BULLETIN BOARD VI
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Leave a fix. A comment, news, fyi's, link, etc. TX!
Seele Brennt Posts
- Bad Blood for the Vampyr (1980s) 2013.05.12
- Blixa Bargeld & Teho Teardo – Interview + Live, Rome, 2013 2013.05.08
- Blixa Bargeld & Teho Teardo 2013.04.24
dropping in to tell you that i’ve seen mick harvey’s concert in berlin today. really good gig with a fantastic thomas wydler on drums. i missed him so much in february when i saw the bad seeds and it was so good to see him today.
and tomorrow again, a so-called “secret gig” in a club in kreuzberg. they’re gonna play only gainsbourg songs and i can’t wait!
i think i’m beginning to realize how much i miss mick in the bad seeds too… oh well.
Congrats, Irene! Nice to know Thomas was there. That secret gig in Kreuzberg sounds fantastic!
This looks interesting. Uncut is releasing an ultimate guide to Nick Cave
http://www.uncut.co.uk/blog/uncut-editors-diary/nikc-cave-the-ultimate-music-guide-on-sale-this-week
This is amazing. I just got my cpoy and it’s a must have. I came across some pictures I have not seen before including young Nick and Blixa.
Lots of goodies on the main board. Vintage Seeds…. sigh…….
Here are the two interview segments from the 1998 Moscow TV broadcast (not part of the concert footage)
[w/ Russian voice-over but you make out what is being said if you try]
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Moscow – 1998 (part 1) (Nixa@ 0.36 and 3:36)
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Moscow – 1998 (part 2)
A funny interview from London, 1992 . The white shoe business.
(w/ Russian voice-over)
Tx to Nightspell9
In case you missed it:
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – Moscow, Russia – July 17, 1998 (DVD/TV Broadcast)
Tracklist:
01. Do You Love Me?
02. Red Right Hand
03. From Her To Eternity
04. Henry Lee
05. The Mercy Seat
06. The Weeping Song
07. Lime Tree Arbour
08. Deanna
09. The Ship Song
10. Into My Arms
Plus Interview segments with Nick and Blixa (and a partial performance of Where the Wild Roses Grow, not included in the broadcast). [via DCR]
Links: http://textsnip.com/6e4e5c
If you have happy with YT quality, here is entire show:
Thank you! I’ve never seen this one before. Wonderful interaction
Am I allowed to post links here?
My sister just found me videos from the show she saw in Israel in 1993. It was a TV broadcast of 6 songs they played at the Blues Festival. They played an amazing version of John Finns Wife, and may I add Blixa’s guitar playing was in fine form. The Mercy Seat was extraordinary as well ! My favorite lineup!
Blixa looked absolutely stunning, standing tall in a sharp black suit, no wonder Nick kept coming to his side…
I wish there were more videos from the 90′s available.
Yes, you are allowed to post links. Usually one per comment or the spam filter will put you in the moderation queue, which is fine, I’ll just get you back out.
I posted the Israel show in June of last year. Fabulous.
http://nickcavefixes.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/nick-cave-the-bad-seeds-live-in-israel-1993/
Did you see ‘Long Time Man’ from the Royal Meltdown Festival, London, 1999? If not:
http://nickcavefixes.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/nick-cave-the-bad-seeds-long-time-man/
Most of our concert video posts are under this tag:
http://nickcavefixes.wordpress.com/tag/concert-video/
Oh my Long Time Man is one of my all time faves. Wunderbar
I can’t believe I didn’t realize you have a tag for all the concert videos. I know what I’ll be doing tonight !!!
Now the only thing I need to find is your Nixa shrine
Hey everyone,
Lately, NCF has been deluged with spam comments that sneak past the filters because the texts are generically worded letters of approval – it is yet another way for spammers to embed their nasty little marketing links. So… comments are now moderated. If you have already posted a comment, you should automatically be approved. If not, please have patience. I check email twice daily for notifications. My apologies for the inconvenience.
All my best, Morgan
Perhaps you don’t realise that many of us — myself certainly included — regularly turn to Nick Cave Fixes for affordable and practical solutions to our erectile dysfunction.
Hahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…. *falls down laughing*
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “Animal X”
I translated the Musikexpress interview and want to add that I personally had the feeling Nick wanted to express the difference between Micks contribution and Warrens contribution. The interviewer was using the German word “Stabübergabe”, in German thats a metaphor for passing the power/leadership to the next one (like in a relay where the word comes from) and Nick was asked if Mick passed the stick on to Warren. If you translate word by word Nick answered “Mick had no “stick” to pass on” before he explains what Mick did for the Bad Seeds and what Warren does for him – and I think that could maybe be a point? When Nick talks about Warren he often talks about their collaboration and their close friendship while when he talks about MIck he often says how nothing would have worked without him in the past. I think even if Nick would not say it, all of us know it is like that, that Mick was the heart and soul of the Bad Seeds for many years. Maybe when Nick thought about if there was a passing on, he was thinking about himself and the way he works with Warren and thought that he and Mick worked together in a different way and that its not like Warren got something Mick had or Mick had something Warren stole from him but that those are two different kind of things. Only suggesting
I personally really like Warren and I love seeing the dynamic between him and Nick on stage, I think they are really good for each other and so it was between Mick and Nick and Nick and Blixa in the past but I think they all had different kinds of relationships with each other – at least in the way they worked together cause thats what we can see and interpret, other stuff is their private thing. I am also nostalgic and I miss Mick and Blixa in the Bad Seeds, but I think musicians who move on are doing it right. Whatever keeps them going and the whole thing alive is good.
I saw Nick and Blixa together on stage in 2009 when Nick did these shows for The Death Of Bunny Munro and I think they were lovely with each other. Nick appreciates Blixa and Blixa was smiling a lot, they were hugging each other…it seemed like nothing had changed for a while and that was a pleasure for our nostalgic hearts of course
Nick was watching him read parts of the book in German to us from the side of the stage (he was standing in the dark smoking but I saw it, I observe everthing 
) and he was stepping from one foot onto the other all the time and he smiled when everybody laughed – Blixa was fantastic, he read that book in a different way Nick does, but both versions are amazing and I thought it shows something these two men share, they really know how to deal with language.
@Morgan: Loved that anecdote about your interview with Blixa! Thanks for sharing!
Hey Anna! Thanks for the word clarification. The problems inherent to every translation were complicated in this situation as the interview was conducted in English by a German interviewer and then translated to German text for Musikexpress readers and then translated back to English by you. It’s a lot of steps and you do have to be intuitive about the word choice. I think you did a fantastic job. I agree with your interpretation, that Nick meant that Warren is not picking up where Mick Harvey left off. Warren began his own form of musical directorship that departs greatly from Mick’s approach. It is a different dynamic entirely, in the way they approach the recording process, and in the live performances.
Thanks for sharing your anecdote about Nick observing Blixa during the ‘Bunny Munro’ reading. I saw a tiny clip of Nick embracing him. He looked like a little kid, so happy. I agree that Blixa brings his own interpretation of the text. I asked him how he felt about doing the audio book. He enjoyed it. I mentioned the humorous aspects and he said, “Well, it is a comedy, right?”
(There were times when all I could do was smile or crack up. He says things straight-faced so you never really know if he’s joking. That’s the best part.)
Thank you for the explanation.
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Although Nick ended his answer ‘between me and Mick there was never this intensive creative collaboration’…ouch and wtf!
Nick has been unkind to Mick in interviews since like 2006 or even before, but I’m sure Mick is not sitting home crying about it
Anyway, I wish them all the best! I have Blixa’s new music to look forward to.
Your Nixa story put a big smile on my face
Thanks for all these explanations that we never dare to ask but are very eager to know about !
@Allesandra
To clarify about Blixa v. Mick H: Mick left because he didn’t like the direction the band was headed and there are plenty of interviews in our archives for you to read about it. He speaks plainly about his feelings, so there is no reason for me to summarize them.
As far as Blixa goes, Nick wasn’t expecting him to leave the band at all, let alone on the verge of the Nocturama tour. It was a shock, and Nick was understandably upset.
After twenty years, it could not have been a cakewalk for Nick. He mentioned how difficult it was to look over to Blixa’s side of the stage and not see him there and that it took him awhile to get over it. Yes, there were some lovely, heartfelt dedications that expressed his sadness, but in the healing process, I think other feelings began to come out. It’s like the stages of grief – first you are shocked and you cry, and then you get angry. Most likely, the snarky interviews came up in the angry stage.
Nick had to rethink the direction they were going to go in. He mentioned they couldn’t go on forever ‘wearing widow’s weeds’. They went into the studio and did Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus. In my opinion, it was a cathartic album and when he came out of it, he was ready to move on. Unfortunately, the rock press were not ready. They kept asking about Blixa as if Nick couldn’t manage without him. That’s when I noticed the weird comments emerging. He was sick of people asking about Blixa, and fwiw, Blixa felt the same and said so in his interviews. The press were advised not to ask him about Nick or about why he left The Bad Seeds because there was a good chance he would simply walk away from the interview.
Nick’s attitude was to say, look, we do have a talented group of musicians here and the whole future does not pivot on the one member who chose to leave. It diminished Nick and the contributions of other members. That is when I noticed he began talking about the importance of Warren’s contributions and how they affected him as a musician. For example, Warren was the one who suggested that Nick learn to play guitar. That’s a great friend, someone who says, ‘hey, come on, you can do this’. They are very close and maybe that closeness led to Mick leaving. I don’t want to speculate about the inner dynamic of the various relationships much more than I already have based on remarks in public interviews.
I will end this on a humorous note. You don’t want to upset Blixa in an interview – it’s not fun. There are plenty of examples on Seele Brennt – try to find the one with Spanish journalist (“Mursiaaaaa, interesting”). I know from personal experience what happens if you bring up a touchy subject with him. In my case, I asked what he thought of the German music press reviews of Neubauten’s 30th anniversary show in Berlin. Not good. Apparently the single review that he happened to read was insultingly worded. The interviewer said that Neubauten were bastards who crawled out of a filthy cellar hole and look at them now. (That’s a rough summation of the article in question) Well, needless to say, I received the emotional backlash that the person who wrote it should have received. He reacted quite viscerally, and I almost had a heart attack. I laugh now, at the memory, but at the time, I was scared shit-less. After that, he was okay, funny, sweet, an interesting, charismatic person.
*taking a deeeep breath*
. Our Blixa is, as Nick once,put it, a difficult man, but oh so charming.
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Morgan your thoughtful response made me quite emotional. I don’t know why i let all the bad seeds melodrama get to me.
Yes it happened 4-5 years ago, but Nick really had me in the recent interview (Musicexpress was it?) when he said ‘Mick had no power to pass on’. I sometimes let my emotions get the best of me, and I guess I idolized Nick in the way I shouhld’t have. Nick IS a human being after all, but I did not expect my hero (yes, that’s what Nick is to me), to piss on the Bad Seeds legacy and on founding members of the band just because he has a new ‘wing man’. I was angry at Nick after the 2008-2009 shows I’ve seen, but Mick’s account on what happened really made my skin crawl. I had a lot of steam to let out, and this is the first time I express my frustration publicly.
You really laied it out for me, and it helped me sort my thoughts and emotions on the matter.
Thank you for taking the time to explain what happened since Blixa left the band. It helped me get a better understanding on what happened in the band in the past 10 years.
I realise most fans expressed their feelings back in 2009-2010, so I do apologize if i took you back to that shitstorm.
OMG at your Blixa experience. It must have been terrifying!!! I would have probably run off crying. I’m glad it ended well for all parties involved
Thank you, I really needed that laugh
P.S. Is your Blixa experience posted on Seele Brennt?
I’m glad my lengthy commentary helped you. Don’t apologize for taking me back to the shit storm even though I admit it’s not a fun place to be. These guys have a long and personal history and it’s up to them to get over it and move on. If they don’t, they don’t. It’s a fact of life that sometimes bands do not get over the bitterness after certain members depart. The Bad Seeds are not the first or the last. Not all breakups are going to end amicably nor will the offended parties necessarily kiss and make up. It doesn’t help when the respective parties dig at each other in interviews. The interviewers who ask those questions tend to keep that shit going, endlessly, as if talking about the music isn’t enough. It’s like stabbing a needle into a wound until it starts to bleed. It is painful and sometimes pain is expressed in anger. When that stuff gets published, the fans gets dragged into the fucking fray, and most of us don’t want to be there. It has a divisive affect, and no good comes of it.
NIck: “…the only thing that is important for me is to keep the Bad Seeds alive, that they continue to make music.”
I tend to agree with him.
>>Is your Blixa experience posted on Seele Brennt?
No, that experience was never published. I am glad you had a laugh over my near heart-attack. It would not occur to me to run out crying, I’m not a cryer, but I remember seeing spots and feeling a little faint. The comment was crudely worded and poor Blixa had been told to check out all the reviews and he sees that one. He was goddamn mad about it. He admitted that it pissed him off and he had to put it away instead of reading it all the way through. When I could get a word in, I tried to explain that the review ended positively but he cut me off. He did not want to talk about reviews. Period. The spots before my eyes cleared up when he moved on to the safer topic of the logistical problems in transporting the jet turbine to various venues. It was in the back of my mind to ask what he thought of Grinderman being on tour at the same time and what he thought of Nick saying he would like Blixa to come back and play guitar for the Bad Seeds (as a guest, not rejoining the band), but I kept remembering that Spanish guy’s experience (HERE) and my basic survival instinct was flashing a red “DON’T DO IT’ sign.
*laughing*
OOOHHH I can’t stop laughing…. poor Spanish guy!
I don’t get it though, Blixa used to be so gracious with journalists, even with the most annoying ones. Nick was the one with the attitude (the famous Columbus interview from 1985). I think Blixa became less tolerant towards the late 80′s, not that i blame him!
I don’t want to spam, but since I’m on a big nostalgic kick, I must say that I spoke this weekend to a few people that saw the bad seeds live in the 90′s, and it seems there are so many Nixa moments that are not captured on camera or video. Damn it! I think we have yet to see the best
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It’s so amazing that their infatuation with one another lasted for so many years. I showed my sister the rooftop picture and she had a lot to say about their onstage interactions!
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My sister and brother saw the bad seeds in 1993, 1995 and 1998 in Israel, and she recalls many Nixa moments (she’s not a fan girl like me). I can’t believe she didn’t snap pictures. She tells me Nick was clinging on to Blixa constantly (especially in Tel Aviv 1995 but also in the Blues Festival of 1993), almost feeling him up, while Blixa kept his cool. She was front row to the side of the stage and she noticed they hugged each other a lot between songs just like that! AAAwww .Without knowing about the Nixa phenomenon, my sister tells me there was a lot of sexual tension between them that did not seem staged. This is music to my ears, because it comes from an objective observer and not some crazy fan girl
My brother tells me about their steamy “Where The Wild Roses Grow” rendition in Tel Aviv 1998 that ended with a french kiss. He said it looked like the real deal! Apparently it had people in Tel Aviv talking for ages (Nick had a special bond with Israel in the 90′s and held huge followers).
As far as I can tell, there are only 2 videos of them singing “where the wild roses grow”, but with no kissing sadly.
Although I read somewhere that Nick and Blixa were definitely living it up with their Israeli groupies after the early 90′s shows. Nick and Blixa had a God like status back then. I was definitely born at the wrong time.
Those Nixa stories made my day! Thank you!!! :*
Hey Alessandra are you Israeli ? The Blues Festival show was amazing, but it was the club shows that blew the fucking roof off. I followed the band through the 90′s, and I can tell you that the Israseli gigs were the most intense I’ve seen.The crowd was nuts, and Nick was feeding off that energy.The 1995 gigs in Tel Aviv were the most intense ones. I have a fucked up video recording of the first night (passover) where u can see girls yelling for Blixa to marry them and Blixa smiling, girls throwing chocolate and panties (!) onstage (these parts are really blury). I am trying to fix the copy so I can upload it soon. I am trying to get a recording of the 1998 shows as well from the same guy. The shows were more laid back but still amazing, and of course there’s THE Nixa kiss. I’ll post the shows soon hopefully.
WOW. Please upload! Tx for posting this news to the Board!
Hey Merav after our Tumblr chat, I signed by my Israeli name as well. What a small world, two Blixa fans from Tel Aviv.!!!
can’t wait…
I would die for a recording of the Israeli shows, especially the 1998 ones
hello! I just found this site. It’s wonderful!
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I’m a huge Nick Cave fan, but reading the recent interviews you posted on the site, I’m a bit turned of but his attitude. Seems like he is constantly tring to belittle his past collaborators and their contribution to his music. He seems to be so obsessed with Warren Ellis, that he feels the need to put down Mick harvey. It’s very off putting, and it makes him sound ungrateful and catty. Sorry about my rant, especially as a new commer, but these interviews made me rather sad
Oh, he’s just being a grump. Middle-aged men are often very skilled at grumping, too (in my experience).
I wouldn’t take it to heart.
Hi Allesandra, thanks for the compliments, glad you found us. I felt that way after Blixa left the band. Nick was dismissive about his contributions and said a few catty things in several interviews. He does not take it well when people leave him. It stopped, after a few years.
Don’t let it get to you. Try to enjoy the good stuff. There’s is plenty of that, surely. FWIW, we celebrate the people who have moved on (or in Rowland’s case, passed on) regardless of whether things are settled or sorted between them and Nick.
Thank you Sam and Morgan. I feel better now
. Plenty of stuff to enjoy indeed, especially now that I discovered this amazing site!
Morgan, I did not know Nick did that to Blixa as well. Oh my! I was happy Nick dedicated songs for Blixa and talked about missing him that I figured it was genuine and they remained good friend. I’m glad I did nor read those interviews because I am very protective of my Blixa! Blixa is my favorite Bad Seed and my biggest obsession. In fact, the reason I’m being very nostalgic about the early and 90′s bad seeds is that I didn’t enjoy the bad seeds live shows in recent years and Warren Ellis became too much…I don’t even know what to think.
I saw your link to Seele Brennt OMG OMG OMG. I’ll be having a Blixa weekend thanks to you..I’m shaking! All these interviews AAAHHHHH.
I’ll be staring at Blixa and Nick’s rooftop picture for a while. Nixa will help me forget about Nick’s comments.
Many many thanks.
Glad to know you love Blixa and that you found Seele Brennt! Lots of goodies over there. In fact, we just posted five or six complete shows from 1987, 1989, 1997, and 2004.
I share your enthusiasm about Blixa. We’re very fond of him around here and that’s one reason I started SB but also it seemed logical to have a separate site for the Neubauten.
I know what you mean about the rooftop picture. It is a beautiful image capturing their youthful exuberance and closeness at that time period.
A lot of people share your feelings about preferring the early Bad Seeds and many don’t like them since the 1990s. You are not alone in saying that you don’t like Warren Ellis. Things took the direction they took for better or worse and I think you have to decide whether Nick is worth sticking with or not.
Most people continue to listen and attend shows because they are Nick Cave fans, first and foremost, and choose to enjoy him in in whatever way he expresses himself, whether with G-man or the Bad Seeds or in various collaborative efforts with other artists.
I’ll answer the rest in a separate comment b/c it’s kinda long and the text gets narrow in the comment field with nested replies.
Q&A: Nick Cave on His Coachella Sets and Denying Himself ‘Sacred Moments
“You can’t trust an artist that just makes good records. Who needs one of them?”
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/blogs/alternate-take/q-a-nick-cave-on-his-coachella-sets-and-denying-himself-sacred-moments-20130411
I’ve uploaded a lot of stuff to YouTube recently. It’s easier if I just post my channel link and you can surf though the list:
http://www.youtube.com/user/morganwolf5?feature=watch
FOUR (Acts of Love) – Mick Harvey solo album
“Mick Harvey has announced details of a new solo album, FOUR (Acts of Love), out on Mute on 29 April 2013. This is the former Bad Seed and PJ Harvey collaborator’s sixth solo studio album, and the follow up to 2011’s Sketches from the Book of the Dead.
“FOUR (Acts of Love) is a contemplation on romantic love – it’s loss, re-awakening, our ongoing struggles with it and its place in our universe. The album is a song cycle, divided into 3 Acts.
“The album features original compositions by Mick Harvey alongside a song by long time collaborator PJ Harvey (‘Glorious’) and interpretations of The Saints’ ‘The Story of Love’, Van Morrison’s ‘The Way Young Lovers Do’, Exuma’s ‘Summertime in New York’ and Roy Orbison’s ‘Wild Hearts (Run Out of Time)’.
“FOUR (Acts of Love) was recorded at Grace Lane, North Melbourne and Atlantis Sound, Melbourne and features regular collaborators Rosie Westbrook on double bass and JP Shilo on guitar and violin.”
VIA: http://mute.com/mute/new-album-four-acts-of-love-out-29-april
My scanner doesn’t work (found the pics on Tumblr) but I had some time so I translated the interview from:
Les inRocKuptibles – Issue 899 – February 20 to 26th
I’ve skipped the journalist’s intro as it’s always pretty much the same… Quick recap of the Bad Seeds career, etc
Feel free to repost of the main page if you’d like.
Journalist: JD Beauvallet
Photographer: Benni Valsson
Your album is more crepuscular: the kind of album from a man who has calmed down…
A wise old man album? I don’t know how it happened (laugh)… I had no attention to make a quiet album, it just happened. It’s a very French album: it was recorded when we were full of French food, and local wines at La Fabrique studios, in Provence. The place really had an influence on the mood of the album, its atmosphere transported me… After a week of living together in this place, we sat down to listen to the first recordings and we couldn’t’ believe it: we had no musical direction when we arrived there, but clearly the place had decided for us. We had never made such a coherent album, with continuity in the lyrics and music. We had never given such an importance to silence.
Usually the tension was lurking, menacing, before exploding. Here the songs play with this tension…
I was flabbergasted by this mix of calm and tension. It’s true that the songs didn’t explode but I can clearly hear what they’d have become on any other of my albums, where they’d have cracked and where they’d have gone in noise. There is a real impression of control… I don’t know if it’s wisdom, because it’d imply a pontificating aspect, an evangelic one. I never listen to an album to learn something, to discover wisdom: I listen to it to be transported to another world, to be roughed up, challenged… A good album makes me escape reality, and then brings me back to it.
For a few years now, with Grinderman, you play a rock that’s very physical, animalistic. Is this new album the antidote?
With the Bad Seeds, we’ve always made very different albums, puzzling even. The reaction of the audience changes but we don’t care: what matters is to keep the Bad Seeds alive. And being in a routine, bored, without challenges, would kill us. What saves us is that we don’t live in the same city; we don’t see each other every day (laugh)… We get together when it’s necessary, for a particular project. The aim is to be there for the songs, whatever the danger is. Each member of the band knows his job, like sleeping cells.
But there are barely any guitars…
For a practical reason: our fucking guitarist, Mick Harvey, has quit the Bad Seeds. Without him we always had a tendency to fill in the blanks. Mick always added a storm of guitars everywhere (he imitates him)… We wanted to replace him but when we listened to the first recordings, all this space in between the instruments, impressed us. It was too beautiful to be stained by guitars. We just added the choir, the kids from the local school. None of the kids spoke English, it was beautiful… When we played a song, we never knew where we were going, or long it’d last… Even I, didn’t have a flight plan. It’s a way to maintaining the beauty and danger.
What kind of beauty?
I spend my life replaying childhood memories. Some things happened that changed me (silence)… My idea of beauty is linked to my childhood. By writing, I find these impressions back, this light.
How did you end up in France?
We looked for studios-house in The UK but they all seemed sinister, without soul. I couldn’t see myself there for more than two days, in a place than looked like a clinic. Someone told me about La Fabrique: a studio with the largest classical vinyls collection in Europe. I felt so much at home that today I miss La Fabrique. I had a strong experience there, which affected my soul. I wouldn’t speak of an epiphany, but something happened. We felt totally free, calm, happy: the album reflects that particular time in our lives, a break… Usually with the Bad Seeds the studio looked like a battlefield, with blood on the walls.
The classical vinyls collection maybe helped?
Do I look like I listen to classical music? (laugh)… But we searched a little and found a box with “David Bowie / Iggy Pop” written on it. There was a tape but too used to be played. We thought we had found lost songs, but it fell apart.
Could you record without the band?
I couldn’t do it: I am a colleague, it’s essential for an artist to measure his limits. Musically, I am limited, fuck, you have no idea (laugh)…. I can compose a song but never give it “shape”, never… It’s frustrating to hear songs in my head and never be able to make them come to life alone, in a convincing way. Thankfully people like Blixa Bargeld, Mick Harvey or Warren Ellis have helped me through the years to make my idea more concrete, to sublimate them, to make them take different directions.
What’s your daily relationship with music?
I write almost every day. I put on my suit; I kiss my wife and kids and tell them: “I am going to the office”. And that’s what I do: I lock myself in our basement and I work. I come up in the evening: “So how was work? – Not bad, thank you!” I focus entire days on my notebooks. It’s not even something I impose on myself, I don’t have a choice, I need to write. I feel like my life is going to fall apart if I don’t work. I am always writing a book or something when I am dragged on vacation. I only stop whn I watch television. There I can stop my imagination and think about nothing. Go fishing? Can you imagine me pulling off a fish from the hook? But I did it for years, as a kid… I am from the countryside: I used to shoot rabbits.
Are you an observer always on the lookout?
I never know how to start a song. On Finishing Jubilee Street, I explain how I’ve written another song, Jubilee Street. I don’t tell what I see, I tell what a man sees, a witness,… It tells more about what this man is, than the people he observes. I am a voyeur.
In particular with your wife…
I have transformed my wife, my muse, in some kind of guinea pig… Nothing is sacred; she knows that these very intimate moments are going to feed my imagination, so my songs, in a corrupt way. But in a way I am immortalizing her (laugh)… Very young, I’ve learned that there is no better way to seduce a girl than write a song for her. It’s the ultimate compliment, even a fierce song. It was a blessing or a curse for the women I’ve sung about. By doing that, I sell my soul… But my muses have to keep their high level of inspiration… By dressing well, not gaining weight (burst out laughing)… I am kidding.
You’ve lived in Berlin, Brazil, London… You’ve been in Brighton for 10 years. No more moving around?
For me 10 years is an eternity. Sometimes I really wonder what I am doing in Brighton. I used to hate this city. When I was living in London, in the 80s or 90s, I came here to stop heroin: I’d book a room with a view on the sea, lock myself with whiskey and sleeping pills, and try to hold on for 2 or 3 days. Then I would fall back in heroin as soon as I was back in London. For me Brighton was a cold, agonizing city, so when my wife, Susie, suggested we moved there, I thought she was kidding. But I’ve grown fond of this city, its light, sea… Brighton is probably still a dump but my love for Susie is making me blind! When I lived in Berlin the city was more exciting but I never took advantage of it: I lived alone, wrote my book. What matters for me, is to have a room, no matter where it is, where I can lock myself up and disappear.
You consider yourself to be just passing through wherever you are?
I don’t have roots. I am not part of the world where I live, anywhere. I feel like an impostor. Sometimes I am ashamed to be Nick Cave.
The pictures didn’t post but here are the link:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8091/8502286103_2fcb4a4584_o.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8098/8502286113_9bece7a329_o.jpg
Thank you so much, Valerie! :*