Room 1702 - Collaborating with Johnny Cash

 by Julian Spivey
Following Johnny Cash’s death his family discovered a collection of unpublished poetry or lyrics that “The Man in Black” had written, ranging from the 1940s up until the end of his life, and these poems were compiled into the book Forever Words: The Unknown Poems, which was published in 2016. That book was gifted to me the Christmas of that year by my wife, but I never got around to perusing through it. This year a compilation album, Forever Words, was released where various artists, mostly within the country music and Americana genres, put Cash’s poems to music. The album is fantastic, but I was slightly disappointed to learn that most of the artists simply put his poetry to music, instead of actually expanding upon it like The New Basement Tapes (Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford, Jim James, Rhiannon Giddens and Taylor Goldsmith) did on Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes in 2014, where they took snippets of unfinished Bob Dylan songs and completed them with their owns words leading to a unique way of songwriting (much the way Old Crow Medicine Show took Dylan’s “Rock Me Mama” and turned it into the fantastic “Wagon Wheel.”) I instantly became interested in attempting to add to or collaborate with my hero Cash on one of his poems, but while flipping through the book realized most of the poems were essentially complete – which is probably why artists pretty much could just add music to them and turn them into songs. I did find one short poem called Room 1702 written by Cash in the late ‘60s that mesmerized me with it’s dark tale of a mysterious hotel room and thought I could expand upon it. Below is my collaboration with Johnny Cash on Room 1702, with his words in italics to differentiate between the two. I hope you like it.
 
Room 1702
In 1702 they’re waiting for you
When you’re out to prove
You’ve got nothing left to lose
1702 has a special way of showing you you do
 
In the hotel room I was lying
In the night a man was crying
He grabbed his phone and started screaming
I covered up my head, I must be dreaming
 
His screams continued in the night
I woke up from my sleep in a terrible fright
The man said, send someone I know I’m dying
Come to 1702, he was crying
 
In the darkness I reached for light
My hand couldn’t penetrate the night
I left my bed, but didn’t feel the floor
Someone was knocking on my door
Thru the bolted door I stepped on thru
And we walked out of 1702
 
He and I were never again the same man
That’s the night I lost my dearest friend
Something grabbed a hold of me, telling me I’ve been set free
But, I’ll never go to 1702 again

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