Waylon Jennings Once Roasted Johnny Cash Over Now-Iconic ‘American Recordings’ Cover

What are friends for if they can’t make fun of you like this?

Of course, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash were not only members of the Highwaymen and iconic country artists in their own rights, they were also very close friends and even lived together during their early years in Nashville. They both had severe drug problems in their younger years, and they’ve admitted to spending $1,000 a day on drugs at the peak of their addiction. Although, it wasn’t something they did together, and wasn’t something they openly talked about very often.

It’s a wonder they became what they did, honestly, but when they shared an apartment, Waylon admits that they hardly ever slept (or ate) there:

“We didn’t sleep a lot. And, uh, June… I was supposed to clean it up… she’d be merciful and once in a while come over there and clean it up. John was the cook, which he got the best deal, because in those days, me and John didn’t eat but like once a week. Whether we was hungry or not, you know.”

Apparently, Johnny was an expert breakfast maker and went all out when it came to the fixings:

“But he can cook breakfast, I gotta say for him. But you gotta picture this first, though. Here he is, he gets over there and he fixes every kind of breakfast meat, you know.

Pork chops, and ham, sausage, and then he fixes all kind of eggs. Fry ’em, drop ’em, pick ’em up. Then he fixes biscuits, and then the best of all, he fixes gravy. He does all of this while he’s over there and he’s got that black suit on. ‘Cuz John wore his suits inside out.”

Ya gotta love the image of Johnny wearing that full-on black suit even when he’s cooking breakfast.

The best part of the interview, though, comes when Waylon roasts Johnny for getting the baking powder from the biscuits all over himself whenever he’d cook:

“You’d turn around and he’d have that baking powder all over him… I think that’s what got me on cocaine. I’ve never told him that. I finally found an excuse.”

Of course, they both eventually kicked their drug habits for good, and during the second act of his career, if you will, Johnny worked with legendary producer Rick Rubin (who was known for his work in the rap and heavy metal genres) on his classic American Recordings album, his 81st album that was released in April of 1994.

It helped restart Cash’s career, as he had been sort of pushed out of country at the time and was struggling with health issues and some other things. His record sales had started to suffer, but Rubin still saw he was a viable artist, so they put this album out and the rest, as they say, is history.

But one song in particular caused some controversy, which was Cash’s inclusion of “Delia’s Gone,” an old folk song that has been done many times by a wide variety of musical artists over the years. Cash had first recorded “Delia’s Gone” the 60’s, which was always a dark murder ballad. There are quite a few different versions, and he recorded one that was inspired by a popular Bahamian one, and a few lyric changes he made only made it more gruesome. The video made him look really wild and it’s pretty jarring, honestly, but that was the point. Some criticized the song for its explicit and gruesome details, which by today’s standards, probably feel much less shocking.

The song is dark by nature, it’s a murder ballad like I said, but hearing it from Johnny Cash and seeing him the way he was on the cover for the whole album (which is featured in the cover photo for this article if you want another look) was probably quite a surprise for fans. Johnny was no longer the young, rowdy outlaw, but this revived image was meant to be a shock and make news, and it certainly did…

Kate Moss stars in the “Delia’s Gone” video alongside Cash, and it’s dark even in terms of the visuals which definitely channels that “Man in Black” persona and makes a huge statement.  And during a 1994 interview with Waylon on TNN, he was asked about his friendship with Johnny and that video and album cover in particular. He said Johnny was his “purest friend” through the years, which seems like an incredibly high compliment from Waylon Jennings:

“John has always been one of my heroes, period. And John has been my purest friend through all the years. He’s bigger than life in so many ways, you know, and people are so intimidated by him and everything. And I can I can see where they would be, you know, but he… he just, he is bigger than life. When he’s your friend, that’s bigger than life.”

Waylon explained that it’s a very old folk song, and he thought Johnny’s version was “great”:

“That song is a real old song. It’s even older than me, it’s an old folk song. John’s got a great version of it, he has.”

When the woman doing the interview brought up the fact that Johnny had stirred up so much controversy, Waylon did not miss the chance to absolutely rip his friend, saying he looked like “a serial killer” on the American Recordings album cover and he could see why there was a big stir over all of it:

“Well, yeah. Who wouldn’t… look at that picture of him on the front of the album. He looks like a serial killer, you know. He’d kill cornflakes…”

Waylon Jennings… never one to hold back and not say exactly what was on his mind. and in the interview, even the interviewer couldn’t help but laugh. I can only imagine what kinds of conversations Waylon had with his friends off camera and I would do anything to have been a fly on the wall, so to speak, that’s for sure.

But me explaining it just doesn’t do it justice… you have to watch Waylon tell it himself:

Here’s the video if you’ve never seen it before:

The original Cash rendition from the 1962:

“Delia’s Gone”

Waylon’s version of “Delia’s Gone”:

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