An den Fragen nach der Legitimität dieses letzten Albums
der American Recordings-Reihe kommt man wohl nicht vorbei, doch sind sie
letzten Endes peripher. Die Gesangsspuren wurden in den letzten Monaten
vor Johnny Cashs Tod im September 2003 aufgenommen, die Arrangements dagegen
entstanden erst zwei Jahre später. Zwar hatte der Mann in Schwarz im
Produzenten Rick Rubin einen Freund, dem er vertraute, doch konnte er das
später Eingespielte eben nicht mehr autorisieren, geschweige denn die
Aufnahmen leiten. Die schiere Kraft dieses Albums dürfte aber alle
Skeptiker verstummen lassen.
Mike Campbell und Benmont Tench von den Heartbreakers, der Studio-Slideguitarspieler
Smokey Hormel (alle drei waren bereits auf früheren Alben von Cash
zu hören) sowie die Gitarristen Matt Sweeney und Johnny Polansky
erzeugen einen Akustiksound, der zwar würdevoll, aber nur an wenigen
Stellen verhalten daherkommt, wenngleich die Dynamik früherer Aufnahmen
fehlt. Die Songs strahlen einen tiefen, elegischen Ernst aus; die Musiker
spielen überlegt, weder zu wenig noch zu viel. Die Texte sind erwartungsgemäß
sehr persönlich und nachdenklich: Das Bewusstsein seiner Sterblichkeit,
begangene Fehler, sein Schöpfer, die Rettung durch den Glauben, der
Verlust seiner Frau June, das Ende seiner Karriere -- all das mag Cash
stark beschäftigt haben, doch in diesen Songs verkörpert er
seine persönliche Lebensgeschichte nicht nur, er wächst auch
über sie hinaus. Während die Musiker in "God's Gonna Cut
You Down" den Takt klatschen und stampfen, durchschneidet Cashs Stimme
die Luft wie die Hand des rächenden Gottes, von dem das Lied handelt.
In dem neuen Stück "Like the 309", dem letzten, das Cash
geschrieben hat, gibt er zu, dass er bereits unter Kurzatmigkeit leidet,
und seine Stimme wird zu einer Metapher für das, was uns allen eines
Tages bevorsteht. In Gordon Lightfoots "If You Read My Mind"
läuft Rubin Gefahr, Cashs bittersüße, schwermütige
Phrasierung in einem geschmackvollen Klangteppich zu ersticken, aber die
Stimme ist doch unbezähmbar. Manche Töne müssen eine unglaubliche
Willensanstrengung gekostet haben. Erstaunlich ist auch, dass Cash Ian
Tysons "Four Strong Winds" nie zuvor aufgenommen hatte; der
schlichte und direkte Text wirkt wie für ihn geschrieben. Zwei andere
Songs dagegen kennt man bereits von Johnny Cash: "I Came to Believe",
das von der Entdeckung des Glaubens erzählt, und das abschließende
Spiritual "I'm Free from the Chain Gang Now". Besonders Letzteres
wirkt endgültig wie ein Vermächtnis. Das Gleiche gilt für
Cashs Version von Bruce Springsteens "Further On (Up the Road)":
"One sunny morning we'll rise, I know / And I'll meet you further
on up the road", heißt es da. Es wäre so schön, John.
(Roy Kasten, amazon.de)
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American V: A Hundred Highways is the long-awaited album of Johnny Cash's
final recordings, the basic tracks for which (i.e., Cash's vocals) were
recorded in 2002-2003, with overdubs added by producer Rick Rubin after
his death on September 12, 2003, at age 71. Between 1994 and 2002, Cash
and Rubin had succeeded in fashioning a third act for the veteran country
singer's career, following his acclaimed 1950s work for Sun Records and
his popular recordings for Columbia in the 1960s and '70s. In the '80s,
Cash's star had faded, but Rubin reinvented him as a hip country-folk-rock
elder at 62 with American Recordings (1994), his first new studio album
to reach the pop charts in 18 years. Unchained (1996) and American III:
Solitary Man (2000) continued the comeback, at least as far as the critics
were concerned, though none of the albums was actually a big seller. But
American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002), propelled by Cash's cover of
Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" and a powerful video, stayed in the
pop charts longer than any Cash album since 1969's Johnny Cash at San
Quentin. By 2002, however, Cash was in failing health, homebound and in
a wheelchair, and he suffered a personal blow when his wife, June Carter
Cash, died on May 15, 2003. The American series, which posited Cash as
an aged sage and the repository for a bottomless American songbook, had
already shown a predilection for gloom in the name of gravity; it's no
surprise that the fifth and final volume would be even more concerned
with, as three earlier Cash compilations had put it, God, Love, and Murder.
The ailing septuagenarian certainly sounds like he's near the end of his
life, but that said, he doesn't sound bad. Cash was never a great singer
in a technical sense: he hadn't much range, his pitch often wobbled, and
his lack of breath control sometimes found him grasping for sound at the
end of lines. But he was a great singer in the sense of projecting a persona
through his voice; his emotional range, which went from a Sinatra-like
swagger to an almost embarrassingly intimate vulnerability, was as wide
as the spread of notes he could hit confidently was narrow. Such a singer
doesn't really lose that much with age; in fact, he gains even more interpretive
depth. Listening to this album, one can't get around the knowledge that
it is a posthumous collection made in Cash's last days, but even without
that context, it would have much the same impact.
The album begins with two religious songs, Larry Gatlin's "Help
Me," a plea to God, and the traditional "God's Gonna Cut You
Down," which, in a sense, answers that plea. The finality of death
thus established, Cash launches into what is billed as the last song he
ever wrote, "Like the 309," which is about a train taking his
casket away. The same image is used later in the cover of Hank Williams'
"On the Evening Train," in which a man and his child put the
coffin of a wife and mother on another train. Cash sings these songs in
a restrained manner, and even has a sense of humor in "Like the 309,"
in which he complains about his asthma: "It should be awhile/Before
I see Doctor Death/So it would sure be nice/If I could get my breath."
In between the two train songs come songs that may not have been about
death when their authors wrote them, but sure sound like they are here.
As written, Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" seems
to concern a romantic breakup expressed in literary and cinematic terms,
but in Cash's voice, lines like "You know that ghost is me"
and "But stories always end" become inescapably elegiac. Bruce
Springsteen's "Further On (Up the Road)" is even easier to interpret
as a call to the hereafter, with lines like "Got on my dead man's
suit and my smilin' skull ring/My lucky graveyard boots and song to sing."
These two songs make a pair with the album's two closing songs. Ian Tyson's
"Four Strong Winds" is, like the Lightfoot selection, a folk
standard by a Canadian songwriter, also nominally about romantic dissolution,
although here the singer who is "bound for moving on" doesn't
seem likely to come back. And the closing song, "I'm Free from the
Chain Gang Now," may have lyrics implying that the unjustly imprisoned
narrator has been set free, but in Cash's voice it sounds like he's been
executed instead and is singing from beyond the grave. The four songs
in between "On the Evening Train" and "Four Strong Winds,"
dealing with faith and love (the former expressed in a previously recorded
1984 Cash copyright, "I Came to Believe"), are weaker than what
surrounds them, but they serve to complete the picture. And it's worth
noting that Cash at death's door still outsings croaking Rod McKuen on
the songwriter's ever-cloying "Love's Been Good to Me." Cash
may never have heard Rubin's overdubs, but they are restrained and tasteful,
never doing anything more than to support the singer and the song. If
the entire series of American recordings makes for a fitting finale to
a great career, American V: A Hundred Highways is a more than respectable
coda.
(by William Ruhlmann, All
Music Guide)
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