Some of Johnny Cash’s best work came near the end of his life when he covered songs by several late 20th-century rock artists, notably "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails and "Rusty Cage" by Soundgarden. Cash recorded 60 songs in the last four months of his life alone.
Ignored by the traditional major labels in the 1990s, he was offered a contract with producer Rick Rubin's American Recordings label, rebranded from Def American, known for rap and hard rock recordings.
From Wiki: His final recordings were made on August 21, 2003, and consisted of "Like the 309", which appeared on American V: A Hundred Highways in 2006, and the final song he completed, "Engine 143", which was recorded for his son John Carter Cash for a planned Carter Family tribute album.
In this MTV interview from August of 2003, Johnny Cash revealed that he didn’t generally enjoy filming music videos. “It’s just work. Sometimes it’s really fun, I enjoyed doing the Hurt video. I enjoyed doing that very much because I thought we were doing something worthwhile. That it was something that was kind of special.” When asked if filming the video was an emotional experience Cash replied, “I did, I did. I felt very emotional during the Hurt video.”
Asked if he had regrets in life Cash answered, “I used to but I forgave myself. When God forgave me, I figured I’d better do it too. So everything’s alright now.”
Johnny Cash died on September 12, 2003, three weeks after this interview.
In October 1965, Johnny Cash was arrested in El Paso, Texas for attempting to smuggle amphetamines across the Mexican border in his guitar case. His addiction to pills led to the desolution of his first marriage to Vivian Liberto. In another MTV interview Cash confessed, “In 1967, I was on amphetamines really, really bad, and I was totally insane. I got in my Jeep and I drove down to Chattanooga, and there was a cave there. A monstrous cave, it went for miles back up onto Lookout Mountain. I went into that cave with my pills, just exploring, you know. I had all these wild ideas about finding gold, Civil War [relics] or something in this cave. I'd keep going and I kept taking the pills, kept taking the amphetamines, and after a certain point, after I'd been in there about three hours. I tried to close my eyes, but you can't close your eyes for long on amphetamines. I laid down and I said, 'God, I can't take it anymore; I can't make it any further, you'll have to take me now, I want to go, I want to die.' "
In 1999, Cash was given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
“When I record somebody else's song, I have to make it my own or it doesn't feel right. I'll say to myself, I wrote this and he doesn't know it!” - Johnny Cash
