While away from our shackles this weekend, we read in this months Vanity Fair (our hands smelled like Calvin Klein’s Eternity for days) that Rick Rubin, founder of Def Jam Records and producer extrordinaire of the likes of the Beastie Boys and Jay-Z, had an intense spiritual relationship with the late, great Johnny Cash in the ten years before the Man in Black died. Rubin, who was expelled from Hebrew school as a boy and never looked back, took communion with Cash every day while recording The American Recordings, a ritual that involves crackers and grape juice and Jesus, somehow. If he and Johnny weren’t in the same place they’d do it over the phone, which might seem weird except we’re talking about two eccentric musical geniuses here, so we’ll begrudge them a little long distance genuflecting. Heck, if it would bring Johnny back, we’d offer up our matzah and a slug of Manischewitz.
No word on when Cash’s last album American V (produced by Rubin in Cash’s Nashville home) will be released, but these guys will keep you posted.