nick cave
Nick Cave has responded to the viral comments he once made about the Red Hot Chili Peppers, clarifying his current stance on the band in the process.
Cave’s comments about the Los Angeles funk-rockers have circulated as something of a punchline for roughly 25 years now. Though their exact origins appear to have been lost to time, the quote is often attributed to Cave as, “I’m forever near a stereo saying, ‘What the fuck is this garbage?’ And the answer is always ‘The Red Hot Chili Peppers.’”
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Chili Peppers bassist Flea (who, like Cave, was born in the Australian state of Victoria) responded to Cave’s scathing remark in 2006, noting that it initially hurt his feelings since he’s a huge fan of the Bad Seeds frontman.
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“I don’t care if Nick Cave hates my band because his music means everything to me,” Flea said. “He is one of my favorite songwriters and singers and musicians of all time. I love all the incarnations of the Bad Seeds. But it only hurt my feelings for a second because my love for his music is bigger than all that shit and if he thinks my band is lame then that’s OK.”
Now, Cave has taken to his Red Hand Files website to respond to a fan asking about the truthfulness of the quote, referring to his comments as an “offhand and somewhat uncharitable remark” about the band.
“There was no malice intended, it was just the sort of obnoxious thing I would say back then to piss people off,” Cave explained. “I was a troublemaker, a shit-stirrer, feeling most at ease in the role of a societal irritant. Perhaps it’s an Australian trait among people of my generation, I don’t know, but that comment has followed me around for the last quarter-century.”
Cave also recalled how Flea’s own response had made its way to him, moving him and bringing forth the realization that “Flea was a human being of an entirely different calibre, indeed, of a higher order.” He also added that the pair have since apparently patched things up, with “pleasant” interactions following both on and off the stage in different iterations over the years.
The response closed with the revelation that Flea is apparently in the process of crafting a new album, with Cave noting he recently added his vocals to the new record which sees Flea’s trumpet-playing skills on full display.
“Last week, Flea sent me a song and asked if I’d like to add some vocals. It was for a ‘trumpet record’ that he is making,” Cave explained. “It is not for me to divulge what the song was, only that it is a song I cherish more than most, with arguably the greatest lyric ever written, a song of such esteem that I would never have dared to sing it had Flea not asked me to. I went into the studio on Wednesday and recorded my vocals.
“The track emerged as a beautiful conversation between Flea’s trumpet and my voice, filled with yearning and love, the song transcending its individual parts and becoming a slowly evolving cosmic dance, in the form of a reconciliation and an apology.”
Australian musician Nick Cave has always been full of surprises, from his incendiary live performances as the singer of The Birthday Party in the early ‘80s, to collaborating with Kylie Minogue as leader of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. However, few may have seen Staffordshire-style ceramic sculptures as the post-punk icon’s latest passion.
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While it’s not the first topic to come to mind when Cave’s name is mentioned, the 67-year-old has been hard at work as a ceramic sculptor for a number of years now, having first adopted the craft during the global pandemic. Later in 2022, he held his first exhibition, with a series of 17 figures depicting the life story of the devil going on display at Finland’s Sara Hildén Art Museum.
In a recent interview with The Art Newspaper, Cave discussed his fondness for the figures, and his ‘The Devil — A Life’ series, which is currently on display at Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, Netherlands.
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“I’ve collected Staffordshire-style sculptures for years. I just love these things,” he explained. “They’re not expensive works of art; you find them in second-hand shops. I just had them in front of me as I was just sitting at my desk. We sort of grew idle through Covid [and] were allowed to do things that we normally wouldn’t have done. I sat there looking at one of these Staffordshires just thinking, ‘I can do this.’”
According to Cave, his mother had loved the clay figurines he made as a teenager, and her passing at 92 during Covid left him with a “sentimental tug” that soon evolved into his newfound passion. “Mostly it was just that I thought, ‘F–k, you know, it can’t be that hard to make one of these things,’” he explained.
Admitting there is “no irony” to his love of the art form, Cave added that his 17-piece ‘The Devil — A Life’ series also served as a way for him to come to terms with some of the internal feelings that still resonated following the accidental death of his 15-year-old son Arthur in 2015.
“The whole thing started to have a more mysterious, mystical pull,” he explained. “Then they started to be in order, one after the other. They were trying to make sense of my predicament in a way that I couldn’t make sense of it in my songs, for some reason.
“Ultimately, this ended up being something about culpability and forgiveness around the death of my son,” he added. “That was something that I could never quite get to in my songwriting. To me, these became acutely personal.”
Cave’s most recent body of work, Wild God, arrived in August as his 18th studio album with the Bad Seeds. The record reached No. 2 on the charts in his native Australia, while peaking at No. 66 on the Billboard 200. The album received two Grammy nominations and was also nominated for the Australian Music Prize, ultimately losing out to Kankawa Nagarra’s Wirlmarni.
Nick Cave has already sorted the soundtrack for his funeral, with Kanye West apparently set to accompany the somber scene.
Cave’s musical request was made via his Red Hand Files website in which he responds to letters from fans. One letter, from Helen in the U.K., reflected on Cave’s choices for his recent appearance on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs segment, in which listeners choose the songs to accompany them on a desert island. Cave’s eight songs included cuts from Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, T. Rex, Nina Simone, John Lee Hooker, Karen Dalton, Tim Rose, Kanye West, and The Saints.
Helen’s letter went on to ask Cave about how he deals with hypothetical questions related to loss and guilt, while another inquiry from Damian in the U.S. asked about the song he would like to be played at his funeral.
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Following a lengthy rumination on his own experiences with grief, Cave closed his response by answering Damian’s question with a track from 2013’s Yeezus album: “Please, ‘I Am A God’ by Kanye West”.
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It’s not the first time that Cave had professed his love of West, with another Red Hand Files response from January 2020 seeing West described as “our greatest artist” by the Australian musician.
“Making art is a form of madness – we slip deep within our own singular vision and become lost to it,” Cave wrote at the time. “There is no musician on Earth that is as committed to their own derangement as Kanye, and in this respect, at this point in time, he is our greatest artist.”
Months after that praise, a fan named Vassilis inquired via Cave’s site about whether West’s 2021 album Donda had been “delayed because you both took the last-minute decision to include a track you have been working on together”. Cave’s response was much shorter and succinct than his typical responses: “Dear Vassilis, No. Love, Nick.”
Nick Cave has responded to a recent complimentary tweet from Bob Dylan’s newly-active account, labelling the experience “a lovely pulse of joy”.
The initial tweet was shared via Dylan’s account on Tuesday (Nov. 19), and saw him reflecting on the recent performance by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in France just two days earlier, specifcally singling out the song “Joy”, from Cave’s Australian Music Prize-nominated album, Wild God.
“Saw Nick Cave in Paris recently at the Accor Arena and I was really struck by that song Joy where he sings ‘We’ve all had too much sorrow, now it the time for joy’,” Dylan wrote. “I was thinking to myself, yeah that’s about right.”
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The comment apparently made its way to Cave, who is himself a noted Dylan fan (having previously reflected on the musician’s work and having covered numerous tracks from his extensive back catalog). Taking to his sporadically-updated Red Hand Files website, Cave explained that he was unaware of Dylan’s presence, but called the tweet “a lovely pulse of joy that penetrated my exhausted, zombied state”.
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He continued; “I was happy to see Bob on X, just as many on the Left had performed a Twitterectomy and headed for Bluesky. It felt admirably perverse, in a Bob Dylan kind of way. I did indeed feel it was a time for joy rather than sorrow. There had been such an excess of despair and desperation around the election, and one couldn’t help but ask when it was that politics became everything.
“The world had grown thoroughly disenchanted, and its feverish obsession with politics and its leaders had thrown up so many palisades that had prevented us from experiencing the presence of anything remotely like the spirit, the sacred, or the transcendent – that holy place where joy resides. I felt proud to have been touring with The Bad Seeds and offering, in the form of a rock ‘n ’roll show, an antidote to this despair, one that transported people to a place beyond the dreadful drama of the political moment.”
Cave closed by lamenting his ability to express in-person gratitude to Dylan, instead opting to utilize his own site to do so: “I was elated to think Bob Dylan had been in the audience, and since I doubt I’ll get an opportunity to thank him personally, I’ll thank him here. Thank you, Bob!”
Dylan’s Twitter account has become a source of intrigue in recent weeks given its recent resurgence in activity and its apparent shift from promotional messages to actual comments from Dylan himself. Alongside recommendations for New Orleans cuisine and a delayed tribute to late comedian Bob Newheart, Dylan has aso ignited speculation into the identity of a mystery woman named Mary Jo.
Albums by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Amyl and The Sniffers, Dirty Three and Hiatus Kaiyote are among the finalists for the 20th annual Australian Music Prize, announced Thursday, Nov. 14.
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The 2024 shortlist features nine albums chosen from a pool of 600, and culled down from a total of 46 nominated records released across the past year by Australian musicians.
This year’s list sees veteran performers such as Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds making the list thanks to their 18th album Wild God. In the two-decade history of the prize, Cave has been nominated four times, including for 2016’s Skeleton Tree, 2019’s Ghosteen, and his 2021 collaboration with Warren Ellis, Carnage.
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Punk outfit Amyl and The Sniffers make another appearance on the shortlist, with third album Cartoon Darkness providing them their third nomination to date. Meanwhile, Melbourne neo-soul quartet Hiatus Kaiyote are nominated for Love Heart Cheat Code, their second nomination after 2021’s Mood Valiant.
First-timers such as Grace Cummings and Rowena Wise also make the list thanks to their Ramona and Senseless Acts of Beauty records, respectively. Australia’s First Nations community are recognised by way of Walmatjarri Elder Kankawa Nagarra’s Wirlmarni and Dobby’s Warrangu; River Story.
Two of the shortlisted albums from this year’s list are also up for ARIA Awards later this month, including Dobby’s record, which is in contention for Best World Music Album, and Audrey Powne’s From the Fire, which is in the running for Best Jazz Album.
Spearheaded by founder and prize director Scott Murphy, previous AMP recipients include Sampa the Great (twice), the Avalanches, Courtney Barnett, the late Gurrumul, King Stingray, and most recent champions RVG.
“On behalf of The AMP, SoundMerch, our industry partners – and the Aussie music industry as a whole, I sincerely thank our judges for their donation of time, expertise – and passion!” said Murphy. “It’s no easy task reviewing over 600 albums and choosing to highlight just 9.”
The winning album will be announced at an event held at APRA AMCOS on Wednesday, Dec. 4. The winning artist will take home a A$50,000 ($32,000) cash prize, courtesy of headline sponsor SoundMerch.
“Thank you to everyone for their support. It means a great deal to us to be recognised by AMP,” Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds said in a statement.
“We are grateful to be shortlisted for this prize,” echoed Amyl and The Sniffers’ Dec Mehrtens. “Australian music is dear to our hearts, and we are incredibly proud to be able to create and perform the music we make.”
2024 AMP shortlist:
Audrey Powne – From the FireAmyl and The Sniffers – Cartoon DarknessDobby – Warrangu; River StoryGrace Cummings – RamonaHiatus Kaiyote – Love Heart Cheat CodeKankawa Nagarra – WirlmarniNick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Wild GodRowena Wise – Senseless Acts of BeautyDirty Three – Love Changes Everything
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