Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

A new year, and a new series. Here I plan to visit album covers which I like. I have no idea if they are the best ever “” an entirely subjective game anyway “” but the featured covers will have made some kind of impression on me. To limit things further, I think I”ll feature only cover art of albums I actually own. We kick things off with Johnny Cash.

After 15 years without a hit album, Johnny Cash made a remarkable comeback in 1994 with the first in his American series of albums, American Recordings, produced by Rick Rubin. Although Rubin was determined to move Cash away from his tried-and-tested (and by now outdated) sound, he did not expect that much of the album would consist of the informal recordings made in a living room as research demos (plus two live tracks recorded at LA”s Viper Room).

Likewise, the cover was the result of unplanned circumstance. The cover picture had to be taken in Australia, where Cash was on tour with Kris Kristofferson. Photographer Andy Earl had scouted a deserted railway track which might give the photo an American feel in keeping with its title (and presumably to accompany two songs which riffed on train themes). The idea was to shoot Cash walking along the tracks. But the tracks didn”t come into proper focus, so the idea was abandoned. At the same time, dramatically ominous clouds were forming in the sky. Earl told Cash, wearing a long, black cloak, to stand in the adjacent wheat field. And as Cash started posing, two dogs ““ one white with black markings, the other black with white markings ““ appeared and positioned themselves on each side of Cash.

Whether the composition was indeed the result of fortuitous quirk or whether it was planned (or, hell, even photoshopped), the result is utterly dramatic and profoundly symbolic of its subject. It expresses the contradictions in Cash, the devout and gentle Christian who, for all his desire to walk the line, could and often would raise hell. The high contrasts express Cash”s contradictions, the virtuous man and the flawed. While Cash stands erect, looking much like a modern-day biblical prophet administering a blessing, thunderclouds are rolling behind him. And the dogs might represent the two sides of Cash “” as the man himself once said: the good John R. Cash and the hellraiser Johnny Cash. Or, as Cash said in an interview with the New York Post, sin and redemption. And, rightly, these are themes Cash deals with repeatedly in his lyrics on the album.

Johnny Cash – The Beast In Me.mp3
Johnny Cash – Thirteen.mp3

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