60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Hurt”—Johnny Cash

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Listen as Rob celebrates the life and career of the music icon who is Johnny Cash and his 2002 legendary cover of “Hurt.” Along the way, Rob discusses Cash’s work with Rick Rubin and much more. Later, Rob is joined by the Ringer’s Brian Phillips to further celebrate Johnny Cash’s greatness. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Brian Phillips Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Olivia Crerie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Sallick, and I'm here to announce a brand new season of my Ringer original podcast, Bansplaine, the show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists to you and yours. This time, babe, we're going across the pond. That's right, I'm absolutely chuffed to be talking about the music scenes of 80s and 90s Britain. I'm talking Mad Chester. I'm talking baggy. I'm talking Shugays. I'm talking Brit Popmate.

So tune in every Thursday starting November 7th for a new episode of Bansplaine on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, friends, just a quick announcement. The announcement is that 60 songs that explain the 90s, colon the 2000s, and Bansplaine are joining forces once again for a live show in Los Angeles early in the new year, and we'd be delighted if you'd join us. On Wednesday, January 29th, 2025, I, Rob Harvilla, and my work daughter, Bansplains, Yassi Salik, will do a show live from the Lod room in Highland Park. I don't know where that is in LA exactly, but I bet it's real nice. Tickets for this 60 Songs Band Splane Summit will go on sale this Friday, December 13th, at 10 a.m. Pacific, and they can be purchased at the ringer.com slash events. To repeat, Yassie and I will be live from the lodge room in Highland Park in L.A. on Wednesday, January 29th. And you can get more info

at the ringer.com slash events and also buy tickets there starting this Friday, December 13th at 10 a.m. Pacific. Come see me wince when I talk in person. Thanks for listening and hope to see you there. You can hear it so clearly, so painfully in his voice, in the tremor, in the terrifying frailty of his voice. It's his time. He has lived a world historically full. and rich and meaningful life, but he is almost gone. He is fading away, visibly, audibly, painfully, valiantly. He is singing you a song about how he's fading away. He is waving goodbye. He is leaving us, not today, not tomorrow, but soon. He is singing us one of the last songs he'll ever sing us. He is singing a song we know already, a famous song written and originally

sung by a much younger man. And the original song is animated by that younger man's totally legitimate pain and sadness and regret. But now this much older man is going to show us what pain and sadness and regret sounds like when you know you're almost gone. So it's time to say goodbye. Say goodbye to this voice you'd grown up with. This voice your parents and your grandparents grew up with. This voice your parents and grandparents probably loved. This voice you probably loved too. This voice is perhaps synonymous for you with a jukebox, with a car radio, with an open road, with country music, with the 20th century, with America. If you know enough about him, maybe you also associate his voice with drugs, with jail, with divorce, with a certain

fundamental rock star depravity, with a tentative and hard-fought redemption. You know this. You know this, voice, the authority, the beauty, the divinity, the command in his voice, reduced on this song to something so much weaker and therefore so much more powerful. It's not a given that he'll even make it all the way through the song. It's not a given that you will either. It is 2011 and Glenn Campbell is waving goodbye. He is 75 years old and he has announced that he's been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. His mind will wave goodbye before his body does. Glenn Campbell put out his first album in 1962 and then he put out, what, 58 more albums and sung what? At least a dozen songs you know intimately, even if you've never listened to a single Glenn Campbell song by choice.

Wichita lineman, gentle on my mind, by the time I get to Phoenix, Rhinestone Cowboy? Sure, Rhinestone Cowboy. And now Glenn figured, years he's got one more album in him. And he's calling this album, ghost on the canvas. That album title alone is designed to make you cry. Everything about this album is designed to make you cry, especially this song about getting invited to the last dance and then having to leave. Right. Okay, sure. But what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what did Glenn Campbell just say? Animal mother, she opens up for free. Excuse you? All right. Glenn Campbell is singing a guided by voices song. A guided by voices song called Hold on Hope. Guided by voices, the pride, the joy, the heart, the liver, the beer

swilling id, the rhinestone cowboys of Dayton, Ohio. Lo-fi gods, indie rock gods, rock and roll gods, God's period. Guided by voices, led by singer and songwriter and national icon Robert Pollard. Dude, I am so afraid to look this up, but I got to look it up now. Okay, Robert Pollard was born 21 years after Glenn Campbell was born. That's cool. I thought they were going to be like five years apart somehow and I was going to have to go walk into the sea. Guided by voices formed in 1983 and have put out what, 600 albums, 6,000? A phenomenal band,

a singularly phenomenal band. Phenominally prolific, yes, but more importantly, guided by voices' songs have just this surrealist, majestically ramshackle, but phenomenally tuneful aura to them. Pristine, but also confounding, but also depraved, but also profound,

but also often like 60 seconds long. And guided by voices, songs are not historically written in a country music vernacular. Can we agree on that? I don't even know if I agree with that, but I do like saying it. Broadly speaking, guided by voices, songs are not conventionally sentimental or coherent enough to work as straightforward weepy country music. Hold on Hope is an exception. Or at least Glenn Campbell singing Hold on Hope is an exception.

is an exception. It's the last thing that's holding me. Oh my God. How are you not crying right now? How am I not crying right now? How am I going to keep this from getting crazy maudlin? Why bother trying? Hold on Hope first appeared on the 1999

Guided by Voices album, Do the Collapse, which kicked off the band's much-debated sell-out era. Up until then, guided by Voices' The songs generally sounded like you're listening to them on a five-year-old's string telephone, you know, where you connect two cups with string, except now they're red solo cups still full of beer that you pour directly into your ear, preferably Budweiser. But now suddenly this album, Do the Collapse, is super clean, super poppy, super slick, ostensibly super radio-friendly.

Do The Collapse is produced by Rick O'Casek, the guy who produced Weezer's Blue album, And also, of course, he's the guy from the cars, one of my all-time favorite bands. Rico Kasich, who died in 2019, was born eight years after Glenn Campbell and 13 years before Robert Pollard. Just FYI. Some people really hate due the collapse for its conventional slickness and poppiness and cornyness. And Robert Pollard is probably one of those people. Talking to the website, song facts about Hold On Hope, Robert says, quote, I actually dreamed it.

the melody and main line anyway. I apologized to Rick because I thought it might be a little cheesy and slightly embarrassing because it came from a dream. But he said, no, it's the power ballad that radio is looking for. And that really scared me. End quote. It turns out, hold on hope was not the power ballad radio was looking for, but the bridge to this song, man, the bridge to this song when Glenn Campbell sings, the bridge. And these lines have a classic arbitrary shaggy guided by voices type accidental majesty to him. Right? Like our old buddy Bob Pollard was midway through writing the song and he got

distracted by an old Western movie on TV. But Glenn Campbell, Glenn Campbell in this moment, Glenn Campbell waving goodbye as he sings, look at the talk box, mute frustration at the station, there rides the cowboy, oof. Oof. The phrase mute frustration in particular. The phrase campfire flickering on the landscape in particular. Oof. Oof. The cowboy is riding away.

The flickering campfire is flickering out. Glenn Campbell is an even more devastating waving goodbye song called I'm not going to miss you, but I'm not going to play it for you. and I may in fact never listen to it again. Too beautiful, too devastating. Too much. Oof. Hold on Hope is not a personal favorite of Robert Pollards.

He once told Goldmine magazine, quote, I remember hearing Hold on Hope in a CVS store on some contemporary adult station. It came on right after a Kenny G song, and I just covered my face and slinked out to my car, end quote. And that's funny. Bob probably wrote a whole song in his head about how embarrassed he was before he got back to his car. But in that song facts interview, Bob also says, quote, I ended up liking it later down the line, especially when Glenn Campbell covered it and validated it.

I guess it's got a good message. I don't know. It's not very punk, is it? End quote. Well, punk according to whom? Nobody said it was. easy It's such a shame for us to part

You're going to tell me that Willie Nelson covering cold plays The Scientist, The Scientist, ain't punk. This cover won soundtrack to Chipotle ad. Shout out to Chipotle's Chicken Alpasteur with the pineapple. Three chicken alpastor tacos, please,

soft tacos with corn, salsa, sour cream, cheese, and just a little lettuce. But no, wait, come on. A Chipotle ad is objectively not punk. Okay. Okay. But Willie Nelson in 2011, at the ripe old age of 78, covering Coldplay's majestic, sentimental,

exactly what the radio is looking for, 2002 jam the scientist, and reinvigorating the scientist with a breezy, jazzy, sobering, but also galactically stoned poignance that only Willie Nelson can provide that's punk rock in its own way a grizzled country music eminence showing those young pompous conventional arena rockers how it's done willie nelson as i speak these words is 91 years old by the way he is

older than bob pollard rick o'clock kossack and glen campbell but willy nelson will never die he will never fade away or wave goodbye or flicker out on the landscape never you hear me Neither will she. And so I cry sometimes when I'm flying in bed just to get it all. My goodness, the mustard Dolly Parton just put on the word peculiar. That's why she's the best. I dig it when timeless, beloved country superstars cover extremely era-specific rock songs. I dig it when Dolly Parton covers the polarizing and delightful 1993 hit What's Up by Four Non Blonds.

Dolly covers this song in her 2023 album Rockstar, which also features her renditions of classic tunes by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Blondie, Prince, and Oreo Speedwagon, etc. You get the idea. I won't tell you how old Dolly Parton is because I am a gentleman. Dolly Parton is older than Robert Pollard. Leave it at that.

I heard about this next one on the internet, and I've been pretty nervous about listening to it, but I guess it's time. All right, cool. It turns out I still dig it when timeless, only slightly less beloved country superstars cover significantly less era-confined rock songs, even when it's the Oak Ridge Boys in 2009 covering Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. Pretty intense piano, fellas. That's not not punk rock. When the band that would become the Oak Ridge Boys first got together, World War II wasn't over yet.

But now the Oak Ridge boys just occasionally swap out some of their older guys for younger guys, so maybe they won't ever die either. Like that tech bro gets blood transfusions, so we never ages. Yeah, we've established the country stars covering rock hits conceit, but we've lost the waving goodbye conceit.

Hold on. Let's recalibrate. This might hurt a bit. It's getting dark, too dark to see. knocking on heaven's stone. Of course he's country. I'm going to let you tell Warren Zvon that he ain't country, or punk rock, for that matter. Warren Zivon's final album called The Wind came out in September 2003, two weeks before he died of lung cancer.

He was 56. He was waving goodbye. So he covered Bob Dylan's knocking on heaven's door, painfully literal and quite moving. Could I have talked you into the idea that Warren Zevon was specifically covering the 1991 Guns and Roses cover of Bob Dylan's knocking on Heaven's door? Maybe. Can I talk you into the idea that this is John Prine covering Metallica? If I should die before I wake, etc. This is John Prine's cover of Enter Sandman by Metallica.

That's not convincing at all. That's not believable. No, that's a John Prine. original called God Only Knows because John Prine is the only songwriter good enough to sing a song called God Only Knows that isn't a cover

of God Only Knows by the Beach Boys. John Prine's final album called The Tree of Forgiveness came out in April 2018 two years before he died of symptoms of COVID-19. He was 73. He was waving goodbye.

Okay. Now we just got to combine country cover of rock song with waving goodbye again. One more song first, though. Johnny Cash never walked no line. Johnny Cash never did no time, but when he sang a foe some bris and blues, you knew good and well it paid it do. Merle Haggard's final album, a collaboration with our old friend Willie Nelson called

Django and Jimmy, came out in June 2015. Merle died 10 months later of pneumonia. He was 79. he was waving goodbye. Merle's not going to cover some random, surprising rock and roll song while he's waving goodbye. That is not Merle's way. Instead, he waved goodbye in part with this song called

Missing Old Johnny Cash. Notice that Merle honors his friend by not necessarily deifying him. The miracle, the greatness, the essential humanness of Johnny Cash is that he did not, generally, walk the line. But we loved him. and more importantly believed him

when he sang the song I Walk the Line. Furthermore, Merle is about to tenderly sing the word pills. Truly always dressed in black, but he loved the folks and they loved him back.

Carried his pills in a brown paper sack. Well, I don't care if he found his stash and missing old Johnny Cash. Plus, at the end of this song, Merle and Willie just swap Johnny Cash. debauchery stories, I think Willie wins. One time he took a casket up to his hotel room and got into it and called room service. I thought that was pretty funny.

I like to imagine Johnny somehow propped his hotel room door open and lay there patiently in his open casket and very slowly sat up as the room service guy entered the room with his cheeseburger. So when you're a country music or country music adjacent legend, and you want to wave goodbye with an ultra-sentimental mic-drop tear-jurker, you can sing one somebody else wrote,

or sing one you wrote yourself, or if you're Merle, I guess you avoid the tear-jurker aspect altogether, and you get together with another legend, and you sing a fun, jaunty song about waving back at somebody who'd already waved goodbye. Somebody we lost 20-plus years ago,

but who still feels present, who is somehow still out there riding someone, a cowboy flickering on the landscape but never quite blinking out. Johnny Cash will live forever because he died the way he lived, which is to say Johnny Cash waved goodbye harder than anyone who's ever lived. We're going to get through this together. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 10th, episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s,

Cole in the 2000s, and this week we are discussing Hurt by Johnny Cash. We are discussing Johnny Cash's cover of the 9-inch Nail song, Hurt. Johnny's version appeared on his 2002 album, American 4. The Man Comes Around, the last album he released before his death on

September 12, 2003, from complications of diabetes. He was 71. We will talk about the hurt video. All right. I put on the hurt video a couple nights ago and I just cried. I did not expect that. My kids were in the next room and I kept worrying they were going to amble into my room and see me crying and freak out.

That is generally not my way. Outright crying at stuff. Crying at music videos. But yeah, man, I lost it for like 20 different reasons, including the gravity, the resignation, the authority with which Johnny Cash sings the words, Everyone I know goes away in the end. Everyone I know goes away. How am I going to keep this from getting crazy maudlin?

I got a few ideas. Or anyway, I got a few frivolous distractions. Ooh, here's one. Look out. Top three guided by voices songs. wish Johnny Cash had covered. Here we go. Number three, my valuable hunting knife.

Hit it. We got to change the key or something, but Johnny would absolutely nail this. Johnny would invest this song with the authority of a man who very likely owned hundreds, if not thousands of valuable hunting knives, even if he never actually hunted anything with any of them. Number two, 14 cheerleader cold front. A huge part of the attraction here, of course, is just the chance to hear Johnny Cash sing the phrase 14 cheerleader Coldfront. But given the Dulcet dueling voices here, Tobin Sprout, we got one time guided by voices, not so secret weapon Tobin Sprout, cruning alongside our guy Bob Pollard here.

I see this as a Johnny Cash and June Carter duet. This would have gone over huge at Folsom Prison. This could have been better than Jackson. And finally, the number one guided by voices song, I wish Johnny Cash had covered. You guessed it, the Goldheart Mountain Top Queen Directory. She runs through the night as if nobody cares.

She screams and she cries and ignores all that. Tell me this one of kick nine kinds of ass. Johnny Cash rumbling through this one with Ring of Fire energy, the walls of Folsom Prison, the walls of Jericho tumbling all around him. I think you can understand why the guy who wrote this, why Bob Pollard would physically flee in terror from a CBS just because one of his sweeter and cheesier songs came on after a Kenny G.

But I do think this one has an oddly affecting gospel music type intensity that Johnny would immediately recognize. June can sing that one too, if she wants. I just watched the hurt video again and almost cried again, but I didn't. I held it together this time. I think that's progress. The cracked gold record for At San Quentin sitting on the floor

and leaning against the wall, that almost got me, though. We're going to get through this together. Here, I will give you a quick moment to compose yourself. I am the Johnny Cash of Ad Breaks. I am at least one of the Oak Ridge boys of Ad Breaks. How detailed and laborious a Johnny Cash primer do you require? Come on now. Johnny Cash was born in Kingsland, Arkansas in 1932,

and he grew up in nearby Dias, Arkansas. Johnny Cash and the Tennessee 2, that's Luther Perkins on guitar and Marshall Grant on bass, released his debut single for Sam Phillips' son records in 1955. Hey Porter on the A side, cry, cry, cry, on the B side. Johnny released a single

I Walk the Line in 1956. He released his first concept album called Ride This Train in 1960. He released the live album at Folsom Prison in 1968, the same year he married his second wife, June Carter. He hosted a variety TV show on ABC called The Johnny Cash

show that ran from 1969 to 1970. and he was attacked by an ostrich named Waldo in 1981. I skip some stuff. I hit the highlights, though, I think. Getting attacked by an ostrich is one of those things that's extremely funny as long as it doesn't happen to you. He's Johnny Cash.

That's the primer. That alone ought to bring us up to speed. Just to pick a random song from a random year, here's what Johnny Cash sounded like in 1962 on a song called Delia's gone. Delia, oh, Delia, dealia all my life. If I had me shot for Delia,

I'd have her for my wife. The semi-jointed backing vocals there might not be strictly necessary. A great deal of what's going on there musically might not be strictly necessary, as we might learn 35 years later. So first you get to know and love Johnny Cash through the hits, right?

The monster hits, the hits that helped build America. I ain't got to play you the hits again. Now you already know him. Big River, I still miss someone, Ring of Fire, a boy named Sue, Sunday morning coming down, Man in Black, one piece at a time, and several

dozen others. But then, in my experience, there's one song, and maybe even one line from one song, that kickstarts your deeper dive into Johnny Cash, your full awestruck immersion. The specific line and the specific song

is different for everybody. Johnny would make these wildly ambitious concept albums, right? With booming narration and super thoughtful historical conceits and like train whistles and shit, ride this train in 1960. Johnny Cash sings the

ballads of the true West in 1965 and bitter tears, ballads of the American Indian in 1964, featuring Johnny famous version of the song The Ballad of Ira Hayes which is the story

the true story, the true American story of Ira Hayes from the Pima Indian tribe who volunteered for the Marines and fought in World War II and helped raise the American flag over Iwo Jima in that

super famous photo and who later died of alcoholism. These are the Johnny Cash lines that got me that truly started. me, that converted me, the abject sadness and the seething rage in this man's voice. This is a voice you will follow anywhere, no matter how dark a path he leads you down. Yeah, calling drunken Ara Hayes. But his land is just as dry and his ghost is lying thirsty in the ditch where Ara died.

The chill that shot through me. the first time I heard that, or maybe not even the first time I heard that, but the first time I fully processed that. The first time I truly heeded Johnny Cash's voice. And from that point on, any era, any record, any song, any line can come out of nowhere and hit me that hard. Johnny Cash made a ton of gospel albums also, even gospel concept albums, including one in 1973 called The Gospel Road, the soundtrack to a whole movie he made about the light. and death of Jesus Christ. And so I put this record on and I'm puttering about my house, doing whatever, and suddenly this line reaches out and slaps me in the back of the head.

Jesus said, if the people keep quiet, the stones along the road will praise me. Johnny Cash's personal spin on Luke 19, verse 40, rattled around in my head for the next 48 hours. If the people keep quiet, the stones along the road will praise me. You believe in Johnny Cash. You believe in what he sings and what he says. He makes you believe what he believes. I think this came up before, but in 2003, I moved from Ohio out to Oakland, California, and I drove there with my father.

We made a road trip out of it, 2,500 miles or so. And I took a turn driving in the dead of night in North Platt, Nebraska. during this wild terrifying thunderstorm. And dad somehow asleep in the shotgun seat, and I'm white knuckling it as hard rain as pelting the windshield and giant bolts of lightning are tearing up the Nebraska horizon. And I got my little sleeve of emotional support CDs in my lap, and I slip one into my CD player.

And whose voice do you suppose was there to comfort me? San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell. May your walls fall and may I live to tell. Okay, I wouldn't say this comforted me, per se. The vicious roar of the crowd, of the prisoners at San Quentin on the 1969 live album at San Quentin. As Johnny Cash talked shit about San Quentin and fantasized about those walls tumbling down around him also. None of this is designed to comfort you.

But I'll never forget that voice, that highway, that thunderstorm. This is what my country is made of. This is the very best of it. And the fear, the fear amid even his biggest fans by the time we get to the 80s, by the time Waldo the ostrich puts

him in the hospital, is that Johnny Cash's years as an unparalleled and unstoppable force of nature are over. He's in his 50s. His albums ain't hitting. His singles ain't even charting. He's already lived six or seven lifetimes.

Harrowing lifetimes. He has risen and fallen and risen and fallen. As our friend Merle Haggard, gently observed, Johnny has struggled with substances, with pills mostly, amphetamines. Sometimes he's got that beat, and sometimes it's brutally beating him. By the time the 80s are over, he'll be dropped by his longtime label, Columbia, and his next label, Mercury, won't know what to do with him either. One of this decade's few bright spots is when Johnny gets together with some old friends.

Some old friends whose careers are currently quite a bit hotter than his own, and may at least help keep him warm. The first album by The Highwaymen, the at least half a million dollar quartet of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Chris Christofferson comes out in 1985. It's called Highwayman. This is the title track and the big hit in which all four dudes take a verse. And in Johnny's verse, he literally flies a starship and makes you believe that he knows how.

Johnny's fellow highwaymen, Willie Whalen, and Chris are the beloved leading lights of the 70s outlaw country movement, which is very, very obviously inconceivable without the guiding light of 50s and 60s Johnny Cash, and yet 70s and 80s Johnny Cash is not quite able to vibe with or fully capitalize on this movement. And so now here he is, swathed and soothing Reagan-era gauze fantasizing about his next life. And the next one, and the next one. Or I may simply be a single drop of rain, but I will remain and I'll be back again

and again and again and again the fear even amid his biggest fans is that Johnny Cash will not regain his throne and will not regain his footing as the Johnny Cash until he's in his next life or the next one or

the next one often some other universe entirely but then two rock star types, two men, two earthlings intervene and build Johnny a new throne to sit upon. The first guy is a guy named Bono, and actually Bono builds Johnny Cash that spaceship. In 1993, in 1993, the noted Irish arena rock band U2, about whom I have never had anything negative to say, U2 releases a rather confounding and gently experimental

and endearingly futuristic sounding album called Zeropa and on the final track called the Wanderer out of precisely nowhere whose voice is there to comfort us and also confound us even further

and nothing about the somnolent electric hum of this song suggests the presence of the man in black but that's the whole point see the whole thrill of the Wanderer is the sheer audacious unlikelyhood of encountering Johnny Cash in this bizarre alien universe. And see Bono, U2's frontman, Bono's, his usual propensity for biblical drama and self-regard

finds its ideal mouthpiece, its ideal vessel in the Johnny Cash, who is in his 60s now, but still sounds like he walks around with a Bible and a gun. He still sounds like the word of God lays heavy on his heart. He still sounds, or suddenly, after a long slump, he sounds once again like he's sure he's the one. And he's sure he can get you to believe he's the one, too. In the giant 2013 biography Johnny Cash, The Life, written by the great L.A. Rock journalist Robert Hilburn, Bono tells a story about having dinner with Johnny Cash in the late 80s. Bono says, quote, we were all holding hands around the table, and Johnny said the most beautiful,

most poetic grace you've ever heard. Then he leaned over to me with his devilish look in his eye and said, but I sure missed the drugs, end quote. And suddenly that Johnny Cash is here again. He's audible again. He's in command again. Both guys are here, both sides of Johnny Cash, the sinner and the Redeemer, the angel and the devil. The guy you recorded like half a dozen gospel albums minimum, and the guy who sure misses the drugs. Talking about the Wanderer, Johnny said, quote, it's the search for three important things.

God, that woman, and myself, end quote. We did not know, listening to this weird-ass conclusion to this weird-ass U-2 album in 1993, whether Johnny would find God or that woman or himself. But at least the search was on again. And this could have been pretty much the end of it. A cool and loopy little coda to one of the greatest, the most impactful, the most heavenly and hellish careers in all of popular music.

Johnny Cash waving goodbye from across the cosmos. Nothing left for him to do but tour for as long as he could, playing the old hits to smaller and smaller crowds, including a gig in 93 at the Rhythm Cafe in Santa Ana, California. You know who opened this show, apparently Uncle Tupelo. Uncle Tupelo opening for Johnny Cash. Wild man. Fortunately for Johnny, fortunately for everyone, at this gig,

one of the people in this smaller crowd is Rick Rubin. And Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash meet backstage. And they get to talking. And Rick Rubin's proposition for Johnny Cash, in essence, is, what if you get rid of everything that isn't strictly necessary? Delia, oh, Delia, Delia all my life. If I hadn't a shot, oh, Delia, I'd have had her for my wife. Delia's gone one more round.

Johnny Cash released his 81st album, on April 26th, 1994. He called it American Recordings. After his new record label, Rick Rubin's record label, Rick Rubin, you again, fame guru like producer for Public Enemy, L.L. Cool J, the Beastie Boys, the Ghetto Boys, Slayer, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Petty, and yes, huh, wow, Johnny Cash. In his 1997 autobiography, simply called Cash, Johnny describes Rick Rooley. Ruben thus. Quote, he was the ultimate hippie, bald on top but with hair down over his shoulders,

a beard that looked as if it had never been trimmed, parentheses, it hadn't, and clothes that would have done a wino proud, end quote. Johnny is skeptical. Johnny says, quote, I was through auditioning for producers, and I wasn't at all interested in being remodeled into some kind of rock act, end quote.

But that is not Rick Rubin's plan. That is not Rick Rubin's game. And Johnny quickly familiarizes himself with Rick Rubin's game. Johnny asks him, basically, what are you going to do that's any different from any of my other producers? And according to Johnny, Rick says, quote, I won't do anything. You'll do it. You'll come to my house and sit down in my living room and take a guitar and start singing. At some point, if you want me to, we'll turn on a recorder, and you will try everything that you ever wanted to record, plus your own songs, plus new songs I might suggest that you think you could do a good job on. You'll sing every song you love, and somewhere in there will find a trigger song that will tell us we're heading in the right direction. I'm not very familiar with a lot of the music you love, but I want to hear it all.

quote. And for the next 10 years or so, spread out over the next six American recordings albums, two posthumous, Johnny Cash sings it all. The beast in me is caged by frail and fragile bars. This song is called The Beast in Me by the Godtier singer and songwriter and producer Nick Lowe. My producer, Justin Sails, will probably get mad at me if I don't tell you that Nick Lowe's version of The Beast and Me, released in 1994, starts playing at the very end of the first episode of The Sopranos. When they're at a barbecue at Tony's house

and the camera pans to the pool and the ducks are gone, I love Nick Lowe. Someday I will contrive a way to talk to you at great length about how much I love Nick Lowe, but not now. Nick Lowe is English and debonair and mischievous, but he's not a terribly volatile or dangerous character. In my opinion,

I don't picture him carrying a Bible or a gun, And so when he sings about the beast in me, you picture Nick like, I don't know, not saying, bless you when somebody sneezes. Or maybe he sees an old lady crossing the street and he doesn't help. Maybe he's listening to Joe Rogan or something. Nothing serious. The beast in Nick Lowe and the beast in Johnny Cash are two different beasts. And no offense, but Johnny's beast could kick Nick's beast's ass. That's what I'm saying.

That's what I'm hearing. Restless by day and by night, Ransom rages at the star. Nick Lowe was married to Carleen Carter, June Carter's daughter and Johnny Cash's stepdaughter, Carleen Carter for a little while. So there's a nice familial undercurrent here. Johnny Cash is about to sing the word God.

Look out. Johnny Cash is about to put some freaking mustard on the word God. The bass rumble here, man, the sweet chariot swinging low. This man was born to sing the word God, and God was born to hear it. God help the beast and me. And you'll notice that what we got here is Johnny Cash's voice and an acoustic guitar, and that's it. Everything else has been deemed unnecessary. And let's not oversimplify.

this. Johnny Cash's American albums are not entirely ultra stripped down funereal voice and guitar affairs. These albums do

not entirely consist of wild, audacious stunt covers of unexpected rock and roll hits. He's not waving goodbye the

whole time. These albums are not entirely animated by the plain fact that Johnny's in his 60s and 70s now and his

health is failing fast and his voice. and his voice, his physical voice, will audibly and heartbreakingly deteriorate as these albums progress. All of that stuff is happening some of the time, yes, and the vibe is indeed often funereal and heartbreaking,

but we are having fun here, honestly. So sure, for this first album, let's get Johnny Cash to sing songs by Nick Lowe and Danzig, and Loudin Wainwright III, and Tom Waits. And from there, let's get even wilder. Johnny Cash

covering Beck and Soundgarden and Neil Diamond and Will Oldham and Nick Cave and the Beatles and the Eagles. Real quick though, per that Robert Hillburn book during their time together, Rick Rubin suggested at least two songs that Johnny didn't vibe with. The first one,

My Way. Frank Sinatra. In the book it says, quote, Cash wasn't a Sinatra fan and he found the state of personal independence grading. End quote. All right, forget it. But you know the other song

Rick Rubin tried to get Johnny Cash to sing? Holy crap. And he did it. There exists in a bomb shelter somewhere, a recording of Johnny Cash singing Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love. Yes, the song with the Super 80s video with the Super Chill models.

as Robert Palmer's backing band. Holy crap. In the book it says, quote, though Cash good-naturedly attempted a vocal, there was so much ridicule from Tom Petty and the others that Ruben quietly put the track on the shelf, end quote.

Tom Petty starts hanging around too. Holy crap. Who do I got a Venmo to hear Johnny Cash's version of Addicted to Love? I will Venmo Rick Ruben 70, bucks right now or PayPal or Zell. Get at me. But yes, yes. Also, from the very beginning, Johnny Cash's American series

has some genuinely blood-chilling moments of frailty, but also a bracing hardness that only Johnny can convey and only in his own words. I really dig a song in the first American album called Like a Soldier. I find it tremendously difficult to listen to but I still dig it. There are nights I don't remember and pain it's been forgotten and a lot of things I choose not to recall.

This is a new Johnny Cash song and this idea of pain so long gone you've forgotten it or you've chosen to forget it. You're trying to convince yourself you've forgotten it. I don't think you can fake that. I think you've got to be literally Johnny Cash to sell that. But let's not overstate this, okay?

The balance here is so crucial, musically and emotionally and philosophically as the American series rumbles on. You don't ever want these records to get too maudlin or too cute or too stark or too flamboyant or too predictable or too desperately unpredictable. The Rick Rubin-Johnny Cash partnership is a triumph of atmosphere and guile and bravery and also restraint. We are never overreaching. but we are building something.

We are building toward something. We are expanding the Great American Songbook. We are expanding Johnny Cash's place within it. Robert Hilburn writes, quote, 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 Rick Rubin. It was the equivalent of Martin Scorsese,

and Robert De Niro teeming on such landmark films as Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, where the director and actor seem interlocked. End quote. And I think that's absolutely the right comparison, the right actor-director team, but maybe the wrong movie.

De Niro in 1976 and taxi driver is way too young. What I'm hearing is Robert De Niro in 2019 in the Irishman, in a wheelchair, in a nursing home. asking the nurse to leave the door open. There are faces that come to me in my darkest secret memories, faces that I wish would not come back at all.

But yeah, yes, also, also, Johnny Cash covering Soundgarden. Too cold to start a fire, I'm burning diesel, burning dinosaur bones. I'll take the river down to Stillwater and ride a pack of dogs. Yes, please, absolutely. Johnny Cash covering Soundgarden's Rusty Cage on American 2 Unchained, released in 1996 and heavily featuring Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who serve as the backing band and provide addicted to love-related quality control. These records, it's never a matter of the grizzled old country lifer showing all these

young rock stars whose boss, right? This is not Johnny Cash upstaging Soundgarden. There is a synergy, a kismet, a bridge built, a shared expanded language. I hear Johnny Cash singing about burning dinosaur bones and riding a pack of dogs. And at first I think, that doesn't sound like him. And then in the next breath, I think, oh, sheesh, yes, of course it does. If any man alive has burned dinosaur bones for fuel, it's Johnny Cash. You get a similar spark, a similar blaze, a similar

nuclear fusion when Johnny Cash and Nick Cave collide. I began to warm and chill to objects and their fuse. A ragged cup, a twisted mop, the face of Jesus in my suit.

Those sinister dinner deals. Yes, please, absolutely. Johnny Cash covering the mercy seat by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on American Three Solitary Man released in 2000, the torrent of rye and biblical and apocalyptic imagery pouring out of Johnny Cash's mouth. Or really, ultimately, it's just the name Jesus, the way he sings the word Jesus. The way he sings the word Jesus in a song somebody else wrote. The captivating dissonance between the rock.

rock star songwriter's conception of Jesus and Johnny Cash's conception of Jesus. The face of Jesus in Nick Cave's soup bears surprisingly little resemblance to the face of Jesus in Johnny Cash's soup. Or maybe Nick Cave's reaction to seeing Jesus's face in his soup differs dramatically from Johnny Cash's reaction to seeing Jesus' face in his soup. There's a captivating dissonance even when you assume there. won't be. On American 3, Johnny Cash covers one by U-2, arguably the single best U-2 song, and among the most unabashedly spiritual U-2 songs. Bono, like Johnny Cash, is a man of faith. These are two men with a lifelong interest in reconciling rock star hedonism with God-fearing devotion. And yet, Johnny Cash, asking this question, feels different to me, less sarcastic or confrontational, maybe. In the Robert

Hilburn book, he says simply enough that Bono wrote one to underscore the differences in people whereas Johnny Cash heard one is a love song and so that's the way he sings it. Have you come here to play Jesus? To

the lepers in your head. And finally there is Depeche Mode. There's Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus. There's Johnny Cash singing Personal Jesus. A song inspired in part by Johnny old friend Elvis Presley. Depeche Mode's Martin Gore said he was reading the book Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley by Elvis's wife. In 1990, Martin Gore told Spin Magazine, quote,

it's a song about being a Jesus for somebody else, someone to give you hope and care. It's about how Elvis Presley was her man and her mentor and how often that happened in love relationships, how everybody's heart is like a God in some way. And that's not a very balanced view of someone, is it? End quote. So the original Depeche Mode personal Jesus is not sacrilegious, but it's less an act of praise than an interrogation

of power dynamics. Lovers as false idols, specifically Elvis as a false idol. But Johnny Cash respectfully doesn't think of it that way, and he sure don't sing it that way. Your own

personal Jesus. Someone to hear your prayers, someone who cares. No, talking about personal Jesus, Johnny Cash once said, quote, that's probably the most evangelical song I've ever recorded. I don't know that the writer ever meant it to be that, but that's what it is, end quote. And leave it to Johnny to put that as clearly and simply and powerfully as possible. If you ask Johnny Cash to sing a song, as long as it's not Sinatra, he'll,

sing the song and he will sing the song with respect. He will have at least some idea of what the songwriter meant or didn't mean. But when Johnny Cash sings your song, that's what it is. I hurt myself today to see if I still feel. So what is this? What has this song become? The original hurt is the last song. the downward spiral, the second full-length album from industrial rock gods, nine-inch nails,

released in 1994. I say gods because I personally worshipped nine-inch nails as a sullen 90s alt-rock teenager. One could say that Trent Rezner, nine-inch nail singer and songwriter and overlord Trent Rezner was my personal Jesus. Quite possibly I have listened to the downward spiral in full more than any other album ever made by anyone ever. In any event, I have heard Tret Resner sing hurt many hundreds, if not thousands of times. I saw Nine In Inch Nails play in 1995 in Cleveland at a basketball arena at the CSU Convocation Center. And they played Hurt. And there was all this unsettling black and white video footage from the Hurt video on a giant screen behind the band.

And I remember the snake, just this long super close up shot of a snake staring everybody down, poised to strike. and the whole crowd cheered and the chill that shot through me. I wondered what kind of snake it was and I found one post on forums.kingsnake.com in which a guy, I'm assuming it's a guy, but come on. A guy goes, quote,

I've always wondered what kind of snake it is in the hurt video. My personal guess is either a mamba of some kind or a boom slang, some kind of old world viper. Thoughts, end quote. And nobody replied, I was so bummed that nobody had, any thoughts. Oh, well, Trent Rezner once called Hurt a Valentine to the Suffer.

He once called it My Most Personal Song. And so there is a profound discomfort for both the listener and the original songwriter here when Johnny Cash sings the words, I hurt myself. Trent Rezner was 28 in early 1994 when the downward spiral came out. Johnny Cash was 70 in late 2002 when American 4 the man comes around came out. We are dealing with entirely different experiences of pain, entirely different conceptions of self-harm. Never mind the details. All the detail you need is in the way Johnny sings the words,

the only thing that's real. Hell, it's in the way he sings the word, focus. I focus on the pain, the only thing Let's read. In 2008, talking to the sun, Trent Resner talks about hearing the Johnny Cash version of Hurt for the first time. He says, quote,

I listened to it and it was very strange. It was this other person inhabiting my most personal song. I'd known where I was when I wrote it. I know what I was thinking about. I know how I felt. Hearing it was like someone kissing your girlfriend. It felt invasive. end quote.

That was before Trent saw the video. Trent has also said that it's Johnny Cash's song now. The needle tears the whole. The old familiar sting. That line potentially has a drastically different connotation now, but let's not get into it. It doesn't matter anymore. Johnny Cash is fading away.

He is waving goodbye. He is leaving us. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon. Never mind the details. I guess they don't matter so much either anymore. The devastating contrast between Johnny Cash's voice on the first American recordings album in 1994 and his much frailer, his palpably vanishing voice on the American Four album eight years later is almost unbearable. The contrast between his voice on American Four and his biblically commanding voice in the 50s or 60s is completely unbearable. He sounds like a different person now. He is a different person now.

He is someone else. We are still right here. He is a much quieter person. But if he keeps quiet, the stones along the road will praise him. Per the Robert Hilburn book, at this point, Rick Rubin and his collaborators are working very patiently with a gravely ill Johnny Cash, a frequently hospitalized Johnny Cash. They are working line by line and often word by word, stringing a full vocal take together by working around Johnny's exhaustion,

his literal breathlessness. This is audible on Hurt, even if Hurt sounds like he's singing the whole song in one shot. Try to kill it all away, but I remember everything. But yeah, there is before the hurt video and there is after. I just watched it again and almost cried again. Having a normal one over here,

the American 4, The Man Comes Around record comes out, and critics dig it, and it sells okay, and it's widely accepted that the Rick Rubin American Recordings Project is a huge success and has redeemed Johnny Cash's years and really decades of stumbling and frustration. But the notion, even the theoretical argument that this might be Johnny Cash's greatest era is crowning achievement?

That's not a remotely plausible argument until the hurt video. Directed by Mark Romantic. Film primarily at Johnny Cash's house in Hendersonville, Tennessee because he was too ill to travel anywhere else. Johnny's eyesight was failing. In the Robert Hilburn book, it says,

quote, Mark Romantic was sadden to see Cash surrounded by a massive wall of books he was no longer able to read end quote i put a big frowny face next to that quote they wanted johnny to sing while looking straight at the camera but johnny couldn't see the camera he couldn't focus on it so they put a little flashing light next to it and he focused on that in this video we see johnny cash an unflinching close-up we see johnny cash's hand tremble when he lifts the wine glass to pour it over the banquet table that's the detail that obliterated me immediately and it's still done

we know. We know he's almost gone. He is almost too weak to even wave goodbye. But also, June Carter, June Carter appears halfway through the video on a staircase, looking at her husband with such concern, such love, such fear. And in the book, in the biography, it seems clear to everyone that Johnny will go first, that he will die first. But June, standing on that staircase, had learned the day before that she had a leaky heart valve. And she told friends that she had a premonition that if she went back to the hospital, she'd never leave.

And let's not overdo this, but June is standing on this staircase looking down at Johnny Cash. And as it turns out, June goes first. June Carter died on May 15, 2003 of complications from heart surgery. She was 73. He told you.

Everyone I know goes away in... This is tough. This is brutal. This video is brutal. Also, we try to avoid hyperbole around here. We renounce hyperbole in all his works. But Hurt is probably the single greatest music video ever made. I don't know if that's even a remotely incendiary opinion anymore.

Certainly it's the most devastating. music video ever made and the tenderest also the idea behind this video in its crudest form stark close-ups of an ailing johnny cash interspersed with vintage footage of a young and strapping and terribly intimidating johnny cash riding trains and commanding huge crowds and cavorting with june and radiating superstardom and immortality in its crudest form the hurt video could be simply crude and exploitative and exploitative and manipulative and gross and borderline abusive. And despite all the crying, I keep making myself rewatch the hurt video to try and figure out why it doesn't strike me as crude and exploitative and gross.

Per the book, when Rick Rubin first saw the hurt video, he kind of freaked out. Freaking out Rick Rubin is nearly impossible. And when Johnny Cash first saw this video, he kind of freaked out. Johnny showed the video to people around him, June included, and they told him to say no, to bury it. Johnny took a long weekend to think about it. And Rick Rubin says, quote, I remember sitting in my car in Santa Monica, looking at the ocean while talking to Johnny, having a feeling that nobody's ever going to see this video. I thought for sure he was going to say no, but he decided it should be seen, end quote. And we'll never know why exactly, but I really want to know why exactly. Johnny Cash thought it should be seen. I'll fly a starship across the universe divide. My best guess is that right here, in the video's final 45 seconds or so, when the editing pace intensifies and we're racing back and forth between Johnny then and Johnny now,

right here we also get footage from the Gospel Road, that movie about the life of Jesus Christ that Johnny made in the 70s. We get footage of Jesus Christ being crucified. pounding of the nails mirroring the pounding of the piano. And see, rock stars, 90s rock stars especially, had trained me to think of rock stars as horribly persecuted, as doomed, as suffering and even dying for us, dying for our sins, getting up on the cross for us. And maybe that's the way I initially read the hurt video. I saw it as Johnny Cash equating himself with Jesus Christ. But I don't think that now. Now, I think that. Now, I think,

that in his last days, with his crowning achievement video for one of his last great songs, Johnny wanted to remind us all what he believed in, what drove him, what he lived for, and perhaps why he was at peace with leaving us. Forget everything I told you earlier about when Johnny Cash died and how old he was and all that. I've forgotten all that. because by another way of thinking, Johnny Cash will never die. He will never fade away or wave goodbye or flicker out on the landscape. Never.

You hear me? Our guest today, we are thrilled to welcome your favorite writer and your second favorite writer's favorite writer. He is a senior staff writer. At the Ringer, he is the author of the Fantastic Essay Collection, Impossible Owls. And he is the host of the Fantastic Ringer podcast, Truthless, which published as its season finale this week. It was on Tuesday.

Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Phillips. Brian, welcome. Rob, we've been talking about doing this for a long time. I've made no secret to you of the fact that I love your show. I thought going on 60 songs

is going to be the most fun experience I could have in the podcast space. And it's for that, those reasons of fun that I'm so delighted to be here to talk about checks notes. Johnny Cash's hurt. I will say you brought this on yourself. We did talk broadly about what would interest you and you zeroed in on Johnny Cash.

And it is, this is not a lighthearted conversation, Brian. This is, we're going to have no fun whatsoever. And I want to be. I am my own worst enemy, Rob. Yikes. Brian, when I say the name Johnny Cash to you, what's the first song, the first era, the first iteration of Johnny Cash that you think of. How do we start this? I think when I hear the words Johnny Cash, what first pops into my head is an image,

and I think it's the famous photograph of him flipping the bird at the camera in 1969 at San Quentin. You know, I just think like that, that picture just summarizes so much and kind of captures so much. And it's just a weird kind of transitional moment for him. anyway. I don't know. I'm fascinated by that that whole concert. So I think that's what it is. In the early 2000s, like when I think of Eminem, I've seen like 50,000 pictures of Eminem flipping off the camera. Like that's just his thing that he does reflexively. And it's like there's something about the power of Johnny Cash doing that once that is so much greater than Eminem doing it 50,000 times. You know what I mean? Like, I think there's just, there's a divide right there that

interests me. Absolutely. Johnny Cash is always the boss. You know, he's not like a little punk doing donuts in the parking lot. Like Johnny Cash, like when Johnny Cash talks, your chest cavity vibrates. Like, Johnny Cash is this, like, just this sort of like patriarch of patriarch. So when he's, like, flipping off the warden of a jail, it really, really rouse. battles everything. Is this a voice from your childhood? Is this music that you heard growing up? Yeah, I, you know, I discovered Johnny Cash twice, I think.

Like, when I was a kid, I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. In a small town in Oklahoma in the 80s, early 80s, like Johnny Cash was obviously a presence. And I remember, like, hearing Johnny Cash records at my best friend's house, you know, his parents would put them on. I knew who he was. I had this, I kind of associated him. I thought he was like best friends with Kenny Rogers.

Like, you know, we were kind of Kenny Rogers, like the gambler era. And I thought Kenny Rogers was just unbelievably cool, which is not wrong. So, yeah, I've carried this picture of just kind of like the peak kind of man in black. Like Johnny Cash is like the ultimate kind of like 52 year old granddad. like he's still kind of hail and hearty, but he's just the patriarch of the whole thing. Like that picture I've always had in my head. And then I discovered Johnny Cash a second time as a grown-up.

Like my first year after college, I was working at this magazine. And a guy I worked with figured out that I was into indie rock. And he was like, well, do you listen to Johnny Cash? And I was like, well, not really. And he loaned me those like, you remember the love guy? murder compilations.

Oh, yeah, the three with the Quentin Tarantino and Bono. Exactly. So he brought me, like, love God and murder and was like, you got to check these out if you love, like, Wilco. I don't even remember what else we were talking about, but, like, that's not untrue. If you're into neutral milk hotel, you got it. You got to discover Johnny Cash. Yes.

So, yeah, I feel like he's been following me around in like one incarnation or another my whole life. Okay, if I remember correctly, Johnny Cash also recorded a version of The Gambler, but he couldn't quite nail it. And then he was really angry when Kenny Rogers' version blew up. And he was mad at whichever producer made him record it. Like there is a universe in which the gambler is a Johnny Cash song. And I can't decide if I want to live in that universe or not. Like the hard thing for me is imagining that Johnny Cash could ever.

fuck up the gambler. Like, that just seems like, that just seems like print the money. Like, I want to hear those tapes. No, I want to hear those tapes too. But like, ostensibly, this is the era. Like, the whole narrative of the American series is that Johnny Cash sends, spends, like, the whole 80s, you know, maybe even part of the 70s, like, at sea, right?

Like, it's just the albums, you know, the singles, you know, he's struggling with pills. you know, it's, it might be over, you know, and suddenly Rick Rubin shows up at a concert of his and just rescues him. Like, is it overstating it? You know, is it over mythologizing it to say that the American series, like, completely reframed how we see and hear Johnny Cash, like, even now? I definitely think the American series reframed how we saw Johnny Cash in 1994. Like, I guess, I guess I have kind of a short-term and a long-term answer to the question. Like, long-term, I think he was probably going to be fine because he had already recorded a pretty immortal body of work. You know, by 2025, we would have sort of forgotten, like, the wayward, bloated, tipsy,

Branson-era, Johnny Cash, and would just be listening to Walk the Line and, you know, the classics. But definitely in 1994, it reframed everything. and just really kind of established him at the center of a conversation that he hadn't even been kind of in the building for before. And so I think that's,

I think that's what it did. Like, I also think that, like, there's an interesting question, like, did the American series kind of help reframe, like, how we think about aging country stars overall? Like, does Willie Nelson have the same place in culture

that he's had for the, the last like decade, 15 years, if not for we all, us already having this muscle memory of kind of putting Johnny Cash in that spot. You know what I mean? That's an interesting question. I think it's definitely true, you know, I, Willie Nelson's like the snoop dog of country to me. Like, that's not just a superficial like marijuana thing. There's like like a cuddly mascots, but also like an absolute badass. Like Willie Nelson feels very distinct to me. But I, just the notion of Johnny Cash and Justin Timberlake competing for an MTV video music award in 2002. And like Justin Timberlake having to, you know, convey, you know, how sorry he is that he won.

Like just the notion of putting Johnny Cash in the present tense conversation, like, with the youth in any sense. Like, I think, you know, I think about like Tom Petty being rehabilitated, not rehabilitated by, like, the second wind he got via MTV. right you know and suddenly the kids are into tom petty again but this feels very different to me and no i think you're absolutely right that there's like an overall way that we looked at our heroes after this and we sort of saw everybody as potentially a reclamation project right like tony bett doing unplugged like that was before that was i think late 90s like that's in the midst of the american thing but just the idea that you can take these old guys you know who your parents were really into and like make them cool again

superficially. I think Johnny Cash has a lot to do with why we still sort of think that way now. We were very glib for a long time. And I mean, this is how stardom works, obviously, but we were very glib about just kind of like throwing these guys on the trash heap

when they'd outlived their usefulness. And I feel like this was kind of a moment where a lot of people paused and went, wait a second, like maybe we shouldn't throw them, you know, throw like iconic legends who, with with decade-long catalogs of brilliant work. Like, maybe we shouldn't dismiss them out of hand.

Right, we're pulling the ice flow back on. Exactly. It's like, never mind. Sorry, never mind. You mentioned Branson, Missouri, which is like, I've never been there, and I hope to never go there, quite frankly. It's like a tourist trap. Okay, it's like a tourist trap sort of thing where, like,

Johnny Cash was supposed to play a residency, you know, and he's playing to just, you know, bus loads of old people who don't care about him at all. And it's like the worst sort of retirement situation. And suddenly he's at the Viper Room in L.A., you know, like playing, you know, for whatever, for Johnny Depp or whatever. Like, he's playing these American songs. Like, it's just, it's so wild to think about the duality of Johnny Cash in that sense.

Like, you said to me, like, you know, he, he's this wild counterculture figure, you know, but he, he met Nixon. He played for President Nixon. Like, he married into the Carter family, but he's like a foundational. outlaw. He's a pop star, but he made a lot of gospel music. Like, you said he was John Wayne and Woody Guthrie. Like, how does one person manage to be everything to everyone like this? I mean, that's the big Johnny Cash question to me. And I think about it a lot. I think that, you know, every icon becomes iconic partly because they unite contradictions, right? But I don't know that anybody did it like Johnny Cash. I mean, you know, Madonna is like, she's like sexy, but she's

also Catholic. But you can usually kind of point to like which half of the dichotomy is like a little bit cosplay, you know, like Madonna being a devout Catholic is a little bit cosplay. Like there's no cosplay in any of Johnny Cash's dualities. And I just think that like, I think he was attracted to edges. I think he was drawn to edges. I think most of us, we kind of look at our personalities, and whenever we sense that there's a contradiction or there's something we can't quite explain, we kind of back away from it, right? Like, we want to make sense to ourselves. But I think Johnny Cash was one of those artists who kind of see the contradiction and think, like, that's what's interesting, that's the real me. Let's, like, you know, he walked the line. Like,

he was not like, he wasn't walking, like, safely 40 feet back from the line. He was walking the line itself. There we go. That's not as good as song title. Those people, yeah, exactly. Like, I walk near the line. You know, he, he just, he was everything he was. And most of us, most of us are never quite everything we are.

And I don't know. He's, I could, I could prattle on about this. But like, I'm fascinated by the way, any, any kind of category you put him in, he both seems to completely embody the category and to completely destroy the category at the same time. Like we were talking about this before and I said something like,

it's like he trashes hotel rooms and every time he trashes a hotel room he gets 100,000 Hilton rewards points. Like he just seems to keep being like... Thank you, Johnny. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cash. Yes. It looks better now.

You've redecorated. It's perfect, yes. As you say, like, he's the most Nashville establishment artist in the history of Nashville. He's married to Mother Maybel Carter's daughter, right? Like, he's married to June Carter. He's, he's doing a TV show from the Ryman Auditorium every week. Like, he is Nashville. But, like, Whalen Jennings is obsessed with him.

Willie Nelson is obsessed with him. Chris Christofferson owes his career to him. Like, you just kind of, you can't, you can't pin him down. even in terms of not being able to pin him. I don't know. I'm not making sense, but for someone so, like, solid,

because he really does seem like a, like a slab of granite, right? Like, as a guy, he's very slippery. Yes. Right, right. Okay, so it's, it's 1994, right? It is like the peak of grunge,

alternative music. It's easy to reduce the American series to, like, you know, what Rick Rubin did is, just put Johnny Cash alone in a room with it gets hard, like just strip everything down. Like, that's a lot of what's happening, but that's not all of what's happening.

That's not all of why the American series works as well as it does. Like, how would you articulate what Rick Rubin does here? Yeah, I think that, like, first of all, I wake up in terror every day thinking about, like, the next kind of collaboration. between like a younger producer and an older established icon that is going to come down the pike. Like every day I wake up thinking, my God,

Jack Antonoff is going to make a Marianne Faithful album, and I'm not like I was going to ask you what you were. That's terrifying. I wish you hadn't said that out loud. Yeah. The difference is I think that Rick Rubin still truly saw Johnny Cash as a great artist and believed he was a great artist.

And Johnny Cash was driving the train. You know, I do not think that was just Rick Rubin driving the train and Johnny Cash kind of showing up in bewilderment being like, you know, help me navigate the maze of contemporary pop stardom and make me relevant again. I think it was like Johnny Cash still has something to say. Rick Rubin knew it, Johnny Cash knew it, and they found a way to say it in terms that 1994 could take seriously.

You know, at the time, the language was all kind of like, you know, they stripped away all the like Nashville doodads and nonsense and just got down to like the true essence of the music. And I mean, I think you could argue that like an MTV unplugged set is in its own way like just as kind of corny and historically conditioned as as had Nashville backing choir. I mean, give me the Jordanaires like at my funeral. But but it was, you know, it was important in that moment to kind of like, put him in front of 1994 in a way that we, the snobbish, like, rock teens of 94, would buy. And that's what Rick Rubin did.

Like, it seems to me that it was more than about kind of like redeeming Johnny Cash from all of the excess of his past productions. It was more just like, here is a historical framing that makes sense for you right now. And it was brilliant. No, I like the simplicity of that. That it's, it doesn't work if Rick. Rick Rubin is like, I am going to save Johnny Cash. I am going to make you cool for the kids again.

It is Rick Rubin knowing that Johnny Cash is already the coolest person who ever lived and you are going to show everybody. You know, you're not intercepting a new thing into Johnny Cash. You are showing people what Johnny Cash is capable of. The idea that you and I in high school would be like Johnny Cash needs to prove that he's as cool as we are. he's no any better he's no Jeff Buckley come on

I don't know I don't know if I like the cut of this guy's jib you know exactly wow I got a dodd neon man I wanted to ask you about this song

The Man comes around which I sort of meant to get to in my thing and then did it it's on American 4 the same album as Hertz and this is an original like this is one of the last Johnny Cash originals and like the books I've read make clear that like this song meant an enormous like this song is very very important to him like he saw this I don't think it's his last you know you know hopefully but like his crowning achievement like this is the best thing I've ever written and like the imagery of this song like the virgins are all trimming their wicks the whirlwind is in the thorn trees like this really is a tremendous song and I don't do you think that this song gets enough credit you know, and that it deserves some of the love and attention that, like, hurt and the other covers get?

It is such a fascinating song. I mean, it's, I always think of the man comes around as kind of like the weird twin of Red Right Hand that Nick Cave song. You know, Red Right Hand is kind of about like the devil going around like fucking everything up for people and the man comes around is about God going around and fucking everything up for people. that's right basically there should be like a really nice version of peeky blinders that that's the theme song too I don't know like I yeah the man comes around it's obviously part of this kind of like long tradition

of end times country songs where we sort of imagine the apocalypse and the writer sort of tries to out revelations the book of revelations and we get these crazy virgins trimming their wicks imagery. To me, I don't know if I think

the man comes around is completely successful. Like, I think about half of it is pretty brilliant. And then there are bits that sound a little bit like a vampire weekend song to me. Like, um,

the line, I have the lyrics open right here. Okay. Till Armageddon, no shalom, no shalom. Then the father hen will call his chickens home.

That just, that's, I can just imagine that with like a steel. I think helps. Yes. I know what you're saying. I think his delivery certainly helps, but there is, I had not considered a vampire weekend, but

his charisma, like his gravitas does really put the song over. And there are moments like when he's singing about a hundred million angels singing or whatever that just like take your spine out of your body for a few minutes. I don't know if that's the song. I would have singled out as his crowning achievement if I were if I were him. But it's everyone should listen to it. I mean, what do you think, Rob?

Do you love that song? It's not that I passed over it, but I definitely, when I started reading about how important it was to him, I was like, oh, you know, I don't think listening to it I would have thought, like, this is it. Like, this is the central thesis

and like the single song that this entire project has been built, toward like I really do love his originals interspersed within the covers like I think partly because of hurt I think it's easy to assume if you don't know a lot about it that like the American series is entirely

stunt covers you know and just like surprising things and there's a lot of that obviously but there is a core like even toward the end there is a core of like him and like him and him in real time him now you know that I think is really vital

so I don't think I would have flagged this as like the one but it really deepened the song for me to know that that's the way he saw it, you know? It is a, it is a like just such a cool and kind of overlooked tradition, these sort of

like country songs that are like adding pages to the Bible. You know, I think about, I think about like great speckled bird all the time which is, it's an older song, but it's like made famous by Roy Aikoff. And it's just this like, really bizarre image of this like giant

spotted bird like that I don't know if I know what it represents but it feels so so like

just kind of like odd and out of place among like all the kind of honky talk ballads there should be a we should do a

compilation of like country Bible songs Neo Neo revelation songs we should probably talk about hurt eventually does it surprise you

or is it not really at all surprising that hurt has emerged as like the singular, you know, achievement, certainly of the American series, but even like it's, if I'm not mistaken, it's the most streamed Johnny Cash song now, you know,

and there's a lot of recency bias. There's a lot built into that, but like, is it at all surprising that this song has emerged as like one of the Johnny Cash songs stretching over his whole career? It's obviously it's, it's a little surprising that a Trent Reznor song is so associated with Johnny Cash now. But I don't know.

I kind of think that the way the whole American series went, it could have been a lot of different songs. And this is just sort of the one where everything came together. You know, the video being so brilliant really did a lot. I think I don't, I want to be clear. I do not think this song is a gimmick. I do not think it's just a stunt cover. I think it goes much, much deeper than that.

But I think that it had very immediate and obvious gimmick appeal at the moment when it came out. Maybe in a way that even went a little bit beyond Johnny Cash singing Personal Jesus or Johnny Cash singing any of the other songs on the American series. So it was something that you know, I remember when it came out and I was like, oh, I want to hear that. Like I was kind of like rubbernecking Like I was I thought I was going to be kind of driving by Driving by the car crash As much as I love Johnny Cash

And then it's and then it's so good I just feel like a lot of A lot of things that were really close In other American recording songs Just clicked with hurt And do you remember You probably talked about this in the episode But do you remember the first time you saw that video

Not exactly not exactly. I'm trying, I don't know if it was on MTV. It must have been. I mean, I don't think it was, it couldn't have been on the internet yet. So no, I, of all the videos that I have a distinct memory of like where I was and everything, I don't have that. What I have is just a sense memory of being obliterated immediately. Like, I have the same memory. I assume everyone has where it's just, you're flattened by the end of it. Like, it's just, it's so beautiful and so devastating. Like, I remember that feeling, but I don't remember the circumstances around it. I also think, like, for me,

I didn't know what he looked like at that point in his life. You know, when I pictured Johnny Cash, I'm still picturing a guy with, like, black hair, big, strong guy, and just to see him with that ravaged face with white hair, you know, I think he's in a wheelchair. I don't think you see the wheelchair, but I think he was in a wheelchair at that point in his life. it just felt like shocking, shocking.

And then to have that feeling of shock folded into this kind of Renaissance oil painting of a video that's like putting you in touch with this like timeless conversation about life and death and, you know, the other thing that hurt has going for it is that the lyrics bizarrely fit his life so perfect. I mean, you know, like,

he lived that song more than Trent Reznor ever did, I would argue. So it really felt like it was coming, it was a stunt cover that was coming from this kind of like Fisher, a thousand miles inside him, and it was, yeah, it was amazing.

Even, like, I wear this crown of shit becoming, I wear this crown of thorns. Like, I'm sure I remember is like an early 20 is being like, ah ha, he won't say shit, like, aha, but like, just that divide, just the way one word changes, like, changes the entire meaning of the song, just reframes the song.

Like, it's just a striking thing to me now, how effective even that one moment is. It takes it from being a slightly whiny, young man's song of self-pity to this incredibly dignified, old man's song of like looking back on his life. I mean, the, the, the, the shit to Thorn's moment is the obvious change. But to me, the switch in meaning of the line everyone I know goes away in the end is,

is just what tears my heart out. Because when, when Trent Rezner sings that, that means like, you know, I have complicated relationships and I can't rely on my friends to stay with me or like my parents got divorced or whatever. When Johnny Cash sings it, it means everybody I know is dying. And, yeah, and, you know, June dies very soon after that song is recorded. And he didn't, I mean, he only lives for another few months, right? Well, you said dignified, like the video is dignified. And I agree with that. And I think that that's astounding that it is dignified. I just, I think there's a version of this video that's just trauma porn, right? Like you just stick the camera in his face and it's just so

exploitative and gross. And I just, I keep watching this video and trying to figure out like how it conveys so clearly, you know, this devastation, you know, and then he's at the end of his life. But still, it confer, it confer such dignity to him. Like, I want to know how it manages this trick of, just being so emotional without being emotionally manipulative, I get. You're absolutely right. There is a version of this video

that is the equivalent of like those direct to DVD like Bruce Willis movies where he doesn't know where he is and they're reading his dialogue into a piece and he's repeating it. And yes, exactly. And it's not that.

It's not that at all. I think it's kind of the same thing we were talking about before, I think the secret is that he knew what they were doing. I think that he was, he was making this. You know, it wasn't like, it wasn't like he was just showing up and being told what to do. They, they filmed that at his house, right? Like, that's his stuff. I think that, I think that it was, the message was his message. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, he wasn't just kind of a chess piece that some kind of corporate producers were, were moving around and exploiting. It really felt intentional and authentic

to use two awful internet words, but it really does. It really feels like this is his art, and everyone else, you know, Mark Romantic is helping him make it, and Rick Rubin is helping him make it, but they're not making it. Just to wrap up,

I think about a young person now getting into Johnny Cash and doing him in reverse, right like so much of the power of the hurt video is that you know even we're too young to really have been around for his heyday but like we know what johnny cash was you know and now we're seeing it at the end whereas i do think that if somebody you know like if you type in johnny cash in a spotify now like hurt is one of the first songs to come up the hurt video is one of the things you know he's most associated with in like the past 20 25 years at least like you

almost go from the end back to the beginning. And I just, I wonder what you think about how a new convert to Johnny Cash, like how it's going to change your perception of him when you're almost running the timeline in reverse. It's a great question. I mean, I think, I think that the like, the underlying, the underlying point, like the, the thought I have that underlies the whole issue is that there are a lot of icons of Johnny Cash's stature who are just barely remembered at all. You know, like young people are not discovering Bing Crosby, right? Like, if, um, if, um, I think, like, Nat, you know, Nat King Cole is much, much more than chestnuts roasting on an open fire. But if, if the Christmas song, like, helps some young person discover, like,

Nat King Cole, then fine. Like, I have no, I have no complaints there. Um, so if, if like people are searching for Johnny Cash at all, that feels to me like a win for the human soul. I'm, I'm all for it. But it does, it does feel, it does feel, um, disorienting to imagine, right? Because for us, like, we knew something about who he was and his life story. And then we got to hurt. And it was like a comment on all that stuff, right? It was, it was, it was, it, it accrued extra power and extra meaning because of everything we knew about him. So if you're going backwards, what, what, what happens? I don't know, I don't know. Um, you know, maybe, maybe you've, you've just listened to the, the rest of the American recordings. I mean, I think, I think there are songs in that

series that are as powerful as hurt. I mean, for me, the, the beast in me is, um, knocks me, knocks me over. I mean, that's that great Nick Lowe song and his version of, I mean, the Nick Lowe version of that song also fells me, but the Johnny Cash version, again, it's somebody else's words, perfectly expressing his life.

Unreal. If they bounce to that and then start going backwards, I think it all probably works out in the end. I think you're right. I think that's the optimistic way to look at it. we end there just on a slightly optimistic. No, that was pretty fun.

That was pretty fun given circumstances, I think. It was pretty fun given the circumstance that we are all going to die and everyone we love will also die. Well, it's been great having you, Brian. A cold cup of coffee from Brian Phillips. Host of Truthless, the show about liars. Yes. That's beautiful. Thank you so much for coming,

thank you, Rob. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Brian Phillips. Thanks, as always to our producers, Justin Sales and Jonathan Kerma. Thanks to Olivia Creary for additional production help. Thanks to Julianna Ress for fact-checking. And thank you very much for listening. And now, let's all go listen to Hurt by Johnny Cash. It's going to be okay.

We'll see you in a little while.