Pop & Hiss
The L.A. Times music blog
February 18, 2010
Veteran music journalist Chet Flippo, now the editorial director for the Country Music Television cable channel and its website, CMT.com, raises an intriguing question about the final entry in the series of “American” albums performed by Johnny Cash and produced by Rick Rubin.I spoke to Rubin recently about “American VI: Ain’t No Grave,” which comes out Feb. 26, on what would have been Cash's 78th birthday, for a piece coming in Sunday’s Arts & Books section. Rubin discusses his great affection for the Man in Black and his feelings of gratitude at both the music they created together and for the larger gift of his friendship with one of the giants of 20th century music. I also interviewed a couple of other key participants in the project: Cash’s son, John Carter Cash, and guitarist Mike Campbell, who with keyboardist Benmont Tench, a fellow member of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, played on most of the sessions for the six albums recorded from 1993 until shortly before Cash’s death on Sept. 12, 2003.
All spoke about how moving it was to witness Cash, in the final months of his life, struggling with failing health, devastated by the death of his wife, June Carter Cash, in May 2003, yet still mustering the will to make more music with what time remained.
Flippo asks whether his memory will be well served by the recordings he made under such circumstances. “Not every home recording by every aging artist needs to be released," Flippo writes in his latest Nashville Skyline column. “To be sure, it was Cash’s decision to spend his final days recording, rather than waiting for death to come and claim him. But. The question lingers: Should these recordings -- recorded by a man who was racing against time -- represent his last recorded work ever?”
As a music critic who saw Cash in concert many times over the last 35 years, both at full strength and toward the end of his touring days when health issues had started chipping away at that force of nature power, I find “Ain’t No Grave” tremendously moving. There are songs where his voice is remarkably potent, especially given how evident advancing age was in much of the 2006 predecessor, “American V: A Hundred Highways.”
Rubin noted that Cash had good and bad days while they were working on the recordings, and that the goal was always to get the best vocal performance Cash could give.
“In a lot of ways, making it was the same as the other albums,” said Mike Campbell. “The difference was Johnny wasn’t here, and that was sad. But we could feel his presence, so it was beautiful too. I felt very honored to be included. I really loved the man, and he was always very kind to me, so I was honored to be there and help in any way I could.
“He wasn’t in the best of health, but we didn’t expect him to go that soon,” Campbell recalled. “We know he missed June a lot. At same time, he really wanted to record, and that’s what kept him going. We just hoped it would have kept him going longer. I have a hunch he wanted to get as much on tape as he could before he left, but I really can’t speak to that.”
John Carter Cash saw things from a slightly different perspective, which he spoke about with discernible emotion in his voice.
“I have a distinct separation between Johnny Cash the performer and entertainer, and Johnny Cash, my father and the man,” Cash, 39, said. “Doing things like this interview and seeing him on television, I still see the entertainer and performer every day. But I miss the man very much.”
As for “Ain’t No Grave,” which he helped shepherd through to completion, “It’s painful to listen to sometimes. In listening to it, you hear the weakness, and the frailty. But the thing I hear first and foremost is the strength.
“That’s what bears upon my spirit, hearing that strength, and that’s what I walk away with, the lesson to be learned from that beauty of character, the unstoppable human spirit. I truly believe his body gave up, but his spirit did not.”
Not so much contradicting Rubin, but elaborating on his comment about the musician's physical ups and downs, Cash said, “My father in the last couple of years really didn’t have a good day physically. What you hear in those recordings where his voice sounds so strong is the pure strength of his spirit.”
Flippo’s argument comes from an honorable place: that it’s better to remember our most vital musicians at their artistic peak -- in Cash’s case, in those magnificent sides he cut for Sam Phillips at Sun Records in the 1950s, or the towering albums he made for Columbia in the 1960s and '70s.
But with Johnny Cash, a man of deeply abiding religious faith, one who believed with everything in him in the transformative power of that faith over the limitations of life on earth, the waning days of life are every bit as worthy of attention as the glory days.
“I’m grateful this record is coming out -- he would have had it that way,” John Carter Cash said. “He wanted this record to be released. He was always willing to show his weakness and his frailties. I think it’s one way people related to him: He’s not saying he’s perfect, but just look at him, listen to that voice, look at that determination. He was right.”
Photo: Johnny Cash in August 1970. Credit: © Bettmann/CORBIS
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The last chapter in Johnny Cash's 'American' series
Despite the title -- 'Ain't No Grave' -- it wasn't meant to be Cash's swan song, producer Rick Rubin says.
By Randy Lewis
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/
February 21, 2010
LOOKING BACK: Cash "was looking forward to getting started on Volumes 7 and 8," Rubin says. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Producer Rick Rubin took up a seat on a sofa on the patio of his expansive Malibu home overlooking the Pacific, emanating both gravity and joy while discussing his extraordinary decade-long relationship with Johnny Cash.
It was the first full day of sun after yet another round of thunderstorms had pounded the Southland, a fitting parting of the clouds on the day Rubin spoke about one of the titans of 20th century music in the final years of his life.
The final entry in their series of studio albums arrives Tuesday, "American VI: Ain't No Grave," yet despite the nod to mortality in the title, an acknowledgment of the closeness of death that runs through most of the album's 10 songs, Rubin insists that it wasn't created as Cash's swan song.
"He had made plans to come to Los Angeles to start recording," said the 46-year-old producer of Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys, Metallica, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tom Petty. "It was the first trip he had planned in a long time . . . He had been on the upswing physically, and was looking forward to getting started on Volumes 7 and 8. That's what made it such a shock when I got the call that he had passed."
It's also one reason it's taken so long for Rubin to put the finishing touches on what he and Cash had been working on nearly seven years ago. "I wasn't in any hurry to let this go," he said with a little chuckle.
In the months leading up to his death on Sept. 12, 2003, Cash, Rubin and John Carter Cash -- Johnny and June Carter's son -- had mapped out both the fifth and sixth volumes of the "American" albums they'd started with 1994's "American Recordings." That one earned Cash a Grammy for best contemporary folk album; he collected another Grammy for its 1996 successor, "Unchained," which was named best country album.
While working on "American V" and "VI," which were recorded essentially simultaneously over several months at the end of 2002 and in 2003 near Cash's home in Hendersonville, Tenn., each man came armed with lists of potential songs, lists they continuously updated and expanded.
"American V: A Hundred Highways," which surfaced in 2006, is the album Rubin considers to be Cash's statement about death -- raising the question, what's left for an encore?
"I feel like this is him talking about what's next," Rubin said. "There's a very otherworldly quality to it. And that's nothing we could have planned . . . . While we were finishing it, once we heard his voice again, we really felt a presence in the studio, and it helped with making a lot of the decisions.
"Even a song as familiar and frequently recorded as Kris Kristofferson's "For the Good Times" takes on a different weight knowing the man who sang it is now gone: "Don't look so sad / I know it's over / But life goes on / And this old world will keep on turning / Let's just be glad we had some time to spend together . . ."
"John's version . . . is so beautiful and sad that it's hard for me to listen to," Kristofferson said after hearing his longtime friend's track for the first time recently.
Rubin also finds considerable beauty, and sadness, in "Ain't No Grave," along with the realization that maybe even more than Cash's death, the completion and release of "American VI" closes a door between them. "I hadn't thought of it in that way, but I guess so," Rubin said, pausing. "I guess so."
"I loved him so much," Rubin said, then quickly shifted to another verb tense -- "I love him so much," as if he'd just been silently reminded of the possibility of transformation that Cash bequeathed to him.
randy.lewis@latimes.com
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