by Johnny Cash
Fuck Elvis, Fuck the Beatles, Fuck The Rolling Stones. Worthless gadavants, shallow, pointless, self-indolent pop Muppets to a man, who all just played at treating music seriously. Wanna cross me on that? How quickly after Elvis left the tender mercies of Sun Records did he stop being of any interest? How soon after their early career of pop-rock covers did John, Paul, George and Ringo become self-indulgent, derivative, self-hating buffoons? And as for the continuing relevance of the Stones, puh-leaze.
They all fade in comparison to arguably the single most valid, viable and continuingly important American musician of the twentieth century, and now the twentieth, Johnny Cash. In all six decades since he started his recording career, he has produced music of such breath-taking bravery and breadth of style and content that it's almost impossible to conceive of his impact and worth.
It is almost frightening to consider that, snowy-haired and in his seventies, Johnny Cash is still producing albums that aren't simply of interest or a book-end to a monumental career, but powerful, relevant and bold. Genuine masterworks. Maybe it's not so much what Cash is doing as how and why he does it. Ever since his early Sun recordings, the blues and gospel and cowboy tales of his early days, he has been very aware of the wide possibilities of music, and yet has never once felt like a dabbler. He is, instead, a student, still learning, still fascinated by the diversity of all forms of music. All forms, that is, that live up to his hard-won understanding of the toils and duresses of the world. Arguably the last of the outlaw balladeers, it is a testament to the grit of the man that he can work with a contemporary icon, producer Rick Rubin, and produce something as urgent as his supposed hey-days in the 60s.
These are the albums that Rubin almost managed a decade and a half ago, when he took Glenn Danzig on-board as his pet project. Their initial four-album collaboration, simply named I, II, III and IV combined sensuality, darkness and American folk music in equal measures, but was both too reactionary and too far ahead of its time for many tastes: plus the fact that Danzig was an outright Satanist put a few people off. A decade later, Rubin started to work with Cash on a new series of recording for his American label: not simply new material or re-appraisal of old work, but an opportunity for Cash to be himself. To record new numbers if he liked, to re-record classic works, to cover, to -rearrange his own works, to work with new people, to revive old friendships. In short, to take the idea of the modern album - a collection of new songs for release as singles - and replace it with a series of sessions, a coherent mass that, if all other Cash albums disappeared tomorrow, would still deserve a place in the musical canon.
Bold stuff, and perilous, especially as many consider Cash's defining work to be his three pivotal live recordings: Live at San Quentin, Live at Fulsom and the recently re-discovered Live at Madison Square Gardens. Yet the American Recordings, of which The Man Comes Around is the fourth in the series, may have achieved Rubin and Cash's aim.
Possibly it is because their interests are so similar. Rubin worked with Danzig because, after pushing the extremities of layers of sound with The Beastie Boys and Slayer, he wanted to sample the simple, rich textures of acoustic work. Also, his fascination with dark imagery, both spiritual and emotional, had made him a good playmate for the self-proclaimed Evil Elvis. Cash works in a similar field, but coming from the other end of the furrow. While Danzig accepted and relished the failings and flaws of humanity, claiming them as its true strengths, Cash looked on with despair and regret. He equally saw the world as a place where the grand battles between Good and Evil were played out, and that's apparent from moment one of The man Comes Around. The opening title track, the only wholly original track here, is a Millenarian tract, a foreboding treatment of Judgement Day. Half trail-side ballad, half funeral march, it's a wild scattering of Revelations quotes, recited rather than sung, but still in that distinctive Cash reverential rolling growl. It brings together two cultures that many would have thought divided: old-time, bible bashing religion and the darkest of modern rock. What brings them together is Cash's devotion and unwavering belief in both.
It says everything that, when performers half his age make guest appearances, it doesn't feel like some juvenile carpet baggers using some old man's droolings to boost their own careers. Nick cave, whose own Murder Ballads put him close to Cash's moral and musical bed rock, seems an obvious collaborator, and sharing vocals on Hank Williams' I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry perfectly matches his mellifluous squeeze box voice with Cash's own dust-bowl harmonica throat. Far removed from that trail-hardened Fiona Apple's whiskey angel wail behind Cash's world-weary devotional take on Bridge Over Troubled Waters is a meeting of souls. Later, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' John Frusciante continues his ascent to the title of most intriguing and creative modern guitarist on, of all things, a superbly sleazy honky-tonk re-engineering of Personal Jesus, originally by Depeche Mode.
Yes, that Depeche Mode. Electro-pop, leather cycling shorts, them's the bunnies. But it makes sense. After their early teen-friendly tales of suburban lust, they became musically informed by many of the same influences as Cash: Gospel, Western acoustic ballads and the sweaty, violent sexuality of Southern storm fronts. That same earnestness, the lyrics that came from Martin Gore's totally non-contradictory embracing of both his sordid and devout instincts, is probably what appealed to Cash. So he re-designs the song in his own image, but maintains its core story of a carnal connection.
Possibly that's what is still most astonishing about Cash and why he remains so vital as a performer. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, age has not softened him. Broadened him, maybe, diversified his interests, but then he has always been a man at the edge, at the cusp. He embraced pop when it was new, turned his back on Nashville when it became soft and anodyne, performed for prisoners when he could have become a family entertainer, challenged America when it slipped to the Right, challenged the Left when it became unpatriotic and always, always kept his faith in a God that stood by sinners more than he did by the saved. He has remained raw.
That's why he can get away with the most audacious recording of the year. Let's remember, we live in an age when neo-prog airheads Radiohead pillaging studio rock primates King Crimson gets called innovative. Yet when the menacing revivalism of this album's title track gives way to a delicate, solo acoustic guitar and Cash rumbling the words "I hurt myself today". Intoned with funereal intent, he takes Trent Reznor's Hurt from Nine Inch Nail's The Downward Spiral and treats it with the respect and reverence that it is due. When Reznor performs it, it is a song about knowledge of the world won too young, too fast; Cash makes it an old man's lament, still hopeful that somewhere in this world there is something that could pass as redemption.
In that one track there is the key to Cash's continued relevance and importance. He has never softened, never given up on his view that the world is place in which we struggle and fight and fail sometimes. Yet he has never surrendered to that darkness either, even in great age. Instead, he has the fire and the drive, the battle-hardened optimism of the lone rider. He gives hope to other performers, that hitting thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, even seventy doesn't mean that you cannot be a performer of worth. The world will be a poorer place when he finally dies, but it seems he will be making his point and making his music as long as he can. He proves that music, for some, isn't just a lifestyle, but a real way of life.
The Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash is out on American recordings and is the fourth in a series for that label: American Recordings, Unchained and Solitary Man. There are almost fifty Johnny Cash albums available, but some good starting points include his three live albums (San Quentin, Fulsom and Madison Square gardens, the Complete Sun Recordings box set and his recent themed retrospective collections, Murder, God and Love.
RMW