“Really proud”: When Johnny Cash met Nick Lowe
In the weird, wonderful world of rock ‘n’ roll, family ties can lead to absolutely baffling connections. Did you know that My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way’s cousin is podcaster Joe Rogan? Did you know that for a period of time in the 1970s, Slash’s stepdad was David Bowie? Perhaps one of the most baffling is the family history of power-pop legend Nick Lowe, who for 11 years was the stepson of the Man In Black himself, Johnny Cash.
It’s true, Lowe married Cash’s daughter Carlene Carter in 1979. With the knowledge of what southern dads can be like, one can only imagine the fear that Lowe could have lived under for that time. After all, they tend to get a rifle out upon meeting the poor lad in question, and for the entire 1980s, Lowe’s father-in-law “shot a man in Reno / just to watch him die“.
Except that obviously wasn’t the case. Southern hospitality is some of the best in the world, and the Carter-Cash family welcomed Lowe in as one of their own. Even after Nick and Carlene divorced in 1990, not only did the couple themselves remain friendly, but Nick Lowe was still treated as one of the family, even working on a number of his former father-in-law’s albums going forward.
Most notable of this period is a song that takes pride of place on what is arguably Cash’s most revered and respected record. The album that solidified his 1990s comeback and overnight changed Cash’s reputation from a cringey, rhinestone-emblazoned nostalgia act to the godfather of outlaw country that we know him as today. His 1994 masterpiece, American Recordings.
What song did Nick Lowe give Johnny Cash?
Track three on the album is the Nick Lowe composition ‘The Beast In Me’. It’s a sign of the mutual respect the two songwriters had for each other that not only was Cash willing to record the song, but Lowe actually let Cash release the song first. Despite Lowe having the song written for years, the song actually came out on Cash’s record first, before Lowe put it out himself on his album The Impossible Bird. Lowe talked about how Cash decided to take the song on in a 2009 interview with Mojo, an interview that also puts paid to the intimidating reputation that Johny Cash has to this day.
It began with Cash asking Lowe to guest at an upcoming concert by him at the Royal Albert Hall. A request that Lowe turns down, quite charmingly. In the interview, he says, “I was a Johnny Cash fan and I knew how I would feel if I’d gone to see him at the Albert Hall and some bloomin’ bloke who you could see for two bob down the road got up with him; get this guy off!” Cash apparently laughed this off, telling Lowe, “It’s too late now, you’ve got to get up and do a couple of tunes.”
According to Lowe, he also asked after ‘The Beast In Me‘, a song Cash had first heard an early version of 12 years previously. At the time, the song wasn’t quite there, with Lowe saying, “The problem was that the first verse was so great and says absolutely everything: you try and take it somewhere else and it doesn’t want to go: it sounds like a thin version of what you’ve already said.”
However, when Johnny Cash says he’d be interested in recording an unfinished song of yours, you get the damn thing finished. Lowe says, “For some reason, something clicked and the thing just rolled out 12 years after he’d first heard it.” Finally, the song was finished, and both Lowe and Cash had an absolute classic on their hands. Lowe finishes off the interview by saying, “When he sent me a copy of American Recordings, I was absolutely thrilled. It really is a good song, and the fact that he dug it so much is something to be really proud of.”
