Nick Cave has spoken again about the death of his two sons, admitting that their passing made him realise that work is not the “be-all and end-all of everything”.
His 15-year-old son Arthur Cave died unexpectedly in July 2015. He was one of the twin sons Cave shares with his wife, Susie Bick, who died following a fall from a cliff near Brighton.
In 2022, Cave confirmed that his eldest son, Jethro Lazenby, had died at the age of 31. His passing came after he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The Bad Seeds frontman previously spoke about how the experiences shaped him in both his personal and professional life last year, and led to him placing his art on less of a pedestal.
“That idea that art trounces everything, it just doesn’t apply to me anymore,” he said at the time. “Rather than making me bitter, it did the opposite in some way. It made me much more connected to people in general.”
Nick Cave in London on April 8, 2024 CREDIT: Dave Benett/WireImage
Now, speaking in a new interview with BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, he reinforced the point.
He said: “It has a lot to do with Arthur and Jethro… I always just thought art was, kind of at the end of the day, everything. I mean, it’s a terrible thing to say, but it was, it was always there. It was always reliable.”
Cave previously told ABC Australia that “for most of my life I was just sort of in awe of my own genius, you know, and I had an office and would sit there and write every day and whatever else happened in my life was peripheral”.
He added: “This just collapsed completely and I just saw the folly of that, the kind of disgraceful self-indulgence of the whole thing.”
Cave made a similar remarks in his latest interview. “I think after Arthur died, I just shut the office, and I haven’t gone, I just locked it up. I was just repelled by it in some way. It seems so indulgent,” he said.
He went on to say that while he still works “very, very hard” it is no longer the “be-all and end-all of everything”.
Cave continued: “I find my responsibility towards my children and my wife, and to be a citizen, a husband, these things are the actual animating force behind, or should be the animating force behind our creativeness.”
Susie Bick and Nick Cave during Milan Fashion Week 2023 CREDIT: Victor Boyko/Getty Images for Gucci
He also said his greatest joy comes “from my family and from my wife, one aspect of my family that it’s difficult to exaggerate how beautiful this is that I have a little grandson who’s like, seven months old”.
The Bad Seeds frontman also previously admitted that he regretted recording his 2016 album ‘Skeleton Tree’, so soon after Arthur’s death.
In a separate interview with The Sunday Times last year, Cave said: “That is the only album that made matters worse. My mental health was made worse, because I did it very soon after my son died, and I shouldn’t have done.”
Elsewhere, he recently defended one of his lyrics written in tribute to Anita Lane, which featured on his latest album with The Bad Seeds.
Lane was a former partner of Cave and bandmate in both The Bad Seeds and The Birthday Party. She died back in 2021, aged 61.
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