Nick Cave

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:45

My castaway this week is the singer and writer Nick Cave. He's one of the most highly regarded storytellers in music today, who's been captivating audiences with compelling narratives and electrifying live performances for over 40 years. He grew up in Wangaratta, Australia, and describes his childhood as idyllic and free range. When his rebellious teens hit, he was sent to boarding school in Melbourne to straighten him out. He joined a band instead. In 1980, his search for something bigger, darker and more thrilling brought him to London, with a band who renamed themselves The Birthday Party on the Plane Over.

Presenter1:22

In those days, he revelled in his outsider status, but as his art and his life progressed, he has ventured beyond the fire and brimstone of his early work, reaching out instead of kicking out. His recent songs, written for his band The Bad Seeds, are about love, loss, faith, fear and hope. Many were recorded in the aftermath of the death of two of his sons and have been among the most lauded of his career. He says, I was never a depressed person. Writing is basically an act of love and a joyful thing to do. That quickening of the heart that comes when you're onto something. I get all shaky. It's an immensely positive act, nothing to do with sadness or depression, no matter what you're writing about. Nick Cave, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Nick Cave2:06

Basics.

Nick Cave2:08

That was very beautiful. You said it all.

Presenter2:09

We said it all.

Presenter2:10

Well, hopefully not. I think there's plenty to talk about. So Nick, your description of songwriting there sounds almost devotional, this act of love that you're sitting down to create something. How do you know when you're onto something? It sounds quite physical.

Nick Cave2:25

Mostly when I write it's despairing and the fact that all I'm doing is writing bad stuff. I have endless note books which I've told my wife to burn upon my desk.

Nick Cave2:35

In case anyone decides that they should look through them and see what kind of writer I actually am. And I write a lot, and within that lot there are some precious moments that reveal themselves in time, by which I mean that everything I put down on the page looks bad, sounds bad, it's never like wow. But certain lines just sit there on the page and they do sort of lift themselves out of the kind of morass of rubbish.

Speaker 12:38

Uh

Presenter2:38

And

Speaker 12:38

Uh

Nick Cave3:06

By which I'm saying I do not sit down ever with an idea for a song. This is what I want to write a song about. This is what's concerning me at the moment. I need to write this. I've read this in the newspaper. What a terrible thing. I need to write a song about it. I simply don't write songs in that way. The songs.

Presenter3:23

And

Nick Cave3:24

reveal themselves.

Nick Cave3:27

painfully and through time.

Presenter3:29

What about a song like Into My Arms? It's hard to imagine that not fully formed, coming together in that way.

Nick Cave3:35

Yeah, I mean th that particular song I I wrote in I was actually in rehab. I'd been to they allow you to go to church, and I'd been to church on a Sunday and I was walking back through the field back to this terrible place.

Nick Cave3:50

And the sort of melody came into my head and I sort of ran upstairs and started writing those words down. A new patient was sharing the room with me who was a junkie in a desperate state, who'd come out of the shower and I remember him spraying body lynx, whatever that stuff was, body spray all over himself, as if this was going to change things in some way.

Presenter4:11

Right.

Nick Cave4:16

And he said, What are you doing? And I said, I'm writing a song. And he goes, Why?

Nick Cave4:24

What did you say?

Presenter4:24

What did she say?

Nick Cave4:26

I don't know. Anyway, that was the song. That was, you know, I Don't Believe in an Interventionist God and all of that sort of stuff.

Presenter4:34

From your description of songwriting though, Nick, I can see it's not something you look forward to. There are other aspects of music that you enjoy more than writing, for sure. How do you approach it? How do you make sure you get it done?

Nick Cave4:45

The the writing? Yeah. Well, first of all, I I go to work like everybody else does and it's not up for debate. I approach it in office hours. I always have. I get up and I wear a suit and I find

Speaker 14:58

And

Nick Cave5:00

The more

Nick Cave5:02

The more sort of strictures I put on things, the more I kind of hem the creative process in, the better I write and weirdly, the more my imagination has a certain freedom. You know, I'm envious of people who don't need that. There are people that just wander round the world and ideas fall down from wherever and they sit and they strum a guitar, you know, one day and they write a song and then they carry on living. And I don't I could never work in that way.

Presenter5:32

Nick, I can't wait to hear the music that you've chosen to take to your desert island today, so I think we should dive in with your first track. Tell us what we're going to hear.

Nick Cave5:40

We're going to listen to Metal Guru. T-Rex is a band that I return to constantly. I think that Mark Boland was one of the truly great lyric writers. I think he basically invented his own language. He's not looked upon in the same regard, I think, in that respect to some of the other people from his time. But I think he was the best of the lot.

Speaker 45:50

Uh

Speaker 46:05

You gonna bring my baby to me She'll watch your father has it been

Speaker 46:16

Just laugh if you must curtains they were true for dreams

Speaker 46:22

Oh yeah, Mega Luke is a chill

Presenter6:28

T-Rex and Metal Gurus. What a song. What a song. I mean, what a start. We are off. We are off.

Speaker 46:30

Uh

Nick Cave6:30

What a song

Speaker 46:34

Buff.

Presenter6:34

So, Nikkei, let's go back to the beginning then. You grew up in Wangarasa, Victoria. You are the third of four kids. What were you like when you were little?

Nick Cave6:43

Vying for attention.

Presenter6:45

Okay, how did you get it?

Nick Cave6:46

Well, I had two elder brothers, and my auntie said, when I came out, everyone had to have a stiff drink. That's what she said, which I never quite forgot. But look, I had an amazing childhood in the sense that my mother would just kick the children out of the house in the morning, and you come back for dinner. You know, it was in the country, it was in the Australian bush, and you just roamed around the town like, you know, from a Spielberg movie or something on your bikes. But, you know, it made me brave. It made me do all sorts of absolutely hair-raising sorts of things as a child. Well, it made me kind of unfearful. I mean, we would go down to the...

Speaker 17:14

Something on your body.

Speaker 17:23

Yeah.

Nick Cave7:28

train tracks and there's a there's a sort of small river underneath with one place you can jump in and we would listen to the train tracks and hear the train which was going to come around the corner and we would run toward the train and leap off the train tracks before the train got close to us. So you only had to sort of fall over or what I mean it was I don't recommend it.

Speaker 17:50

And it was

Nick Cave7:52

It's not something that I would allow to happen, but it was an entirely different way of raising children back then.

Presenter7:59

So your your father, Colin, taught maths and English at the local high school. What did he teach you?

Nick Cave8:05

He taught me a lot.

Nick Cave8:08

was a very loud, gestural extrovert, knew his his poetry, knew his writers, would take books out of my hand that he thought were less than and replace them with something that had the same body count, let's say, but was more interesting.

Presenter8:29

What would be a typical swap?

Nick Cave8:31

Well well, I'd be reading some crappy crime novel and he he would put Titus Andronicus, let's say, by Shakespeare in my hand, because it has you know, it's a massively bloody play.

Presenter8:36

Say by Shakespeare

Speaker 18:41

Play

Nick Cave8:42

But but I think I think my father

Nick Cave8:45

Enjoyed taking me to things that were slightly out of order, that I was a little too young.

Nick Cave8:51

to be seen that were kind of offensive, that just sort of shook up what I thought about things. And first of all, when I was quite young, he used to take me to Barry Humphrey Dame Edna Everidge shows. You know, I was only twelve or something like that.

Nick Cave9:07

Now sh what she is on T V is one thing, but a live show of hers is absolutely outrageous. And I remember just being absolutely entranced.

Nick Cave9:17

But he also took me to film festivals where there were quite adult movies that I saw with him. He he read me the first chapter of Lolita and said this is what literature is all about. It's actually quite emotional for me to talk about this because

Speaker 19:32

The speaker.

Nick Cave9:34

Because he was sitting me down and saying, This is what it's about: that idea that art should shake you up and should.

Presenter9:40

That's

Nick Cave9:42

Confront you and shock you and offend and all of these sorts of things.

Presenter9:46

And you know he wasn't afraid of that in his own approach either, because I think he asked you quite a confrontational question when you were just twelve, and it was a penny drop moment for you. Would you tell us what happened?

Nick Cave9:58

Well, you know, I mean, the thing about my father was he was a great teacher, but he also.

Nick Cave10:03

I think he he also wanted to be a writer, and even though he's extraordinarily articulate, he um I think he only ever

Nick Cave10:11

had his writing in a in a couple of magazines. They used to print little essays and stuff back then.

Speaker 110:16

But then

Nick Cave10:17

But but he did ask me what I had done.

Nick Cave10:21

to help the world.

Nick Cave10:24

Or to save the world.

Presenter10:26

Was it was it what what have you done for humanity?

Nick Cave10:28

Yes, that's right. It was an unbelievably pompous question to ask like a 12-year-old.

Nick Cave10:35

Who didn't even know what humanity meant?

Nick Cave10:38

And I asked him what he'd done, and he showed me these little bits of writing, and he was very moved by that.

Nick Cave10:46

That's kind of what he was like. At the dinner table, we would all sit around the dinner table. He said, Okay, what have you done?

Nick Cave10:54

Today at school, and the kids would be like, oh no.

Nick Cave10:59

Whatever. And uh and then he'd go, well.

Nick Cave11:03

And then he would he would sort of expand upon his day, right? I'm kind of painting him out to be a complete pain in the ass, actually, but it was actually exciting to be in his presence. And it it was exciting when

Speaker 111:13

See you.

Nick Cave11:15

he turned his attention on to you and and

Nick Cave11:19

He liked me because I was interested in these matters.

Presenter11:23

It's time for your second disc. What have you chosen?

Nick Cave11:26

It's called My Father by Nina Simone and I remember first hearing this. I was driving in a car and this came on and you know I had to pull over and have this moment with this song because it's unbelievably moving. There's a fundamental truth to the way that she sings. It's a giant expansion of the heart when she sings this.

Speaker 411:49

My father always promised me

Speaker 411:57

We would live.

Speaker 412:05

They're both

Speaker 412:13

I would

Presenter12:13

Love to die.

Speaker 412:15

Uh

Presenter12:17

My father, Nina Simone. Nick Cave, your mother Dawn was a librarian at the school where your dad taught. You said she was a strong character, and this was very much put to the test when you were twenty one and your father was killed in a car crash. It must have been devastating for all of you. How was she able to come back from that?

Nick Cave12:35

She she was extremely warm, extremely loving, but she didn't go in for public displays of grief and by that stage I was in pretty bad condition and and not really able to handle this sort of stuff very well. I was, you know, taking a lot of drugs and drinking a lot and

Nick Cave12:55

And felt ill-equipped to deal with my mother's pain. And I regret that. I wish I had been.

Speaker 112:59

And

Nick Cave13:02

be able to talk ab about this sort of stuff with her, but I was just unformed, you know, I was unformed in these matters.

Presenter13:11

To process your own grief at that age, something so terrible happening must have been almost impossible. You like you say, on you're unformed, maybe you don't have the language.

Nick Cave13:21

I I think I was quite immature in the way that I went about things.

Nick Cave13:26

I don't think I was ever even remotely able to articulate the feelings I felt about my father dying back then. I'm not sure if I ever ever have really worked that out. I just ran away and went to London and blasted my way through the next twenty years or something like that. I wish I had been more alert.

Nick Cave13:49

to what she was going through, but um

Presenter13:52

What kind of thing was she she going through? Looking back, you know, what are you thinking about?

Nick Cave13:56

She's a very attractive woman, and she got uh a sort of palsy of the face, where she just woke up one morning and half her face had sort of collapsed. And just

Nick Cave14:06

Carried on.

Nick Cave14:07

Now, if that happened to me, I'd be...

Nick Cave14:10

You know, I'd have written 20 albums about it.

Presenter14:14

Yeah.

Nick Cave14:14

But do you know what I mean? And I think because she was like that, we just sort of.

Presenter14:15

Mean season

Presenter14:18

It assumed she was she could do anything.

Nick Cave14:19

She could do anything.

Nick Cave14:21

She's a j just an absolutely amazing woman.

Nick Cave14:25

You know, I think that there's something about a mother's love. If it is unconditional and it doesn't really it's not predicated on good behaviour, that's for sure. It's just there. This feeling acts as a

Nick Cave14:41

safety net. You're able to operate in the world in an entirely different way with the confidence that if that safety net wasn't there, it would it'd be a completely different story.

Presenter14:52

So she gave you great freedom in a way because you've said that regardless of what you did, you know, throughout all the years that you were using drugs or when it you know she didn't know where your career was going to be.

Nick Cave15:01

Your career was going to be a little bit more.

Presenter15:03

Deliverance is

Nick Cave15:05

She just, you know, as clearly.

Nick Cave15:07

My fault. I clearly deserved to be in trouble with the police, and she'd just be like those bloody bastards, those bloody coppers. That sort of mumbling, you know, and I'd be just sitting next to her.

Presenter15:17

It's on your side to an unreasonable extent.

Nick Cave15:19

Yes, exactly.

Presenter15:21

So talk me through the change in you then, because it's interesting. You know, you had this kind of idyllic Steven Spielberg montage childhood free range and were a pretty well behaved little kid, but then you approach your teens, eleven, twelve, I think, and things start to change. What happened exactly?

Nick Cave15:39

I don't know, it was just a troublemaker, outspoken in class, talking back all the time, a kind of me against them kind of feeling towards the school in general, that ended up really in me getting kicked out of the school. I mean, it was a terrible situation anyway, because both my parents worked at this school, so the headmaster's office was in the hallway on the way to the staff room, and so I was in constantly sitting in the chair outside the headmaster's office where my mother would walk past or my father would walk past. And then there would be the sort of meal in the evening and all of that sort of stuff.

Speaker 416:15

Yeah.

Nick Cave16:16

So I was quite glad to have gotten kicked out and went to a for one year I was a

Nick Cave16:22

uh a a boarder in a school in in Melbourne.

Presenter16:25

I've seen a couple of pictures of you and your early bands at boarding school and you look like you're out there, you know, making a point, being different, embracing what what must have made you different.

Nick Cave16:35

I I think I often got a lot of energy from the general contempt people had for me.

Nick Cave16:41

You know, look, I was in a all-boys private school for four or five years.

Nick Cave16:47

And so I was always pushing against that. I just n never really liked to be told what to do and how to behave and what to sing and what to play and all of this sort of stuff. And I I think this very much carries on to this day. I I find

Nick Cave17:03

That fundamentally sticks in my craw. That's what my father was teaching me from.

Nick Cave17:10

The very beginning, to be a kind of social adjutant to the culture itself.

Presenter17:18

Nick, I think we should have some more music. It's your third choice today. What's it going to be?

Nick Cave17:20

Toasted

Nick Cave17:23

I've got I'm Stranded by the Saints. So they came down from Brisbane with a sound that they'd worked out entirely on their own, which weirdly sort of sat before the punk thing happened in Britain. We're very proud of that aspect of the Saints in Australia. We got there first and they put out I'm Stranded first, right? If there's one prevailing emotion that came from those live shows, it was complete contempt. about everything and that was really unbelievably exciting. You know, they had it all down. We were just sort of flailing around.

Presenter17:39

You've got

Speaker 117:39

Yeah.

Speaker 418:01

Like a Smith calling on the phone

Speaker 418:04

I've got no time to be alone

Speaker 418:07

Someone coming at me all the time You better think I lose my mind Cause I'm stranded

Speaker 418:18

Friend is far from home.

Speaker 418:23

Alright.

Speaker 418:27

I'm fighting on a midnight train

Presenter18:29

The Saints and I'm Stranded.

Presenter18:32

Nick Cave, you formed your first band while you were still at school. How did you get to be the lead singer?

Nick Cave18:39

I think I was the only one who who would do it. The others played instruments, and that was just the obvious choice. Not that I could sing. That was a seemed at the time to be a mere detail.

Nick Cave18:54

I I had a, you know, I

Nick Cave18:56

I was happy to stand on stage and give it a go.

Presenter18:59

You went to art school in Melbourne a little later, but you left to focus on the band. By that point, they were called The Boys Next Door. And in 1980, you and the band moved to London. You became the birthday party, I think on the playing over. And critics described your early gigs as riotous. You said that they were religious in their own way. You incorporated biblical imagery in your songwriting from very early on. Tell me about your your interest in that language, that world and bringing it into the music.

Nick Cave19:31

I don't want to get too much into this, but it really goes back to when I was very, very young.

Nick Cave19:38

My grandmother had a Bible. This was before I could even really read, certainly before I could understand what the Bible was trying to tell me. She had this great big family Bible, which she gave to me, or at least that's what I thought that she did. And it was just this massive, beautiful thing. I still actually have it, that I would sit there and look at and kind of feel this sort of weird allure about this mysterious book. full of these mysterious stories that I would start to hear when I started going to church. You know, Old Testament stories, these terrifying, terrible stories, and these beautiful, strange, haunting New Testament stories.

Nick Cave20:21

And I I was just always sort of I always found them compelling.

Presenter20:26

And how did you find living in London back then?

Nick Cave20:28

We were living in Earl's Court in a bedsit. There was I don't know how many of us there with with our girlfriends and so forth. We were just crammed into this tiny little place. So yeah, we we we were very close in that respect.

Presenter20:41

And and what about your mum? What was she thinking at this time? Because as you said, she's always supportive. What did she make of the mayhem that you were causing in Earlscourt and beyond?

Nick Cave20:50

Well, we um downplayed it. Uh she died during COVID and

Nick Cave20:56

when we were going through her things, I found this box that my mother had kept of my letters to my mother from Earlscourt. There there were a hundred of them, you know, and they were long and I mean, if if I was getting these letters as a parent I would freak.

Nick Cave21:14

You know, there was so I mean, it wa I was desperately trying to

Nick Cave21:19

hide the situation that I was in, which was pretty dire.

Nick Cave21:23

behind you know what a good time we're all having over here in London.

Speaker 421:26

Mm.

Nick Cave21:27

And also asking them to please write to me. You know, we couldn't afford phone, long-distance phone calls or anything like that. So there was a.

Speaker 121:34

So we think

Nick Cave21:36

They were strangely, weirdly loving, desperate letters from across the sea.

Nick Cave21:44

But she did come over to sort of see me and that was quite distressing in a way. We were all living in a squat in Maidevale and with all the windows kicked out and so forth. But we were on a train, we were going to visit some distant relative or something like that. And I opened up the NME and there was this little ad for the birthday party that had a gig somewhere. And my mother saw that and just this sort of look of relief on her face that, okay, this is actually not just something in my imagination or whatever.

Speaker 122:04

And

Presenter22:16

On her

Presenter22:21

Yeah.

Nick Cave22:22

Um so so that was

Nick Cave22:24

A lovely moment.

Presenter22:26

Nick, let's have some more music. Your fourth choice today. What are you taking to the island next?

Nick Cave22:31

Okay, this sounds gloomy. It actually is a little gloomy, this song. But it's called It Serves Your Right to Suffer by John Lee Hooker. I think a friend... No, no, I bought a tape of this particular record from Camden Market just because of the amazing cover. It's got a picture of John Lee Hooker up close of his face and he looks like he's screaming in agony. And it just says It Serves Your Right to Suffer. And I thought, wow, what's that?

Nick Cave22:56

And played it in the car, and it really changed things for me because that first line, it serves your right to suffer, serves your right to be alone, you're still living the day, done, packed its bags and gone, or something like that. This desperate line sung to himself, and it pointed to a way of singing that you just sort of sat back. I hadn't quite worked that out yet, but I sing much more like that these days with a lot of sort of things. A kind of dark, bluesy croon. I mean, the start of the song's absolutely spine-chilling.

Nick Cave23:33

Uh you

Speaker 423:33

Right to Scott

Speaker 423:39

Serve your right to be alone.

Speaker 423:46

So you write a software

Speaker 423:50

Love your right to be alone

Speaker 423:56

Because you are still living.

Presenter24:03

John Lee Hooker, It Serves You Right to Suffer. Nick Cave, all through the early years of your music career you were using heroin. How were you able to maintain your life, creativity, touring, everything else? It all takes structure alongside that drug use.

Nick Cave24:22

I was a heroin addict for 20 years, and 10 of that I was young and out and having a good time and taking drugs, and it was all part of that world. The second ten years was much lonelier, much more isolated, much more despairing, just trying to stop, trying to stop, unable to stop, starting again, all of that. Just this complete waste of time. It in no way, I would say, aided my creative potential. I often hear that people

Nick Cave24:56

won't give up whatever they're doing because th th they think that they're you know they they need it to be creative. This is absolutely untrue, I found at least. I found once I got rid of the kind of monotony of that particular drug, my life just sprang open like a jack in the box or something like that.

Presenter25:16

Yeah. How many times did you go to rehab?

Nick Cave25:19

I went about six times to rehab.

Presenter25:21

So it worked on the sixth time.

Nick Cave25:22

Yeah, but that that was a

Nick Cave25:24

That was a whole different s set of circumstances happened for me.

Presenter25:28

So why didn't it work until that point? What wasn't in place those you know, the five times over the, like you say, those ten very difficult years?

Nick Cave25:36

It's hard to say, um

Nick Cave25:40

You know, it's it's it's very difficult. I I'm I'm not actually sure, to be honest. There there was just an impulse. You know, I would stop for a while and then this voice would start gone.

Nick Cave25:52

It's okay.

Nick Cave25:54

This would happen and eventually that became overwhelming and I would score and I'd be back to the start again and and so that just went around and around. It was not fun. It was not fun.

Presenter26:05

What was the thing that made the difference, if there was one, a turning point?

Nick Cave26:10

I met my wife.

Nick Cave26:12

Susie. Susie. And she was a recovering addict herself and

Nick Cave26:20

I wasn't and it just didn't work. We loved each other clearly, but it just didn't work. And she eventually left and after many months came back and said, look, you can do what you like. I love you. I'm here. And at that point, I think I just realized that this just isn't going to work. And I'm going to screw this whole thing up. And then went into a rehab in America and got clean, haven't used since. You know, I mean, I had something to come back to.

Presenter26:58

And tell me about that sense of life springing open, that rediscovery of all of these emotions that you mustn't have been able to feel when you were using.

Nick Cave27:10

Yeah, I mean I I would always work anyway, right, whether I was using or not.

Presenter27:16

Uh

Speaker 427:16

Top.

Nick Cave27:16

But when when when you're using heroin, you're not

Nick Cave27:21

fit to work on some level. You know, I would

Nick Cave27:24

I mean, this is embarrassing to say. I mean, I would be sit at the typewriter and sort of feel that I'd done a good day's work.

Nick Cave27:32

and then go and and and look at myself in the mirror and I had the the keys of the typewriter imprinted on my forehead. You know, that I'm just I'm just sort of you know knotted off there and and it's not it it it's just

Nick Cave27:46

It's just bullshit. So once I got rid of that aspect, I was just alive to things. I was just alive.

Presenter27:53

To what? To what things?

Nick Cave27:54

Well, to to to love and to beauty and and

Nick Cave27:59

To heartbreak.

Nick Cave28:00

I'm trying not to to make this a hallelujah.

Nick Cave28:04

moment. You you become alive. And become to become alive means you're subject to all sorts of things, good and bad. You become a human being.

Speaker 128:05

Yeah.

Presenter28:17

Nick Cave, it's time for some more music. Your fifth choice today, tell me about this one.

Nick Cave28:22

This is Karen Dalton, Something on Your Mind. Beautiful singer. I had this friend, Mick Guyer, who died of cancer twenty-something years ago.

Nick Cave28:31

And he would make these extremely beautiful tapes of weird, esoteric, unknown music. And he would educate us. He would send everybody, all the people in the Melbourne scene and all of that sort of stuff, had these tapes from Mick Guy. And they were full of extraordinary music, jazz, all sorts of blues, country that really expanded our range of what we would consider acceptable music. And Karen Dalton was one of those people. When I think of Karen Dalton, I think of driving around Brazil in Sao Paulo, where I was living at the time.

Presenter29:06

Where are you living at the time?

Nick Cave29:08

With Karen Dalton in my cassette, listening to her over and over again. This once again, this extraordinary voice, racked, tragic.

Nick Cave29:17

And this particular song.

Nick Cave29:20

I mean lyrically it's extraordinary and her version of it it's mind-blowing.

Speaker 429:24

Yesterday

Speaker 429:28

Anyway you made it voice good.

Speaker 429:34

How you turn your days into night time

Speaker 429:40

Didn't you know?

Speaker 429:44

You can't make up without ever even trying

Presenter29:53

Karen Dalton and Something on Your Mind.

Presenter29:56

Nick Cave, in twenty fifteen, your family experienced an unimaginable tragedy. Your fifteen year old son, Arthur, died after accidentally falling off a cliff near Brighton, where you were living.

Presenter30:09

You've described experiencing a rupture that time and memory poured itself into. Are you able to explain what you meant by that?

Nick Cave30:18

Um probably not. Or not adequately.

Nick Cave30:22

You know, I find these things strangely difficult to talk about. I find them easier to write about. It's one of the reasons why I have the red hand files or started it up in the first place in a way that I've got.

Presenter30:34

So that's your online platform where anybody can write to you and ask a question and you answer one a week.

Nick Cave30:39

Yeah, I I try my best to I can't answer them all'cause hundreds are coming in but

Presenter30:43

But

Nick Cave30:44

I used them to try and articulate the the way I was feeling and the way I I felt about Arthur's death.

Nick Cave30:52

There is a kind of river of sadness that runs through the Red Hand files that is to do with loss, and I think it's really colored my way of viewing the world. I'm not sort of deflecting here, but

Nick Cave31:05

I have someone write in and say and and talk about their husband who died. And and then then you realize that actually the husband died sorry, actually, sorry.

Nick Cave31:18

You realize the husbands died like 15 years ago and this person is writing this letter in and they're still inside this cataclysmic event. And I think what I really want to try and do is to let people know in some way that it doesn't have to be thus and that there is a world beyond the grief that they feel.

Presenter31:42

And for you, Nick, you've experienced tremendous pain losing Arthur and then in 2022 your eldest son Jethro also died. He was just 31. But your recent songs do seem to be very interested in questions about hope. You said not long ago hope is optimism with a broken heart which I just love. Tell me more about that.

Nick Cave32:04

I think when I'm talking about hope, I'm also talking about the idea of joy. And for me, perversely, I suppose, joy is in itself a form of suffering in the sense that it understands the mechanics of what it is to be a creature of loss. I think that's basically what happens. It's the sort of terrible secret behind grief and loss is that great joy can come eventually. A joy you've never experienced or could anticipate. When you're fresh to grief, let's say. This sounds completely impossible. But it's not. Susie, my wife, and I have a... there's a lot of joy in our lives. But, you know, I was in a weirdly

Nick Cave32:59

privileged position to do this publicly. A lot of people don't get that opportunity.

Presenter33:05

So tell me about that because you know I would have thought in the the rawest stages of grief many people would just they'd want to pull up the drawbridge, you know, they'd want to retreat from the world and you have so determinedly done the opposite.

Nick Cave33:13

Yeah.

Nick Cave33:16

I haven't had any choice in a way. You know, it became common knowledge. You know, I would walk when I started to go outside the house in Brighton, walk out on the street, everyone knew. So I'm sort of walking into a kind of common concern for me that was really difficult, but also extremely beautiful. And people started to write letters in to my house in Brighton that.

Nick Cave33:42

spoke of their experiences with the same sorts of things. You know, all of that was very helpful and I I I s I started to understand the sort of fundamentals of these things, of of what we are as human beings and how we are connected to one another and

Nick Cave33:57

we're connected in all sorts of ways, but we are connected in our loss. It just inspired me in a way that if these people can make me feel that way, maybe I can make other people feel that way. Maybe there is a sort of

Speaker 134:10

Maybe there is

Nick Cave34:12

A way of learning how to articulate these matters that might be helpful, both to myself, maybe to Susie.

Nick Cave34:20

and to other people.

Presenter34:22

Nick, it's time for your next track, your sixth selection today. Tell us about this next tune and why you're taking it to the island.

Nick Cave34:30

This is A Girl from the North Country by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. Now I think I saw this for the first time when Bob Dylan performed this song on The Johnny Cash Show when I was about nine years old in Australia. And I used to watch the Johnny Cash Show and there was something about Johnny Cash that really captured me. He was like the first time I'd ever seen

Nick Cave34:59

the potential of music to be like evil, an outlaw and dangerous. He looked like a dangerous guy. He dressed in black and

Nick Cave35:08

He started off the program going, Hello, I'm Johnny Cash, and then sort of s he'd swing around and do that and there was just this sort of gravity to the man. And he would um bring on different guests and and uh he sang Girl from the North Country with Bob Dylan, who of course I'm a massive admirer of.

Nick Cave35:29

That's quite a moment. It's a very very beautiful duet.

Speaker 435:33

B Easy for me if she's wearing a coat so warm.

Speaker 435:41

To keep her from Littley How Laying Wind.

Speaker 435:50

If you travel in

Speaker 435:52

In the north.

Speaker 135:53

No

Speaker 435:57

Where the wind's been heavy

Speaker 436:00

On the borderline.

Presenter36:04

Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, Girl from the North Country.

Presenter36:08

Nick Cave, how much has your attitude to the work that you do creatively changed in recent years? Obviously, life must have changed immeasurably. But when it comes to your work, do you see things differently?

Nick Cave36:23

Yeah, I do. Once again, this is very much, you know, has a lot to do with Arthur and Jethro too. You know, I always just thought art was kind of, at the end of the day, everything. I mean, it's a terrible thing to say, but it was always there, it was always reliable, it was just the thing that I did. And, you know, I'd get up in the morning, I'd go into an office and I'd lock the door and I'd work away and sort of.

Nick Cave36:50

you know, in awe of my own creative potential, let's say.

Nick Cave36:55

And and I think after Arthur died I just shut the office. And I and I haven't gone, you know, I just locked it up. It it just I was just repelled by it in some way. It seemed so indulgent.

Nick Cave37:09

I still work very, very hard, but I don't see that as the be-all and end-all of everything. That I find my responsibility towards my children and my wife and to be a citizen, a husband, these things are the actual animating force behind or should be the animating force behind our creativeness.

Presenter37:33

You've said that today you're mostly happy and life is good. I wonder where you find your greatest joy in life today?

Nick Cave37:42

Yeah, I mean, there's so much to choose from, actually. You know, I do get it from from my family and from my wife. One aspect of my family that it's difficult to exaggerate how how beautiful this is that I have a little grandson who's like seven months old and

Presenter37:58

Oh, congratulations.

Nick Cave37:59

No, I mean this little guy is so gorgeous and

Nick Cave38:05

It's really, really something. Uh his name's Roman Cave.

Presenter38:09

What a great name. I mean destined for big things.

Nick Cave38:09

What a great name

Presenter38:14

What kind of granddad are you?

Nick Cave38:15

Oh, I'm pretty good. No, he he's it it's it's a it's a very beautiful thing and and, you know, I I also get much pleasure, um joy out of my work, you know. It's quite a privilege to go on stage and play to people. Uh I sort of understand that more.

Presenter38:31

Can you imagine a day when you don't do that? I mean, the idea of putting your feet up retirement one day.

Nick Cave38:37

Well, I I I always thought I'd stop doing it when I couldn't do knee drops anymore.

Nick Cave38:42

Actually when I look back I haven't done so anyone.

Presenter38:45

As long as you feel like you could, if you need to.

Nick Cave38:47

I could do, yeah. I can get down, it's getting up that's a little bit harder than.

Presenter38:48

Okay.

Presenter38:53

Nick, it's time for your next disc, number seven. What are we gonna hear?

Nick Cave38:57

This is I Am a God by Kanye West. This became, weirdly enough, a kind of family song for us. My kids loved it, Susie loves it, I love it. It's an extremely playful, extremely dark, complex song where on the one hand Kanye is presenting himself as a god and then towards the end of the song he's like screaming in terror. It's unbelievably deep song in my view. Mostly we would drive to this. Most of these songs I'm driving in all of these. Perhaps what I should get also on the Desert Island is a car that I can drive around and listen to these songs.

Presenter39:37

Now you've got a little while to think about. Maybe you can take one.

Nick Cave39:39

Yeah.

Nick Cave39:40

But yeah, this is a song that I I value on a personal level and actually I just think it's a a complete amazing work of art.

Speaker 439:49

I am a god.

Speaker 439:53

I am a god.

Speaker 440:02

I am a god, hurry up with my damn massage, hurry up with my damn menage, get the Porsche out the damn garage. I am a god, even though I'm a man of God, my whole life in the hand of God, so y'all better quit playing with God.

Presenter40:18

Kanye West and I Am A Gorge

Speaker 440:21

What a song

Presenter40:21

That's visceral, isn't it? That puts you in touch with something that you must love about music, that raw energy. Yeah. Nick Cave, over the years, as well as releasing music, you've published books, you've written screenplays, you've written the libretto for an opera, but you do have another artistic string to your bow that I wanted to ask you about, ceramics. You make these Staffordshire-style figurines. How did you get started and why?

Nick Cave40:47

Yes, well I I am a a legitimate ceramicist.

Nick Cave40:52

It's good to have one of those on the programme that lasts. It's been a while. I've noticed. I collect Staffordshire-style figurines, which are

Presenter40:52

It's good to have one of those on the programme at last. It's been a while.

Nick Cave41:02

little figurines made in the Victorian ma mass produced in the Victorian era. And it w and Covert had happened and I had nothing to do and I couldn't go on tour and I I picked up one of these little staffatures, which I used to make similar sort of figurines when I was a teenager and and and looked at it and

Nick Cave41:20

Kinda thought I could do that. I don't know why I thought that, but I um as it turns out it was a hell of a lot harder than I thought it was.

Presenter41:27

Yeah.

Nick Cave41:29

He knows that you

Presenter41:29

Oh, but you have done it. You've made more than one.

Nick Cave41:31

Yeah, there's 17. My mother loved the little sculptures that I made, and to the day she died,

Nick Cave41:40

At ninety-two she had them around her chair where she would sit. These little things I made as a fifteen, fourteen year old.

Nick Cave41:47

little sad clowns and and and little screaming pregnant mothers and all sorts of weird little things I I made. And on the day that she died, I was booked to go in with the guy who was going to teach me how to do this, a guy called Corin Johnson.

Nick Cave42:02

And she died. She was in hospital. I couldn't go to Australia because of COVID.

Nick Cave42:07

And I was ringing up Corin to cancel the day, and Susie was like, What are you doing? And I said, Look.

Speaker 142:11

Yeah.

Nick Cave42:13

Mums die.

Nick Cave42:15

I'm just cancelling. And she goes, No, you go and do your work.

Nick Cave42:20

And I'm like, oh, you know, all right. And went and sat with the clay and just started to make these little things. And really it was something

Nick Cave42:31

extremely beautiful about just sitting there and poking my fingers into this clay and trying to make some sense out of this basic material.

Nick Cave42:43

I mean, it was more than therapeutic. It was a sort of spiritual thing. So I I went in every day ni n nearly for two years making these a year and a half making these little things.

Presenter42:55

Nick, you've been a churchgoer throughout your life. What does attending services mean to you?

Nick Cave43:00

There have been many year gaps, but I've always returned to church as some sort of way of trying to articulate the sort of basic spiritual yearning that I have. I was born with it. The reason why I go to church is because it is a structured, institutional, human, yes, institution that wraps its arms around certain yearnings and sorrows that I have and makes sense and gives space for them to find themselves in some way. And I find it extraordinarily moving. That is both true, that is imaginative, and that is participatory. And there's something about that that goes on that.

Nick Cave43:49

I find just a very beautiful thing to do.

Presenter43:53

It's almost time Nick to cast you away to your desert island. How will you approach life there?

Nick Cave43:59

Minimally, I am a minimalist, and my wife, as much as I love her, is a maximalist.

Nick Cave44:04

And um

Nick Cave44:06

Our home is just full of stuff.

Nick Cave44:10

And the idea of sitting on a desert island with a single palm trees rather.

Nick Cave44:16

um attractive to me.

Presenter44:17

So that's appealing.

Nick Cave44:18

Well, it's appealing except that I that I'm very social sort of character and and so I I I don't think I'd like the the sort of solitary nature of it. I mean I can do being by myself quite well.

Nick Cave44:31

But

Nick Cave44:32

I like people.

Presenter44:34

Well, before we cast you away, we'll let you have one more track to take with you. Your final choice for the island today, Nick Cave. What's it going to be?

Nick Cave44:41

Morning Dew by Tim Rose. I think it's controversial as to who actually wrote the lyrics to this song, so let's not get into that. But the lyrics are a work of absolute genius, and Tim Rose's particular version of this song, which is, in my view, the sort of supreme version of it, is so racked and kind of apocalyptic in its delivery. It's just a sensational song.

Speaker 445:07

Walk me out in the morning, I do my honour.

Speaker 445:15

Walk me out in the morning do today

Speaker 445:22

Can't walk you out in the morning do my favorite

Speaker 445:29

Can't walk you out in the morning too at all.

Speaker 445:36

Ah

Presenter45:38

Tin Rose and Morning Dew. So Nitcave, the time has come. I'm going to cast you away to the island. You'll have the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book of your choice. What will it be?

Nick Cave45:50

I take The Adventures of Pinocchio. This book connects to me both as a child I think I had it read to me as a child read it to my own children, but it also very much connects to me as an adult. And it's so layered and so human.

Nick Cave46:07

often read this and get kind of swept away on it.

Presenter46:09

It's yours. You can take it with you. You can have it, of course. You can also have a luxury item. What will that be?

Nick Cave46:10

Can I

Nick Cave46:15

I would have a suit. I'll have a new suit.

Presenter46:18

A new suit of

Nick Cave46:19

So that I'm appropriately attired when I'm rescued.

Presenter46:22

Your signature look has always been a suit. Do you wear a suit all the time, in real life, day to day?

Nick Cave46:27

Breathe.

Nick Cave46:28

Yeah.

Presenter46:29

Lottons

Presenter46:30

What what kind of suit would you like for the island?

Nick Cave46:34

Just the same one in a in a dark colour.

Presenter46:37

So you won't even dark on the island.

Nick Cave46:37

Seizure

Nick Cave46:40

Well, I I don't want to get rescued in a camo.

Nick Cave46:43

Or an orange suit or you know

Presenter46:45

I was thinking of like a pale linen for the hot environment, but

Nick Cave46:48

No, a a dark suit.

Presenter46:50

And finally, Nick Cave, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves first, if you had to?

Nick Cave46:58

I have a terrible feeling it's I Am a God by Kanye West.

Presenter47:03

Why?

Nick Cave47:04

If if I'm to die on the island.

Nick Cave47:07

And there's some music that's sort of ringing around when they find me, that song wouldn't be a bad song to be going on. I think it's a song.

Nick Cave47:17

To God.

Presenter47:19

Nick Cave, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Nick Cave47:23

I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

Presenter47:37

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Nick. I'm sure he'll look fabulous in his new suit if he's ever rescued. We've cast many singers and songwriters away, including Bonno, Guy Garvey, and Adele. Nick's fellow Australians, Barry Humphreys and Jermaine Greer, are in our archive too. The studio manager for today's programme was Duncan Hannand. The assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky. The production coordinator was Susie Roylands, and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the barrister and writer Nemonie Lethbridge. I do hope you'll join us.

Presenter48:18

Join me, Rachel Burden, inside Cafe Hope. Thank you so much. Radio 4's virtual coffee shop, where guests pop in to tell us what they're doing to make the world a better place. I really believe that food waste and food poverty shouldn't coexist. From those helping feed people to those helping them get out and about.

Speaker 148:37

We have now created a scheduled bus service running six days a week.

Presenter48:40

Hear about the plans, the struggles and the triumphs. We've had a really supportive local community here. A home for people who dedicated their lives to helping others. The new series of Cafe Hope with me, Rachel Burden, from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds.