The song Rick Rubin was never comfortable revisiting: “It really upset me”
Going back to older songs can feel like digging up old memories half the time. As much as some material has been played into the ground, whether it’s on the radio, on streaming, or in commercials, there are always going to be melodies that artists remember where they were the minute that they started playing the tune. And while Rick Rubin was always a song coach rather than a strict songwriter, he knew when someone pushed themselves to the point of breaking down.
When looking at Rubin’s work, though, he’s hardly the most hands-on producer to ever walk the Earth. His logic was always about letting the artists work their magic on their own and guiding them in the right direction, and if that meant them going back to the drawing board and trying something different, that was what he made sure needed to be done. But it was a different story going from the world of hip-hop to Americana music.
His work with Tom Petty wasn’t something anyone saw coming in the mid-1990s, but outside of one of the greatest heartland rockers of all time, hearing Rubin work the same magic for Johnny Cash felt too strange for words. This was the same guy who helped everyone from Slayer to Public Enemy make their greatest records, so what was he going to bring to one of the biggest names in country music?
He may not have had the most esteemed country pedigree before signing with Cash, but he did know the character better than anyone. Cash was still sounding as dangerous as ever, and when Rubin heard how he could interpret songs like ‘Rusty Cage’ by Soundgarden, he knew that working on songs like ‘Hurt’ by Nine Inch Nails would have been perfect if he had the right idea.
And while members of the Heartbreakers play beautifully behind Cash, Rubin said that he couldn’t revisit the song when watching the music video, saying, “It really upset me, and it really affected me. I thought it was beautiful, but it was unlike any video I’d ever seen before. It was so extreme that it really took my breath away – and not in a good way. I didn’t know how to handle it. It was just overwhelming.”
But that’s exactly what the film was supposed to be about. Cash was on his last legs both as a musician and a human being, and when seeing him at the museum dedicated to his life, he seems like a broken-down man who is finally faced with confronting his mortality after years of sympathising with the outlaws of the world.
It might seem distressing for people who knew him personally, but any fans knew this version of Cash the minute they laid eyes on him. ‘The Man in Black’ prided himself on standing up for those who didn’t fit in, and now that he looks back at his empire of dirt at the end of his life, he’s almost bargaining with where he’s going to land when his higher power calls him home.
So while Rubin might have been taken aback seeing one of his artists in so much pain, Cash knew there was no other way for him to play it. This was the kind of song that demanded him to be seen at his most vulnerable, and while it would have been easy to adopt that ‘Man in Black’ persona one more time, anyone who has ever felt an ounce of sympathy would be bawling their eyes out the minute they laid eyes on this video.
