In the early 1990s, Johnny Cash was as cool as a festival beer and playing modestly-sized rooms and county fairs across the US. Rick Rubin did not like that story trajectory and tasked himself with revitalising The Man in Black’s career
The result was a no-frills album titled American Recordings, recorded in his Los Angeles home. It wasn’t a solo mission, though. Glenn Danzig was part of the rescue team.
In the spring of 1993, work had started on the album which would give Cash's life the final chapters the laudation it deserved. He had already recorded his version of the cowboy folk song, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie, titled Oh, Bury Me Not on the finished album. But it was the following December that Cash appeared to hit his stride, recording the remaining 12 songs in a handful of days in Rubin's living room.
“I would send Johnny CDs that contained 30 songs sometimes, other times it might be one," Rubin told Classic Rock. It was just whatever I thought he might like. He might call me back and say: ‘I like four of these’, or ‘I like this one a lot.’”
For the Misfits vocalist, his roots in his collaboration with Cash can be traced back to 1987. Rubin, who produced Danzig's self-titled debut, commissioned him to write a song for Roy Orbison, titled Life Fades Away, for the Less Than Zero soundtrack (it would later appear on a reissue of Orbison's King of Hearts collection). It also helped that two of Cash's nephews were fans of the Misfits vocalist.
“It wasn’t a Danzig song,” Danzig told Revolver. “I wrote him a Roy Orbison song because I’m writing for Roy Orbison. I got to go out to his pad in Malibu a couple of times, teach him the song and then I was in the studio with him, Rick, and [assistant producer] George Drakoulias. It was a really cool experience.”
