Nick Cave reflects on recording with Johnny Cash: "He was a sort of terrifying apparition of a man"

"Just to be clear – Johnny Cash was my hero. I used to watch him as a child. They played The Johnny Cash Show on TV in Australia. I got to sit there as a child and see this man with a voice – there was something about this voice that just followed me all my life," Cave said, explaining his history of admiring Cash before he eventually went on to record a cover of Cave's track, "The Mercy Seat", which was originally performed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on the 1988 album Tender Prey.

Going on to recall the experience of duetting with Johnny Cash on the Hank Williams song, "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", he said he was terrified of singing alongside Cash "because of gravitas of his voice".

“When I got there quite early at the studio and when he arrived – this was close to when he actually died – and he was not well at all. When I saw him, he was a sort of terrifying apparition of a man so different to the man I thought him to be," Cave recalled. Describing the moment he officially met Cash, he said: “He sat down with me and he said, ‘Look, you know, I’ve had the flu, I’ve had laryngitis, I have no voice. I’ve never asked Jesus for anything, but I had to perform with you today. Last night I dropped down on my knees and I said, ‘Jesus, I got to sing with Nick. Give me back my voice."

He revealed Cash said that he woke up that very morning, "singing like a bird". "Then he sat down – this depleted man – and just transformed from this sort of suffering individual into something really extraordinary, literally before my eyes.”