A conversation with Nick Cave: 'Our intention for the Bowl is simple -- to tear everyone's heads off'

Australian native Nick Cave is an artist so distinctive that to hear a catch of his sonorous voice, a moment of his fragile or vehement lyrics, a sight of his inky hair swooped over his pale cheek, can alight an instant frisson in his legions of fans. At age 50, he hasn’t let his fascinations lull him into a static place. His latest album with the Bad Seeds, the boldly punctuated “Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!” isn’t the retracing of territories he’s already plumbed. It’s a shining new city in his mythic land, rich with dark humor, redemptive visions and no-apologies idiosyncrasies.

While the new album has reinvigorated the Bad Seeds, Cave has also found fresh blood in Grinderman, his staunch outfit with three other members of the Bad Seeds -- Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey and Jim Sclavunos. Last year’s debut was a controlled, blackened fit of rock and roll, most scabrously in the song “No Pussy Blues.” The band, which opened a handful of dates for the White Stripes in 2007, has performed at a few festivals in Europe this year, including the Roskilde Festival, and is at work on a new album.

And then there are Cave’s explorations into film and fiction, the latter of which Cave is mostly close-lipped about for now, confirming only that he’s at work on a second novel. A contributor to the soundtracks of many of Wim Wenders’ films, including “Wings of Desire” and “Faraway, So Close!,” Cave also wrote the score with Ellis for “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.” They are now at work on “The Road,” based on the Cormac McCarthy book and directed by another of Cave’s co-conspirators, John Hillcoat. The two most notably teamed up on “The Proposition” in 2005, a grizzly Australian Outback western written by Cave.

The father of four children, Cave lives in Brighton with his wife, Susie Bick, and their twin boys, and also has an apartment in London. For the first time in more than five years, Cave & the Bad Seeds will play L.A. on Wednesday at the Hollywood Bowl and he promises not to go easy on the crowd. We chatted over the phone when Cave was on a break from recording music for “The Road” at a London studio.

-- Margaret Wappler


You have a pretty set work routine at home, where you write in a studio every day. Does that process differ from what you might have done with the Birthday Party?

I always sat down at a desk and wrote, since I started doing this kind of thing. I write on tour as well. I’m kind of writing all the time these days. I write when I wake up, on the bus, when I get back from the gig. And I’m writing a novel at the moment; I work on that everywhere and anywhere. Though my sleeping has gotten really strange lately -- I just don’t do very much of it. But sleep deprivation is kind of a creative force in itself.

Does inspiration factor into your work habits?

I’ve never been concerned with inspiration. I talk to musicians about this sometimes and...

their response is that they write songs when they come to them and sometimes they don’t come for three months or a year or five years or whatever, and other times they get a lot of songs. I’ve never felt that I’ve had that luxury. It’s important for me to go in each day and work and that’s how I get things done.

How close do the final products of your songs come to the ideas in your head?

That’s the thing about songwriting. I record them with a band and the band interprets what I write. So,  sometimes the songs are a million miles from the original conception and sometimes that's frustrating and sometimes that’s really wonderful. It depends on how the songs turn out. The Bad Seeds understand the stuff that I write and they’re actually involved with the songwriting process quite often. I trust their judgment on how to interpret my songs.

You’ve written about redemption, love, religion and death, to name a few of your favorite themes. Have you sensed any new preoccupations creeping in or any new ways of looking at those old ones?

No, not really. I think it’s the same with most of us. Ideas are formed very early. It’s not all about ideas,  but certainly things we respond to and the things that we love, the things that inspire us. For me, they’ve remained the same things that I’ve wanted to write about. I don’t feel like I have to scrabble around to find new things to write about. I don’t know what else there is, actually. There are certain places I don’t really go because I don’t feel I have the authority. I don’t particularly want to write songs that are about the current state of politics. I can’t bear it in other people, so I don’t see why I should do it myself. I can’t bear being told what to think, especially by musicians.

What do you get out of Grinderman that you can’t get out of the Bad Seeds?

We’ve just been doing a tour with Grinderman at the festivals and it’s been amazing. The impact that Grinderman has had in a festival situation is nothing like the Bad Seeds have ever been able to achieve, actually. The Bad Seeds are much more lyric-based and complex and possibly even a little less generous in what we give to an audience or in the way we include an audience. And Grinderman are very inclusive,  so people have been going nuts, even people who don’t really know the band. It just seems to work really well.  You don’t need a lot of brain cells or something.

There’s a line in “Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!” the song, where you sing, “He thought even the pale sky stars were smart enough to stay away from L.A.” I know this is from a character’s point of view,  but it made me wonder what your feelings are about L.A.?

Actually, I love L.A. But when I was there -- I lived there for maybe nine months maybe 20 years ago -– I was almost murdered on a daily basis.

Where were you living?

I spent a lot of time around 6th and Union.

Well, some would say that’s still rather rough.

Oh, is it rough? Yes, even the character in that particular song realizes it’s wise to keep away from L.A. Also, I’m talking about a particular historical period in that song, the '70s in America, when, well, it was a dangerous place to be. I’m actually a huge fan of America in general but I had a lot of difficulties with it for a while. When I first went there, and this was quite a while ago now, I found it very difficult to be there. I’m not even sure why. Not to play concerts but other aspects of it. I just found it to be too foreign to the way that I wanted it to be… but the last three times I’ve been back in a while, I’ve loved it. There’s an energy that remains in America that just doesn’t exist in other countries. It certainly doesn’t exist in England anymore.

What’s the energy exactly?

An edge to things and a true vitality and energy amongst the people. I’m not saying it’s always a positive energy, but it’s certainly there. It’s just a fascinating place.

I noticed that you quoted Wallace Stevens in “We Call Upon the Author.” What made you want to put his line in your song?

I don’t know… basically, the final verse of that song is supposed to be the author descending into complete navel-gazing and it’s kind of incomprehensible. And I just threw in this rather lovely line I saw floating around somewhere.

Is that generally your philosophy on authors, that they engage in a lot of navel-gazing?

That particular song is very much about the role of the writer, the role of the writer in creating his own universe, the role of God, a kind of general listing of the horrors of the world and the things that irritate me and creep me out, from the little things to the big things, and asking for some explanation for why these things need to exist. It’s also a comment on my songwriting. It’s a lot of different things. It felt nice that the song just descends into an eternal nonsense.

About that last line, “Prolix! Prolix! There's nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix.” Is that a condemnation or a celebration of the editing process?

It’s certainly a comment on my own prolix style of songwriting. It’s how I write: A song that’s maybe five to six verses long, I write 20 verses and then I chop, chop, chop, chop. That’s always been the case. I can’t let something go until it’s exhausted, so I have to edit. I’m always editing. I find editing hugely exciting. Taking something away from something can do extraordinary things, whether it’s music or writing or in a film. In film, it’s extraordinary what happens. We’re working on “The Road,” and a new edit gets sent every three days or so and your way of seeing can completely change from it, from just leaving a lingering look for three seconds longer or something like that. It’s very much the same thing with lyrics and music in general.

You’ve had a lot of experience with writing music for film. What’s it like to create music for a fluctuating visual medium?

It’s exciting. It’s easy in the sense that it’s hugely enjoyable, but it’s complex. It’s hugely enjoyable to make your own records because you go in, you write something, it’s cool and you like it and you put it out as a record. There’s no financiers or producers who then have to listen to it and decide whether they like it or not, do you know what I mean? The whole film business, everything is done by committee, it would seem. So what you feel about what you’ve created is highly irrelevant in the process of making a film. You hand something in and the worth of it is judged by people you’ve never even seen, so it’s mentally frustrating in that way, but at times it’s hugely enjoyable because the kind of agony of original creation, of having to think of the actual idea and the theme and what you’re going to write about and all that kind of stuff, which is really very difficult, the toughest part of songwriting for me, is not there. You’re simply supplied everything by what’s on the screen.

Tell me about the book you’re writing now. Is it any kind of follow-up to “And the Ass Saw the Angel”?

It’s about as far away from that as you can get.

Are you thinking at all, now that you are writing another prose work, about the idea of the author and how that relates to the idea of the creator or God?

No, I’m not thinking about anything because I’m writing my book. That’s a matter of putting your head down and writing the pages. There’s no other way of doing it. For me, the process of writing is the thinking. It’s the most exciting of all things, when you have these words in the English language, and writing is just sort of ordering these words in a pleasant way. I find that whole process extremely exciting. I don’t think about the sort of question that you mentioned.

Why is that? It would tangle you up somehow?

Well, I’m involved in telling a story. It’s fiction and what you need to be doing is being in there, inside the character’s head. I just love it. With writing, I can definitely get closer to the vision in my head than with any other art form that I’ve been working in. There are no surprises. I can actually have an idea and take it exactly to the place where I want to go. I feel like I have some control over the medium. I don’t actually feel like I have control over the medium of music. In fact, when I create music and I perform music, it never sounds the way I thought it would. You asked this before, but I never feel I have much control over its outcome. Not because other musicians are involved, but because I understand music less than I understand writing.

Do you get tired of how your personality is identified through your music?

Well, why wouldn’t they do that? That’s part of listening to music. We all do it to everybody. Good music, bad music, whatever. You can’t listen to a Britney Spears song without thinking about Britney Spears, can you? She’s an extreme example, but that’s what art is. It’s a very generous act. It’s giving a part of yourself, or opening a part of yourself up for people to investigate. That sounds slightly obscene but there it is.

Well, was there ever a time when you did not enjoy the investigation?

I think at some point I felt I didn’t need to dwell on the particulars of my life as I was perhaps doing, that I could write things that were more generic. Or at least a little more obscure. There were a few years there where I was pretty much writing what was happening on a daily basis in my life. And that’s kind of a dead end after awhile: You can’t write a song unless there’s some sort of tragedy going on in your life.

I know you’ve been fascinated in the past with writing the classic love song. Which of your songs has gotten closest to the platonic ideal?

I think “The Ship Song” is good. I’m always proud to sing that song even though it’s kind of one of those songs you could crank out. It’s simpler than I normally do. There are a lot of them, actually, that I’m very pleased with. I don’t do that sort of thing very much anymore but I spent a lot time trying to achieve a certain kind of emotional power within a classic format. I don’t know whether I achieved it or not but I did the best I could. I’ve decided to move on to other things.

Why did you decide to let it go?

Well, I’ve just done it. It becomes second nature, to write that kind of thing. To me, that’s the time to change direction.

And what’s your direction now?

I have no idea. If I work it out, I’ll have to change it again. But there’s certainly a renewed energy around our music, certainly in a live capacity. It rocks.

Photo courtesy of Anti-

Comments

[Brien Comerford]

We all respect Nick Cave put the truly great Australian Band is The Church. Frontman Steve Kilbey has resonant and dreamy vocals that compliment the band's ethereal and haunting sound. "Under The Milky Way" exemplies the great music they have released for the past twenty years.

[AD]

Nice of you to share your opinion, but The Church isn't at The Bowl tomorrow night. Go start a fan site, Brien.

[Otis Campbell]

Good looking man.

[Inna]

I can't wait for the show tomorrow. His songs have invaded my head for the last few days.

[CSE]

Nick Cave is the greatest song-writer/musician ever. His sparse, piano-centered songs are pure perfection.

[michael pulsford]

So we only get to have one truly great band in Australia?

Damn.

[Mike]

Last night's show was electrifying...

[Inna]

The show was amazing. He encompasses the essence of rock and roll -- charisma, sexuality, a little danger, and ability to draw you into the moment. Best show I've seen in a long time.

[mal]

some add'l info on the new NICK CAVE novel,, his second-

http://www.musicnewsnet.com/2008/09/nick-cave-to-pu.html