Page 116 - BFM F/W 2024

Good Grief
The legendary singer-songwriter Nick Cave opens up about the creative process, his relationship to his fans, and his 18th album, the extraordinary Wild God.
By Calum Marsh
Photography by Megan Cullen
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.
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.
This presents a stark contrast to the Nick Cave of the popular imagi- nation — 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.
But lately, Cave says, he has come out the other side of the grieving
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