—–

Now, 70-year old pop icon Tom Jones is lifting liberally from Cash’s playbook with his new album Praise and Blame.  Consisting of traditional gospel songs and covers of spiritual songs by artists such as Bob Dylan, P&B features stripped-down folk like Susan Werner’s “Did Trouble Me” and raw, stomp-rock blues like John Lee Hooker’s “Burning Hell.”  The production style, eschewing overdubs and allowing Jones to hit flat notes in all the right places, reflects a desire for authenticity that the Welsh singer hasn’t indulged before in his multi-decade career. 

But apparently, this new creative direction is a “sick joke.”  A leaked email from Island Records’ vice president David Sharpe reads, “We did not invest a fortune in an established artist for him to deliver 12 tracks from the common book of prayer.” 

It’s easy to see where he’s coming from, as Island’s market seems to be the tween to college hipster crowd.  But does he really think that a gospel album won’t sell?  And does he really think that an older audience wouldn’t be a boon to sales?  I can’t find anything else noteworthy about Mr. Sharpe’s life, but the snark that it takes to mock an artist for being “churchy” and the laziness it takes never to have checked in on a high-profile project by a new, expensive star on your label until it was finished certainly give us a clue as to what kind of man is financing music production in the United Kingdom and can make or break aspiring artists on a whim.

Delia, O Delia
Delia all my life
If I hadn’t have shot poor Delia
I’d have had her for my wife  

Whenever I play American Recordings I find this opening as startling as when I first heard it well over a decade ago. Cash could get close to the darkness without screeching or posing. He was already there. He just started singing in that rumbling baritone and you believed. It’s so powerful that you forget he could also be funny- and indeed, the last track on American Recordings was a joke song, The Man Who Couldn’t Cry.  

Later I discovered that Delia was an old song, that Cash was covering himself. The American series always relied less on Cash’s abilities as a songwriter and more on his skills as an interpreter, even if he was reinterpreting an earlier version of Johnny Cash. Some of the songs covered were selected by Cash, others by Rubin. It was easy to tell which was which: Cash’s sensibilities were steeped in the broad country, gospel and folk tradition, while Rubin favored a narrower palate of heavy metal and alt rock. The miraculous thing was that it worked, most of the time. Cash could invest the adolescent self-loathing of Trent Reznor’s Hurt with the same authority and sincerity as an ancient standard like That Lucky Old Sun, a mournful lament for the difficult life of a working man. The songs on these records sat comfortably alongside each other because Cash’s experience, persona and interpretive gift enabled him to uncover the shared themes of God, pain, redemption, love, violence and longing in the unlikeliest bedfellows. 

The peak of the Rubin mix n’ match approach was reached on American III: Solitary Man. Cash’s versions of Nick Cave’s The Mercy Seat  and Will Oldham’s I See a Darkness  are revelatory, as good as if not better than the originals. By the time of American IV however some of the alt-pop covers were starting to sound like novelties. Personal Jesus is a trite rather than inspired song selection while even the much vaunted version of Reznor’s Hurt gains much of its power from the harrowing video. American IV is also marred by some disastrous appearances by celebrity guests. Nick Cave strangles I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry to death on his first verse, and then, as if unsatisfied, repeatedly kicks the corpse in the head before the song ends. Fiona Apple rots like a dead whale on Bridge Over Troubled Water. By far the best track on the album is Cash’s apocalyptic The Man Comes Around, which is as good as anything he ever wrote. When I play that album now I tend to skip the corny covers and concentrate on Cash’s choices. 

Anyway, Cash died before Rubin could throw Lady Gaga’s Poker Face at him and as a result the two albums culled from his final recording sessions are much lighter on the reinterpreted heavy metal/gothic pop factor. American V, released posthumously in 2006, was a decidedly stripped down affair. Recorded in the aftermath of June Carter Cash’s death, Cash was himself teetering on the brink of eternity. The album has an intimacy that can be painful, even claustrophobic. It is mournful and sad, and Cash’s once booming voice is reduced at times to a croak, almost a whisper. Unlike its predecessor however, it feels like a whole; and yet it wasn’t, not really- because Rubin had a sequel planned. 

—–

Which brings us to American VI: Ain’t No Grave. I had some anxiety about this record: as somebody who loves Johnny Cash’s music, I wanted it to be more than just good. It needed to cap not only the American series but also Cash’s career, reaching all the way back to his Sun recordings (best experienced in the excellent Bear Family box set. And after a few listens I’m starting to think that- just maybe- Rubin and Cash pulled it off. Although American VI like its predecessor finds Cash in frail voice over subtle, spare arrangements, the tone is different. Cash’s body may have been shattered, and he may have been in mourning for his beloved wife but the tone is calm, almost transcendent. On the title track he sings: 

Well there ain’t no grave 
Gonna hold my body down 
Well there ain’t no grave 
Gonna hold my body down 
When I hear that trumpet sound 
I’m gonna get up out of the ground 

The song mixes defiance with a joyful declaration that death is not the end. And it is this bedrock of faith, of an elemental Christianity that liberates Cash from fear and informs the rest of the album. This is the sound of a man at peace with himself, with his life, who is ready to meet his Redeemer. Indeed, he’s so at peace he can take a Sheryl Crow song, Redemption Song and make you forget about her musings on toilet paper and suspect for the first time that she might actually be a talented songwriter. Then he takes Kristofferson’s For the Good Times- basically a song in which a horny goat tries to emotionally blackmail his ex into giving him some pity sex- and turns it into a moving reflection on a long life nearly at its end. The fourth track, 1 Corinthians 15:55 is the last song Cash ever wrote and begins with the lines from scripture: 

Oh Death where is thy sting?
Oh grave where is thy victory? 

Before Cash continues with a plea to God for shelter, guidance, forgiveness and mercy; but it’s a plea given in the certainty that God is merciful, delivered over a cheerful waltz. Cash knows that if he asks, he shall receive. 

—–

American VI is Cash’s final articulation of his faith, his life’s experience, his long dying. At times it sounds like a ghostly transmission from the beyond. Some critics have complained about the emphasis given to Cash’s frailty and mortality on the last four American records; others have even accused Rubin of exploiting him, as if Cash was the sort of man to allow himself to be thus used. Other critics complain that the gothic darkness of the American series overshadows the richness of his persona, obliterating memories of the speed freak Cash, the rockabilly Cash, the historian Cash, the comedy Cash, the socially conscious Cash. 

They are wrong. Forget my crack about Lady Gaga on the way in: Rick Rubin deserves only praise for seeing the potential that still lay untapped in Johnny Cash when everybody else thought he was washed up. Cash was lucky indeed to have found such a great collaborator in his last decade, although he probably didn’t think it was luck. The other, younger Johnny Cash still exists; his records are out there, and are being rediscovered all the time. Nobody else has such a rich discography- thematically at least- for Cash could become a killer, a child, a dispossessed Indian, a randy husband and yet always remain Cash. But it’s the emphasis on mortality that makes the American albums unique and adds to rather than subtracts from that richness. Given strength by his faith, Cash could afford to be honest, even shocking in his expression of weakness. If it makes us uncomfortable then that’s our fault. Cash showed us how it’s done, this business of dying, and he did it in song. Let us all hope that when we get there we can do it with the same dignity, resolve and peace of mind as the Man in Black.

Part of what I love about my father is how he is a vessel that carries the good things from the past into the future. His generation may have brought some bad things along with them too, but we don’t mourn or fear the passing of bad things. It’s the good things that I fear are leaving us, and our society no longer produces men like Lincoln, Johnny Cash or even my dad. That’s what a father is, a vessel that ushers greatness into the next generation. Dads bring great things from the old school to the new school.

The only DVD my dad owns is “The Magnificent Seven.” The only video tape he owned before that was… “The Magnificent Seven.” There will come a time when Dad’s voice will be silenced by mortality and I’ll watch “The Magnificent Seven” with even greater meaning.

So here goes: Dad, when I was a teen I thought you were the worst son of a bitch to walk the planet. You want a shock, Pop? Now I think you’re the greatest man I’ve ever known.

I remember when Cash died in September, 2003.  It was strange that it hit me so hard.  He had, after all, been ill for quite some time.  I remember him being diagnosed with Shy-Drager Syndrome, a mysterious, degenerative nervous ailment.  That turned out to have been a misdiagnosis, though he was still plagued with diabetes, and bouts of pneumonia which hospitalized him for long stretches.  And, of course, the massive drug and alcohol abuse which characterized his early life had taken their toll as Johnny slid from middle into old age.

In the spring of 2003, his wife of over three decades, June Carter Cash (who wrote his most famous song, Ring Of Fire about their tempestuous romance) passed from the earth, leaving Johnny without his best friend and closest companion.  It is a cliched truism that, when one lifelong partner dies, the other often follows in rapid succession.  When two hearts beat together for so long, they can no longer beat independently, and so it proved for Mr. and Mrs. Cash.

I was raised in rural Colorado, with naught but country music to grace my ears through my early youth.  I detested it so, the sad sameness of it all, the poverty of its vision.  Country musicians made music seem so small.  Then I heard Johnny.

Johnny was the antithesis of the other country artists who sounded so tinny from my parent’s eight track.  Johnny was ten feet tall and loud as hell. It seemed like he was letting more of himself come out through his songs, all of himself – his voice dripped with a sepulchral dignity that allows for no affectation.

I remember hearing Long Black Veil for the first time.  My God, I thought.  If a ghost could sing about his betrayal, his love…it would sound just like this.

And the whirlwind, is in the thorn tree…

A few years before he died, Johnny had a dream that he was in Buckingham Palace, meeting the Queen of England.  In that dream, she looked at him and said, “Why Johnny Cash, you’re like a whirlwind in a thorn tree!”  He woke up, the phrase ringing in his head; he remembered it was a passage from Job.

The phrase refused to let him go, and he began to write.  A song took shape from that dream, and over the next few years, he worked and reworked it hundreds of times.  It became When The Man Comes Around, the title track for what would be his last album.

That song is Johnny Cash’s finest original creation, an extraordinary epilogue for a long and large life.  Like any great piece of art, it is impossible to describe.  It is country, gospel, folk, rock & roll – it is all of these things, and none.  It is scary and comforting, ecstatic and foreboding.  Sorrow and joy live side by side in the rhythm; Jesus playing guitar with Satan’s pick.

The whirlwind, is in the thorn tree…

I used to listen to Johnny Cash with my Grandpa.  Grandpa loved Johnny, which always mystified me a little.  Grandpa was so sunny, so cheerful, and Johnny was, well, so very dark. Unfailingly, unflinchingly dark.  Dark enough to make The Man In Black the patron saint of Goth rockers from Mr. Reznor, to Nick Cave, to U2’s Bono (who has no small dark streak in his own soul).

And it is no wonder, really; Johnny’s voice fairly drips with impending doom, the famous quiver in the upper register hints at Apocalypse just around the corner.  Johnny’s voice is a big, booming cave, vast and dark, sheltering both Preachers and Sinners, Angels and Devils, Lovers, and Murderers – long, long predating the ridiculous posturings of gangsta rap, Johnny boasted in song that one time he shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

So I was always a little surprised that Grandpa loved Johnny Cash so much.  And when I first heard When The Man Comes Around, I knew that Grandpa would have loved it, too.

Johnny departed from this realm amidst a strange career resurgence.  Producer Rick Rubin, known for his work with metal acts like Metallica, had picked Johnny up, dusted him off, and presented him to a new generation.  The collaboration produced the critically acclaimed American Recordings albums, of which When The Man Comes Around is the best.

Johnny and Rubin especially received accolades for their haunting rendition of Trent Reznor’s Hurt, the video for which was nominated for a half dozen MTV video awards.  It did not win the coveted “Best Video,” but winner Justin Timberlake, in a moment which led me to believe all was possibly not lost with the younger generation, proclaimed in his acceptance speech what everyone knew: Johnny was robbed.

–

The video for Hurt is a shocking piece of film.  A montage of images spanning Johnny’s entire career show his descent into frailty in all-too-vivid detail.  It is sad, truly sad, to see a great man, any man, sink so before your eyes.  Grandpa made that descent over four years, but in my mind, it seems just like that video; sped up and slowed down at the same time, forever wrapped up in a few painful moments.

In the years since Johnny has been gone, there has been much buzzing about the man and his work.  It seems we are just beginning to realize that Johnny was perhaps a little too comfortable hanging out with the inmates of Folsom Prison, where his most incendiary concert was recorded.  It seems a lot of people are only now realizing the depths from which Johnny sang.

Maybe most people don’t realize why they love Johnny Cash.  I don’t think we should worry about it too much.  We don’t need to ask what Johnny’s songs  mean, or why they call to us like they do.  The intellect may strip away lyrics and melodies, in search of ‘why’, but that is a fool’s quest.  The only meaning that matters is embedded in the music itself, in the trademark boom/chick/boom rhythm that beats like the Mother Heart we hear in the womb.  To appreciate this, we need, thank God, no intellect.  Just a soul.

Johnny Cash died on September 12.  It would have been Grandpa’s 81st birthday.

I remembered something as I woke from my dream last night.  Years ago, I was troubled by which direction I should take, what I should be.  I asked my Grandpa what he thought I should do.  “You got to play, son,” he said.

And maybe that’s why I woke with a start last night.  In the years since Grandpa died, in the years since Johnny died, I have done everything but.

Matt Patterson is a columnist and commentator whose work has appeared in The Washington Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, and Pajamas Media.  He is the author of “Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story.”  His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.

Johnny Ramone

The rebellious spirit of rock is dead. No better evidenced than by its formal endorsement of President Obama. Never before has rock been so central to the inauguration of a president. Bono is an ambassador in sunglasses who still knows how to pull a string and get an audience of thousands to put their fist in the air.

But rock cannot be both establishment and anti-establishment. It can’t be a rebellious underdog while endorsing and distributing the status quo. And yes, President Obama is the status quo of unlimited spending and government expansion he supposedly opposed during the election … then again, he also said he would fight to reduce abortion but couldn’t wait three days in office before throwing the pro-life useful idiots who voted for him under the bus. No change there. If this is what he meant by “reducing abortions” I can’t we to see what he meant by “reducing taxes.”

This is the mainstreaming of the bad boy, complete with rat-pack suit and cigarette in hand. A snappy skin spread over the boring, failed, liberal Democrats of the sixties. Hope and Change was nothing more than a repackaging of policies that have no right to be associated with hope or change.

Lefty politics are no longer the fringe and no matter if the voters knew it or not they carved lefty politics into stone.  Bill Ayers became the system he once fought against. Sure, they still wear the earring and say “fuck” a lot to maintain street-cred among the academics, but now rock has taken sides — it is for the establishment. Same with journalism, the university and pop-culture. The left has become a cliché. They’re not “Arrested Development” they’re “Golden Girls” with a soul patch. Snore.

Now that the art nerds and punks just became the football jocks and prom queens, a new rebel is emerging from the wilderness. They are the new anti-establishment. One minority force bands together against every other branch of government swallowed by the Democrat octopus. The last evidence of a check or balance against the popular people are now the Conservative Republicans.

The arts have failed. They no longer keep mass culture in check with thought-provoking art that challenges the establishment. Now they’re in charge of spreading the mainstream mandate of the Liberal Vatican. There isn’t an original thought among them, just a thousand-mile stare, a blue logo and the drone-like vocabulary of emotive, vaguely inspiring chants.

We’re the new rebellion against the majority juggernaut that doesn’t take kindly to dissent. Make a fist and show them what happens when they tell you what to think, feel and believe.

If you want me to unite to your cause, then end abortion, give the people back the money they earned, fight terror, keep your hands off free speech on the radio and enable job creators to make more jobs. Until then, screw your hope and screw your change.