“Nick is navigating a completely new world,” says Andrew Dominik of his friend Nick Cave. That world began eighteen months ago when Cave’s teenage son Arthur fell to his death. Nick Cave the father was devastated while Nick Cave the artist, then in the midst of recording an album, was stopped in his tracks.
“Nick has always used art as a way to not feel things,” says Domink. “I think the function of art is not to feel – it’s to not-feel. Artists make art instead of feeling something. What he says in the film about trauma damaging the creative process – that’s true and that has been really terrifying for him because he expected that his ‘Nick Cave’ self would come out and protect him. And he got into the studio and he found that a different Nick Cave, a less confident one, had to make the record.”
Dominik (the director of the films Chopper, The Asassination of Jesse James, Killing Them Softly) was invited into Cave’s recording sessions after Arthur’s death. The film that came out of it, One More Time With Feeling, is an uncomfortable witness to the way that grief transformed Cave and his wife Susie Bick.
This is a new Nick Cave. But there have been several Nick Caves before. “Nick Cave” is a theatrical construct of the singer songwriter from Warackanbeal. Always has been. Like Bowie and Bob Dylan, he is an artist who is on a constant path of reinvention. So many artists – Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen for example – refine and develop their original idea. Cave however changes his persona and language with each new phase. He doesn’t have a fixed idea of his art but is really happy to follow his instincts and be open to the inspiration of his friends. Once embarked on a phase, Cave submerges himself in that and it determines his public persona, his concerts and his writing.
Ever since his teenage days, Cave has hit on a creative idea and immersed himself completely in it until he has exhausted all the possibilities. There was the Birthday party years as outlaw poets and mad children, he moved on to the Pentecostal years of Southern Gothic Flannery O’Connor, the Berlin years of art rock and later the Anglican theologian and so forth. Few artists, Bowie and Bob Dylan being two, can carry off this perpetual reinvention. But it’s this dogged pursuit of the new that has kept Cave growing when almost all his contemporaries have retired from the field.
Once he has exhausted his interest, Cave moves on and doesn’t look back.
“He is one of the few artists who has been around for a very long time who is still relevant to now,” says producer Nick Launay. “In the ‘70s, we couldn’t wait for the next David Bowie record because we didn’t know what he’s going to do. That’s where Nick Cave is now.”
“Nick is always the custodian of the Nick Cave character and that means several things at once,” says Dominik.
In a digital era, Cave is about real-time, flesh and blood performance. The Bad Seeds and spinoff band Grinderman put on electrifying stage shows. The albums cut almost live but Cave also gives great interviews where he contextualises and expands on his current persona and its relation to the work. It’s part of this immersion. And anyone who wandered through the exhibition of his archive in Melbourne a few years ago will attest that he nothing if not obsessive.
Nick Cave’s creative output is almost neurotic in scale; a novel, a film soundtrack and possibly a screenplay, a steady stream of songs, of artwork and live performance at a pace that outstrips most artists.
The doco-dramady 20,000 Days On Earth, which Cave co-wrote. was a humourous take on his recent “Nick Cave” persona as the tortured artist. Most of the film was a delightful confection, the only ‘true’ parts were where Cave and the Bad Seeds worked together. But the film also suggested the end of one Nick Cave and the incipient beginning of another.
Then of course the accident happened. Nothing will be the same again.
Andrew Dominik’s documentary captures the months after the accident. He sees the profound grief and a welcome unsentimentlity from Cave. Life has to go on. But then when he sits behind the piano and sings “I Need You” the air is filled with sadness and loss. Although the song predated the accident, life has transformed its meaning and expression.
The trajectory of Cave’s career over the past decade has been shaped by his deepening relationship with Warren Ellis, the Melbourne violinist and multi-instrumentalist who joined the vagabond circus that is the Bad Seeds back near the turn of the century. Together they write almost all the Bad Seeds material and do soundtracks and other work on the side. The film – Hell or High Water – currently playing in Australia has their score.
While Cave does the words and Ellis is perpetually writing loops on pedals and archaic keyboards, the relationship is complex and beyond the fathoming of either Dominik or co-producer Nick Launay.
“When Warren plays there’s something that is so moody about what he does it really gets to you,” says Launay. “. In the same way that Jimi Hendrix moves you in ways that other guitar players don’t, what Warren does with all his miniature guitars and bouzoukis and violins and all his pedals is incredibly emotion provoking. That’s why he has connected with Nick. They get on very well as people – like 2 little kids in a room they are inseparable. They’re constantly taking the piss and bullying everyone else in the room – in a funny way. There’s a real childlike things that happened when they get together and it’s beautiful in a way.”
“Warren has got his pedals, he’s got these things that make noise and he just sits around all the time making these incredible loops of sound,” says Dominik. “Warren doesn’t care about things being in time or being in tune. He doesn’t care about anything except for how it feels. Nick is more of a formalist. He likes the joke structure where there can be lots of disparate ideas floating around and he ties them all up at the end in a punch line and Warren pushes him out of that.
“Warren is always pushing him into areas that are more direct. In a friendship way they love each other very much. They inspire each other and they see change as the way to move forward.”
Cave’s songs have become more abstract over time and more emotional, less narrative-based. One thing that hasn’t changed though is the emphasis on live performance.
Launay describes recording Nick Cave as “a lot of fun and sometimes scary. It can sometimes be hectic like juggling chainsaws. Nick has a self-professed impatience that leads to stress but this energy is what fuels his recordings, and even his scary low bellowing becomes very endearing. I’m glad to say that the being shouted at has dwindled over the years Ha Ha !”
Launay has a policy of switching the tape machines into record the moment Cave walks through the door and they stay running.
“It’s a very different process than I’ve worked with any other artist. Nick works very fast. If a song doesn’t work pretty quickly then he wants to move on to the next thing. If he’s not feeling it, or gets bored, we start the next song and that earlier song is scrapped, It’s a great form of self editing. The Dig Lazarus Dig album was recorded in four days, overdubs took a week and it was mixed in a week, Abattoir Blues / Lyre of Orpheus which has 24 songs was done in 2 weeks.
“Nick writes everything out meticulously in little books. It’s all very organised and very beautiful. He comes into the studio and will describe what the mood has to be. He will go to the piano and start singing and everybody joins in. There’s no real rehearsal. He has a great gang of musicians who are also his friends who all have great aesthetics. So when Nick starts playing his new song even if they have never heard it before, they join in and the emotion pores out of the speakers. then its a matter of thoughtful editing.
The recording method has it benefits in bringing a genuine intensity to the sessions.
According to Dominik, the new Nick Cave is about seducing his audience. “The live show is very different now – all the getting out amongst the crowd” he says. “He used to stand on the edge of the stage and project his rage to them. Now, Nick is pulling the audience in. Playing these songs was not easy during the filming. This tour will be really interesting because he will be starting again in a way and that will make it really good.”
By Toby Creswell
Nick Cave Tour Dates are here http://www.nickcave.com/live/
