Q magazine interview with Nick Cave
Feb. 24th, 2005 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alonewiththemoonFor any interested parties, I post this interview with Nick Cave in fine form. An example:
Q: Who impresses you musically right now? NC: In relation to what's going on in music today, I consider myself head and fucking shoulders above, musically, lyrically and as a live band. I mean that in all humility. Q: But you claim not to listen to pop music, so how do you know? NC: Well, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe everyone's really great. But the fact that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are one of the biggest bands in the world makes me want to hang my head and weep. I'm forever near a stereo saying to the band, "What the fuck is this GARBAGE?" and the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Q: Really? There are a lot worse. NC: Really? Well, that's my point exactly.
ACROPOLIS NOW!
Forget the dark lord of doom shtick. Nick Cave is, in reality, a man who
collects tea towels and wishes to turn Brighton Pier into an ape sanctuary.
WORDS: MICHAEL ODELL
Nick Cave is struggling with the dress code for 200BC. In an Athens
restaurant, which aims to recreate the ambience of ancient Greece, he
sits at the centre of a 30-foot table as toga'd servants pour sweet wine
into goblets and a spit-roasted carcass is passed overhead. Between the
Doric columns are beds, should you require a mid-prandial rest. On the
walls gods loll and point or stab animals with spears.
In his brown, chalk-stripe suit Cave looks like a Reservoir Dog who has
blundered onto the set of Alexander. As the Bad Seeds get trolleyed in
historically accurate fashion around him, teetotal Cave smokes a
succession of highly anachronistic roll-ups.
He recommends the lamb. He explores the photo opportunities with Q's
snapper ("You're not getting a Kylie shot of me in a toga," he warns),
and for a man so often compared to the devil or a vampire, he seems a
genial host.
In fact, on a scale of one to smashing-Kylie's-head-in-with-a-rock (the
grisly text of their duet Where The Wild Roses Grow), Cave is in jovial
mood and with a good reason. His dates in Athens and Thessaloniki mark
the end of a sold-out European tour. And today is the last day of
filming of his screenplay The Proposition, a story about Australian
bushrangers starring Guy Pearce, John Hurt and Ray Winstone, being shot
on location in the outback.
A quarter-century into his career Cave has evolved from the proto-goth
lunatic attacking his audiences at Birthday Party gigs to the
multi-tasking artist, as comfortable at his grand piano as he is writing
on theological matters for The Times. It's as much a surprise to him as
everyone else that his recent album, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus,
has sold 80,000 copies in the UK alone.
In the limo ride back to his hotel he's quite the elder statesman,
remembering how the Greeks smashed up a now defunct venue at a Birthday
Party gig in 1981. Confronted with a tape recorder, the famous reticence
returns. "Oh God…" he moans.
Q: That's not a good start. What do you mean, Oh God?
NC: It's just I hate… Put that. Just start with, Oh God…
Q: OK. You think this album is a masterpiece?
NC: I say that about all my records because people believe it, and it
becomes the accepted viewpoint. But yes, I'm very proud of this record
and it's been a pleasure to play it. We wrote it as a band rather than
me working alone in my office.
Q: Yes, you usually work nine-to-five in a suit. Sounds a bit dull.
NC: What am I going to wear? Bermudas and flip-flops?
Q: How about trainers?
NC: No. I'm going to do something serious. I would feel extremely
uncomfortable sitting at a piano in trainers. Trainers?! I couldn't
bring myself to demean myself or my material. My muse wouldn't bear it.
I've always worn suits as soon as I could afford them made. They're only
600 quid but I feel serious. I feel the part.
Q: You've got Leonard Cohen's suitcase in your office. What's in it?
NC: Nothing of Leonard's in there, unfortunately. Just crap. It's my
wife's. She got it from a friend who was involved with Leonard. I don't
kneel by it or sit in it. He can have it back if he wants.
Q: Tell me about Orpheus's Lyre…
NC: Oh, is this where you try and forge a link between my music and us
being in Greece?
Q: Yes.
NC: Well everyone knows the myth of Orpheus and his lyre, don't they?
You didn't? That's intriguing. You need to sue your school. I'm worried
about you. It's a story that is from before The Rolling Stones. Anyway,
I grew up with it. I've been aware of it for as long as I can remember.
I'm not even sure it was my father who told me about it. Obviously the
tale of Orpheus, who makes music so beautiful it can wake the dead, was
something that spoke to me but I wanted to change it. So in my song he
makes such a godawful racket. He makes a deadly sound.
Q: You're very settled now. Wife. Kids. Steady career. And you love
Hove, don't you?
NC: I feel more towards that place than any place I've ever lived in,
except maybe Australia. I'm thinking of a particular stretch of the
promenade and certain back streets of Hove. I feel happy there and I
feel invisible. I've always felt an alien or intruder or gringo or a
guest. I'm happy to remain in Hove for the duration.
Q: So your wife will wheel you along the prom in a wheelchair and a
tartan blanket when you're 70?
NC: And she in stilettos and a nurse's outfit, yes.
Q: Do you campaign on parking and dog shit?
NC: No. Not yet. Although I did campaign to have Brighton's West Pier
turned into an ape island.
Q: What do you mean?
NC: It was front page of The Argus, the local rag. Rock King Has Idea
For Pier, or something. We wanted the pier's iron frame to be covered in
vines, lay grass on top and throw a few monkeys on it so that it was
this strange island sticking out to sea the community could watch.
Q: That's a bit more like it. Now you're sounding a bit like the madman
of old.
NC: I felt demented when I arrived in London in the '80s. Now, like many
parents, I feel the world is crazy, not me. I'm a tourist now, so I like
London again. I can go to Buckingham Palace and buy a tea towel.
Q: I don't believe you.
NC: I have. I went to Buckingham Palace and bought a tea towel. I've got
it hanging in the kitchen, but we really don't need to go there. I like
tea towels. It felt symbolic.
[Bad Seeds percussionist Jim Sclavunos later confirms that Cave collects
tea towels. At their Greek shows over the weekend, Lyre Of Orpheus tea
towels are available for five euros.]
Q: Are you a royalist?
NC: I'm a tourist. But I'd rather have the Queen on my tea towel than
Tony Blair.
Q: Why?
NC: [Suddenly bored and grumpy] Oh, I don't know.
Q: Breathless, from the new album, is an unironic love song. It's
unusual, perhaps, because no women end up in tears or in casualty?
NC: I'll exclude my wife from this. I've always found that women I've
written about have been flattered even when I haven't been nice.
Q: Was [former lover] PJ Harvey OK with the songs about her on ['97
album] The Boatman's Call?
NC: I don't know. It was all over by the time it came out. We haven't
talked about it.
Q: Didn't you start going to church to get over Polly?
NC: What?!! No I fucking didn't. Where'd you get that from? Come on.
That's just not true. I wasn't that wounded, to be honest with you. I
wrote a great song, Far From Me [on The Boatman's Call], about her,
which was a fucking cracker. That song was by far the high point of our
relationship. It lives on.
Q: What about Tori Amos. You said the "twinkling cunt" line in Green
Eyes [also on The Boatman's Call] was about her sewing sequins into her
pubic hair. I bet she wasn't flattered by that.
NC: That's simply not true. It keeps getting repeated in the press, but
it's not true.
Q: It's here in this music magazine from 1997. The journalist asks, "You
have first-hand experience of this?" and you say, "Yes."
NC: I lied. I start to lie when things get really tedious. Anyway, I met
Tori in the lobby of a hotel once afterwards. She seemed a lovely girl.
She didn't send any letters of complaint. I think even if it were true
it's kind of flattering. I mean, how sweet. What a sweet thing to do… to
sit there and sew sequins into your pubic hair.
Q: You've managed to maintain a very balanced view of being a junkie,
haven't you?
NC: I was a junkie for 20 years. I'm not going to deny all that. That
would be silly. I don't trust the whole reborn thing, whether it's
religious or cleaning up. You're still absolutely the same person. It
would be like denying my entire youth. Perhaps if it was a deeply
hideous time I would, but it wasn't. People take drugs to feel good and
that seems a legitimate reason to do it for me.
Q: Won't that be a tough rationale to defend as a parent?
NC: I'd have a lot more difficulty if my son came home in a Burberry cap
carrying a six-pack under one arm and a football under the other. If he
started binge drinking like a huge proportion of the English male
population does, I would be worried.
Q: That's class snobbery. What if he wore a Burberry suit while he got
pissed?
NC: No, it's Burberry that's the problem. And junkies don't punch the
shit out of each other every night. They don't trawl the streets looking
for heads to kick in. They just sit there and quietly dribble into their
lap. They're passive and harmless. There is a difference.
Q: Who impresses you musically right now?
NC: In relation to what's going on in music today, I consider myself
head and fucking shoulders above, musically, lyrically and as a live
band. I mean that in all humility.
Q: But you claim not to listen to pop music, so how do you know?
NC: Well, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe everyone's really great. But the fact
that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are one of the biggest bands in the world
makes me want to hang my head and weep. I'm forever near a stereo saying
to the band, "What the fuck is this GARBAGE?" and the answer is always
the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Q: Really? There are a lot worse.
NC: Really? Well, that's my point exactly.
Q: Hearing Johnny Cash when you were nine drew you to music. You ended
up recording with him.
NC: I worked with him in the studio. We weren't friends, but he was a
great man. It was very sad when he died, obviously, but in some ways it
gave me hope. He sang right up until he died. And he died not long after
his wife died, which is a beautiful thing, too.
Q: You've said you are forever trying to escape the myths around you…
NC: Do you know it's a breach of the gentlemanly code to repeat back a
man's quotes to him?
Q: You didn't ask me to sign any code. Go on, be your own PR for a day.
NC: I wouldn't do that job. But I suppose if anything rankles it's that
I sit down and do interviews and the article will always say I look like
a fucking vampire in the first sentence. I realise I am implicated in
that. I've written some pretty dark, death-obsessed music, but there is
more to me than that.
Q: Stop dyeing your hair, perhaps? Be Nicholas again?
NC: I don't think so. It's been black since I was a teenager. I dyed it
when my first girlfriend, with whom I was besotted, left me. Just
vanished. I'm brown naturally.
Q: And you're quite warm and friendly, too, aren't you? I saw you stroke
a cat yesterday. Do you regret cultivating an image as a dark lord?
NC: I don't cultivate any image. Granted, I see the macabre in life but
I'm just as capable of stroking a cat as the next man.
The next night in Thessaloniki Cave entertains 3000 Greeks, but his
struggle to avoid vampire stereotyping hits a snag. A bat flies into the
venue and dive-bombs the stage and audience. Nevertheless, his
high-kicking, gothic Rat-Packer routine hits the mark. Backstage he
takes receipt of an end-of-tour cake and gives flowers to the choir. But
he's not quite done. Unlike many pop stars Cave does not really curate
his image, but he does care about words. Our earlier discussion of
"chavs" in Burberry needs tweaking. Cave approaches with a carefully
prepared statement.
"I've been thinking about your suggestion that my dislike of English men
in Burberry drinking lager amounts to class snobbery," he begins. "But
you are English. That's why you deal in class. I'm Australian, a land
where a cunt is a cunt." 
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-24 08:16 am (UTC)Brilliant.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-24 08:42 am (UTC)Personally the last paragraph is my favorite.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-24 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-28 07:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-28 12:46 am (UTC)Speaking of, is it worth my 10 euros, on sale now?
no subject
Date: 2005-02-28 07:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-02 10:12 am (UTC)