In an interview with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, Nick Cave recalled how Johnny Cash pushed himself and called on a higher power for the opportunity to record a duet cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” for Cash’s 2002 American IV album.
Cash was around 70 at the time and had been suffering from the flu and laryngitis. “When I saw him, he was sort of a terrifying apparition of a man, so different than the man I thought him to be,” Cave said. “He was essentially blind walking down these stairs with his hands out, going, ‘Are you there, Nick?’ And I’m looking at it, like, ‘How is this man going to perform?’ … [Cash said] ‘I’ve never asked Jesus for anything, but I had to perform with you today, and last night, I dropped down on my knees and said, ‘Jesus, I’ve got to sing with Nick. Give me back my voice.” [Cash’s wife] June Carter was there as well, and she was going, ‘Hallelujah, Hallelujah.’ It was an extraordinary moment.”
Cave said Cash then sat down and appeared rejuvenated. “So we sang this beautiful song together,” Cave said. “We finished the song, and there’s this dead silence. And [producer] Rick Rubin said, ‘Gentlemen, we’re gonna have to do that again.’ And I’m like, [bleep]. And I go, ‘I’m flat, right?’ And he goes, ‘No, Johnny’s flat.’ And I was like, ‘Oh … amateur.'”
Cave, whose new album Wild God comes out Aug. 30, also explained how his perspective on grief has become different since losing two sons and why he made what he considers a joyful album. “I think there’s a decision that we need to make … On some level, there is a desire to turn inward and wrap ourselves around the absence of the person that we’ve lost, as if there’s some sort of nobility in wrapping ourselves around the absence of that person,” he said. “And I think that’s a very dangerous situation and a mistake, and that we must be able to turn ourselves the other way and look at the world and understand that we are part of a world and that the world is essentially full of people who have lost things. … We need to understand that that is what we are.
“And I’ve found that by looking at the world in that way that I saw the world not as a cruel place but as an extraordinarily, systemically beautiful place to live in,” he continued. “And that’s out there. That’s why we’re talking about this record. It’s a joyful record … There is joy and there is happiness in a way that we could never believe possible on the other side of grief.”
Ahead of the album release, Cave has previewed several songs from Wild God, including the title track, “Frogs,” and “Long Dark Night.” He will be touring with the Bad Seeds throughout Europe for most of the fall but will make a solo appearance in Brooklyn on Thursday to play Wild God for an audience and participate in a conversation about his creative process.
