The Man Comes Around (2002) – Johnny Cash

If there’s one artist I’ve shortchanged in my Music Library Project, it would have to be Johnny Cash. I’ll be doing some necessary backtracking in the coming years with respect to the alphabetical listing of songs, to include more of his music that I regrettably overlooked the first time. That said, today’s song isn’t one of those late additions – it comes to us as if predestined, right on schedule. Fittingly, it follows not too long after another modern classic from the same album, American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002) – the brilliant Hurt. Today’s featured song is, in fact, the album’s title track from his 67th studio album (yes, you read that number correctly).

Other than his duet with Bob Dylan on Girl from the North Country from Dylan’s 1969 album Nashville Skyline, Johnny Cash wasn’t someone I grew up listening to. That might help explain the sparse presence of his music on this blog so far. Aside from dabbling in some Woody Guthrie and reading his semi-fictional autobiography Bound For Glory, I wasn’t exactly immersed in the rootsy country music tradition from which Cash and his wife, June Carter, emerged – a wellspring that also produced the likes of Hank Williams. My appreciation for Cash came to me gradually, through literature and film – especially his role in influencing and shaping Dylan’s career mid-to-late ’60s, through Cash: The Autobiography (1997), and later, the 2005 biopic Walk The Line. His music would also appear with some frequency in other colleagues’ music blogs here at WordPress.

Considering how scarce Cash’s music is represented here (so far), should tell you how highly I regard The Man Comes Around. The song is a sermon-like forewarning of religious apocalypse, laced with references from the Book of Revelation. And yet, what makes it remarkable is how non-preachy it feels – more illuminating and introspective than dogmatic. Though the song was originally penned years before the album’s release, Cash revisited and updated it, making it one of the last original compositions he completed before his death. Throughout his career, Cash made no secret of how deeply religion shaped his life.

According to Wikipedia: The Man Comes Around was inspired by a dream Cash had about Queen Elizabeth II in which the Queen compared Cash to “a thorn tree in a whirlwind.” Haunted by the dream, Cash became curious if the phrase was a biblical reference and eventually found a similar phrase in the Book of Job.
The song has become a staple in its use in popular culture with ten’s of instances mentioned in the reference below.

[Intro]
“And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying, ‘Come and see’
And I saw, and behold a white horse”

[Verse 1]
There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won’t be treated all the same
There’ll be a golden ladder reachin’ down
When the man comes around

[Verse 2]
The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup
Or disappear into the potter’s ground?
When the man comes around

[Chorus]
Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singin’
Multitudes are marchin’ to the big kettledrum
Voices callin’, voices cryin’
Some are born and some are dyin’
It’s Alpha and Omega’s kingdom come
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks

[Verse 3]
Till Armageddon, no shalam, no shalom
Then the father hen will call his chickens home
The wise men will bow down before the throne
And at his feet, they’ll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around

[Verse 4]
Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still
Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still
Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still
Listen to the words long written down
When the man comes around

[Chorus]
Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singin’
Multitudes are marchin’ to the big kettledrum
Voices callin’, voices cryin’
Some are born and some are dyin’
It’s Alpha and Omega’s kingdom come
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks
In measured hundredweight and penny pound
When the man comes around

[Outro]
“And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts […]
And I looked, and behold a pale horse:
And his name that sat on him was Death
And Hell followed with him”

References:
1. The Man Comes Around – Johnny Cash