songs that Rick chose and the songs that Johnny chose."
Cash obviously chose his own songs: "Country Boy," first recorded in 1957, "Mean Eyed Cat," and "Meet Me in Heaven," a beautiful song based on the words of his brother Jack's headstone. He probably picked "Memories Are Made of This," a hit for Dean Martin in 1956; "I Never Picked Cotton," a hit for Roy Clark in 1970; "Sea of Heartbreak" recorded by Don Gibson in 1961; "The One Rose" recorded by Jimmie Rodgers; Geoff Mack's "I've Been Everywhere," a hit for Hank Snow in 1962; and "Unchained" by Jude Johnstone, a friend of his daughter Kathy's husband, Jimmy Tittle. Rubin definitely chose "Rowboat" by the then up-and-coming singer Beck (featured on his 1994 album Stereopathetic Soulmanure), "Rusty Cage" (from Soundgarden's 1991 album Badmotorfinger), and "Spiritual" by Josh Haden.
Some of Rubin's choices were inspired. Most people could never take originals and imagine them as possibilities for Cash. Even Cash couldn't imagine himself doing "Rusty Cage" when he first heard the track by Soundgarden. He was also acutely sensitive to Cash's Christian world-view and picked contemporary songs that expressed aspects of the human struggle. In order to help Cash in the selection process, Rubin would record demos to show him how specific songs might sound with his interpretations.
"The way I picked songs for him would always be about what they said, not about the music," says Rubin. "I would ask myself whether it was something I could imagine him singing and it feeling right. If he sang, I'm gonna break this rusty cage and run,' would I believe that? Yes. All the songs we ended up with resonated with who he was. They sounded like they could have been his words. With some of the less-well- known songs, people still often assume that he wrote them."
Although the second album didn't have a conscious concept, many of the songs focused on the same themes of bondage and release, sin and redemption that pervaded American Recordings. Songs such as "Unchained," "Rusty Cage," and "Spiritual" were pledges or prayers emphasizing the need to be set free, whereas "Meet Me in Heaven" was a song of hope about the world to come.
Backing Cash were Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, a band that Rubin had produced in 1994 on Wildflowers and was now producing for the soundtrack of the movie She's the One. Petty played a Byrds-inspired music, which acknowledged the blue-collar rock of Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen. He'd toured extensively with Bob Dylan and had been part of the Traveling Wilburys with Jeff Lynne, George Harrison, Dylan, and Roy Orbison.
The speed of recording was hampered by Cash's recurring medical problems. His broken jaw required repeated operations—over thirty he once said—and when he arrived in Britain in May 1995 he was only able to play one show before hurrying back home in pain. Additionally, he was suffering from an undiagnosed nervous disease that saw him stumbling, shaking, and sometimes unable to sing.
Despite the illness, Cash continued to tour and record, and Unchained was released in November 1996. Entertainment Weekly called it "a travelogue of Cash's sticky psyche—the repentant sinner wrestling with dark desires." Musician said that "Unchained seems such classic Cash it almost doesn't matter who's playing with him." Alternative Press reported, "Cash slips on [these] tunes as comfortably as a black mourning coat." Rolling Stone voted it number five in its list of the Ten Best Albums of 1996.
Cash started 1997 optimistically, playing dates in the U.S. and then touring in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, Austria, Switzerland, and England. In September he began another tour of the country, but by this time he knew that his health was deteriorating and that he just didn't have the stamina to continue. Before a show at the Ford Theater in Washington, D.C., on September 16, he and June called a meeting with the musicians. "Everybody on the show was there," says Earl Poole Ball. "He wanted to let us know that he wouldn't be able to go on forever." The idea was to reduce the number of concerts each year and retire by 2000.
The end though came abruptly. At a concert in Flint, Michigan, on October 25, h
e stumbled and almost fell as he bent down to pick up a guitar pick. He then told the audience that he was suffering from Parkinson's disease. Many of them thought he was joking, but he wasn't. It proved to be the last concert Johnny Cash ever gave. He would continue to make an occasional guest appearance, but never again would he mount a full-length concert.
He had been scheduled to make a seven-city tour to promote his book Cash: The Autobiography, which he'd written with country music journalist Patrick Carr, but it had to be cancelled at the last minute. He thought at the time that he had Parkinson's Disease and that as soon as the condition was stabilized with medication he would resume the promotional tour. However, on October 29 all the remaining concerts of the year were cancelled when he was admitted to the hospital with a combination of pneumonia, diabetes, and nerve damage.
It turned out to be his most dangerous battle yet. Cash lapsed into a coma for twelve days. His family became so anxious that June arranged for a special prayer request to be put on fan Web sites. What they didn't know was that for much of the time Cash was aware of what was going on in the hospital room. He could hear people discussing his fate. "I remember things they were saying," he later said. "I couldn't respond. [I couldn't] wake up and tell them, I heard what you said . . . I'm not dying.'"
June believed that prayer had brought Cash back from the brink of death. "There seemed to be no way to reach him," she said. "I couldn't think of anything but to pray. So we prayed and within a matter of hours he just started squeezing my hand." The joy was short-lived. Doctors informed Cash that he didn't have Parkinson's disease but a rare condition known as Shy-Drager's syndrome. His life expectancy was no more than eighteen months.
Copyright © Jim Marshall
John Carter Cash and Johnny Cash at the House of Cash Studio in 1974
