Nick Cave says death of sons ‘fundamentally changed’ way he saw world

Glastonbury Festival 2013 – Day 5

Singer Nick Cave has said the death of two of his sons “fundamentally changed” the way he saw the world.

The 66-year-old said he was now “less precious about my own place in the world” and added that his music had become braver as a result.

Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died in a cliff-jumping accident in 2015, while his eldest son Jethro died aged 31 in 2022.

He told The Big Issue: “We change, sometimes multiple times, shattered by events.

“This can fundamentally change the way that you perceive the world and the way you behave.

“I think that happened to me to some degree, made me a little less precious about my own place in the world. The worst had happened. It maybe made me a little braver about things.”

He went on to speak about the song O Children, first released in 2007, and still his most-listened song on Spotify.

The Australian said he wrote the song about not being “able to protect my children”, and added that the song was still relevant today.

He added: “I wrote (O Children) 22 years ago watching my children when they were little, playing in a playground.

“I wrote about this f*-up world we were creating and that we had no way of protecting our children from. That seemed relevant when it came out but it’s always found its theme.

“From a personal level, I was not able to protect my children. Today too, children are dying everywhere in their thousands. And it asks the same question – what kind of a world are we creating for our children?”

Cave first came to public attention in the early 1980s as the lead singer of influential noise rock band The Birthday Party, before launching his band the Bad Seeds in 1984, who he has gone on to release music with for five decades.

The singer also formed the garage rock band Grinderman in 2006, releasing two albums with the group.

Cave also has two more sons, actor Earl Cave, and Luke Cave.

The Red Right Hand singer went on to speak about technology’s increasing influence on the music industry, saying he felt AI would soon be able to write a song in his style as well as he can.

Cave said: “I don’t know what the tech world has up its sleeve.

“I tried Suno, the song generator thing, and the song was fine. In two or five years it’s going to be amazing.

“Without a doubt, eventually you’ll be able to make a Nick Cave song that’s as good if not better than I can do myself. But it will have no intrinsic meaning.

“Sometimes I see evidence to suggest that people don’t really care about these sorts of things and the idea of the artistic struggle may just be a kind of artistic indulgence.

“But I care. I also understand that I’m just some old guy crying in the wilderness about this stuff.”

In the rest of the interview, Cave described social media as “a binary, polarised, this-side-that-side situation” which did not represent “the way things actually are”.

He also spoke about the recent UK General Election, saying he was “not politically affiliated in that way” but added that he did not see “any real significant difference between these parties”.

The full interview can be read in the latest edition of The Big Issue, which will be released on Monday August 19.

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