Having a chance to speak to Nick Cave is among my most favorite interview opportunities. As Jack Nicholson said of Stanley Kubrick, “Everyone pretty much acknowledges that he’s the man, and I still feel that underrates him.” With The Bad Seeds, solo, and through collaborations with other artists, Cave has built a multifaceted and profound body of work in the studio while growing into a towering figure on the live stage. As readers of The Red Hand Files know, he’s razor sharp, funny, and expresses himself with remarkable candor and piercing specificity.
This interview occurred about five weeks after the release of Push the Sky Away by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. I might say it was an especially creative period for the artist but the guy has sustained a prodigious multimedia output for decades. It’s probably more accurate to say this is my favorite stretch of his career following up the 2008 LP Dig Lazarus Dig with The Bad Seeds, his 2009 novel The Death of Bunny Munro and the Grinderman albums. His approach to writing and recording was changing and he drilled down on why and how.
See our interview here.
