Sting on why Johnny Cash was a song “master”
Artists like Sting aren’t solely looking for a great groove whenever they hit the right song.
He had his moments of making great tracks in The Police, but throughout his later career, he tried his best to go into the same singer-songwriter territory with a subtle sprinkling of jazz in between everything. But even if he experimented with what a pop tune could be, he knew that some accolades went beyond anything he could have expected.
Granted, Sting already lucked out when he started his solo career away from The Police. There was never an official announcement that the band had broken up, but when he started working on Dream of the Blue Turtles, having the biggest names in jazz and fusion behind him is what made tunes like ‘Fortress Around Your Heart’ a lot more interesting. The rules of the modern pop song weren’t his vocabulary anymore, and for the rest of his career, he made the charts come to him half the time.
‘Fields of Gold’ was always going to be a hit because of its timeless melody, but across his solo career, he was more focused on quoting his heart than following a proper pop structure. The Soul Cages was about him trying to move on past his father’s death, and while not everything worked out the greatest on the charts, people like Rick Rubin were paying attention to what Sting was doing.
Rubin was far from a devotee of soft rock at the start of his career, but having worked with Tom Petty, he was interested in seeing what great songs were out there. All of them were being saved for the right time, and when Johnny Cash needed songs for his later albums, ‘I Hung My Head’ served as the perfect vehicle for his voice.
Then again, you wouldn’t know it listening to the Sting original. Having one of the biggest country legends of all time sing in 5/4 was never going to happen, but by stripping it down to the lyrics and changing the chords around a little bit, the ‘Man in Black’ persona was perfect for the tune, with Cash singing the song about a kid who accidentally kills someone as if he experienced it himself.
A lot of musical legends had to see their tunes reinterpreted by Cash, but Sting said that it was among the great honours of his life to hear his song done that way, saying, “I was so proud to hear my words and music interpreted by the master. Although he did replace the last word in the second line of verse two, ‘stream’ with ‘sheen,’ for some reason. Whatever, he was probably just reading a misprint, and, even so, it didn’t detract one bit from the final result.”
Misheard lyrics aside, ‘I Hung My Head’ is a brilliant reflection of where Cash had come ever since Rubin began working with him. He no longer wanted to be considered a legend with a wealthy back catalogue to milk, and hearing the final songs of his career was proof that he could still interpret these dark songs with the same kind of mystique that he did when playing ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ decades before.
And while it’s hard to judge Sting’s version and Cash’s version side by side, it’s easier to think of them as songs from parallel universes in some way. Sting was telling a tale about a kid who had made his fair share of mistakes, but Cash really is that kid looking back at the end of his life and hoping to take back what he had done.
