Guitar MX Blog

There is a recent interview with producer Rick Rubin on Johnny Cash at the Gibson Lifestyle site. Rubin has produced many hit rap and metal albums, but took a chance in the early 90’s by signing and producing for Johnny Cash. These albums with Johnny Cash are known as the American Recordings. The songs on these albums are known for their minimalist style, which has Cash singing over an acoustic guitar. This style seems to works best with Cash’s voice. According to Rubin, this approach was not preconceived. They had experimented with many different styles until settlings on this.

We were just trying to find our way. The first thing we did were acoustic demos, in my living room. And then we went into different studios, with different players, and tried songs in different ways. Ultimately, after many experiments, we kind of looked at each other and decided that we liked the acoustic stuff better than any of the other experiments we tried. – Rick Rubin

The American Recordings exposed Cash to a younger audience by performing with and covering songs written by contemporary artists. One example is the song Rusty Cage, which was originally recorded by Soundgarden.

Here’s a dark song off the first of the American Recordings albums and a good example of the minimalist style used on these albums.

You can read the rest of the Rubin interview here.