"They asked if I knew who Johnny Cash was. I was like, ‘Of course I f**king know who he is!" How a punk legend helped resurrect the career of an American icon in less than half an hour

In the early 1990s, Johnny Cash was as cool as a festival beer and playing modestly-sized rooms and county fairs across the US. Rick Rubin did not like that story trajectory and tasked himself with revitalising The Man in Black’s career

The result was a no-frills album titled American Recordings, recorded in his Los Angeles home. It wasn’t a solo mission, though. Glenn Danzig was part of the rescue team.

In the spring of 1993, work had started on the album which would give Cash's life the final chapters the laudation it deserved. He had already recorded his version of the cowboy folk song, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie, titled Oh, Bury Me Not on the finished album. But it was the following December that Cash appeared to hit his stride, recording the remaining 12 songs in a handful of days in Rubin's living room.

“I would send Johnny CDs that contained 30 songs sometimes, other times it might be one," Rubin told Classic Rock. It was just whatever I thought he might like. He might call me back and say: ‘I like four of these’, or ‘I like this one a lot.’”

For the Misfits vocalist, his roots in his collaboration with Cash can be traced back to 1987. Rubin, who produced Danzig's self-titled debut, commissioned him to write a song for Roy Orbison, titled Life Fades Away, for the Less Than Zero soundtrack (it would later appear on a reissue of Orbison's King of Hearts collection). It also helped that two of Cash's nephews were fans of the Misfits vocalist.

“It wasn’t a Danzig song,” Danzig told Revolver. “I wrote him a Roy Orbison song because I’m writing for Roy Orbison. I got to go out to his pad in Malibu a couple of times, teach him the song and then I was in the studio with him, Rick, and [assistant producer] George Drakoulias. It was a really cool experience.”

Danzig received a call from one of Cash's inner circle.

"They’d heard the song I wrote for Roy Orbison and asked if I’d write a song for Johnny Cash," he told this writer. "At first they asked if I knew who Johnny Cash was, and I was like, ‘Of course I fucking know who he is’. When they asked me to write a song for him, I was like ‘Fuck yeah, of course, I’d be honoured.’”

The phone had barely left Danzig's hand before he started work on a song. Within half an hour – or even 15 minutes or 20 minutes, depending on which interview you read – the song Thirteen was done and dusted and ready for the original Man in Black. Plans were made to meet with Cash at Rubin’s house in California on December 7, 1993.

“They invited various prominent songwriters to come and they each got an hour-long appointment with John," recalled Cash's manager, the late Lou Robin. "Glenn Danzig was one of those. At the appointment, they would play their songs, Rick would record them and, if John liked them when they listened again, he’d record them.”

The set-up in Rubin's living room was simple: a couple of microphones and drapes on the wall. Cash would settle in, the tape would roll and that voice would resonate with warmth, wisdom and gravitas. Imagine the Space Coyote in The Simpsons, but with an acoustic guitar.

“I brought it down to him and he loved it," Danzig remembers. "When he sang Thirteen back to me, it was cool. I had one way of singing it, and he had his own way and it became different. We sang and played it together a couple of times at Rick [Rubin’s] home studio but I don’t know if we’ll ever put it out. It was incredible. When he started singing, his voice filled the room.”

Seven months later, Cash recounted his meeting while onstage at the Manhattan Center (now the Hammerstein Ballroom).

“I liked it and started playing along with it and recorded it that night," he told the audience. "When we were going home, he said his last name was Danzig. I said, ‘Hey Glenn Danzig, nice song’.”

You get the picture.

15 years after the release of American Recordings, Danzig re-recorded Thirteen as the closing track to his sixth album, 6:66 Satan's Child. He added an unused verse about playing "21 with The Devil" – "Pontoon with Lucifer" sounds a bit too Spinal Tap, really – and told Rolling Stone that he made it "more creepy" and "kind of eerie". The new version of the song also appeared on The Hangover soundtrack alongside the likes of Phil Collins, The Donnas and The Cramps.

According to the Misfits singer, Thirteen could have been the start of a musical alliance, but after he left Def American under a dark cloud, any further work with Cash failed to come to fruition.

“Later on, he asked me to write him some more stuff," he told Planet Rock magazine. "I wrote him Come To Silver but I never gave it to him [It later appeared on Danzig's 1996 album, Blackacidevil]. He came down to the studio when I was working on Danzig IV and he liked it, but I left [the label] after that and didn’t give it to him. But [writing for him] was a great experience."