In the early, anxious weeks of the first Covid lockdown in March 2020, Nick Cave and I spoke regularly on the phone. I have known Nick for more than 30 years, but in that time our paths tended to cross only fleetingly, often backstage at his concerts or when I was asked to interview him. The pandemic changed all that. With time on our hands and the world out of kilter, our phone chats turned into extended conversations about all manner of subjects, both esoteric and everyday. In that strange and heightened moment, the idea for a book was born.
Faith, Hope and Carnage is the end result of nearly 40 hours of recorded phone conversations that happened, off and on, between August 2020 and the summer of 2021. In the chapter that follows, Nick talks about the predictive, even uncannily prophetic nature of certain songs, the vulnerability that attends songwriting, and his working relationship with his collaborator and friend, Warren Ellis. He speaks candidly about the capsizing nature of grief, but also the small, but transformative, acts of kindness that he experienced from strangers in the wake of the death of his son, Arthur, and the “impossible realm” he entered while making his acclaimed album, Ghosteen.
