Arguments, walk-outs, even the odd fight – early interviews with the young Nick Cave were a health hazard. “I was a young troublemaker, drug addict, chaos maker and my default setting was just a general contempt for everything,” the Australian musician says. Via his angsty goth-rock outfits The Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds and Grinderman, Cave railed against the world and everything in it. “I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing,” he says now, looking back. “I mean it’s not bad for young people to kick back against this world and try to do something about [it].”
Until recently, Cave rarely gave interviews. In 2017, he vowed “never to do one again” after struggling to talk about grief to a journalist following the death of his 15-year-old son, Arthur. Instead, Cave responded to fan questions (many of which were about loss) via his Red Hand Files website, articulating the debilitating process of grief with unflinching clarity. A live In Conversation series followed and then, during lockdown, he spent 40 hours speaking to journalist Sean O’Hagan for a book, Faith, Hope and Carnage, the paperback of which is released next week.
