Johnny Cash: The Life

by Robert Hilburn

  But that tranquil scene couldn’t obscure the physical struggle involved in making the album. Last-minute cancellations were becoming increasingly frequent. “It was a hard one because Johnny was sick and he was trying to get himself out of pain,” David Ferguson says. “I’d get a call the day before he wanted to record, and a lot of times I’d get a call the next morning saying he wasn’t up to it so we’d cancel the session. As time went on, it got to where we were canceling sessions 60 to 80 percent of the time.”

  On those days when Cash made it to the cabin, his work ethic was strong. He’d often work for an hour, take a break for something to eat, and work another hour. “There was never anything wrong with his mind,” Ferguson says. “It was just his energy level.

  “Sometimes the pain would be so bad that he would just stay in the house, but sooner or later, he’d be back in front of the microphone singing. It was literally day by day. None of us knew how long it was going to keep going, but no one wanted to stop—most of all Johnny.”

  Cash tried to block out his pain and worry by constantly searching his memory for old songs that still spoke to him, be they spirituals or something with a wry philosophical edge such as “Nobody,” a 1920s number he first heard on a Bing Crosby record. He was attracted to the song, which was co-written by vaudevillian Bert Williams, for its “sad sack” humor. Cash conveyed the wistfulness so deftly that Ferguson thought he had written it. Cash did write another of the songs, one he first recorded in the 1970s but reprised for this album—“Country Trash,” a playful look at Cash’s own Arkansas roots, a backwoods connection that had once embarrassed him but eventually became a source of inspiration and even pride.

  When Ferguson had a few tracks done, he sent them to Rubin, who discussed them on the phone with Cash. Rubin didn’t like everything he heard. Sometimes the vocal was weak; other times the song didn’t add anything to what fans already knew about Cash. At the same time, Rubin marveled at the best of the recordings. He couldn’t believe that this great artist had been exiled by the music business for all those years. Meanwhile, he too continued searching for songs for Cash, listening to dozens of albums. Periodically he would burn a CD of ten to twenty of his favorite songs to get Cash’s reaction.

  A week after the first round of Hendersonville recording sessions ended on May 21, John and June were at the Troubadour, a club within walking distance of the Viper Room in West Hollywood, to celebrate the release of June’s new album. Backed by a four-piece band that included John Carter on guitar, she delivered affectionate versions of various songs from the collection.

  But there was no doubt the central theme of the evening was her life with John—from the early “Ring of Fire,” delivered in the gentler acoustic style of the Carter Family, to Cash’s joining her for “Far Side Banks of Jordan” and their most famous duet number, “Jackson.”

  Upstairs in the club dressing room, Cash beamed as well-wishers congratulated his wife. Seven months later they would both have even more reason to cheer, when Press On won a Grammy in the same category that Cash’s American Recordings had earlier—best contemporary folk recording.

  Yet these moments of celebration were becoming fewer and fewer. Cash looked frail at the Troubadour. He had to sit on a couch backstage and couldn’t get more than a few words out without having to pause to regain his breath.

  On top of their own illnesses, John’s and June’s spirits were further dampened because Anita was dying. She had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for years, even going to Mexico in hopes of finding a miracle treatment. By the time of the Troubadour date, her liver and kidneys were failing. John and June took her into their home, where she finally died on July 29. She was sixty-six. In a period of thirteen months, June had lost both her sisters. “That hit her very, very hard,” Rosanne says. “She rebounded after Helen’s death and was her old self fairly soon, but I don’t think she ever got over Anita’s death. It was a terrible blow.”

  Then in October, Cash was rushed to the hospital, where he was listed in serious condition with pneumonia. As he spent several more days in a coma, rumors again swept through Music Row that Johnny Cash was dying. Yet he was soon sufficiently recovered to go to Jamaica to recuperate. While there, however, he had a relapse and had to be flown back to Baptist Hospital.

  One good piece of news came out of these hospital stays: Cash learned from his doctors that he did not have Shy-Drager syndrome after all. “I think they had to change their minds because if I did have Shy-Drager I’d be dead by now,” Cash said later. The doctors now said he was suffering from autonomic neuropathy, which covered a wide range of nervous system disorders. It didn’t matter much to Cash; he still felt terribly ill.

  Rubin was in Los Angeles through most of 1999, working with a variety of rock acts, but that didn’t prevent him from looking for more songs to challenge Cash. After “Rusty Cage,” he knew that the musical style of the song didn’t matter as long as Cash could identify with the lyrics, so he spent hours at home at night listening to album after album by punk and post-punk groups as well as by such mainstream acts as Neil Diamond and Simon & Garfunkel. He also kept his ears open when he went to concerts, and he knew he had the perfect song the night he heard “The Mercy Seat” by Nick Cave, a lanky Australian known for delivering gothic tales of darkness and salvation with a frightening, typhoon-like intensity. Rick had been a Cave fan for years, and he had heard “The Mercy Seat” on an earlier Cave album, but it didn’t hit him until he heard it live.

  He was struck by the duality of the song—a seemingly defiant man in the electric chair reflecting on a gracious God on his throne. It was tailor-made for Cash, but Rubin knew it was going to be a difficult choice. One thing in his favor was John’s fondness for prison songs. What he didn’t know was that the Cave song would remind Cash of the chill that had come over him when he walked by the electric chair during a tour of the grounds the day he did a show at Tennessee State Prison in Nashville.

  When Rubin played “The Mercy Seat” for Cash in April 2000 in Hendersonville, Cash felt intimidated by the complexity of the story. They cut a version of it, but agreed to wait until Cash was in Los Angeles again to finish it.

  Meanwhile, Rubin had several other songs that would end up on the pair’s third album, including Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man,” Tom Paxton’s “The Last Thing on My Mind,” and Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” In some ways the Petty song seemed too obvious—Cash proclaiming his own independent spirit via a song that had been a huge hit in 1989. But part of Rubin’s strength as a producer was the ability simply to focus on what worked—“what would be great,” as he put it.

  Unlike most record executives, he didn’t think of chart position when asked to name his favorite recordings. Like Cash, Rubin wanted hits, but he didn’t measure the greatness of a song or an album by numbers. That’s how Rubin could come up with an obscure Beck song (“Rowboat”) to open the second album and a hit Petty song (“I Won’t Back Down”) to open the third. He was focused on what was appropriate. About “I Won’t Back Down” Rubin says, “It’s a powerful lyric, and it served as a good organizing principle for Johnny. Hearing Johnny sing it in his weakened state was really a statement of what he’s all about. We didn’t do it just because people would recognize the song quickly. Tom just loved it. He felt Johnny did a better job on it than he did.”

  During Rubin’s two weeks in Nashville, Cash recorded eleven songs, ranging from a sweet hymn—“Wayfaring Stranger,” which he first heard on the radio in Dyess—to a nineteenth-century folk song, “Mary of the Wild Moor,” which he learned from the Louvin Brothers, to a new Cash composition, “Before My Time,” a love song with the simplicity and appeal of some of the early Sun hits:

  I know that hearts were loving

  Long before I was here

  And I’m not the first to ever cry

  In my bed or in my beer

  There were songs before there was radio

  Of love that stays and love th
at goes

  They were writing melancholy tunes

  And tearful words that rhyme

  Before my time

  Before my time…

  But what the old time masters had

  Is what I feel for you

  Love is love and doesn’t change

  In a century or two

  If some way they had seen and knew

  How it would be for me and you

  They’d wish for love like yours

  And they would wish for love like mine

  Before my time

  Before my time.

  Rubin returned to Los Angeles deeply pleased. Despite the health problems, Cash was expanding again as an artist. He was sifting through both his memory bank of songs and his personal experiences to see which tunes still spoke to him and what new ones he could create. After writing two autobiographies, he now wanted to tell his story through his music: a musical and personal self-portrait.

  “It was like that time at the White House with Nixon,” Cash told me. “If these were going to be my last recordings, I wanted them to tell a little bit of a road map, so to speak, about who I was as a musician and as a man. I’ve been really conscious about handing something down.”

  III

  When Cash finally was able to travel to Los Angeles, Ferguson accompanied him. Cash was feeling good, but he worried about capturing the nuances of the Nick Cave song. “I went to his room at the Four Seasons,” Ferguson says. “He said, ‘Man, I’ve got this “Mercy Seat” song hanging over my head. It’s a great song, but I am worried sick about it. I don’t know if I can do it right.’”

  Cash indeed had a hard time capturing the dark, conflicting strains in the song, but he kept at it. “He worked and worked on it,” Ferguson notes. “But that’s one of the things I admired about Johnny. He had a work ethic better than anybody you’ve ever met. If he was drawn to a song, he wouldn’t give up until he got it right.”

  In the end, Cash became as enamored with “The Mercy Seat” as Rubin was, and he wanted to open the album with it, but Rubin was afraid that the track would be too powerful and make the rest of the album feel anticlimactic. Rubin believed it was best to open with the more accessible “I Won’t Back Down” and “Solitary Man.” He had always liked Diamond’s own hit 1966 version, but he felt Cash could bring an interesting maturity to the lyrics—and Cash again came through. Whereas Diamond’s single drew most of its effect from the lilting guitar intro and the infectious sing-along charm, Cash made the words the central attraction. They agreed Solitary Man should be the album title.

  Yet the first eye-opener on the album was the song Rubin and Cash placed fourth—U2’s “One.” Cash had wanted to record another U2 song ever since “The Wanderer,” and Rubin agreed this would be the ideal choice. Though Bono had written the lyric to underscore the differences among people, Cash saw it as a love song, and Bono marveled over the interpretation Cash brought to his words.

  In assembling the album tracks, Rubin followed “One” with the lighthearted “Nobody” before setting up “The Mercy Seat” with “I See a Darkness,” written by another of Rubin’s underground rock favorites, Will Oldham, who frequently recorded under the pseudonym Bonnie Prince Billy. It was a profoundly moving sequence.

  No one—not even Sam Phillips—had understood the depth and range of Cash’s artistry or worked as hard at keeping Cash focused on his strengths as Rubin. It was the equivalent of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro teaming on such landmark films as Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, where the director and actor seem interlocked. To make it work, the director—or producer—needs to partner with a great talent and then find the ideal showcase for him.

  What especially enriched the Rubin-Cash relationship was that for every song from Rubin that stretched Cash’s creative reach, Cash’s choices brought a warm, often disarming touch to the proceedings. Thus Rubin was able to follow “The Mercy Seat” with a series of selections, some of which Cash had written (including “Before My Time” and “Country Trash”), that gave the CD an undeniably personal stamp.

  For all the months spent recording vocals and adding instrumental touches, the new album felt remarkably effortless. To point out that these albums were part of an ongoing creative journey, Rubin used the word “American” from the first album—American III: Solitary Man.

  The media were back on board in the months leading up to its release in October 2000. The two Grammy wins and the lingering impact of the first two albums were more than enough to convince editors and writers that Cash and Rubin were making amazing strides. But Cash also benefited strongly from a three-CD package that had been released the previous May by Columbia in association with American Recordings. The set was built around three themes, with one disc devoted to each: Love God Murder. The liner notes were written by June, Bono, and film director Quentin Tarantino, respectively.

  Cash personally chose the selections, which stretched across his entire career, and he made some inspired pairings, among them, following “Folsom Prison Blues” with “Delia’s Gone” and “Don’t Take Your Love to Town” with “Highway Patrolman” on the “Murder” package, and “I Still Miss Someone” with “The One Rose” on the Love disc. It was a spectacular showcase that documented the imagination and range of Cash’s musical catalog—all the more impressive because knowledgeable Cash followers knew there was enough compelling work left over to fill another set.

  Adding the stamp of approval of a new generation of rock leaders, Bono wrote, “Empathy and grace are written in his face, etched into his voice…[and] so are the years in the wilderness.”

  Cash’s longtime booster Rolling Stone checked in with a lengthy profile the week the album was released. Anthony DeCurtis, who had given American Recordings a rave review, found Cash “expansive, good-humored and, above all, indomitable” during an afternoon interview in the living room of the house in Hendersonville. But DeCurtis noted there were also moments when Cash would “put his hands over his eyes and rub them, as if in pain.”

  Still, Cash’s outlook was positive as he spoke about his relationship with his new musical partner. “From the first day…we trusted each other to be honest,” he said of Rubin. “I said, ‘I’m gonna sing you a song and if you don’t like it, you tell me. And if you got a song that you like and I don’t, you’ve got to listen to me. I can’t sing it if I don’t like it.’ But he has come up with some really fine songs, and he has never pushed anything on me. We get along beautifully.”

  He was even more eloquent talking about June and their future. “There’s unconditional love there,” he said. “You hear that phrase a lot, but it’s real with me and her. She loves me in spite of everything, in spite of myself….She has always been there with her love, and it has certainly made me forget the pain for a long time, many times. When it gets dark, and everybody’s gone home, and the lights are turned off, it’s just me and her.”

  American III: Solitary Man was the first of the Rubin-produced albums to crack the Top 100 pop chart, thanks to sales of nearly ninety thousand in its first two months in the stores—almost 50 percent more than Unchained.

  Nothing, however, was coming easily. While in Jamaica for the holiday season, Cash went through another siege of pneumonia that was serious enough for him to return to the Baptist Hospital in Nashville. He was still too weak to travel to Los Angeles for the Grammy Awards ceremony on February 21, so he watched on television as he was honored for best male country vocal for his performance of the song “Solitary Man.”

  Cash and Rubin approached the fourth album with high hopes. They had gotten past the novelty aspect of an odd couple making music together and now had the public’s attention—and they wanted desperately to deliver something lasting. Rubin began to look for a song even more challenging than “The Mercy Seat.” Cash wanted to write something epic—a final statement, a work that would define his spiritual beliefs.

  “I know everyone will say I’ve got to be out of my skull, but I feel like
my recording career has just begun,” Cash told a reporter. “You know, my dreams and ambitions after all these years are pretty much the same as they were at the beginning. I still just want to make records and sing on the radio. After I finally got on the radio I just wanted to make better records and that’s still what I want to do.”

  Cash was finally back in touch with the standards that had once defined his best songwriting—from Jimmie Rodgers to Merle Travis on. At the same time, he held on to his spiritual inspiration. In a very real sense his musical vision was complete.

  Chapter 35

  “The Man Comes Around” and “Hurt”

  I

  ONE SONG HAD BEEN HAUNTING Cash for years, and it was back on his mind in the early weeks of 2001. He had started laying down tracks for the new album the previous fall, just three months after finishing Solitary Man. “That’s the way we worked,” Ferguson says. “We just kept recording. There were no big breaks between albums.” During the September and November sessions in Hendersonville, Cash recorded more than twelve songs, including Bruce Springsteen’s feverish “I’m on Fire” and Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’,” the wistful song from the film Midnight Cowboy. But none of them would make the fourth album. Cash and Rubin were just marking time. They both feared that Cash had enough strength for only one more album, and they were both searching for one song that would serve as their pinnacle accomplishment.

  Up most mornings by five, Cash would shower, have breakfast, and take in the news on CNN before settling in a chair, either in his upstairs office or in the house’s massive round room below. He’d invariably think about that new song—one largely inspired by U2’s, “The Wanderer.” Cash loved the way Bono took a story from the scriptures and turned it into a parable that spoke to contemporary music fans. Cash wanted to write a “modern gospel” song that would speak to the young fans who had begun listening to him.