4 Springsteen Songs Covered by Johnny Cash Over 30 Years (1983-2003)

When Bruce Springsteen was working on his 1982 album Nebraska, he tapped into Johnny Cash‘s old Sun Records, clinging to his stark and stripped-back storytelling. In 1999, Springsteen also covered Cash’s 1957 ballad “Give My Love to Rose” for the All-Star Tribute to Johnny Cash in New York City.

“Johnny, I wanna send out a big thanks for the inspiration,” said Springsteen during his pretaped performance. “You kinda took the social consciousness from folk music, the gravity and humour from country music, the rebellion out of rock and roll. You taught all those young guys that it was not only alright to tear up all those lines and boundaries, but it was important.”

Days after Cash’s death in September 2003, Springsteen also performed “I Walk the Line” live on his The Rising Tour, and later added the classic “Ring of Fire” riff to his 2014 song “We Are Alive.”

In the years and decades since Nebraska, Cash also pulled several songs from Springsteen’s songbook. Here’s a look behind four Springsteen songs that Cash recorded over 30 years.

Videos by American Songwriter

[RELATED: From Johnny Cash to Finnish Goth: 4 Covers of Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man”]

“Johnny 99” (1983)

Johnny Cash didn’t just cover this Nebraska track; he titled an entire album after it in 1983. Cash’s Johnny 99 opens on another Nebraska song, “Highway Patrolman,” but it’s his version of “Johnny 99,” the story of a man who loses his job, murders a store clerk, and is sent to jail for 999, that takes a more rockabilly turn on the album, despite its darker storyline.

“Highway Patrolman” (1983)

Springsteen’s “Highway Patrolman” opens Cash’s 1983 album Johnny 99. Set in the 1960s, the song tells the story of highway patrolman Joe Roberts and his troubled brother Frankie, who goes off to Vietnam. Joe becomes a farmer before transitioning to a highway patrolman. After leaving the army, Frankie violently attacks someone at a bar and is on the run with his brother on the chase. In the end, Joe can’t bring himself to arrest his brother and lets him flee to Canada: When it’s your brother, sometimes you look the other way … I pulled over to the side of the highway and watched his taillights disappear.

“I’m on Fire” (2000)

In 2000, Johnny Cash recorded a cover of Springsteen’s 1984 classic “I’m on Fire” for a tribute album to the Boss, Badlands: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. The album also featured Springsteen covers by Chrissie Hynde, Ben Harper, Los Lobos, Aimee Mann, Hank Williams III, Ani DiFranco, and more.

Coincidentally, Cash was the initial inspiration behind “I’m on Fire,” one of Springsteen’s more controversial narratives about a man lusting after a younger girl. As Springsteen was piecing together the song, he imagined Cash singing it. Though it was initially recorded for Springsteen’s Nebraska, it wasn’t released until 1984 on Born in the U.S.A.

“Further on Up the Road” (Recorded in 2003; released 2006)

The fifth installment in Cash’s American series of albums, American V: A Hundred Highways, was released three years after he died in 2003. The album features special guests Marty Stuart, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, guitarist Jonny Polonsky, and more, along with a cover of Hank Williams’ “On the Evening Train.” Also on the album is Cash’s final recording of a Springsteen song, “Further on Up the Road.”

Originally released on Springsteen’s 2002 album The Rising, the album was a collection of songs reflecting on the September 11 attacks the previous year. The Rising went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and won two Grammys for Best Rock Song and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for the title track.

Photo: RB/Redferns