“He looked at me like I was insane”: The song Johnny Cash thought was too crazy to work
Johnny Cash was never one to back down from a challenge. Despite all of the darkness that surrounded his life, the core trait that he had, above all else, was bravery, usually doing things outside of his comfort zone, specifically to go against the grain. Although most people would have had a hard time trying to spook ‘The Man in Black’ for any reason, Cash remembered thinking that Rick Rubin was crazy to present him with many of his more current cover songs.
Before looking at the music itself, it’s a small miracle that Rubin and Cash managed to work so well together. The same person behind albums like Slayer’s Reign in Blood and Jay-Z’s ‘99 Problems’ was certainly a strange choice for a country legend, but Rubin came at every project thinking about the songs first, and by the time American Recordings came out, Cash felt completely reborn in his older persona.
Since he had spent all of his life singing about the darker side of mankind, hearing his thick baritone get even gruffer in his older age is far more haunting. Depending on what song you’re listening to, Cash either feels like a ghost from the past discussing the sins he made among the living or some wise old man talking about all of the sins that he committed during his lifetime and what awaits him on the other side.
Of all the choices that Rubin made on Cash’s part, getting him to cover contemporary songs was a stroke of genius on his part. Although none of the writers were probably expecting Cash to do justice to their work, hearing songs like ‘Personal Jesus’ and ‘I Won’t Back Down’ being sung by him really helps remind fans of Depeche Mode and Tom Petty, respectively, how beautiful those songs were, to begin with.
During the recording of his second renaissance album, Unchained, though, ‘Rusty Cage’ was a bit of a wild card. Although Cash could certainly deliver something as dark as Soundgarden could, he remembered being taken aback when listening to the first version of the album Badmotorfinger. The original is fantastic, but suffice it to say that Cash probably wasn’t going to go for the same high notes that Chris Cornell hit.
While Rubin was adamant about the song, Cash thought the song was too crazy to work, saying, “Everything else could change, but the lyrics were always what made the song suitable. I remember I played him ‘Rusty Cage’ and he looked at me like I was insane because if you’ve heard it, it’s a full heavy metal record. And then I did a demo of the song just to show the vision of the song and how he would do it. [He said] ‘Oh, I like that song. I’ll do that one.’”
In Cash’s hands, though, Cornell’s original melody got flipped on its head. The original might have that swirling guitar hook and the strange time signature that never quite settles into a groove, but Cash’s version might as well be an unearthed outlaw song, with Cash sounding like he’s travelling through the countryside talking about burning dinosaur bones.
Even in the greater context of Cash’s career, though, ‘Rusty Cage’ is a better representation of his final years than his cover of ‘Hurt’ is. Because the Nine Inch Nails cover was a postscript for his career, and the Soundgarden classic was a case of him getting back that old outlaw country swagger.
