Posted on 09/16/2023 6:40:06 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Plus, Rick Rubin on how Cash "looked at me like I was insane" Remembering The Man In Black's stunning Nine Inch Nails cover 20 years to the day after his death
It's 20 years to the day since we lost The Man In Black. The country star was one of the genre's defining stars throughout an uncompromising career that spanned half a century.
"Having Johnny Cash, one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time, want to cover your song, that's something that matters to me"
But for many (at the time) younger music fans, it was the Man In Black's remorselessly sparse 2002 cover of Nine Inch Nails' Hurt and its accompanying video that made them sit up and take notice of the country legend.
Hurt originally debuted on Nine Inch Nails' 1994 album The Downward Spiral, before Cash performed it on the 4th of his epic American Recording series of albums, under the guidance of uber-producer Rick Rubin.
When they met, Cash had no idea who Rubin was. Speaking on the BBC's Desert Island Discs, the producer said, “He didn’t know who I was, but he wanted to understand why I would want to work with him because why would anyone want to work with him? In his mind, he was done,” Rubin said.
“I didn’t convince him. We just sat and talked for a while, and I said, ‘Well, let’s just sit down and play me songs you love, and we’ll figure out what to do.’
"He sat in my living room and he just started playing me these songs, most of which I had never heard, old country songs, or old folk songs, and it was magnificent.”
Later, Rubin said, “I played him the song [Hurt] first and Johnny just looked at me like I was insane, because the Nine Inch Nails version of the song is very noisy, aggressive,”
“Johnny was wary! [Laughs] And I think I did a demo where I had a guitar player play it, and I said the words the way I imagined him saying it, and then when he heard the lyrics, and he heard the format of what it could be, he said, ‘Let’s try it.’”
"I'd been friends with Rick Rubin for several years," he said at the time. "He called me to ask how I'd feel if Johnny Cash covered Hurt.
In 2008, Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor spoke to British tabloid The Sun about his first hearing of Cash's spine-tinglingly emotive version.
"I said I'd be very flattered but was given no indication it would actually be recorded.
"Two weeks went by. Then I got a CD in the post. I listened to it and it was very strange. It was this other person inhabiting my most personal song.
"I'd known where I was when I wrote it. I know what I was thinking about. I know how I felt. Hearing it was like someone kissing your girlfriend. It felt invasive."
It was the moving video, though, that made it all fall into place for the Nine Inch Nails star: "It really, really made sense and I thought what a powerful piece of art.
"I never got to meet Johnny but I'm happy I contributed the way I did. It felt like a warm hug. I have goosebumps right now thinking about it.
"Having Johnny Cash, one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time, want to cover your song, that's something that matters to me. It's not so much what other people think but the fact that this guy felt that it was worthy of interpreting.
"He said afterwards it was a song that sounds like one he would have written in the '60s and that's wonderful".
I’m born in an earlier era than the 1990’s rock. I did see the term Industrial rock, but it all sounds the same to my ears. I honestly can’t tell the difference between genre’s like industrial and grunge and whatever else comes from this era.
I’m born in an earlier era than the 1990’s rock. I did see the term Industrial rock, but it all sounds the same to my ears. I honestly can’t tell the difference between genre’s like industrial and grunge and whatever else comes from this era.
I’m firmly an 80’s child.
A good memory. Sounds like a creative group of people who knew how to have fun.
Another of my Cash favorites....
I just listened to that song today
The song Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood was written by three men. But specifically, one man, Horace Ott, started the song, after a fight with his girlfriend (later wife), so you have a good ear, about it making more sense coming from a man.
Gladys Knight was really mad a Motown because they released the Marvin Gaye version shortly after her version went #2, then the Gaye version went no. 1 for eight weeks and upstaged it. The Gaye version and one by Smokey Robinson were recorded before Knight and the Pips did it. Motown barely supported Gladys Knight's version, but it was the label's best selling single at that time. Strangely, Berry Gordon never liked any of the three versions, and had to be forced to release both of them. And of course, within two years, CCR did a long rock version of it.
Also, to what you were saying Jonty, one day I heard Gladys Knight's Midnight Train to Georgia on the radio, and I thought, "Wait a second, this is a country song." I looked it up, and the writer was indeed a country music guy.
In the 70s, especially, country musicians covered soul songs and vice versa. Think Barbara Mandrell covering Luther Ingram's (If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want to Be Right, Otis Redding's I've Been Loving You Too Long, and Joe Tex's Show Me.
Johnny Cash was appearing at the Garden of Allah theater in San Jose, California in 1953? or thereabouts. We kids were warned to stay away because there was going to be a riot. As I recall there was, but who started it and who ended it, ???.
Reminds me of the scene in "Amadeus," where Mozart is being introduced to the court of Joseph II. Salieri wrote a special welcoming march to greet Mozart. Mozart then sits down and proceeds to play an improved rendition, humiliating Salieri.
Well, I like 80’s music better, but and I certainly don’t like grunge, but mostly industrial is even worse. Grunge is kind of like punk and metal with a little but of classic rock. Grunge started in the late 80s, but industrial goes back to the 70s. Industrial is mechanical and abrasive, with some concrete music. It has more aggressive and controversial words. Grunge is guitar-based, while industrial is often electronic.
That was definitely one of the highlights at that movie.
I thought CCR’s cover of I Heard it through the Grapevine was better than Marvin Gaye’s.
Also Tina Turner’s cover of Proud Mary is better than CCR’s.
As an aside, I once phone a Christian radio station and requested Proud Mary by Christian Cross Revival. They said never heard of it. So, I asked why they have have never heard of CCR?
It was a very emotional video for sure.
I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything
What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar’s chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I’m still right here
What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way
Having Johnny Cash, one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time, want to cover your song, that's something that matters to me..."
Yup... Every month it matters to you when you pick up that huge royalty paycheck because Johnny Cash sang your song. It's essentially keeping Reznor in the lifestyle that he's become accustomed to.
Mad World, right?
The original original Hurt by Timi Yuro cannot be beat by anyone!😁
https://youtu.be/Nszd5djpJKU?feature=shared
Cannot listen to it.....very powerful.
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