It wasn't necessarily going to end this way for Johnny Cash. When the 62-year-old singer first sat in Rick Rubin's Sunset Strip living room and played him the handful of songs that would form the core of 1994's American Recordings, he seemed destined not for a packed Manhattan Center (now the Hammerstein Ballroom) and an inky monochromatic video treatment but someplace far darker: become a member or log in.
