Prolific Bono may be as a songwriter, forgetting you have a song collaboration with Johnny Cash is quite remarkable.
The U2 frontman confirmed that, during the period where Bono and Cash worked on The Wanderer, there had been work on another track, Ellis Island. Though Cash never had a chance to record the vocals before his death in 2003, Bono has confirmed the existence of the song. There is no comment on whether U2 will record or release the song but Bono did recall Cash as a “folk hero” who, during his 1970s period, was considered one of the greats in Ireland. Frequent visits to the country from The Man in Black made that so, and U2 would end up working with Cash in the 1990s on their Zooropa album. Though it was a match made in heaven, some at the time viewed the collaboration as “the end” of U2’s “experimental” record.
Bono, speaking to BBC Radio 2 as part of the Tracks of My Years appearance, said: “I have a relationship with Johnny Cash because when he was not cool in the end of the 70s, It’s hard to imagine Johnny Cash ever being uncool. But there was a period because he was a star of the early seventies and he wasn’t cool kind of anywhere, but he always came to Ireland. He was a folk hero in Ireland and I used to go and see him. I think we went to see him. We had this kind of reverence for Johnny Cash and I’d end up on stage with him, ended up writing songs with him.
“It’s Johnny’s story really, The Wanderer. And it’s in one of our most experimental albums. And people are saying Johnny Cash is going to be the end of Zooropa. This really experimental album with Eno and Flood. And he came into the studio, but he was going, so how do I find my time here? And I said, well, you know, you’re Johnny Cash, you can do it anytime you want. And he goes, no, but the metre is so exacting because it’s electronic. And he stayed with it, and he stayed with it, and he stayed with it, and he got it.”
Bono would go on to recall a somewhat awkward interaction with Cash’s wife, June Cash. U2 had heard Johnny Cash had been ill and rang his home to wish him well. June Cash picked up the phone, and Bono believed Johnny was simply not present at the time, until he realised the Folsom Prison Blues hitmaker had been listening the whole time.
The U2 frontman recalled: “And it’s a beautiful and extraordinary Southern Gothic kind of song somewhat comic and then you know he was in our life, called his house because we heard he was ill and June picked up and she said ‘oh hi Bono, how’s Ellie, how’s the band, how’s Jury’s hotel’ as because that’s where they used to stay and I had a little chat I was talking I said, ‘I’m just curious about how Johnny is’ and all this she kept asking questions we were talking for about 20 minutes and I realised He’s obviously not there.
“So I said, ‘Well, June, look, if you see Johnny, just tell him we heard he was ill and the band are asking after him.’ And she [said], ‘Oh, no, he’s right here, he’s right beside me. We’re in bed.’ So Johnny picks up, and says, ‘Sorry about that.’ He proceeds to, you know, talk, you know, and we had a great relationship and we worked on songs.
“And just five years ago, 10 years ago, His son John came to see us and he’d found lyrics of a song we had written together that I had completely forgotten we’d written together, a song called Ellis Island. And I have it now, it’s an unfinished U2 song called Ellis Island with Johnny Cash.”
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