Nick Cave
Australian musician, songwriter, poet, author and actor.
I am the king! I am the king! I am the king!
One dead marine through the hatch,
Scratch and scrape this heavenly body,
Every inch of winning skin,
Honey Honey Honey Honey Honey, come and kiss me-e-e-e-e-e!
I tried to kill it in my bed,
I gagged it with a pillow,
But awoke the nuns inside my head.
I'm looking forward to working with Nick on something special one day. .... He has an amazing gift, a level of spirituality and self-realisation in his writing you don't often find. A Hemingway or Xavier Herbert of our time.
O the same God that abandon'd her,
Has in turn abandon'd me,
Deep in the Desert of Despair,
I wait at the Well of Misery.
Of course I doubt [the existence of God], I would distrust anybody who didn't doubt. But I'm a believer. I have an understanding and belief in the divinity of things. It seems to me that people look at God in the wrong way. They think that God is there to serve them, but it's the other way around. God isn't some kind of cosmic bell-boy to be called upon to sort things out for us. It's important for us to realise that God has given us the potential to sort things out on our own.
The actualising of God through the medium of the love song remains my prime motivation as an artist.
In a clap-board shack with a roof of tin,
Where the rain came down and leaked within,
A young mother frozen on a concrete floor,
With a bottle and a box and a cradle of straw.
I'd rather see what makes me different as something almost congenital. And I have these inklings that what you commit or endure in this world, relates to some kind of justice or balance. Maybe if you get a bad deal in this world, it is because of something you did, or were, in a previous life. Which is why I don't feel sorry for the poor.
One morn I awakened, a new sun was shining,
The sky was a kingdom, all covered in blood.
The moon and the stars, where the troops that lay conquered,
Like food left to wither, poor spirital food.
The boy watches his father cross the road and thinks there is something about the way his dad moves through the world that is truly impressive. Cars screech to a halt, drives shake their fists and stick their heads out the windows and curse and blow their horns and Bunny walks on as if radiating some super-human force field, like he has walked off the pages of a comic book. The world can't touch him. He seems to be the grand generator of some hyper-powerful electricity.
I took her from rags right through to stitches,
Oh baby, tonight we sleep in separate ditches.
Hold me up baby, for I may fall,
Hold my dish-rag body tall,
Our bodies melt together, we are one,
Post-crucifixion baby, post-crucifixion and all undone.
Nick the Stripper,
Hideous to the eye,
Hideous to the eye,
He's a fat little insect,
A fat little insect,
And oooooooh! Here we go again.
I heard Nick Cave for the first time on an independent radio station in Australia, and the way he uses words is breathtaking. And it’s very melodic at the same time, very anthem-like. He also wrote a book called And the Ass Saw the Angel, from the perspective of a fetus in a womb. He’s really arrogant, but he can afford to be.
On 30 March 1983 The Birthday Party played Los Angeles. Me and all the guys from Black Flag went to see them do two sets at a small place called The Roxy, and they were thoroughly godhead. They were one of the all-time premier live bands. .... I see Nick about once a year, which is about as much as I see anybody I don't work with. But that means when I do run into him it's really great to see him. He's an excellent human and I love him a lot and that's the bottom line, he's one of my favourite people, and I think he's a tremendous artist. He has a great band, too. The Bad Seeds are a band I will travel a great distance to see whenever possible. What Nick goes after is so incredibly interesting every time, because it's always different. He always takes chances. The art comes before the commerce. As far as the music business goes, he's one of the good guys. He's the real thing.
I don't particularly believe all love is doomed. But I guess, one is usually kinda suffering from some aborted love affair or association, rather than being at the peak of one. I think it's fairly obvious that a lot more suffering goes on in the name of love than the little happiness you can squeeze out of it. But I wouldn't like to dwell on it. Perhaps you could lighten up a bit.
Another ship ready to dock... the rigging comes loose... like Jennifer's Veil.
The carny had a horse, all skin and bone,
A bow-backed nag, that he named "Sorrow",
Now it is buried in a shallow grave,
In the then parched meadow.
My responsibility as an artist is to turn up at the page or the piano or the microphone. The rest is up to God.
King Ink feels like a bug,
Swimming in a soup-bowl.