American Recordings

We're going off the rails here, but that's gonna happen.

Into the American Recordings, you know?

Yeah.

And, um, I, I was trying to get perspective of, like, where was Johnny at as a singer? Because when I re-listened to that first American Recordings album, I was like, "He's still got chops." I didn't...

I thought he was already kinda, you know, he, he got kinda tired.

It didn't take anything away from the performances, but he still had the chops.

And so- The whole Rick Rubin rejuvenation was a couple years away.

Um, but, you know, they, they, they, they came through huge.

Redemption for Johnny Cash would come in the unlikely shape of one of the godfathers of hip-hop.

Record producer Rick Rubin shepherded Cash into a new era with his American Recordings albums, a series of records which stripped Johnny Cash back to the essence of that almost biblical figure of the man in black, confronting love, death and God.

Aided by some expertly chosen covers, including Nick Cave, U2 and more, Cash tapped into a new audience, delivering classics like this take on Nine Inch Nails, Hurt, something even its writer, Trent Reznor, considers to be the definitive version.

What have I become My sweetest friend Everyone I know goes away in the end.

The whirlwind

is in the thorn tree

And if you want to hear more Long Player with Stephen Rainey, Johnny Cash, American Recordings is available now on BBC Sounds.

Thank you for listening this morning and thanks to our team, producer Mark McCleary and Adam Nixon.

Him, Erasure, Roy Orbison, Elvis.

It's a very old-school kind of taste, but what's your favourite kind of era? Are you an American Recordings boy? Are you a Foolsome boy? Are you someone in the

middle, maybe like the Redden era? What you've just said, Nate, I've never heard about.

American Recordings? Yeah.

Right, so Hurt

is an American Recordings one.

So the American recordings, there's one to seven.

It's like, it's like a seven.