30 Years Ago: Iconic Johnny Cash Show Relaunches His Career

There are concerts. Then there are concerts that go on to be so iconic, they become etched into the consciousness of music indelibly and forevermore. On December 3rd, 1993—30 years ago today—Johnny Cash played one such concert to a very small, but very distinguished group of guests. The performance would go on to be the catalyst to revitalize his entire musical career, and launch Johnny Cash into the stratosphere once again.
Johnny Cash’s set for 150 people at the tiny and packed club called The Viper Room in West Hollywood, California wasn’t the beginning of Johnny Cash’s re-emergence with producer Rick Rubin, resulting in his Cash’s second coming. But it’s the moment where it all became real and front facing to the public, and where the American Recordings era first caught fire.
You probably already know the first part of the story about how Johnny Cash was virtually washed up in late 1992 after being abandoned by the country music industry, and was relegated to playing nostalgia shows in Branson, and generally being crestfallen about the lot of his career after so many years as a country star and legend. Producer Rick Rubin went to see Cash perform at The Rhythm Cafe in Santa Ana, California on February 27th, 1993, and immediately knew he wanted to work with him.
By June of 1993, Johnny Cash was signed to American Recordings and regularly going to Rick Rubin’s home off the Sunset Strip to record in his living room—just Johnny, Rick, and a couple of microphones. It became evident quickly that they were capturing something magical. As fall turned to winter, Cash continued to work with Rubin, including at his Cash Cabin studio in Hendersonville, TN.
But up until December 3rd, everything was still preliminary and hypothetical. Would Johnny Cash really be able to hold an audience with just his voice and an acoustic guitar? Previously, Cash’s guitar had been just as much a prop as it was and instrument as he strummed it way up on the fretboard. It was the date at The Viper Room that would go on to prove that Cash 2.0 could be epic.
The Viper Room had been founded by Johnny Depp earlier in 1993, and catered mostly to rock, punk, and metal bands. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played the opening show as a favor to Depp, and it has since become an iconic Los Angeles club, despite its small size and multiple ownership changes (Depp sold it in 2002). Many important musical moments have happened on that stage. But arguably none more important than Johnny Cash’s.

When Johnny Cash took the stage, Johnny Depp is who introduced him. Tom Petty was in the crowd as a true fan and spectator, and would go on and insist to Rick Rubin that he and the Heartbreakers wanted to be a part of the next Johnny Cash recording sessions. Flea of The Red Hot Chili Peppers was also there, as were scores of other heavyweights in the music and entertainment business. Johnny’s bride June Carter Cash was in the front row too.
Johnny Cash admits that for the first time in many years in his career, he was super nervous taking the stage because he didn’t know if he could pulled off what Rick Rubin envisioned for him. But of course, Johnny Cash killed.
“It was an incredible night. Dead silent. You could hear a pin drop. People couldn’t believe it was Johnny Cash there in The Viper Room,” Rick Rubin recalled later. “People who were there that night still talk about it as one of the greatest things they’ve ever seen.”
After Cash played 45 minutes of the American Recordings material they were working on, he leaned over to June and asked, “What do I do now?” She replied, “Well, sing your hits.” And that’s exactly what Johnny Cash did.
When the opening salvo from Johnny Cash’s American Recordings was released on April 26th, 1994, two songs recorded on that night at The Viper Room made the album: “Tennessee Stud,” and “The Man Who Couldn’t Cry.” Most notably, “Tennessee Stud” is far and away the most downloaded and streamed song from the album. When you hear the crowd hooting and cheering Johnny Cash on, you’re hearing it directly from the Viper Room set.
Johnny Cash’s appearance at The Viper Room went on to be one of those shows everyone in Hollywood claimed to be at, but only a few were telling the truth. Rick Rubin knew Johnny Cash could still be iconic, and so did Johnny himself. But it took The Viper Room performance to prove it, and the buzz from it went on to seed the interest in Johnny Cash’s American Recordings legacy.
December 3, 2023 @ 10:34 am
John Lennon is on record as saying that nothing ever really affected him, musically, until he first heard Elvis Presley. That’s basically how I feel about Cash. I liked him before, but when I first heard the Folsom Prison album, that virtually blew away all previous albums I had liked. His television show was exceptional, and not only introduced many people to country music, but also introduced many country music lovers (and others) to what we now call “Americana.” While his career did go into decline for a number of years prior to the American Recordings sessions, I maintain he still made some quality albums during that span, including “The Baron,” “Silver,” and a couple of others. “The Ballad of Barbara,” one of the singles from that era, is a great song. I highly recommend both of Cash’s autobiographies in order for one to better understand the events that created one of the greatest singer-songwriters of the 20th Century.
December 27, 2023 @ 7:21 pm
100% Agreed !!!!
December 3, 2023 @ 10:43 am
And next year sees the 30th anniversary of a show Johnny said was amongst his favourites. Glastonbury Festival 1994, I. Was always a fan before then but seeing him then cemented it.
December 3, 2023 @ 11:05 am
I became a country music fan when a student a long time ago. I was bored studying and was tuning my radio form station to station and stopped when I came across Cash in Concert singing I walk the Line, Streets of Laredo , Riders in the Sky etc. I was hooked. I saw him concerts a few times and he always entertained. The American recordings took him to another completely different level. He remains my favourite to this day. I just wish I could have been at the Viper.
December 3, 2023 @ 11:24 am
Was this show ever released? I
December 3, 2023 @ 3:25 pm
The first “American Recordings” album came out in 1994. Johnny Cash was on tour for the album and was performing at Carnegie Hall on September 14, 1994. I didn’t buy a ticket because it was the first night of Yom Kippur. I went to shul with my father that evening. Afterward, I had nothing to do and I couldn’t stop in a coffee shop and get something to drink or eat, so I took a 15-minute walk over to Carnegie Hall just to see what was happenning and got there before the start time.
There was a crowd milling about on W. 57th Street, mostly ticket holders, and I started talking to a guy in a sport coat who was out there. Turned out, he was with “Rolling Stone.” He had two tickets and he was waiting for a colleague of his to show up. In the end his friend didn’t show, so he gave me the ticket for free. I wasn’t carrying any money, anyway, but I was once in the boxing business, and I know that if you work in the media and are given a comped ticket, you absolutely do not sell it–and you also don’t want it to go unused. The promoter will not appreciate either one. But he didn’t have to give it to me. Anyway, I went in, the seat was in the center, four rows from the stage, and I saw the whole show. I figured the songs about sin and redemption were in keeping with the holy day.
December 3, 2023 @ 5:46 pm
I always respect the musicians that can wow a crowd with just a sparse or lone acoustic set. I listen to a bunch of different genres and love a good electrified band performance, but there’s something special about folks who can keep an audience transfixed for an hour or more by themselves with their chosen instrument.
December 3, 2023 @ 5:59 pm
That young man looks like Johnny debb
December 3, 2023 @ 6:52 pm
Johnny Cash was one of the greatest entertainers of the 20th century. I bought every new Cash album starting in the late 60’s. Also purchased all of the ones in his Columbia catalog released before I was old enough to really know who Johnny Cash was. Even by the late 60’s ALL of Cash’s previous Columbia albums were still in print and widely available. When his vintage 1950’s recordings were finally back in print on the resurrected Sun label in the late 60’s & early 70’s I added those to my collection too.
That said I’m tired of the false recurring narrative that Cash was somehow “abandoned” by the music industry in the mid-80’s. Unfortunately by the late 70’s Cash had returned to his old habits involving substance abuse. He cared little about his recordings. Marshall Grant, the original bass player from the Tennessee Two who was also Cash’s long-time road manager recounted the sad details of Cash’s relapse in his book “I Was There When It Happened.” According to Grant, it was very difficult to even get Cash to go into a recording studio.
If you listen to Cash’s 1980’s albums it is painfully obvious that he had lost interest in his music. His record sales plummeted as did his concert attendance. The low point was this embarrassing single & video from 1984:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTP9__vi3d4
Cash had a brief resurgence as part of the Highwaymen ensemble in 1985, but his solo efforts continued to flounder. Then when his Columbia contract was up for renewal he asked his daughter Rosanne what her Columbia Records deal was. Rosanne Cash was much hotter than her Dad during that era scoring huge single hits and selling millions of albums. Cash demanded that Columbia give him a deal similar to Rosanne’s. It was a ridiculous demand that made no financial sense for Columbia so they parted ways.
Cash went to Mercury Records but little changed there. Mostly lackluster new recordings that did not sell well or get much radio play. Cash even re-recorded new versions of his old hits to pump up sales but eventually the Mercury deal ended too.
So let’s be clear. The situation that Cash found himself in 30 years ago was mostly of his own doing. Yes the “New Country” era was in full bloom so veteran artists were being pushed to the sidelines. But Cash had badly derailed his career more than a decade earlier with only himself to blame.
Thankfully Cash’s association with Rick Rubin resurrected his pride and his career during the final decade of his life by introducing him to new and younger fans. But to be honest as big of a Cash fan as I am, I never enjoyed any of his American Recordings as much as his innovative early Sun records or his pre-1980’s Columbia recordings when he was at his creative peak.
Less than 10 years after the Viper Room concert, Cash was gone. He died on September 12, 2003. Cash was only 71 years old but due to his long time drug abuse and other ailments he looked decades older and was in frail health. It was a much too early ending for an American Icon.
December 3, 2023 @ 7:34 pm
Whoa!
71 is considered a pretty full life. Yes, lots of people live 10 or 20 or 25 years longer, but there are plenty of seemingly healthy people who take care of themselves who die at an even younger age. of a sudden heart attack or something. You sound angry at the guy, 20 years after he died.
December 3, 2023 @ 7:52 pm
And somehow Keith Richard’s is 79 although he looks like he died several years ago.
December 4, 2023 @ 7:26 am
71 was considered a “full life” 50 years ago. But by 2003 (the year Cash died) life expectancy had risen to almost 77 years old. In 2023 it is now 79. Those are just the averages and many folks live well beyond what the actuarial tables predict.
I find it very sad that due to his own behavior Cash likely hastened his own demise. His final years were very difficult for him physically. For a man that contributed so much to American culture and music it seems very unfair to me. His life choices provide a cautionary tale for the rest of us.
December 4, 2023 @ 12:44 pm
I appreciated reading this perspective, and for sure Cash made some mediocre records at various points in his career, including the 1970s (“Strawberry Cake” or maybe “Look at Them Beans”, anyone?). But I’d argue that for every “Chicken in Black” in his 80s output, there’s something great to be found, like his bittersweet version of “Love Me Like You Used To” from the final Columbia album, Rainbow, or the lovely duet with Emmylou Harris on Roy Acuff’s classic “”As Long as I Live”, from the Water From the Wells of Home album. From my perspective, Cash never stopped making great music; we all just stopped listening for awhile.
December 4, 2023 @ 2:56 pm
Good stuff, CountryDJ.
I tire of the narrative that country music screwed Cash. Johnny wrecked his career.
I enjoy some of the American Recordings but dislike how Rubin mostly sidelined Cash’s humorous side in favor of the dark and dreary Old Testament reaper.
December 3, 2023 @ 9:10 pm
Thanks for highlighting Tennessee Stud on here. This is the song we played in college and this is the song my kids love to listen to. I’m not a Cash fan, but this is a great tune, and far better than Cash’s pandering BS.
December 3, 2023 @ 11:36 pm
I love this. This is exactly the type of content I love to see here. I am now about to go back and listen to American Recordings once again.
December 4, 2023 @ 7:09 am
93′ let me see…oh that was the year I discovered the Jayhawks Hollywood town hall. Yeah, I missed this. I was discovering alt country and what would later be dubbed “Americana” around that time. JC was my dads music. still is really. that’s not to say I haven’t apricated Johnny over the years, but I was a different place then. I’m today years old when I learned that JC even played the Viper Room. It’s a pretty cool story tho.
December 4, 2023 @ 7:56 am
Very similar story to mine. I was floundering in the early 90s musically, trying to find something that was…well, I didn’t know. I eventually settled on “authentic” and found, almost at the same time, Hollywood Town Hall and Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo, which was released the next spring.
That led to a myriad other artists I was only vaguely aware of or had never heard of.
Of course, as to authenticity, the lid got blown off
December 4, 2023 @ 7:53 am
It was outside the Viper Room where 23-year-old River Phoenix’s fatal overdose occurred Halloween 1993,but it was his Dec.3,1993 Viper Room concert at which Johnny Cash reminded the crowd that he was Country music’s true Tennessee stud.
December 4, 2023 @ 5:33 pm
Johnny Cash is by far my favorite country performer of all time. Honestly, I view the Sun and early Columbia period (1955 to around 1969) and the American Recordings era as the two peaks of his career, artistically. That said, I’ve got to wonder how much of a “comeback” the American period really was. Sure, it was awards fodder but – until “Hurt” (and even that was mostly posthumously), it didn’t really equate to that much more airplay or exposure. I know he played stuff like the Glastonbury festival in the wake of the first American Recordings record, but the live appearances ended out of necessity after Unchained.
Really, looking at Cash’s later career, it does feel like there are a ton of missed opportunities. Had he chosen to align himself more with the Outlaw movement in the early 1970s, he could’ve probably arrested his career slide. A chapter in one of the Cash biographies I’ve read goes into a pretty deep dive on how Cash recorded “The Gambler” prior to Kenny Rogers. Apparently, Cash rejected most of the producer, Brian Ahern’s suggestions, and the result is an incredibly dull take on the song. Ahern then went on to produce the massive hit version for Kenny Rogers.
What’s funny is that the Personal File set Columbia/Legacy put out a few years ago – most of which was recorded in the ‘70s if memory serves – would seem to show that it wasn’t just that producers didn’t know what to do with Johnny cash (the commonly held view) , but also that Cash didn’t really have a sound grasp of what his audience wanted either – or he’d have put that stuff (which greatly resembles the first American Recordings) out earlier.
December 5, 2023 @ 6:23 am
Agree with your contention that Cash had numerous missed opportunities. It’s likely that his judgement was often clouded by substance abuse. Marshall Grant also indicated Cash had some people around him that gave him bad advice or outright lied to him. But I don’t think that he could have become a convincing member of the outlaw movement. That movement was fundamentally about bucking the system. But by the early 70’s Cash had already become such a mainstream icon that trying to reposition himself as an “outsider” would have been viewed as unauthentic. Public admissions of his deep religious beliefs and appearances on the Billy Graham Crusade TV programs was not very “outlaw.” However had the public been aware that a few years earlier he had impregnated his sister-in-law (leading her to have an abortion) while his wife was pregnant with his son, may have given him a true “outlaw” image.
The Cash biography you referenced contains some erroneous info. Kenny Rogers’ hit version of “The Gambler” was produced by Larry Butler not Brian Ahern. Butler produced all of Kenny’s late 70’s hits.
My guess is that other than hard core Cash fans there would have been little interest in Cash’s sparse “Personal File” recordings when they were made 40+ years ago. They were essentially demos never intended for public consumption at that time. Who could have predicted that the unembellished recordings with Cash & his guitar would one day be considered acceptable for release. But you are right that Cash had the right idea. It was just many years too soon.
December 5, 2023 @ 7:37 pm
The American Recordings era had a lot of great remakes of rock tunes (NIN’s “Hurt,” Soundgarden’s “Rusty Cage,” U2’s “One,” etc.). The one no-brainer that I always thought Cash and Rubin missed was that they should’ve done a take on Metallica’s “Unforgiven.” Just the thought of that biblically thundering voice delivering the lyrics “you labeled me, I’ll label you – so I dub thee unforgiven” would’ve been amazing. Cash actually talks about taking in Iron Maiden and Metallica shows with John Carter in his biography, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he’d heard the song.
December 6, 2023 @ 1:41 pm
I could imagine Jonny Cash as The Gambler due to the craggy features lots of gambles have wondering if they’ll at least break even,but Johnny’s great career had been made long before the movie hit the theatres.