Stains of Time: Ageing According to Johnny Cash's "Hurt"

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Even from the first chime of Cash’s guitar and the pain-soaked lyrics of the first verse it is clear that Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” is going to do just that: hurt. 

Like many of the stars of the Rock ‘n’ Roll era it is all too easy to discount Johnny Cash as a thoughtless songwriter but to do so would be more than a little foolish. Songs like “Man in Black” and Cash’s decision to cover “Hurt”, along with his years of political campaigning for Native Americans and the mistreatment of Vietnam vets, go on to show that he was an extremely thoughtful man. 

Originally a song about self-harm, depression, and drug use, Trent Reznor’s song is one that was transformed by Cash’s performance. Instead of being a consideration of the fragility of life and the numbness one feels when there appears to be no hope, Cash takes the song and makes it a musing on the damage of time. The line ‘What have I become, my sweetest friend?’ asks not what drugs and depression have done but what ageing has done to both the mind and body of a once strong person. Johnny Cash recorded the song in 2002 and starred in the music video in February 2003, just 7 months before his death. 

Trent Reznor, who wrote “Hurt”. Credit- Gary Malerba, Getty Images

Even without seeing his fragile frame in the music video (which we will get on to) it is clear from his voice, that this is not the Johnny Cash which hollered about shooting a man in Reno “just to watch him die”  in front of inmates in Folsom Prison nor the country superstar that performed next to greats such as Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, or Dolly Parton. His once rich baritone is withered down to little more than a cry. But it fits the song, and more importantly the message, so much better. Cash’s cover of the Nine Inch Nails songs is perhaps one of the greatest reflections on age in music history, along with the late John Prine’s “Hello in There”. 

If the song, in its cut back and sparse audio form, were not enough to pull at your heart strings then the music video is enough to melt the heart of the most heartlessly-hearted critic. Directed by Mark Romanek (who at the time had been a collaborator with Nine Inch Nails and has since worked with artists from Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, and Beyoncé), the music video for “Hurt” is one that contrasts the young and confident Cash with his aged and infirm older self. 

We begin by seeing Cash’s aged hands plucking the opening riff on a guitar and then we are shown the face, and the hollow empty eyes that John Prine famously wrote about. Instantly we can see how Cash is locked away in a kind of Miss Havisham-esque former glory. He is surrounded by once lavish decor that now seems haunting. We get our first glimpse at the House of Cash which features so heavily in Romanek’s video. Serving as the core metaphor for the superstars fall from grace, the museum of Cash’s life and work is shown to be run down, close to the public, and near ransacked. The montages of Cash’s former life as an all round man of entertainment, starring in films, headlining shows, and travelling the world, are chosen in such a way that every note of the piano or strum of the guitar brings up another broken thought. 

Cash & Bob Dylan on one episode of the Johnny Cash Show. Credit- austinchronicle.com

The build on the first chorus is just a clue to the emotional wound that will be opened with the songs finally. The second verse opens with a black and white video of a prison cell being shut and a prisoner sitting alone in his cell; this is quickly followed a piece of film reel showing Cash in one his roles in a western movie telling the camera to “stay the hell away from me, you hear,” offering a much more closed off and threatening image to that of the old man featured in the rest of the video.

Originally, Reznor’s second verse opened with “I wear this crown of shit/Upon my liar’s chair” but this was changed by Cash to be “I wear this crown of thorns” and while it might seem self-righteous to compare oneself to Jesus Christ this was another example of Cash’s thoughtfulness. Johnny Cash was many things but a devout christian was perhaps the thing he was most; he used the biblical metaphor of Jesus on the Cross to show just how withering ageing can be and how, with time, all of our sins catch up with us,  in one form or another. Later, we see other biblical reference in the form of Cash’s shaking hands pouring out a goblet of blood red wine and intercut shots of a dramatic reconstruction of the Crucifixion. 

The close of the second verse and the beginning of the final chorus bring with it one of the most emotionally charged sections of the music video. The lines “You are someone else/And I am still right here” are followed by a shot of Cash’s second wife, the great June Carter-Cash, watching over him; a caring look of shared pain and helplessness in her eyes. The fact that June would die just 3 months after the video was filmed, leaving Johnny alone for the final 4 months of his life adds even more gravity to the feeling of being left behind by time and the first lines of the chorus:

“What have I become,

My sweetest friend?

Everyone I know, 

Goes away in the end.”

Cash and his second wife, June Carter Cash. Credit- Special Collections, University Of Memphis Libraries.

By the time Cash's voice begins to distort slightly in the song's final few lines, the quick succession of shots from his past life just add to the wealth of emotion already produced. The strikes of the piano and the strums of the guitar gather greater emphasis as Cash moves onto a final and, somewhat surprisingly, resolute and triumphant note. Cash tells us that:

“If I could start again,

A million miles away,

I would keep myself.

I would find a way.”

Perhaps this is Cash telling us that despite all of the pain caused by the passage of time, it is simply something that we all must, hopefully, experience. Or maybe it is another biblical consideration of  the foolishness of humans and how, despite everything that we can learn from the death of Christ, we still fail to relies that we are selfish creatures. Either way, a triumphant ending somehow feels fitting to a song and music video that is, at points, uncomfortable to take in. It is a last attack against the “stains of time.” Despite the somewhat clumsy metaphors of a closing piano lid and a fading spotlight, which are forgiven because of what precedes them, Johnny Cash’s cover of the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt” ends by being one of the greatest cover, song, and music video in music history.