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Underground > Radio & Music >

Johnny Cash's covers

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17:38 / 07.02.03

I just finished d/l the mp3 of Hurt, the cover JC did of the NineInchNails song. Incredible. One of the best covers ive heard in over a year. Much better than Tattu's cover of that Smiths song even better than Vanessa Carltons Paint It Black (which is suprisingly better than I expected)Im glad some people know how to make a quality cover.

Matthew Fluxington

17:59 / 07.02.03

I was reading yesterday about how that cover of "Hurt" has somehow ended up on the playlist of K-Rock in NYC and KROQ in LA, and it is on its way to being playlisted on all the big Clearchannel "edge stations" across the country. I haven't heard the cover yet, but either which way, that's extremely surprising. Especially considering NIN can't get their own songs on the radio these days, and that the playlists of those stations are so incredibly motononous and stifling.

I'd love to hear Johnny sing "I wear this crown of shit upon my liar's chair"...I'll have to get myself a copy of that.

18:52 / 07.02.03

You'll never hear it..he says "crown of thorns", no shit. Literally.
Unless this is some sort of "radio edit". I hate those. Get so used to hearng them that by the time you hear the actual version you prefer the radio version.

19:14 / 07.02.03

I've heard his cover of Depeche's Mode "Personal Jesus" on LIR a few times.

Matthew Fluxington

19:19 / 07.02.03

WLIR seems to have one of the more experimental playlists of all the rock stations in the area - I remember you mention that they were playing "Church On White" a while back. But looking at their current playlist, it appears as though their experimental days may be behind them now.

19:31 / 07.02.03

His 'I See A Darkness' was okay.

Not as good as the Bonnie Prince, though.

22:15 / 07.02.03

Fuck, I love this cover.

The video is amazing. Cash sitting in the Johnny Cash museum, surrounded by his life's work, singing about how it's an "empire of dirt." Words can't describe.

02:27 / 08.02.03

Even better is Johnny Cash and Nick Cave singing Hank William's
"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" on that album. So horribly sad.

His covers of "The Mercy Seat" and "Rusty Cage" rock too.

His covers of "Personal Jesus" and "I won't back down" are not so
rockin'.

19:15 / 10.02.03

How 'bout his cover of "One"? Blows U2's version out of the water. Or the air.

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:05 / 10.02.03

See, I thought his "The Mercy Seat" was a bit dodgy. It sounded too tired. I suppose, given what he's been going through over the past couple of years, that's understandable - but it's not that good. Just ain't.

Matthew Fluxington

22:42 / 10.02.03

How 'bout his cover of "One"? Blows U2's version out of the water. Or the air.

Funny. I was just about to mention how unbearably awful Cash's version of "One" is.

23:34 / 10.02.03

I thought the U2 was better to be honest. I thought the Cash version didn't have enough of a tune to it. I did think his Mercy Seat was better than Nick Cave's, but I haven't heard the latter in many years.

23:54 / 10.02.03

I can't stand the studio version of "The Mercy Seat" that's on Tender Prey, but the version on Live Seeds was my introduction to all things Cave, blaring out of my car radio (which was tuned to a college station) on a sunny spring afternoon, sending sharp shivery chills up my back: I'd never heard anything like it, and I suppoise I never shall again.

I cannot overstate how much I love that recording.

The Return Of Rothkoid

01:02 / 20.02.03

The "Hurt" filmclip is fucking awesome, indeed.

01:22 / 20.02.03

I really dig Cash's version of Personal Jesus, brilliant!

03:00 / 20.02.03

That video just killed me. I'm so sad. He's so old. I want to cry. Must download that again...

The Return Of Rothkoid

03:25 / 20.02.03

It's surprisingly effective; the visuals are what make it, I think. His singing's so-so, but it's the fact that he just looks so on-the-verge-of-death and pissed off about it - that's what makes it just amazing. It's quite upsetting. I'm sure you can dig around in the source of that page and find the url of the vid file if you want to keep it, Barry...

Jack: what don't you like about the album version? I like the story behind the creation of that - thwocking one's engineer and THEN doing a take is very rock.

04:10 / 20.02.03

I saw the "Hurt" video a few weeks ago... the song itself is one thing (the jury's still out on whether the raw, unrelenting pathos expressed therein can be digested more than once a year)...but that damnned video. really puts the thumbscrews to my youthful invulnerablity. I get flushed from the bathroom of Johnny Cash's heart everytime I see it. It might be nice if the music stations would warn you abput it. It's really jarring to sit through titillating, cacophonous trash only to have "Hurt" deliver the emotional equivalent of multiple gutshots.

He does a mean "Rusty Cage", too.

wembley can change in 28 days

07:48 / 20.02.03

I get flushed from the bathroom of Johnny Cash's heart everytime I see it.

Indeed!

Johnny Cash is a god, the type that gets better with age. It really depends on my mood as to how I feel about Cash's covers vs the originals. I think his "Mercy Seat" kicks ass, but if I'm all angsty and loud-mooded, I have to put on the Nick Cave. U2's version of "one" makes me want to call all my friends and huggle them; Cash's version makes me want to lie comatose for a week in a cave somewhere. Just a matter of mood. And I love old artists anyway - it's like difference they speak of in Noh theatre training between a young, attractive, talented actor, and the 80-year-old master who walks across the stage and makes everyone cry, because he's got the hana - untranslatable but something like "the flower of true expression." Johnny Cash got hana.

01:58 / 21.02.03

There's a Rolling Stone article about the video here.

Cash's producer, Rick Rubin, sent a copy of the video to NIN's Trent Reznor. "We were in the studio, getting ready to work -- and I popped it in," Reznor says. "By the end I was really on the verge of tears. I'm working with Zach de la Rocha, and I told him to take a look. At the end of it, there was just dead silence. There was, like, this moist clearing of our throats and then, 'Uh, OK, let's get some coffee.'"

The article in the physical magazine's a bit longer, and talks about how they went to the closed down "House of Cash" museum to film it and whatnot. Worth a browse in the shop.

02:53 / 21.02.03

I can honestly say, Johnny Cash has reinvented my youth, aged it and given it back to me with wisdom and grit. "Hurt" has been taken and stripped down to its core and scrambled. So has "Rusty Cage" and "One". All songs I heard a million times. But now, they're much better. I hope Johnny's around for another round of songs.

18:49 / 24.02.06

I never cared much for nine inch nails or johnny cash before, then I saw this video.

Johnny Cash, Hurt

I find it hard to put into words how the song makes me feel, its best if you just see it for yourself.

Mortal is the best way I can describe the way it make me feel.

02:18 / 25.02.06

I recently heard a rebroadcast of an interview with Rick Rubin about the recording of this song; apparently, Johnny Cash was reading it as a song about drugs (with which he was pretty familiar) while Reznor's intention was probably more about cutting/self-mutilation. (the needle tears a hole...)

That idea really clicked, kind of bridging the gap between self-caused pain, temporary pain relief, and deeper agony underneath it all.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

02:35 / 25.02.06

Having said that, Reznor had a fairly hefty smack problem at the time of writing too...

09:00 / 25.02.06

Interestingly, the only (I think) line of 'Hurt' that Cash (presumably) wanted changed was the one that goes 'I wear this crown of shit...' In JC's version, 'shit' is replaced by 'thorns.' Was this done because the former seemed a bit too adolescent, or because it's the kind of thing you can say when you'e 29-ish, with your career as a millionaire dissolute rock star very much still ahead of you (one of the things that appeals about early Nine Inch Nails is that, for all the guy's singing about wanting to destroy himself in the bleakest possible way, it sounds like he's having a lot of fun while he's doing it, y'know, 'Go to work, sing about self-immolation, finish, go for a beer with pals') but which would feel like a step too far when you're almost literally (as I understand JC was) staring death in the face?

If I firmly believed I was about to meet my maker (again literally in JC's case) before the year was out, I'd be inclined to watch what I said, too.

The Nine Inch Nails version of this tune is an anticipation of horrors that are yet to come, (I don't mean to 'top trump' your good self, Stoat, with regard to self-destuctive industrial rockers, but I've studied this, and teh smack arrived later, damnit,) whereas Cash's version is more about how you'd feel afterwards.

As an optimist, essentially, I kind of prefer the Nine Inch Nails take.

09:15 / 25.02.06

Then again, I have mis-spelled 'literaly,' repeatedly, in the above... I am lower than a worm

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:38 / 25.02.06

I've also read somewhere that Cash's version implies insulin with "the needle"- mind you, that was the writer's inference, rather than anything actually stated, as far as I know.

(Alex- surely Downward Spiral was while he was on Cielo helping Marilyn Manson with Portrait Of An American Family? Cos there was LOADS of smack then, so they say).

01:02 / 26.02.06

I've also read somewhere that Cash's version implies insulin with "the needle"- mind you, that was the writer's inference, rather than anything actually stated

Um. Guilty.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

01:27 / 26.02.06

Ah! Yes, that was the very reference I was thinking of.

It was indeed Mr Fear.

09:21 / 26.02.06

Um... yeah, you could well be right there Stoat. I was basing my (somewhat arch, admittedly,) assumptions on what Reznor said about drugs during his last set of interviews, which was that things only really got out of hand in the five or so years leading up to 'With Teeth' - he'd been a tourist before, but he hadn't really lived there. But I dare say it's often a mistake to believe what people say to the media...

19:36 / 26.02.06

"Hurt" was a great cover. I also like the Cash-Strummer team-up on "Redemption Song."

19:37 / 26.02.06

Not having a tv, I've managed not to see that since it came out. i've been feeling fairly good of late haivng just seen it I just have to say...

You bastards. You big box of bastard covered bastards with rich bastardy centers.

15:22 / 27.02.06

'Time of the Preacher' is always a cool song, but Cash kinda puts it over the top.
Actually, that whole last album of his is mostly - if not all - covers and it's immensely that damn good. Unless you try to listen to only one song at a time, at which point some are excellent and some just fail to make the grade.
On the end of things I thought this thread would be about, I totally desire a Glen Danzig cover of 'Chicken in Black'.

10:04 / 28.02.06

i think one of my fav Cash covers is of Tim Hardins If I was a carpenter, even better than hardins or the four tops versions, which is saying something,

i think cash is often best as an interpreter of songs, this may sound heretic now that he has become a secular saint for rock fans but most of his self-written stuff is pretty samey and just goes 'chunk chunk a chunk' for around 25 years

18:13 / 28.02.06

I think that's a little harsh: I'd agree that the strength of his songwriting is perhaps more in the lyrics than the music and that he does a great job interpreting songs in the American Recordings, but he also does a great job singing his own stuff on those as well.
Possibly the limits in his musical style say more about the sub-section of the music industry he worked in than his songwriting talent? Though I'm not really qualified to answer that one way or another it's worth considering.

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