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It\u2019s been an odyssey from the heroin addiction and on-stage violence of The Birthday Party to life as a nine-to-five songwriter with The a Seeds. In 2004, with his roll-ups, cups of tea, family life, a film in production and one of the finest albums of the year, Cave opened up about art school, drugs, religion, his father and being a good dad.<\/p>\n
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Words: Phil Sutcliffe<\/strong><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/07\/PROPillo1-copy.jpg” title_text=”PROPillo1 copy” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Nice of MOJO to do a painting of me,\u201d says Nick Cave, referring to the angelic illustration which accompanied MOJO\u2019s review of Abattoir Blues\/The Lyre Of Orpheus. \u201cBut why did you give me truck driver\u2019s arms? I\u2019m well known for having very thin arms?\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n He spreads the maligned limbs wide. His dark jacket\u2019s tightly tailored sleeves prove they are indeed pipestems. But that\u2019s art for you.<\/p>\n Despite MOJO\u2019s unwarranted slur on his dark-night, dissolute image, he\u2019s smiling \u2013 it was a glowing review after all. This is cheering from one whose reputation rests on exploring shades of gloom with a sense of humour, which comes in any colour you want, so long as it\u2019s black.<\/p>\n The bleaker aspects of Nick Cave\u2019s legend date from his time with Melbourne mates The Birthday Party \u2013 who broke up in 1983 \u2013 and the 20-year heroin addiction which began in the late \u201970s. But he\u2019s all right now. At 47, he has a wife, Susie, and twin sons, Earl and Arthur, aged four (as well as two teenaged boys, Luke and Jethro, by earlier relationships). His songwriting is much admired and always developing. His band, The Bad Seeds, serve his songs, rarely get a solo and like it that way.<\/p>\n Seated on a sofa in the upper room of a smart West London pub, he picks at a plate of kebab and rice, pinches MOJO\u2019s big chips, drinks tea and smokes roll-ups. Periodically, he looks up from under his black eyebrows towards his almost supernaturally jet hair, and greets MOJO\u2019s latest poser with a grin that seems to relish the comic ins-and-outs of more or less everything.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-151050097.jpg” title_text=”Nick Cave” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n You\u2019ve been telling everyone your new album is \u201ca masterpiece\u201d and \u201ca work of genius\u201d. Have people been shouting \u201cOi, big \u2019ead!\u201d at you on the streets of Brighton?<\/strong><\/p>\n Hmm, I don\u2019t remember calling it either of those things. But yesterday we were rehearsing for our tour and those songs were a real pleasure to play, which was further proof\u2026 that it\u2019s a masterpiece and a work of genius. We recorded it fast and spontaneous. Ten days for a double! But the writing was very considered. I kept going back and back to the lyrics until I\u2019d chopped away all those lines that don\u2019t really mean anything, plus the odd unintentional quote. Sometimes I see a line in a poem and think \u201cFuck, that\u2019s really nice\u201d, so I whack it in a notebook. In a song called Loom Of The Land [on Henry\u2019s Dream], there\u2019s a bit about the poplars \u201cturning their backs\u201d. Recently, I was re-reading Lolita for the millionth time and there it was, \u201cThe poplars turned their backs\u201d. I got rid of that stuff this time. Except in Supernaturally there\u2019s \u201cYou are my north, my south, my east, my west\u201d from Auden\u2019s poem Funeral Blues. That\u2019s a deliberate \u2013 what\u2019s the nice word? \u2013 reference.<\/p>\n For several albums you\u2019ve been writing in an office on a nine-to-five routine, which suggests a change in you \u2013 you once said, \u201cThe idea of a calmer life frightens me more than anything else. It\u2019s inherent in my character to destroy that.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n I really don\u2019t know what that means. But I\u2019ve been using the office for about six years, since I met my wife. As soon as I started living with her it became clear to me that I wouldn\u2019t write under those circumstances. I don\u2019t feel the creative process is something you do around people you love. It\u2019s undignified. The screaming and crawling the walls and tearing your hair out and cursing. There again \u2013 call me old-fashioned \u2013 I do see the idea of organised work, as creditable, even noble, romantic.<\/p>\n Romantic? A factory worker will say, \u201cSod that, squire.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, a factory worker, I assume, does something he doesn\u2019t particularly want to do. I don\u2019t. I go into the office and my work, it\u2026 transports me in some way.<\/p>\n Do you distract yourself? Do you have a radio or TV?<\/strong><\/p>\n I have a desk, a piano, a telephone, books. I don\u2019t use the phone so much now. I had a friend, Mick Geyer, who died recently. I used to talk to him for at least an hour every morning. And I\u2019d play the piano and sing at the phone (he hunches up and twists around to demonstrate). I\u2019d say, \u201cWhat d\u2019you think of that one?\u201d He\u2019d say, \u201cI think it needs a bit of work, Nicholas\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019re onto something there, mate\u201d. I had a complete respect for his opinions. He spent his time looking for obscure and delightful music which was an enormous part of my development. I don\u2019t do that. I don\u2019t have time and I don\u2019t have his adventurous spirit. The album\u2019s dedicated to him.<\/p>\n The office must be a lonelier place now.<\/strong><\/p>\n It is. I don\u2019t know how else to write, though. The idea of sitting around with your mates and knocking out a song appals me. I have written songs on beer mats, but I always ended up at the fucking typewriter working it out. Whatever was going on in my life. There were periods when I could have loosened up a bit, when I was over-involved in the English language. Proofreading my lyrics for the Penguin collected works, sometimes I thought, \u201cFuck! This guy needs a night\u2019s sleep!\u201d<\/p>\n Your writing style was probably at its most extravagant during the \u201980s when you were reading Deep South novelists like Flannery O\u2019Connor and Carson McCullers and writing your own novel, And The Ass Saw The Angel (1989). Lately, it looks as though that influence has faded.<\/strong><\/p>\n Southern literature deals with grand themes in hyper, extreme prose. That\u2019s why I responded to it and certainly I would relate to that in the way I write today. To get into one of my records, you have to enter my world, an alien, romantic, extreme world of my making. You don\u2019t drag one of my records into your world. I think that\u2019s why, to a degree, my music will always be marginal.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n And you absorbed all those influences into your novel and your songwriting while only ever visiting the South for one gig?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, it was totally based on received information: movies, books, blues music. I was creating something unreal, mythical. I didn\u2019t think research was necessary\u2026 although I do remember ringing my mother, who\u2019s a librarian, and asking if she could find out something about sugarcane growing because it was absolutely fundamental to the story. She sent me this two-page pamphlet for schoolkids and that was it.<\/p>\n Thinking of you creating \u201ca world\u201d for each album, you once said that one reason you took heroin was that it beat back \u201cthe voices\u201d that were flying at you from your imagination.<\/strong><\/p>\n That glorifies it somewhat, but it was true. It happened in periods where I would try to stop taking drugs. I felt besieged by an endless stream of prattling internal dialogue in my head. I couldn\u2019t sleep. It got overwhelming and then\u2026 I was delivered into this place of peace for a while when I took smack. Eventually heroin just exacerbated the problem so I gave it up, to cut a long story short, six years ago. And I don\u2019t have that bullshit in my head anymore.<\/p>\n You said you see the office routine as protecting your family from the stresses of your work. Aren\u2019t rock stars meant to be above family responsibilities?<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s a whole world within the family that is beyond anything I do workwise. I wouldn\u2019t have had kids if I didn\u2019t feel that way. There\u2019s also a\u2026 My father was larger than life [adult educationalist Colin Cave died when Nick was 21]. When he entered the room he was Godlike to us all. I loved him very much, but in some ways his personality was so big that it sucked everyone else\u2019s away. That was very much about his work. It\u2019s important to me that I don\u2019t affect my children in that way. That they are free to\u2026 blossom in the way they want to blossom.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a story about your father in a new song, Nature Boy. As a kid, you see \u201csome routine atrocity\u201d on the TV and then, \u201cMy father said, don\u2019t look away \/ You got to be strong, you got to be bold, now \/ He said, that in the end it is beauty \/ That is going to save the world, now\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n I was at my grandmother\u2019s house. On the TV news I saw the attempted assassination of George Wallace [in 1972; Wallace was a racist ex-Governor of Alabama who regularly stood for the Presidency]. I was shocked because I knew it was the real thing. My father said, \u201cYeah, this goes on, but there are beautiful things in the world too.\u201d You hang on to a memory like that.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve often said you rate yourself as a father.<\/strong><\/p>\n The revelation is, I always thought my parents knew what they were doing and suddenly I realised they didn\u2019t and I don\u2019t \u2013 you\u2019re fucking winging it! (Laughs) That endeared my parents to me and reconciled me a lot.<\/p>\n One thing having children must challenge is the creative artist\u2019s egocentricity.<\/strong><\/p>\n Writing can be incredibly selfish because you have to spend much of the day examining yourself, plumbing the depths of yourself. On one level, I find that nauseating.<\/p>\n Has fatherhood and marriage affected you as an artist?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s made me better. It\u2019s deepened me. You have to compromise. And compromise can actually be strengthening when you see there\u2019s something greater going on in a marriage than the two parts, which is the marriage itself. Does that make sense? I\u2019ve always written songs about love, but I\u2019ve written about the beginnings of love and the ends of love. There\u2019s this whole middle section that hasn\u2019t really been examined in rock\u2019n\u2019roll. It\u2019s harder. It\u2019s less dramatic. But I\u2019ll give it a bash.<\/p>\n Love gets a fair kicking in your earlier work. Isn\u2019t it something you’ve been extremely suspicious of?<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s certainly a nice sense of drama in letting the whole thing explode. So, yes, it gets a kicking. But while I was writing those songs I was falling in love every week. I had anything but a cynical attitude to love. Although I suspect what I thought was love may not have been love.<\/p>\n In your songs, the big move away from the feeling that we need love but it\u2019s impossible comes with Into My Arms from The Boatman\u2019s Call (1997), where you actually say, \u201cI believe in love\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n It came out of a very wounded period [after the break-up of relationships with Viviane Carneira, Luke\u2019s mother, and then with Polly Harvey]. That album has the whole gamut going on. Well, it has the beginnings and the ends (grins). No, I think I\u2019ve always had faith in the idea of love.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-2197606068.jpg” title_text=”Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds 2004″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Playing live at Brixton Academy, London in 2004<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Do you know what set you on the road towards being an artist?<\/strong><\/p>\n I always wanted to be a rock star. But I wasn\u2019t that musical. I was quite good at painting, so that became my chosen field. And then I failed art school and, at the same time, this band I was in [The Boys Next Door] started to take off so I got involved in the music business \u2013 which I am very happy about.<\/p>\n But were you disappointed at the time?<\/strong><\/p>\n I was outraged that I failed art school. I was fuckin\u2019 mortified. But, uh, I\u2019m slowly getting over it.<\/p>\n Back then you talked about discovering \u201cthe joy of displeasing somebody\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n We had that twofold. In art school there were a couple of fairly conservative teachers and we took great joy in painting things that offended them \u2013 such as penises. And with the band we were playing Australian beer barns so we were weaned on being booed, people sitting there shouting, \u201cGet off you wankers!\u201d Something about that felt really good. Displeasing people keeps you awake, with a good healthy fuck-you attitude.<\/p>\n You did an impressive amount of fighting at school \u2013 apparently, the main event was a scrap with a lad called Beaver Mills?<\/strong><\/p>\n Great name. I did fight a lot, but I was forced to. I was a boarder for one year and boarders always fought wars with the day scabs as we called them. Then the following year I became a day scab myself. Awkward situation. Beaver Mills was a little rat-faced guy and he carried a knife. We had several fights. I beat him once. I wasn\u2019t very good, but I did have a certain spirit.<\/p>\n In The Birthday Party years you seem to have been a violent fellow, too, forever jumping into audiences at gigs and punching fans.<\/strong><\/p>\n Allegedly. On one tour of Europe some promoter billed us as \u201cthe most violent band in the world\u201d. It was an open invitation to conflict. We had an ex-marine fan called Bingo who used to keep an eye out and disarm the front row. Backstage he would show us the iron bars and whatnot he had confiscated. I\u2019m not saying I didn\u2019t play my part in it, but for self-protection sometimes you have to do, uh, pre-emptive strikes. Take \u2019em unawares (laughs).<\/p>\n It must have been a rough life. Did you enjoy it?<\/strong><\/p>\n We had a good time. Eventful. Although after a while it became a little predictable, people coming along to fight the band. I guess that\u2019s why The Birthday Party broke up. When we started The Bad Seeds it was different. We just plough our own lonely furrow. We\u2019ve been around for a long time and there have been periods when we\u2019ve been hopelessly irrelevant to what\u2019s going on. When we did the Lollapalooza tour in America [in 1994] \u2013 53 dates, I remember \u2013 grunge was happening, not one person there in long trousers, and they went for lunch while we played, then came back when we stopped (laughs). I found it extremely difficult, but, contractually, we couldn\u2019t pull out. It was years before we went back to America.<\/p>\n Your conspicuous drug-taking, in The Birthday Party and beyond, gave the appearance of being self-destructive, maybe of a piece with the way Keith Richards used to talk about himself as a \u201chuman laboratory\u201d. Is that how it was?<\/strong><\/p>\n No. I can understand that Keith Richards may have seen himself that way because he was a forerunner for white rock\u2019n\u2019rollers taking drugs. By the time we were doing it everyone was taking massive amounts of drugs so we were doing something tried and tested! I was a junkie. I was not particularly adventurous. I took heroin and I took speed. I didn\u2019t smoke pot. I drank. It was kind of depressing (laughs). Well, the first 10 years were all right, the second 10 years were nothing to write about. But, to me, way too much has been made out of the drugs thing. When I grew up in Australia everybody I knew shot up heroin, it was the recreational drug. It was only when I came to England I realised it was probably the most anti-social drug you could take. You were marginalised. Junkies were down there with the paedophiles, basically.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n You\u2019ve lived in Australia, the UK, Germany, Brazil. Was there anywhere or any time when you felt part of a community \u2013 in any sense of the word?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019d have to say no. Not long ago I had this twinge about the place where I live, Brighton \u2013 that I felt a part of it, that I actually cared about it. A feeling almost of civic duty creeping in. Utterly foreign to me\u2026 except that within The Bad Seeds there\u2019s always a very solid feeling of a group of men working together. We prize that. We\u2019re very careful not to disrupt it by bringing personal problems to the band. A gang mentality, I guess.<\/p>\n Your songs have always dwelt on religion \u2013 usually in an ambivalent way. I understand The Bible first made an impression on you when you were a choirboy, but \u2028how did your beliefs begin to develop from there?<\/strong><\/p>\n As a kid I liked the stories because they were spooky, violent. I don\u2019t know whether I believed or not. But I started reading the Old Testament in art school because I found I had more of an emotional attachment to religious art than I did to a lot of modern art. Then, through the \u201980s, writing the novel I read the New Testament very closely and I was\u2026 taken away by the life of Christ. To me, he seems deeply human, fallible, something one could almost aspire to.<\/p>\n What was your favourite Bible story?<\/strong><\/p>\n The touching of the hem of the garment. Christ is in a throng of people. A girl who has had \u201can issue of blood\u201d for 12 years reaches out and touches the hem of his garment. He turns and says, \u201cYou are made whole.\u201d That notion of being made whole\u2026 that was the human nature of him.<\/p>\n Do you believe in God now?<\/strong><\/p>\n I do, yeah. But it\u2019s open, doubtful, sceptical. Although I\u2019ve never been an atheist, there have been periods when I struggled with the whole thing. As someone who \u2028uses words, you need to be able to justify your belief with language. I\u2019d have arguments and the atheist always won because he\u2019d go back to logic. Belief in God is \u2028illogical, it\u2019s absurd. There\u2019s no debate, I feel it intuitively, it comes from the heart, a magical place, a place\u2026 of the imagination. But still I fluctuate from day to day. Sometimes I feel very close to the notion of God, other times I don\u2019t. I used to see that as a failure. Now I see it as a strength, especially compared to the more fanatical notions of what God is. I think doubt is an essential part of belief.<\/p>\n On The Lyre Of Orpheus that more settled faith seems to bring a hint of preaching into your writing. In O Children you say \u201cthe answer is short, it\u2019s simple, it\u2019s crystal clear\u201d. Aren\u2019t you starting to \u2028tell people?<\/strong><\/p>\n Maybe. There\u2019s an element of preachification in that. But it\u2019s also saying, we can\u2019t find that answer, we\u2019ve lost it. I don\u2019t like being preached at and I don\u2019t have the authority to tell anyone what to think. If I started doing that, it would take something away from my work. In O Children I don\u2019t say what \u201cthe answer\u201d is. What I value most about my work is that it retains a certain amount of mystery \u2013 which keeps you revisiting the record. But, uh, I do see it as my duty in some way to put forward my own notion of God. I don\u2019t think it would be true to myself not to do that. It\u2019s a genuine preoccupation. Always has been.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-539509371.jpg” title_text=”Australian singer Nick Cave at the ‘Final Last Words’ interview at the State Lib” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n At the Final Last Words interview, Sydney, December 2004.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Do you have an overarching big idea about the value of music? In 1981 you said, \u201cI want to write songs that are so sad, the kind of sad where you take someone\u2019s little finger and break it in three places.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n I can\u2019t add to that! I do like a sad song. I said that in 1981? There you go. I\u2019ve always been miserable.<\/p>\n Well, on the new album, the song The Lyre Of Orpheus portrays music as a weapon of mass destruction which not only blasts Eurydice into the Underworld but massacres birds and bunnies too.<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, but it\u2019s a comic song, you know. I remember sitting in the office working on the last verse: \u201cShe said to Orpheus \/ If you play that fucking thing down here I\u2019ll shove it up your\u2026\u201d I thought, \u201cArse? No. Bum? No.\u201d Then I got it. \u201cOrifice!\u201d Fucking great! I took the day off after that.<\/p>\n But what about that big idea? How do you rate rock as an art form?<\/strong><\/p>\n I had a lot of received notions about where rock music was on the creative ladder from my father and art school. Painters were up there. My father always put poets on the top rung. It took some time before it dawned on me that I was doing something as worthwhile, if not more so. Through what music did for me, I found it had a potential other arts don\u2019t have, which is to utterly change you within three minutes. Your whole body chemistry can change, your mood, your perspective. I use music for that purpose. I know Dylan or Van Morrison or Nina Simone will make me feel\u2026 better. Music makes me better.<\/p>\n Have you ever heard anyone whistling one of your songs?<\/strong><\/p>\n Er, no. I\u2019d like to. Walking down the street, yeah. It would be nice.<\/p>\n Do you think you\u2019ve become a good singer?<\/strong><\/p>\n You don\u2019t know how hard it is for me to say it, but yeah. I\u2019ve always been bowed beneath the limitations of my voice and I\u2019ve always felt that very deeply. But I like it now. Although tuning isn\u2019t one of my great talents, and intonation isn\u2019t either, I think I have a pleasing way of phrasing at times and I can be quite expressive. To a fault on occasion. It can become a little melodramatic. But I\u2019ve finally accepted that my voice will always sound morose, melancholy, lugubrious, plaintive.<\/p>\n And now your first screenplay is about to be filmed. How does that compare to making music?<\/strong><\/p>\n They\u2019re already in the third week of filming, which is great news for me. It\u2019s called The Proposition and it\u2019s an entirely fictional story set in 1888 at the end of the bushranger era. I don\u2019t think my script relates to my songwriting at all. Hopefully the characters aren\u2019t just dribbling Nick Caveisms throughout. Johnny Hillcoat, the director, is an old friend who\u2019s done a lot of Bad Seeds videos and he asked me to write it. It stars Ray Winstone, Emily Watson, Guy Pearce and John Hurt. A few weeks ago I went to Winton, this tiny town in Queensland where they were rehearsing, and it was fantastic \u2013 to have written something and see these actors do it, really great.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s the movie, the novel and loads of albums. Which begs the question: when are you going to write your autobiography?<\/strong><\/p>\n I did have an idea about going back through my life and interviewing people. But I abandoned it. Too much like hard work. And masturbatory. So. Fuck, no!<\/p>\n Overall, in many areas of your life \u2013 religion, music, relationships \u2013 you seem to have emerged from all kinds of uproar and confusion into a workable degree of self-respect and stability. Is that how it feels to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n I feel more confident in the worlds I\u2019ve created. A lot of it comes from narrowing down the experiences I actually have. I\u2019m involved in my family and my work and some friends and that\u2019s it. It\u2019s simpler and it\u2019s\u2026 intensified. And, in that respect, I\u2019m happier.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The PropositionIt\u2019s been an odyssey from the heroin addiction and on-stage violence of The Birthday Party to life as a nine-to-five songwriter with The a Seeds. In 2004, with his roll-ups, cups of tea, family life, a film in production and one of the finest albums of the year, Cave opened up about art school, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2557,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-mojo-interview"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"akindell","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2630"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2637,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630\/revisions\/2637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u201cBeaver Mills was a little rat-faced guy and he carried a knife. We had several fights. I beat him once. I wasn\u2019t good, but I did have spirit.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Nick Cave<\/h3>\n
\u201cAs a kid I liked the Bible stories because they were spooky, violent. To me, Christ seemed deeply human and fallible.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Nick Cave<\/h3>\n