“He was insistent”: the song Johnny Cash wanted to be his last
The role of Rick Rubin on any one of his records tends to change depending on who he’s working with.
Anyone could claim to turn a couple of knobs and tell their client to do it again and get the role as a producer, but when you look at what Rubin does, it is about understanding every group on a more visceral level before he even hits the ‘record’ button. It was about trying to slowly develop every group he was working with, but he knew that he needed a bit more steady hands when he started working with the final albums that Johnny Cash made during his lifetime.
Because, really, how do you really prepare to work with ‘The Man in Black’. His legacy is so big that he practically feels like a founding father of country music, so it’s not like anyone was going to have the guts to tell him one of his tunes wasn’t good enough. But if you look at Rubin’s track record, that’s exactly what Cash needed after spending the last few decades becoming an elder statesman of country for all the wrong reasons.
The Highwaymen were a decent enough supergroup for what they were, but when you look at the more embarrassing pieces that he made later, Rubin wasn’t looking to dress him up in ridiculous outfits. That version of Cash wasn’t made for MTV, and he wanted to remind everyone about the deeper roots that he had on records like American Recordings. This was practically gothic stories that felt like a part of Southern folklore, but that didn’t mean that he forgot how to adapt with the times, either.
‘Hurt’ is still one of the finest songs that Cash ever made, and back when he made the album Unchained, Rubin had the perfect foil to him when asking the Heartbreakers to guest on the record. All of them loved country music, and even if Cash wasn’t exactly the easiest musician to live up to, every one of them seemed up to the challenge when they reinvented tunes like ‘Southern Accents’ to suit his voice.
But by the time that he made American IV: The Man Comes Around, Cash knew that his time was short. He wasn’t going to get much further with his voice, and with old age and his health in decline, there was no reason to think that he had any more gas left in the tank. He was simply trying to make the best with what he had left, but when working on those final sessions, Rubin remembered that Cash was adamant about ‘We’ll Meet Again’ being the last song on the last official album he put out.
There were still plenty of songs left in the vault, but even Rubin felt a sense of finality hearing the crowd vocals on the track, saying, “He thought that was going to be his last album, and ‘We’ll Meet Again’ was the last song on IV — and when we recorded it, he was insistent that everyone in the studio, the engineers, the musicians, all had to sing on the last chorus. In his mind, the series was done. Not because he wanted it to end, but I think he felt that he wasn’t in great shape and thought that it was going to be it. But I could tell it was really breaking his heart that it was it.”
While Rubin did oversee a few more records with him, he managed to keep the same mentality in mind when looking at Cash’s voice. ‘Aloha Oe’ was meant to be the last song on the American series of albums, but even then, you can hear the same kind of tone in Cash’s voice, almost like he wanted to send his audience away with just the faintest bit of musical sunshine as he gracefully bowed out.
But given the song’s title, Cash didn’t want ‘We’ll Meet Again’ to be a tearful goodbye by any means. He knew he was going to see some of his loved ones on the other day, and even if he had a longer spiritual journey ahead of him, he was content knowing that he had finally brought his career to a close the right way and could cross over to the other side knowing that he gave it everything he had.
