Nick Cave: ‘There is always more to know’
Nick Cave feels at home in Greece – it makes sense: After all, this is the country that gave birth to tragedy, and Cave knows a thing or two about tragic things, both in art and in real life. His new album with The Bad Seeds, titled “Wild God,” has just been released to wide acclaim. In late September, the Wild God Tour will begin in Germany and, two months later, it will be concluded in Paris. These 27 shows will have him visiting 17 different countries and by spring 2025, they will tour the USA and Canada. But a little before that, he made a stop in Athens, a city where he has been adored for more than 40 years. “You look beautifully dressed,” he says, as he enters the hotel room we have booked for our interview, and shakes my hand, adding, “But mind you, I haven’t had a coffee yet.”
Getting an interview slot with Nick Cave is not an easy thing to do. For his last couple of albums, he avoided any promotional activity whatsoever. For “Wild God,” though, his record company made clear that “although most markets will not get any interviews, as he will be in Athens for three live shows the first three days of summer, we may have an opportunity for just one interview. His management asked for a very credible, cerebral, intellectually focused conversation rather than lifestyle/pop culture magazines. The artist himself would prefer a longer interview slot of around an hour in order to have an in-depth, insightful conversation rather than a short general chat.” This is where Kathimerini pops up and secures the only approval his team provides.
Up close and personal, he is taller and thinner than he appears in photos or videos. Plus, his eyes are even more blue, when you thought they were already as blue as it can get. He is patient, gentle and carefully picks every single word he uses – sometimes, he shuts his eyes in order to get the exact phrase he is looking for. At least when he is coffee-less!
When we meet, he has already done the first two intimate shows in Onassis Stegi, an alternative venue just a block away from his hotel. The Bad Seeds are not with him and no songs from “Wild God” are included in the setlist. Instead, he sings sitting in front of a piano and Colin Greenwood, the well-known Radiohead bassist, stands by his side, playing the right notes on his four strings and making sure the sound is ample, and the songs are far from naked. All three concerts are sold out, although the ticket prices were anything but low. In fact, it only took 15 minutes for all tickets to be sold.
“Oh, I’m enjoying it,” he admits, as he makes himself comfortable in an armchair. “I enjoy the intimacy and the flexibility of these shows. I’ve done it in America with Colin, and we just loved it. We basically rent a car there, just driving from town to town playing these concerts. There was a sense of a lovely freedom to it. These shows… you know they are easy to do, in the sense that they are easy to put on. When The Bad Seeds do a concert it’s a massive production, or it has become a massive production. But this is just a small tight mobile setup, so we’re able to just move around like that. Then we did it in Australia, with a different idea, which was a kind of residency idea: In Melbourne we played three in a row and then in Sidney we did something like five in a row. That was an interesting idea that had echoes to me of Elvis in Vegas or something like that! After Australia, we realized that was something we could just take anywhere. Where do we want our little team to go for the weekend or four days? ATHENS! And we go and put the show on here, which is impossible to do with The Bad Seeds. Although, I don’t really deal with these kinds of things, it seems like Greece has been left off The Bad Seeds tour this year. I feel quite upset about that, and so this is one of the reasons why I came to Athens in this way.
“I am really enjoying the Greek audience, as always, just a very special bunch of people that I have a long-standing relationship with. In general, accepting of new things, so it has been really great, two lovely concerts, so far. You see, the shows that we have done in Greece, from the beginning, were highly celebratory, slightly dangerous, unbelievably enthusiastic. When we first came to Greece [back in 1982 with The Birthday Party], I think we were the first punk rock band to ever play here [that would be true if The Police, Lene Lovich and the Tom Robinson Band who had already played were not considered ‘punk’]. So, we’ve kind of cemented our relationship with Greece early on in that way and I’ve always loved to come here.”
All these years, all these concerts in all those different countries, has he ever felt that he is not sure in which country he just woke up? And could he answer that just by the reaction of the audience later the same day on the live venue?
“Yes, this may happen and, yes, you can do that. That’s what I love about going to different countries or even different cities across America: Countries have their cultural personality to some degree. It’s something that I love. There’s also the element of unconsciously performing in a different way. When I play a London show or even a Melbourne show, there are higher stakes because they are my own hometowns and this doesn’t necessarily make for a good concert: You are more nervous, more tense, it’s like more important in some kind of way, so the concert can be just a bit more uptight and less free as a consequence.”
Nick Cave has lived abroad longer than he has lived in his native Australia, since he left for Europe at the age of 20. London, Berlin, Sao Paolo, Brighton, Los Angeles are the main cities he had a place called home. What would be the criteria for his next pick, if he wanted to move?
“Only one: that my wife is happy there, I would say. I am not particular in that respect. I don’t particularly like to travel. Because I am traveling all the time, anyway, so when somebody says, ‘let’s go on a holiday,’ I’m like, ‘Really?’ I am not making this interview Greek-centric, but I have really enjoyed going to Hydra recently. That feels like a place where I can just settle in and let everything go. And weirdly left alone. There’s something private and respectful about that island, I don’t know how to explain that. At the moment, though, I am essentially living in London. I have a whole lot of different things there, I have a community of people that I know, that I’ve developed, things I do. I am quite happy to spend time in London.”
I was listening to Nick Cave’s most recent book on audiobook the other day, the acclaimed “Faith, Hope, and Carnage” (Canongate, 2022) and I soon realized it was a huge mistake: Any question worth asking and any meaningful answer are already included there. Furthermore, at some point in the book Cave demands that Sean O’Hagan, journalist and co-author, “stops quoting things I have said in the past – it’s rude!” O’Hagan is a friend of Cave, whereas I just met him for the first time. How will he respond if I start quoting? Let’s hope he will react mildly, since his coffee hasn’t arrived yet!
Does it make him feel uncomfortable to be confronted with quotes from the past? Does he happen to disagree with some things he has said years ago, or does you feel that journalists are pushing him to defend himself?
“I think it’s more the Socratic – feels very Greek, this interview, doesn’t it? – notion that there is always more to know. It’s a position of humility about things where I don’t have a sort of permanent position on. It’s always moving and that’s what I spend most of my time doing, trying to advance my thinking about particular things. And so, in that prospect, I sort of demand the right to be wrong, to get things wrong. So yes, it often feels uncomfortable for me when someone happens to quote something that I have said six years ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago for that matter, as if I still hold that position now. And that’s mostly because I hold a sort of centrist position on things, quite naturally. As an artist, personally, I think this is a comfortable position for me to be in, because it feels the most open, where I am not kind of hemmed in by some ideological point of view or that I am on this or on the other side, rather I just feel flexible and open and fluid enough to be able to move around. Around ideas and opinions. That is extremely helpful for the business of songwriting. And the way that I write songs is a direct extension of the way that I live my life.
“So that’s a very different idea than having a side, and what you do with your life is spend time reinforcing that position, the side that you are on. This may not be a good thing, this may be a character flaw, but I have never had that commitment to the left, to the right, to whatever. I just never had it. It’s like a thing that’s always been missing in my character to some degree, a kind of unerring conviction towards a particular death. I just find myself tossed around all over the place. Tossed around by different truths that you learn. ‘Oh God, I didn’t know that, my position changes.’ And, only talking personally here, it is the optimal place to be, creatively.”
For some people, though, such an attitude would be rather…
“…Annoying, of course, I know! It’s like ‘Oh, choose a side. Where are you on this?’ I think it’s important for people to choose sides and it’s an important part of what it is to be a civilization that people do choose sides with enough conviction to attempt to make changes in that way. But I am not that person, I have a different position.”
A knock on the door, room service enters and that means it’s coffee time at last!
Cave picks up the porcelain cup, has a sip and warns me with caffeine-relief laughter, “Now you’re not going to be able to shut me up!”
I smile but then I notice, in horror, that he adds milk to his coffee! I try to put on my best poker face not to show my objection to this dreadful abomination and return to dear old quoting!
Back in 2017, high-profile artists like Brian Eno, Roger Waters and director Ken Loach had asked him to cancel his tour of Israel – he refused to do so and issued a letter explaining the reasons behind his decision. The tragic war between Israel and Palestine makes the issue relevant once again. Thom Yorke has stated that ‘playing in a country isn’t the same as endorsing its government,’ but not everybody sees it that way, especially some hardcore Nick Cave fans…
“I wrote that letter seven years ago. Which goes to what I was saying before. To write that letter now, I wouldn’t write the same thing. But I still, in this respect, don’t believe a culture boycott works. In fact, I think a cultural boycott of Israel makes things worse for the Palestinians. I think the present government in Israel feeds or exploits the isolationist notion that ‘the whole world is against us and anti-Semitism is all over,’ and so forth, in order to pursue these terrible policies. So, what you’re doing is giving ammunition to the government and, at the same time, punishing the ordinary people. And I refuse to do that, it’s as simple as that. That does not mean, although other people may think differently, that I am anti-Palestine. Of course not! Of course, what is going on in Palestine is a moral catastrophe. Of course. But if you can’t hold the atrocity that happened to Israel in your hands at the same time, then, in my view, you are morally confused.
“That’s about as much as I can say, only because I don’t want to add to the blizzard of bullshit that comes out of rock stars’ mouths about these issues. One word of advice for people: Don’t get your politics from rock stars! Right? There are other people who actually know stuff that you could go to and listen to and find things out. Don’t get your politics from TikTok!
“There are these people who throw pamphlets around in my concerts, in fact they are doing that in Athens… It’s hard to say… these pamphlets… I feel they are written by children. Maybe they are written by children, maybe they are just some teenagers who worked out how to use a printing press and the arguments aren’t serious, I am sorry. You know, I am not an expert on these things, I am just a fucking musician. I think one of the great problems with musicians is not that they have platforms and that they should be speaking on these large platforms, it is the fact that they do have access to these platforms in the first place, because what you get, at the end of it, is people who don’t know anything having a huge influence over people. These platforms should be given to people who actually understand and spend the time working out what is actually going on in some of these places. So, I am sorry if that does not comply with the current feelings around that sort of thing, but that’s really all I can say about it.”
It is true that pamphlets accusing Cave of his “support to Israel” were being distributed outside the venue but it is not true that this is really all Cave can say about it, as he goes on explaining further his principled stand.
“If you look at what kind of a musician I am, there is a philosophical position around that for me, what I consider music to be. I know this annoys people as soon as you put it into the political up against ‘children dying in Palestine,’ right? Everything wobbles, everything becomes unstable when you put it up against these terrible situations, but, in principle, I believe we live in a world where music is, sadly, the last legitimate place we could have a transcendence experience. Everything else is being irradicated. All the structures around our society that we used to feel secure in have been pushed aside, erased. Yet still we have this feeling of longing and yearning about things, and it is within music that we find some expression for that yearning. That music is being corrupted or used and defined as just a tool for people’s ideological points of view I think it is a crime in itself. There are just not enough sacred places left to us. I think this is a major problem and I understand these words sound like vanity of a privileged musician and all this sort of stuff but actually music sits outside the concept of privilege. It’s something that really, really is for everybody and to have it corrupted in that way… I find it extremely uncomfortable.”
One of the main keys of a successful interview is to secure, as a host, that the person in front of you feels comfortable, so I decide it is time to talk about the new album. It’s June 3, “Wild God” was scheduled to be released on August 30, so I realize I am the first one out of his team with whom he will talk about it. I read out loud an excerpt from the press release, according to which “it is an album that reveals its charms swiftly and its secrets slowly.” I point out that, after having listened to the albums 20 times, I couldn’t have put it better myself.
“Oh that is a great line. I wonder who wrote that,” he responds with a smile.
You can recall the use of backing vocals in past recordings but it’s the first time a choir, called Double R Collective, has such a crucial role. The choir has 12 members and eight of them are women, so the female element is very tense and, at times, creates a gospel ambience.
“We didn’t want it to be a gospel record. When we used a gospel choir for “Wild God,” apart from the closing track, which is used more traditionally, we were playing around with the idea of the choir, something like what we did in the song “Conversion”: a gospel choir in chaos, as they are not singing like heavenly angels. It’s just this kind of mess, because of the way it was recorded, it was improvised singing. Normally a gospel arrangement is worked out and everyone knows what they’re doing, but when we went in to do “Conversion,” I just run in there with them and screamed stuff out and they echoed it back and it was a one-take situation, ad libbing. I was improvising things. We were trying to get a free ecstatic happening with the singers.”
“Skeleton Tree” and “Ghosteen” were dark albums, full of abstract arrangements, slow tempo songs that soaked up melancholy and grief – not exactly radio material. It’s obvious, though, that somebody opened the curtains and let the light in from the opening track of “Wild God.” Was this the result of a need to rejoice?
“You don’t really have much control over how something turns up. That’s the great beauty of making music. You really think you’re in control, but you’re actually not really in control. There are certain decisions you make that, of course, affect the outcome of a record. And so, even though I didn’t know what it was going to be like, I knew that I wanted to do a Bad Seeds record. And I wanted to bring The Bad Seeds back, because for the last two or three records, in a way, they’ve had a less and less important role. And that was the right decision. Just for the health of the band. The band understand that some records they don’t play a lot on, on other records they are much more present. That’s been an understanding right from the start. So, they understand that, because that’s the way you keep a band going, in my view, when you change things all the time. And that’s why, I don’t know how many albums it’s been, we still keep making interesting records, because we change the terms of what it is to make a record constantly. That, and the fact that The Bad Seeds are amazing!”
There’s been 18 studio albums since 1984. Forty years, 18 albums – not one of them bad or indifferent.
This, the last one, was recorded in four different studios, in London, in Marseille, in Perth and it was mixed in New York by David Fridmann. But the record industry has changed a lot during this 40-year period and the old-fashioned approach to making a rock album may seem, erm… old fashioned!
“We come from a different era, we understand the value of a bunch of musicians in a room, playing together. Some rock bands may still do that, I really don’t know. Certainly, that’s not the only way one can go about making music. On some level our music has largely to do with improvisation of accidents that happen when a bunch of people get in a room together and make music. That’s not us sort of sticking to our guns, it’s just the way that we know how to produce music. When we do a soundtrack for a movie or something like that we sit in a little studio, it’s all done digitally. It’s not that we don’t know how to make music that way, obviously…
“One could argue that the way music is being done now it’s over as well. Those artificial intelligence song-generating things… it’s exactly what I was talking about before, it’s a further step to eliminate what’s sacred. Music cannot become pure commodity – but it’s getting there. You can now go to a site called suno.com, where you just type in the song you want, let’s say ‘I want to hear a sad song about my grandmother,’ and, 15 seconds later, a song comes out. It’s not bad, it’s good, I mean it’s only its first iteration, it’s the first time. It’s a good song, it’s got a chorus, the lyrics are good, but it’s absolutely banal, in the sense that it seizes the creative struggle of the artist as just a problem, as an inconvenience, so we must go straight to the product itself. For me, this final sacred space, music, is being taken from us. It’s sad.”
Suno’s tagline is “building a future where anyone can make great music.” Back in November 2023, author and actor Stephen Fry read a letter of Cave’s regarding artificial intelligence, as part of the Letters Live event at London’s Royal Albert Hall, where various performers narrated notable letters in front of a live audience. It’s clear that Cave objects to AI but a younger person would argue that “you people over 50 don’t understand how things work out, this is our reality, back in your day, when you were young, the older people comparing to you had similar remarks.”
“That may be the argument that’s put forward but at the same time, the counterargument is why isn’t there any, listed within rock ‘n’ roll, new music being generated? Why is everything that you hear these days kind of retro? Why are people listening to vinyl? Why is there a sort of return to something that’s authentic?
“That, to me, is because I think people want meaning in their lives. And it’s meaningful to sit down, put a record on the record player and put the needle on and listen to the record. In a different way, I think that listening to music anonymously, digitally, there’s not a sense of purpose and ritual to that. To use a modern word, there is a kind of mindfulness about putting a record on, you are actually doing something, you are contributing to the process in some kind of way.
“I don’t see any reason why in two years’ time an AI-generated Nick Cave track wouldn’t be better than an original Nick Cave song that I would write. Maybe more consistently better, because I am an artist and I fluctuate, and sometimes I write good songs, sometimes I write bad songs, because I am a human being, that’s what we do as human beings.
“We have to stand firmly right and actually protect this last castle of safeguarding the human spirit and creative ability.
“I respect the argument, however, I can hear it when I talk about AI that I’m like some old prophet, in the desert, ringing his hands, like Jeremiah, about the world. Because this can’t be stopped, it’s here, it’s happening, it has already happened actually. I am not trying to stop it, I am just, in general, concerned about the demoralizing effect of such an anti-human option.
“On a larger scale, I am concerned about the contempt we are having for our own selves, that we see ourselves as shit. We see the world as shit, we see human beings as purely distractive, oppressive creatures and this is a general demoralization around what it is to be a human being. And AI is just another step towards that, in my view. Like I said, I am just an old guy…”
Cave is literally a grandfather. His son Luke had a son last May, making him a first-time grandfather.
“I am a granddad, yes. I am the definition of the granddad who sits in the corner at Christmas and says inappropriate things!”
The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has a great podcast, and in one episode, two years ago, Nick Cave was invited to talk about loss and grief. It is a lovely conversation, and, at some point, Cave mentions his mother, stating that she was very loving and caring and always present in his life. “You understand how much parents worry, by being one yourself,” he notes. Does he worry what world his grandchildren will live in?
“To some degree. I literally have no idea what that world would be, I don’t think anyone really does, things are moving so rapidly, who knows? It could be an amazing world. And I am not saying that all is going to hell, by the way. And to make things clear, I am not anti-AI. I am against AI being used to manufacture art without the need for human intervention.
“The beautiful thing about being a grandparent, I feel that I have a longer-range vision – all the horror of parenthood, the worry and terror about what’s happening with your children, you can step back a little bit, and not worry! Because, in most cases, things will be alright – it’s not really your worry! It’s the very sweet end of parenthood, that’s what it is to be a granddad.”
Does that mean that he is going to write more children’s books? There are two books (“The Little Thing” and “The Little Thing Is Sad”) along with a coloring book available at cavethings.com among many other products created or designed by Cave. Apart from some special releases, music is not the main category there. Visitors can order polaroids, artworks, prints, tote bags, stationery, even charms and homeware. Surely an unexpected business choice for a man whose first novel was titled “And the Ass Saw the Angel.”
“Cavethings was done through Covid, bear that in mind – but does it still exist?”
I assure him that it does.
“Well, I don’t think anything new is being added, they just got a bunch of stock and it’s just out there, until most of them will be sold. Now, I feel a kind of discomfort towards some of this stuff, which I didn’t feel at the time. During Covid, you see, it was actually really good fun, because I just had all this spare time, I had a whole year where I didn’t have to do anything, and so all this stuff started happening. Yeah, I mean, maybe it wasn’t a good idea after all… Apart from the children’s books, I totally love those books, I am really happy about them, I see little kids reading them, wearing the little T-shirts, I like the children’s line of clothing, the whole Shit For Kids concept with the hats, the cups, the kids tattoos. Cave Things was irreverent and playful. But there is so much going on now, what I am trying to do is clean things up these days and get back to something a bit more essential – it’s a very difficult thing to do actually, because there is always something else you can do. So, I am trying to say no to things – even to… cave things!”
During his career, Cave introduced to his audience many of his musical heroes, through his variety of covers: American blues, Kurt Weill, Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, Velvet Underground, T. Rex, and, most recently, Edith Piaf, as his voice is heard on the version of “La Vie En Rose” which is used in the Apple TV+ series “The New Look.” When the time comes for a tribute album to his own songs, which artists would he like to see taking part in it?
“Oh, I don’t know. No one, really. The artists that I really love, I love them because I love what they do, I do not want them to be doing my stuff. Cover versions may happen and when it happens, occasionally it means a lot. When Johnny Cash did “The Mercy Seat,” that meant a lot. It’s like people can say whatever they like about me, but fucking Johnny Cash did a cover of The Mercy Seat, my song, so go fuck yourself, basically. So, these things to me are validations of what I am doing, it feels great.”
In the last nine years, Cave experienced the most difficult period of his life. He lost family members, relatives, colleagues, music partners, friends… Most of all, two of his sons died. I am ready to ask the most difficult and sensitive question, when his manager walks in and informs us that our time is up: We have been talking for 60 minutes. To my relief, Cave asks for another 15-minute extension, so I take courage and go on, asking if he has survival’s guilt.
“I don’t feel guilty about being alive. Losing my sons is a different matter. There are obviously feelings of culpability that parents feel if that happens, that’s unavoidable. You feel it was your fault on some level. But regarding colleagues and stuff, I feel a certain richness of life, that’s on some level dependent on the set of parameters of loss that surround us. When I close my eyes and think of those no longer with us, which I do every day, it’s a collective of people that I feel supported by in some way and people like Rowland [S. Howard, Cave’s musical partner since the early days of Boys Next Door who died in 2009] and Anita [Lane, a friend, singer-songwriter and a muse who died in 2021], my dear friends that have gone and my parents and my children and so forth, as sad as this is, it’s also a thing of great beauty for me, it’s a deepening, it’s a thing that just deepens life to some degree. I mean I wish things were different, but we all lose people, I think this is what we are. Human beings are creatures of loss. And it’s that very thing that makes life to me, very often, a joyful thing. Loss and joy strangely sit next to each other or interconnected in some way. It’s a strange thing that you learn, after a while.
“Everyone deals with these things in a different way, I’ve also learned that. You do grow accustomed to people dying and more resilient and you know, there’s this sort of original catastrophes that happen in your life which you just think, at the time, ‘There’s no way out, no way… this is what my life will be forever,’ this is a very dark place that most people go through. But after a while, losing people becomes more simply part of the fabric of existence and we learn how to deal with that in some way. When I lost my mother, she was 92. It was really sad, because I loved her, but at the same time, she wasn’t snatched away, she didn’t suddenly disappear, the sort of ghost of her isn’t like this confusing, terrifying thing. It’s a must softer landing, I think, but very sad too, of course. I loved her, you know.
“It’s never easy, especially if they go through pain or a kind of radical diminishment, when you see these great people sort of shrinking before your eyes or losing their minds. This is tough stuff.
“At the same time, I am quite looking forward to losing my mind, because part of losing your mind is stopping worrying about what people think of you!”
At 66, Nick Cave has never been more admired and established, so it strikes me as odd that that he still worries about what people think of him.
“Yeah, of course I do. You see, I launched the Red Hand Files on the internet five years ago, where anyone is encouraged to ask me a question and I try to reply in letter form. Mostly, the letters that come into the Red Hand Files are very beautiful, there’s a lot of sadness, a lot of grief but it’s a kind of river of love that comes in. But it’s punctuated by people who are seriously angry about certain things, and they write in deep criticisms of me and the way I think about things and so forth. And these… I do read as well, and they are hurtful. I don’t agree with them, however their words stay with you, they have their own effect, even if you try not to care.”
It is a bold move to gather all these musings, sometimes funny, sometimes deep but always candid, especially for a person who doesn’t like being confronted with his own quotes from the past.
“The value of the Red Hand Files is that I get the opportunity to be wrong about things.
“What I enjoy most about the Red Hand Files, which pisses a lot of people off, is that I speak about things that I have absolutely no authority to talk about. I am not a psychoanalyst or a political commentator or anything of that sort, but I get to be able to express my opinion about things and, in that respect, I enjoy the annoying aspect of that for people, I am aware of that.
“The Red Hand Files is really based upon the idea that it is OK to be wrong, that you don’t have to be right. No one is right all the time, most people are wrong most of the time or at least on a journey towards some kind of truth but not there yet, and history comes in and the facts change and you need to be able to change your opinion, you need to be able to accept or recognize that you are wrong and be able to move on. I think there is great value to the Red Hand Files for that reason alone.”
In one of the texts posted there, one can read that Nick Cave changed suits three times in one day in Los Angeles: One was gray, the other was blue and so forth. Do the colors have a specific meaning when he makes his choice?
“No, they don’t actually. I dress more in a utilitarian way, I have three suits bang-bang-bang, doesn’t really matter which one. OK, I had three suits and then I got three more but, again, choices are limited and so it makes it quicker in a way for me. It’s important not to have to make many decisions in the morning.”
He stands up. Only his eyes and the sky outside are bluer than his suit. He asks if I will attend the show that night. I say that I have a ticket, and I will be the one at the back, asking for “(I’ll Love You) Till the End of the World” at the encore. He smiles as if saying that I shouldn’t get my hopes high. A few hours later, at the venue, he gets on stage wearing a black suit. The crowd love him. He opens his arms as if to hug them all. He is the balcony man. When everything is ordinary until it’s not.
