1. Johnny Cash
It was 2009 when I heard ‘Hurt’, when I was mixing A Sufi And A Killer. AGDM, who I was mixing the record with, played it for me and it just floored me man. It made me cry. Just even watching the video of him and seeing the way he’s looking at the video screen, how honest he is about his mistakes made me cry. I know it’s a cover, but it seemed like Trent Reznor wrote that song for Johnny Cash.
Being honest with myself, I’m fucked up. It’s taken me a lifetime to accept completely who I am. If people are honest, of course they want to show their best face and shit, all their good angles all the time. But it’s like I know all the crazy shit I think and how all my fucking anger affects me, battling with my demons every day. I can relate to the self-confessional style of that song.
Did you suffer with similar demons to those Cash sings about in ‘Hurt’?
Definitely. Like in the beginning, I just loved being a DJ and I loved spinning records. It wasn’t until I started taking a lot of psychoactive plants and shit that I started hearing all these crazy-ass voices. I battled with schizophrenia or bipolar – I don’t know what it was. Maybe I was overthinking, becoming a little paranoid, or maybe I was just too sensitive. But there was a large portion of my life, a good chunk of me just feeling like the world was talking shit everywhere I went and I couldn’t understand it, hearing voices in my head. I still suffer with that shit, too.
In the world there’s a lot of wickedness and sin that we have to deal with every day. In songs like ‘Hurt’, where you strike it bare, you see man’s true feelings and vulnerability in the world against what he’s dealing with. Johnny Cash maybe had no idea how many people listened to that song and how it may have saved their lives. For art to do that shit kinda blows me away, you know, and I can relate to that through my own demons.
