How Rick Rubin Helped Revitalize Johny Cash’s Career

Johnny cash had gone 25 years of not having success, and when I signed him, he didn't even know why I was interested. He's like, why do you think working with you is going to be any different than working with anyone else? Like, he had given up. In my Living room, he would just play me songs on an acoustic guitar. And there was an honesty in what was happening there. We didn't know that we were making a record at that time. We were just looking for songs. We went through hundreds of songs and then picked a handful to try to record. And when we went into the studio with the band, it didn't have what the Living Room recordings had, some intimate honesty. And we'd never heard Johnny Cash that way before. So that led to the first album, which was a solo acoustic album, and that was a real revelation.