Johnny Cash and Rick Rubin: a successful musical collaboration

Rick Rubin successfully produced Johnny Cash's albums.

Johnny Cash made four wonderful recordings with producer Rick Rubin between 1996 and 2002.

Cash died in 2003, closure on a lifelong calling as singer/songwriter that began in the cradle of rock'n'roll birth, Sam Phillips' Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee.

When Rubin called on Cash and said he'd like to work with him, the singer was cautious: "I thought it all pretty unlikely. He was the ultimate hippie, bald on top but with hair down over his shoulders, a beard that looked as though it had never been trimmed, and clothes that would have done a wino proud."

But in those early months of working on the first album, the singer and producer found they shared common ground.

As Rubin said: "We both loved music and the history of music. We were interested in spirituality."

John Thornley has recently recorded a half-hour show on Manawatū People's Radio (AM999), featuring seven songs from the Rubin era of recordings.

Thornley says they are all covers of songs by other artists.

"All were Johnny's choices, as he scrolled the Songbook of American music.

"On every song, he stamped his own unique vocal personality."

Thornley has listed in sequence the songs on the album.

A country love song You are my sunshine; Tom Patty's I Won't Back Down; A Singer of Songs – Tim O'Connell ode to the vocation of Singer as Storyteller; Jude Johnstone's Unchained; Paul Simon's Bridge Over Troubled Water; a duo with Will Oldham on I See a Darkness; and Personal Jesus by Martin Gore of Depeche Mode.

"It is invidious to highlight any one song, as they are all gems," says Thornley.

"But some comment is worthwhile.

"June Carter, Johnny's wife, wandered in to the studio and harmonised on Bridge Over Troubled Water. Rubin: 'That's great. We'll keep you in.'

"I See a Darkness is about mateship between men, and digs up unexpressed pain and evil in an emotional cage that traps some men.

"Cash had his own rages, including battles with drug addiction, against which he fought for his freedom.

"The same ideas are explored in Unchained, in words that could have been written by Cash himself.

But they were made for him to sing:

I have been ungrateful
I've been unwise
Restless from the cradle
Now I realise
It's so hard to see the rainbow
Through glasses dark as these
Maybe I'll be able
From now on, my knees

Oh, I am weak
Oh, I know I am vain
Take this weight from me
Let my spirit be unchained.

"Cash's Christian faith was always there.

"While the last song, Personal Jesus is explicit in its testimony, you'll find a gentler homily in A Singer of Songs."

I'm not a saviour, and I'm not a saint.
The man with the answers I certainly 'aint.
I wouldn't tell you what's right or what's wrong.
I'm just a singer of songs.

Thornley's show airs live on Manawatū People's Radio AM999, just after 10am on Tuesday September 8.

It can be downloaded any time via website www.mpr.nz/show/wesley.

A recent backlist of Wesley Broadway shows can also be accessed on this website.

Due to the Covid-19 lockdown, John Thornley's Vinyl Talk Two, on Aretha Franklin has been moved to Sunday November 8.