![]() ![]() So we take our seats in our separate booths and the band start up the song and I can see Johnny through the glass partition and the moment the music starts I see before my eyes a sudden, radical and absolute transformation. Johnny sits down and I talk to him for a bit and every time he says something inspirational, which is often, June says, Hallelujah! or Praise Jesus! Johnny says, What do you want to sing? and I say, How about ‘ I ’ m So Lonesome I Could C ry ’ Johnny says, O h yeah, I love that song, and June, who I ’ ve taken a real shine to, shouts, Praise the Lord! Sweet Jesus! He keeps saying in a weird, shaky voice, Are you there, Nick? Are you there, Nick? And I ’ m thinking, Oh my God, because Johnny seems seriously debilitated, and how the fuck is he going to sing a song? I ’ m here, Johnny, I say. I later find out that he has a condition where he is temporarily blinded when he goes indoors from sunlight. Johnny has his hands out in front of him like a ghost or spectre or something as he descends the stairs, led by his wife, June Carter Cash. I ’ m immediately confused because Johnny doesn’t look like Johnny anymore, he looks unbelievably old and his hair isn’t black, it’s white and he seems very frail. Someone eventually announces that Johnny has arrived and we sit there for a moment and then the door opens and Johnny Cash appears at the top of a long flight of stairs that lead from the street down to the control room. I sit down in the control room with Rick Rubin, while the guitarist goes through the chords to the Hank Williams song, as we all wait for Johnny. ![]() That night my mind goes into full-on overdrive, and I ’ m tossing and turning and worrying about this and worrying about that, and worrying about being out of tune, and being flat, and I can ’ t sleep, and by the time I get to Rick Rubin ’ s studio the following morning I ’ m basically a wreck. I say, OK, great idea, but what if I sing the song fucking flat? Sing this, Warren says, as Hank Williams starts crooning ‘ I ’ m So Lonesome I Could Cry ’. I start panicking and so I go down the corridor to Warren ’ s room and he’s lying on the bed in his underwear listening to Hank Williams and I say, Fuck, dude, Rick Rubin just called and he wants me to go into his studio and sing a song with Johnny Cash! Warren says, Far out, man, and I say, Yeah, I know, but what if I sing out of tune ? Warren says, Don ’ t worry about that, mate, what are you going to sing? I said, Rick Rubin says I can do whatever I like. How was I not going to be totally annihilated by his brilliance? And that was that, he hung up, whereupon my mind immediately descended into worst-case scenario mode and all the misgivings I had about my own voice, which were considerable at the time, rushed in, and I started wondering how the fuck was I going to contend with the voice of Johnny Cash, so deep, so soulful, so beautiful. I asked him what song Johnny wanted to sing and he said that it didn ’ t matter and that I could decide. So, I was very excited to be asked to sing with him and I said to Rick Rubin, Yeah, you know, of course, it ’ d be an honour. ![]() 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. 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. Now 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. It was the record producer, Rick Rubin, wanting to know if I ’ d like to come down to his studio the next day to sing a song with Johnny Cash. It was early 2002 and I was sitting in my hotel room in Los Angeles when the phone rang. Cash, some readers may have heard it already, my apologies if so. ![]()
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