End of the Line

Music legend Johnny Cash. Courtesy Universal Music Canada.

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.

Courtesy Universal Music Canada.

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.

American V: A Hundred Highways is available now.

Matthew McKinnon writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.