New album by Johnny Cash (American V)
Got this album this morning, and have played it at practically every opportunity since then! It is a great album, I'm hesitant to say 'I love it' or 'I love listening to it' as to me its a raw, powerful album too, and I can't listen to it without thinking of how he was when he was recording it - physically and mentally, thinking of his losing June, his memories of her, everything.
I just realised that 'If you could read my mind' is a Gordon Lightfoot song, I have a tear in my eye listening to it and its not even my favourite on the album so far. The song that's moved me most so far is 'Further on (up the road)'. I used to think I loved the Springsteen original of this song, and I still love the sound of him playing it with the E-Street band. But now I feel Cash's delivery of it suits the song better and brings out the mood of it better. In the original, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a literal road. No longer, for me anyway.
Tim
I just realised that 'If you could read my mind' is a Gordon Lightfoot song, I have a tear in my eye listening to it and its not even my favourite on the album so far. The song that's moved me most so far is 'Further on (up the road)'. I used to think I loved the Springsteen original of this song, and I still love the sound of him playing it with the E-Street band. But now I feel Cash's delivery of it suits the song better and brings out the mood of it better. In the original, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a literal road. No longer, for me anyway.
Tim
You can listen to the entire album here - its very good. I'll get it soon.
http://music.aol.com/songs/new_releases ... 0000000009
I agree with Tim that Further on up the Road becomes something special the way Cash does it. My favorite so far is Hank Williams 'The Evening Train'. Help Me (Larry Gatlin) is also very good.
Its been a long long time since I've been really moved by a Johnny Cash album. Probably 10 years or more.
http://music.aol.com/songs/new_releases ... 0000000009
I agree with Tim that Further on up the Road becomes something special the way Cash does it. My favorite so far is Hank Williams 'The Evening Train'. Help Me (Larry Gatlin) is also very good.
Its been a long long time since I've been really moved by a Johnny Cash album. Probably 10 years or more.
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/johnnycash.html
End of the Line
The last album of Johnny Cash’s life
By Matthew McKinnon
July 7, 2006
In Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening, the poet wrote:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
During Help Me, the first track on the last album of J.R. (Johnny) Cash’s life, the distance feels close to done. And country music’s most exalted outlaw seems to know it. “Oh Lord, help me to walk another mile/Just one more mile/I’m tired of walking all alone,” he sings.
The Man in Black’s baritone had always quivered, but gained a tremor near the turn of the century — a change that sometimes embarrassed him. His voice has never sounded so frail as it does here. Country-gospel singer Larry Gatlin wrote Help Me in the early ’70s; Cash strips the lament to its bone. “I never thought I needed help before/Thought that I could get back by myself/Now I know I just can’t take it anymore.”
Cash recorded the vocals for Help Me and the rest of American V: A Hundred Highways during the spring and summer of 2003. He worked on the songs with Rick Rubin (bearded, shoeless yogi; ’80s co-founder of rap’s Def Jam Records), his producer and friend since 1994’s superb American Recordings. That was the album that lifted Cash from a mid-career slump (he had been playing revue shows at dinner theatres), and recast him as a hipster icon to a new generation of fans.
Cash’s health had faltered from the time of the pair’s first meeting. Late in life, he was often housebound and needed a wheelchair. He and Rubin began planning American V one day after they finished their fourth collaboration, 2002’s American IV: The Man Comes Around. Progress was slow; the initial recording sessions meandered and took no shape. Then in May ’03, June Carter Cash — Johnny’s wife of 35 years, his muse and constant companion — passed away a week after having heart surgery.
“[Johnny] said to me, ‘I want to work every day, and I need you to have something for me to do every day. Because if I don’t have something to focus on, I’m gonna die,’” Rubin told Vanity Fair in 2004, for a profile of the odd couple’s musical partnership.
During the four months that followed June’s death, Cash and Rubin devoted themselves to American V. They finished only the vocals, with plans to overdub accompaniment music later. But that September, Cash got sick again. Then he died, at 71, of complications from diabetes. No one needed a doctor to know that heartache was the true cause.
Rubin waited until last year to complete American V. When he felt ready, he assembled an “A” team of rock and country players to perform its instrumental tracks. The Heartbreakers’ Benmont Tench contributed piano, harpischord and organ parts, alongside a half-dozen veteran guitarists. Their contributions are spare: quiet in the moments when Cash rasps for air (Rod McKuen’s Love’s Been Good To Me); loud when he finds the wind to boom again (the church traditional God’s Gonna Cut You Down).
Most of American V’s selections are preoccupied with endings. The album includes 10 cover songs, one remake of a Cash favourite (I Came to Believe) and the last song that he ever wrote, Like the 309. “It should be a while before I see Dr. Death/So it would sure be nice if I could get my breath,” Cash, who had asthma, jokes on 309. Its action is set on a train, as was Hey Porter (1955), the first song that he ever wrote.
Take me to the depot, put me to bed,
Blow an electric fan on my gnarly old head.
Everybody take a look, see I’m doing fine,
And load my box up on the 309.
Cash gives his strongest performance near the album’s centre, for his version of Bruce Springsteen’s Further On (Up the Road). The song features one of the finest arrangements that Rubin has contributed to the American series. Its music begins soft and loose. Midway through, Tench’s keys rise from the background, and Rubin thickens the layers of strings. The sum feels like a bare room filling with old friends.
American V has no peak as high as American IV’s towering Hurt — the Nine Inch Nails cover that, decades from now, will be remembered as the song (and video) that defined Cash’s final years. The new album’s back half is less interesting than its beginning, but it soars near the finish, when Cash and Rubin lean into Ian Tyson’s Four Strong Winds. The folk standard is the second of two Canadian anthems on the album; the other is a remake of Gordon Lightfoot’s If You Could Read My Mind.
Cash’s voice, even depleted, carries a weight that deepens the theme of both songs. Lightfoot’s plea to a drifting lover (“I don’t know where we went wrong/ But the feeling’s gone/And I just can’t get it back”) becomes Cash’s call to June beyond the grave. And Tyson wrote Four Strong Winds with migrant workers in mind. But when Cash sings “Well, our good times are all gone/And I’m bound for moving on/I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way,” you don’t need a map to know that he has no desire to reverse his course.
End of the Line
The last album of Johnny Cash’s life
By Matthew McKinnon
July 7, 2006
In Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening, the poet wrote:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
During Help Me, the first track on the last album of J.R. (Johnny) Cash’s life, the distance feels close to done. And country music’s most exalted outlaw seems to know it. “Oh Lord, help me to walk another mile/Just one more mile/I’m tired of walking all alone,” he sings.
The Man in Black’s baritone had always quivered, but gained a tremor near the turn of the century — a change that sometimes embarrassed him. His voice has never sounded so frail as it does here. Country-gospel singer Larry Gatlin wrote Help Me in the early ’70s; Cash strips the lament to its bone. “I never thought I needed help before/Thought that I could get back by myself/Now I know I just can’t take it anymore.”
Cash recorded the vocals for Help Me and the rest of American V: A Hundred Highways during the spring and summer of 2003. He worked on the songs with Rick Rubin (bearded, shoeless yogi; ’80s co-founder of rap’s Def Jam Records), his producer and friend since 1994’s superb American Recordings. That was the album that lifted Cash from a mid-career slump (he had been playing revue shows at dinner theatres), and recast him as a hipster icon to a new generation of fans.
Cash’s health had faltered from the time of the pair’s first meeting. Late in life, he was often housebound and needed a wheelchair. He and Rubin began planning American V one day after they finished their fourth collaboration, 2002’s American IV: The Man Comes Around. Progress was slow; the initial recording sessions meandered and took no shape. Then in May ’03, June Carter Cash — Johnny’s wife of 35 years, his muse and constant companion — passed away a week after having heart surgery.
“[Johnny] said to me, ‘I want to work every day, and I need you to have something for me to do every day. Because if I don’t have something to focus on, I’m gonna die,’” Rubin told Vanity Fair in 2004, for a profile of the odd couple’s musical partnership.
During the four months that followed June’s death, Cash and Rubin devoted themselves to American V. They finished only the vocals, with plans to overdub accompaniment music later. But that September, Cash got sick again. Then he died, at 71, of complications from diabetes. No one needed a doctor to know that heartache was the true cause.
Rubin waited until last year to complete American V. When he felt ready, he assembled an “A” team of rock and country players to perform its instrumental tracks. The Heartbreakers’ Benmont Tench contributed piano, harpischord and organ parts, alongside a half-dozen veteran guitarists. Their contributions are spare: quiet in the moments when Cash rasps for air (Rod McKuen’s Love’s Been Good To Me); loud when he finds the wind to boom again (the church traditional God’s Gonna Cut You Down).
Most of American V’s selections are preoccupied with endings. The album includes 10 cover songs, one remake of a Cash favourite (I Came to Believe) and the last song that he ever wrote, Like the 309. “It should be a while before I see Dr. Death/So it would sure be nice if I could get my breath,” Cash, who had asthma, jokes on 309. Its action is set on a train, as was Hey Porter (1955), the first song that he ever wrote.
Take me to the depot, put me to bed,
Blow an electric fan on my gnarly old head.
Everybody take a look, see I’m doing fine,
And load my box up on the 309.
Cash gives his strongest performance near the album’s centre, for his version of Bruce Springsteen’s Further On (Up the Road). The song features one of the finest arrangements that Rubin has contributed to the American series. Its music begins soft and loose. Midway through, Tench’s keys rise from the background, and Rubin thickens the layers of strings. The sum feels like a bare room filling with old friends.
American V has no peak as high as American IV’s towering Hurt — the Nine Inch Nails cover that, decades from now, will be remembered as the song (and video) that defined Cash’s final years. The new album’s back half is less interesting than its beginning, but it soars near the finish, when Cash and Rubin lean into Ian Tyson’s Four Strong Winds. The folk standard is the second of two Canadian anthems on the album; the other is a remake of Gordon Lightfoot’s If You Could Read My Mind.
Cash’s voice, even depleted, carries a weight that deepens the theme of both songs. Lightfoot’s plea to a drifting lover (“I don’t know where we went wrong/ But the feeling’s gone/And I just can’t get it back”) becomes Cash’s call to June beyond the grave. And Tyson wrote Four Strong Winds with migrant workers in mind. But when Cash sings “Well, our good times are all gone/And I’m bound for moving on/I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way,” you don’t need a map to know that he has no desire to reverse his course.
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Andrew McGeever
- Posts: 905
- Joined: Sun Jul 07, 2002 10:02 pm
Dear Anne,
Thanks for your post: the link between Robert Frost and Johnny Cash was so appropriate.
Tom Sakic suggested (in an earlier post on this thread) that Rick Rubin was maybe trying to get Cash to do too many covers. I personally don't think that Rubin would, out of respect, even contemplate that.
Andrew.
Thanks for your post: the link between Robert Frost and Johnny Cash was so appropriate.
Tom Sakic suggested (in an earlier post on this thread) that Rick Rubin was maybe trying to get Cash to do too many covers. I personally don't think that Rubin would, out of respect, even contemplate that.
Andrew.
Even in death, Johnny Cash is still mighty enough to top The Billboard 200. "American V: A Hundred Highways" earns the Man in Black his first No. 1 album since 1969's "Johnny Cash at San Quentin" with 88,000 copies sold in the United States, according to Nielsen Soundscan.
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/art ... 1002837777
I've heard a couple of the songs on a college radio station and will
be buying the CD soon. What was done with Lightfoot's "If You
Could Read My Mind," is... art. If anyone were to say it is
only a reinterpretation, it'd be selling it short. Johnny Cash
took a popular, melodic and moody song and gave it gravitas
that I never even thought was there. I wonder if Lightfoot,
himself, had anywhere near the depth of association with
the lyrics that Johnny conveyed. No direspect to
Gordon Lightfoot intended with this post.
be buying the CD soon. What was done with Lightfoot's "If You
Could Read My Mind," is... art. If anyone were to say it is
only a reinterpretation, it'd be selling it short. Johnny Cash
took a popular, melodic and moody song and gave it gravitas
that I never even thought was there. I wonder if Lightfoot,
himself, had anywhere near the depth of association with
the lyrics that Johnny conveyed. No direspect to
Gordon Lightfoot intended with this post.
I totally agree with you. How his voice breaks at a point reduces me to tears.Steven wrote:I've heard a couple of the songs on a college radio station and will
be buying the CD soon. What was done with Lightfoot's "If You
Could Read My Mind," is... art. If anyone were to say it is
only a reinterpretation, it'd be selling it short. Johnny Cash
took a popular, melodic and moody song and gave it gravitas
that I never even thought was there. I wonder if Lightfoot,
himself, had anywhere near the depth of association with
the lyrics that Johnny conveyed. No direspect to
Gordon Lightfoot intended with this post.
But the feelin'g gone and I just can't get it back...
...But heros often fail...
But for now, love, let's be real...
Just hearing Cash utter this words is art. The best kind, too.
never could stand that dog...