Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Caveis an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional film actor. He is best known as the frontman of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1983, a group known for its diverse output and ever-evolving line-up. Prior to this, he fronted the Birthday Party, one of the most extreme and confrontational post-punk bands of the early 1980s. In 2006, he formed the garage rock band Grinderman, releasing its debut album the following year...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth22 September 1957
CountryAustralia
I just want to leave this world with a massive catalog of songs.
I lost my innocence with Johnny Cash. I used to watch the 'Johnny Cash Show' on television in Wangaratta when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At that stage I had really no idea about rock n' roll. I watched him, and from that point I saw that music could be an evil thing - a beautiful, evil thing.
I used to believe that if I could do certain things - write a book or be a successful musician - that I'd be transformed into a happy person, but it doesn't work that way.
I have to be able to see the thing that's going on that I'm writing about, or else it just doesn't make any sense to me.
Most screen violence is tedious.
Being a parent can make you a horrible person at times, because you're pushed to the limit constantly.
If you look around, complacency is the great disease of your autumn years, and I work hard to prevent that.
I don't like those songs where you have to listen to a story to get into them. I don't want to have to pay attention to music in that way, I just want it to hit me in the heart and do what music's supposed to do.
I love being manipulated by what I see. I love weepies and romantic comedies where you're reaching for the Kleenex at the right moment.
I love performing. I can get to be that person I always wanted to be - godlike.
I'm not in the business of telling people what to do. I'm much more in the business of describing things, situations and stuff like that and leaving them out there, and you can make up your minds about them.
I've had to try and find a way over the years of writing narratively that doesn't really require you to sit down and work out what the story's about. You're brought into a sort of sequence of images that have that emotional resonance, but it's kind of irrelevant what the actual story is. It's taken me maybe 13 albums or something to work that out.
There are times when I think I can sing it better, but usually I find that I can't.
I write songs from the point of view I had at a time;I'm not tryingto write songs from a young person's point of view.That only ends in disaster.