The Bad Seeds song Nick Cave called “pure Johnny Cash”
Prison and its symbolism for guilt and innocence is an image borrowed in music. Whether used to critique the evil in society or the corruption in the system, jail time haunts rock, blues and country with a consistent regularity. As a theme that connects so many famed artists, it ties a thoughtful link between Nick Cave and Johnny Cash.
“Johnny had been a hero of mine since I’d watched The Johnny Cash Show on TV in Australia when I was about ten years old,” Cave wrote in his Red Hand Files. “As a kid I had been genuinely transfixed by the ‘Man in Black’, as he was known, thrilled and intimidated by his dark, grave voice, thinking he was truly scary, like an outlaw or something.”
While Cave had always treasured Elvis Presley, Cash appeared to him as a darker, more intriguing alternative. Like the antithesis of Presley’s mainstream all-American goodness, Cash represented the seedy underbelly. Naturally, when it came to The Bad Seeds, he was a muse often called upon. “He went on to have considerable influence over the songs I wrote in The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds and, of course, the way I would sing them,” Cave adds.
One song where that influence is undeniable is ‘The Mercy Seat’. A seven-minute-long spiralling murder ballad set on death row, the track stands as one of the most defining releases of Cave’s career. Not only is it a perfect example of the chaos of the Bad Seeds’ early work, but the rolling narrative still feels distinctly Cave, seeming to hold a key to the type of pensive ballads he has come to make in his later period.
The track follows a death row character on his walk to the electric chair, diving into his panicked and spiralling internal monologue. What begins as a desperate pleading of innocence, singing, “anyway I told the truth” over and over, derails into a possible confession of guilt. In the final verse, that central lyric changes to “I’m afraid I told a lie”.
This open-ended interpretation of whether his character is guilty or innocent has kept Cave interested in the track, stating, “I think that’s why we can continue to play it at pretty much every concert. It remains mysterious and ambiguous but genuinely thoughtful.”
While Cave’s musical styling is far darker and more chaotic than Johnny Cash’s classic country, the connection is clear. It would be impossible to consider any music related to prisons without some link to Cash, whose song ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ stands as the magnum opus of the topic. In 1955, the song changed the face of country music.
Cash’s outlaw image and this guilty perspective broke through the more clean-cut country and folk image that had previously prevailed, merging it with the more rebellious look and feel of rock. After a series of concerts inside prisons, Cash’s persona as the ultimate bad boy of music was set, and that outlaw man-on-the-run image is exactly what hooked Nick Cave and the world in.
In that way, even without any connection between the singers, ‘The Mercy Seat’ is a deeply Cash-inspired track, continuing on the legacy he set. Full of all the same feelings of entrapment and panic, allusions to religion and considerations on the way the prison system stands as a flawed judge of good and bad, the two tracks are two sides of the same coin.
Their connection and contrast were stark when, in 2000, to Nick Cave’s total awe, Johnny Cash recorded a stripped-back cover of the song. However, his subtle lyric changes make it a different story. In Cash’s version, the prisoner declares himself ‘totally innocent’, as opposed to the original’s purposefully ambiguous “nearly wholly Innocent”.
Cave didn’t mind, of course. He declared the cover, “Pure Johnny Cash”. Detailing further, he told Mojo that Cash’s take spoke to a prisoner that had “been fucked over by the system”. In keeping with the sombre tone of ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and his engagement with the prison system in general, Cash’s version strays on the side of sympathy and sadness. Cave added, “he’s an innocent man in jail, he’s going to die”.
But the Australian singer wasn’t quite so interested in goodness. “I always thought it was clear that the guy did it,” he continued. Instead, the original ‘The Mercy Seat’ is less about the realities of who did or didn’t do something and more a judgement on judgement. “What’s in question is the concept of guilt and innocence, in the sense that he may have done it, but that doesn’t mean he’s a guilty person in a broader sense.”
Considering the difference between the two versions, the inspiration Johnny Cash gave him and the ways he’s run with it and changed since, Cave concluded fondly and proudly, “My version is more conflicted. Which is pure Nick Cave, I suppose.”
