It became one of the most artistically successful and satisfying covers of CashвЂ™s entire career. In 1983, one year after it came out, he covered SpringsteenвЂ™s вЂњ Highway Patrolman,вЂќ one of the toughest Springsteen songs to cover because of its ambiguous morality. вЂњThe Chicken in BlackвЂќ is the sound of a brain breaking, but if you dig a little, you find that he also sang songs by some of country and folkвЂ™s best songwriters, from Billy Joe Shaver to John Prine and Guy Clark. He was on and off pills, he had to play shows with the country supergroup the Highwaymen and he starred in a remake of the John Ford film Stagecoach and he was in his fifties and he had this thing going on with his jaw and, well, it happens.Дespite all this, and in defiance of conventional wisdom, his material in the вЂ™80s wasnвЂ™t all bad. This was an environment that had little room for Johnny Cash, who came from the pill-guzzling highway to hell that Sun Records paved.Д«ut he had also been recording for decades, and his operating expenses were enormous. For the first half of the decade, the prevailing style bent toward the slick, the saccharine, the easy-listening. One possible reason is that the country music business in the вЂ™80s was making some historically terrible shit because of Urban Cowboy, a John Travolta vehicle easily summarized as Saturday Night Fever in cowboy boots. Columbia didnвЂ™t know what to do with a legacy act from 1955 and reluctantly dropped him, then the label he went with afterward, Mercury, treated him like he didnвЂ™t exist. ItвЂ™s true that Johnny Cash had it rough in the вЂ™80s. This is the door Johnny Cash walks through to dethrone Hank Williams as the king of country music.Д«ut the true story of American Recordings is messier than that. Rubin is a miracle worker and he encourages Johnny Cash to make the best music of his life. HeвЂ™s playing South by Southwest and Glastonbury and heвЂ™s on the road to becoming an eternal symbol of punk rock and anything thatвЂ™s real, man, you know, authentic. He makes American Recordings, and all the critics love it. He sings gutbucket songs about sin and redemption, and in the blink of an eye, Johnny Cash is himself again. But then Rick Rubin, a bearded and inscrutable mystic, a man known for producing hard rock and hip-hop, brings him back to life in a house overlooking the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California with a brilliant idea that no one had ever thought of before-put Johnny Cash in a living room, hand him a guitar, set up a microphone, ask him to play the songs he loves, not for anybody else, just for him.Д¬ashвЂ™s face lights up. He spent the 1980s a lost soul, recording bad music (вЂњ The Chicken in BlackвЂќ) and watching the embers of his career fly away into the night. ItвЂ™s a ghost haunting Billy Graham crusades and the dinner theaters of Branson, Missouri. The popular story goes like this: ItвЂ™s 1994 and Johnny CashвЂ™s career is all but dead. Johnny Cash was the only infallible man on earth. He saw in Johnny not just the Southern man to emulate, but something close to a holy figure. He knew every producer Johnny ever worked with, every sideman he ever played with, every man down and woman gone. He was there from day one, from the first day вЂњ Cry, Cry, CryвЂќ got played on the radio. HeвЂ™s alright except for the foolish hip movements. Elvis, heвЂ™s pretty good, my grandpa recalls. HeвЂ™s doing this because вЂњI ainвЂ™t paying no two dollars for a concert.вЂќ The concert? Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. He never got more than a fifth-grade education, but heвЂ™s breaking into a high school. ItвЂ™s 1955, in Arkansas, and heвЂ™s standing on his motorcycle, prying a bathroom window off the wall with a pocket knife and a screwdriver.

ThereвЂ™s only one story my grandpa ever tells about his childhood.

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