Nick Cave Talks Creativity, Writing, & New Album, “Wild God”

It’s Monday afternoon in London, and Nick Cave is feeling happy. “It’s a beautiful sunny day today, amazing weather,” he says cheerfully by way of introduction, stepping outside while we talk to soak it all in.

This presents a stark contrast to the Nick Cave of the popular imagination — the gloomy impresario with the funereal visage, contemplative and severe. And while Cave’s music has always been powerfully fascinated by themes of mortality and tragedy, since the loss of his 15-year-old son, Arthur, in 2015, death has been even more central, being confronted at length on the Bad Seeds record Ghosteen (2019) and the album he co-wrote with longtime collaborator Warren Ellis, Carnage (2021), both decidedly steeped in grief and mourning.

“I think joy understands suffering. It’s different than happiness. Joy sort of feels like momentary explosions of optimism, which come from an understanding of loss.”

Nick Cave

But lately, Cave says, he has come out the other side of the grieving process, and the result is the most spirited and, indeed, joyous Bad Seeds record in more than a decade: Wild God, his 18th studio album, is full-throated and exuberant, brimming with energy and life. Meanwhile, Cave continues to slave away at the side project that’s become his recent obsession, his blog, The Red Hand Files, where he fields questions from curious fans and offers sprawling, candid, and often shockingly insightful musings on life, death, and everything in between.

Clearly, at 66, Cave is as productive as he’s ever been, back from the brink of despair with a newfound zest for living — and creating. In this far-ranging conversation, Cave discusses the mysteries of the creative process, the usefulness of criticism, and why writing songs is still, to this day, an incredible pain.

I wanted to mention a personal loss I experienced and how much your music helped during the grieving process. But then it occurred to me that maybe this happens a lot — that people often tell you about their grief.

Nick Cave: It actually happens all the time, yeah. I have the same problem as a gynaecologist at a dinner party. People feel open to talking to me about that sort of thing, though I never feel I have the answers when people do talk to me about them. But I’m always interested in what people have to say.

You’ve spoken about moving on from grief, or allowing yourself to feel joy again. Is that feeling, that joyfulness, reflected on the album?

Certainly, I’ve felt acute grief, and I have been able to come out the other side, feeling very happy and joyful about things. That journey is absolutely possible — even though it doesn’t feel like it for people new to these matters. I’m happy that Wild God is out there, and that people feel that it’s a joyful record, but it’s important to understand what joy actually is. I think joy understands suffering. It’s different than happiness. Joy sort of feels like momentary explosions of optimism, which come from an understanding of loss.

“We need to understand the moment we are in and be alert to the beauty and the potential joy that exists within the moment — to not be overly concerned with the future.”

Nick Cave

There’s a line on the song “Joy” that’s very powerful: “We’ve all had too much sorrow / now is the time for joy.” I think it captures the feeling that when you’re grieving, you almost need someone to allow you to feel happy, or to get—

Permission. Yeah. There is that. It’s a sort of spiritual position that I’m putting forward on some level, to do with the idea of present laughter. That is, we need to understand the moment we are in and be alert to the beauty and the potential joy that exists within the moment — to not be overly concerned with the future. It seems to me that there is a sort of deep dissatisfaction, culturally and politically and spiritually, about the present moment. We’re constantly pushing toward something better, and we miss a great deal in the process of doing that.

In The Red Hand Files, you’ve written about your interest in cold plunges, or swimming in icy water. Not to sound too woo-woo, but for me, that’s a way of really getting into and feeling the present moment — you can’t think about anything else.

I hadn’t actually thought of it in that way, but that’s totally right. It is a ‘present moment’ thing. But it’s not a gentle activity. That’s what I like about it. It’s sort of subversive, and dangerous, and catastrophic. It’s not a woo-woo moment at all. It’s deeply, physically subversive. I love that about it.

The Red Hand Files is a kind of service to your readers. But it’s also clearly therapeutic for you. Was that always the intention?

It didn’t start that way. What I wanted to do initially was a podcast or something like that, where I sat down and talked to people about certain things. I was interested in the idea of conversation and of having good-faith exchanges with people. But I realized that I didn’t have it in me to do podcasts. It just wasn’t the right — I didn’t have enough control over things. So, I decided to do The Red Hand Files. Ask me a question, and I can answer it. That way, I can find a question that interests me, and write into it in a careful way. It’s become a fundamental part of the way I live my life. It forces me to be considerate and compassionate towards my fellow human beings, day to day.

Is the process time-consuming?

Fuck yes [laughs]. The whole thing takes a couple of days. I’ve got to read all the questions, first of all. I’ve got to think about it. I don’t just find a question and bash out a letter. They’re really carefully considered. I go through a back and forward exchange with my assistant, who’s turned out to be an amazing editor. And I try to craft something that feels like it might be helpful.

“I found myself with a big fucking smile on my face the whole way through it. It’s a big, beautiful, joyful thing. It sort of leap-frogs over all the nagging.”

Nick Cave

You recorded Wild God in London, then went to a studio in France, where I understand you hit a roadblock. What happened?

I think we were aware that we were making a big record. We recorded all the songs in London, and as is often the case, we thought we’d go and do it properly somewhere else — go and rerecord all of this stuff. Then when we tried to do that, we just listened more and more to the stuff we already had, and we liked it more and more. I tried different vocals, different versions of things. But the originals, just me playing the songs and singing without really knowing too much about what I was doing at all, there was an adventuring spirit that couldn’t be recaptured. Doing it properly, you lose something.

How did you feel about it once it was complete?

Well, once a record is mastered, you can’t do anything else, right? It’s over, and you have to step away, for better and for worse. I usually wait a bit of time because I don’t have the stomach to actually listen to any given record, and then a month later I’ll sit down and listen to it. Normally, I’m happy with it, but I’m also already thinking ‘God, I wish I had done that in this way, or this would have been better had that had happened.’ Already I’m looking at it critically. With Wild God, I put it on, and I was more excited to listen to it for some reason. I found myself with a big fucking smile on my face the whole way through it. It’s a big, beautiful, joyful thing. It sort of leap-frogs over all the nagging.

And that’s unique to this record? Or have you felt that way before?

I suppose Grinderman was like that. But this record is principally, as we’ve been saying, about talking into the present moment in a joyful way. You can’t argue with that, really. Although, of course, many people will.

Do you actually pay attention to what people say about the albums?

I do. I read some reviews and then stop, just to get a basic idea of how the record is going over, I guess. I don’t spend a lot of time on them, but I am interested to see what people think of the record. There are all sorts of places these days where you get reviewed, not just in the press. People will write in and tell me what they think. They already are, about the songs that I’ve already put out. They’ve been overwhelmingly positive. Occasionally, someone will write in and just say, ‘What the fuck happened to you? This just sucked on every level, blah, blah, blah.’ That’s kind of like, ‘Oh. I wish you hadn’t said that.’ But you move on.

“You’ve been sitting there just fucking hating everything you’ve been writing, and it’s nothing but artistic anguish, shall we say. And then suddenly it all makes sense, and it just hits you.”

Nick Cave

I can’t imagine anyone who writes that thinks you’ll actually read it. I mean, no one would say that to your face.

Well, isn’t that the very nature of these things? Especially social media. These remarks are largely anonymous, so people are emboldened to display the very worst aspects of their character, knowing that no one will ever know who they are. They do it with impunity. The thing about The Red Hand Files is that the kind of performative outrage that you get on the social media platforms doesn’t work, because no one can see what’s being written. The only person who can see it is me. And so mostly it’s people who genuinely want to know something — who think that I might have, because of experiences I’ve been through, some answers to their particular sorrows.

It’s not just the sorrows. I read a quote about you today, which said that where other artists are afraid to talk about their own work, you are one of the great analyzers of the creative process. I think people want to know what you have to say.

I’m conflicted about that. We’re always concerned about doing damage to our work by explaining it. I often hear that people don’t want to know — that they want their own interpretations. But the times that I have interpreted my own songs, I hope I have done it in a way that it adds something rather than takes it away. If I am a taxidermist of the creative process. But that doesn’t mean I demystify the creative process, because I can’t. The creative process is extraordinarily confounding and mystifying.

I think we all have this craving to know more about creativity, and maybe people are responding to the fact that you’re at least attempting to offer some explanation.

You know, the amazing thing to me about the creative process is the distance travelled, the instantaneous distance. sometimes, travelled from complete despair and boredom over your work to transcendence, like you suddenly hit on something. You’ve been sitting there just fucking hating everything you’ve been writing, and it’s nothing but artistic anguish, shall we say. And then suddenly it all makes sense, and it just hits you. That’s the feeling that I chase. Those unfortunately quite rare artistic epiphanies.

Martin Amis said that as you get older, those epiphanies become rarer, but that what you lose in inspiration you gain in technique.

I don’t know about technique, but I’m in a different business. Songwriting is completely different to writing a novel. When writing a novel, you have to have some sort of control over the narrative. You need technique. Whereas songwriting is not like that at all. When you eventually play the song in the studio, the smallest most inconsequential things become massively interesting. All your best efforts to write a beautiful line end up unused on the floor of the studio. You never know with songwriting. It’s amazing. The beautiful thing about songwriting is that you’re often the last to understand how wonderful something might be. You can sing a song in the studio, and walk in, and the band is sitting there floored by what you’ve done — on a good day. And you’re like, ‘Was that any good?’ You don’t know.

“You’re on your own with yourself, doing something that’s incredibly intimate and vulnerable and which you’ll ultimately be judged on, not just by other people but by yourself. It’s a very fraught position to put yourself in.”

Nick Cave on songwriting

You’ve also written novels. You don’t find the two things remotely similar?

There’s no comparison. I just find novels easy. It may be that they’re not very good novels, but you sit down, you’ve got an idea, you write your pages, and they all come pouring out. They suggest the next page. You get into it, and it all runs along pretty well. You give it to your editor and they knock it into shape and you’ve got yourself a novel. That’s my experience writing novels. Whereas songwriting, it’s a completely abstract and mysterious form.

In the film One More Time With Feeling, you describe songwriting as a process that’s become more difficult for you with time. Is that still true, or has this return to joy helped make the process easier?

No. There’s nothing joyful about writing lyrics. It’s mostly pain. Self-loathing. You’re on your own with yourself, doing something that’s incredibly intimate and vulnerable and which you’ll ultimately be judged on, not just by other people but by yourself. It’s a very fraught position to put yourself in. I find it extremely difficult. Once I get the words, that’s a whole different thing. When I have even three or four songs, I think, ‘Right, I’ve got this.’ Once I go into the studio with the band, the whole thing changes. It’s just a pleasure to make a record with these extraordinary people.

What about when you work in other mediums? Is it all pain and self-loathing when, say, making ceramics?

[Laughs] No, no. The glazing was very difficult, but no, that was extremely good fun. I had no expectations. They looked great, you know. Mostly that was just a huge pleasure.

Photography by Megan Cullen.

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