, their first collaboration, Rubin scrapped the country-music orchestration and encouraged Cash to use only an acoustic guitar to accompany his increasingly fragile baritone. Over six albums and a box set of outtakes, Rubin updated Cash’s material with covers of songs by Soundgarden and Nine Inch Nails; guests on these albums included contemporary musicians like Flea, Fiona Apple and Nick Cave. As the Cash example shows, the subjects of rock restoration projects aren’t always rockers.
Among the first of such retrofits were blues artists like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, who each released albums with updated, psychedelic versions of their earlier hits. Both artists played with British blues-rockers like Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones, who championed them by covering their songs and appearing with them on TV shows. According to James Segrest and Mark Hoffman, authors of Moanin’ at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin’ Wolf , Wolf initially disliked both psychedelic music and hippie hairstyles.
“Why don’t you take them wah-wahs and all that other shit,” the notoriously cranky bluesman told one hirsute session guitarist during a 1968 recording session, “and go throw it off in the lake — on your way to the barber shop.” Wolf nonetheless enjoyed working with appreciative, well-mannered Brits like Mick Jagger and Clapton. The result was that became the only one of the blues legend’s albums to crack the Billboard 200 chart, peaking at number 19 in 1971.
Meanwhile, the young rockers he played with were able to bask in the grizzled authenticity of his music. Rock ‘n’ roll was still a relatively new art form then, eager to establish its credentials as something more than a fad. Five decades since its inception, the genre can claim its own long history.
Yet rock’s obsession with authenticity as a badge of quality continues. Shine on you crazy Diamond: Neil Diamond performing at New York's Madison Square Garden. While updating older artists’ material, restoration albums often feel like acts of revisionism that seek to transform has-been stars into wizened, haunted heroes.
, their first collaboration, Rubin scrapped the country-music orchestration and encouraged Cash to use only an acoustic guitar to accompany his increasingly fragile baritone.
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