Nick Cave says connecting to audiences after death of sons was ‘life-changing’

By Naomi Clarke, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter

Nick Cave has said connecting with his audience after the death of his sons was “absolutely life-changing” for him.

The Bad Seeds frontman, 66, known for hits such as Into My Arms and One More Time With Feeling, lost two children in seven years.

His 15-year-old son Arthur died in a cliff-jumping accident in 2015, and his eldest son Jethro died aged 31 in Melbourne in 2022.

Cave told The Sunday Times newspaper: “I’m fully aware what music means to people. But that energy from the audience has been really different in the last eight years… because my son died.”

He said many people felt “invested” in his loss, not just out of sympathy but because it was “an indicator of the perilous nature of us all”.

“These things isolate you. You feel no-one has experienced anything like this pain,” he said.

“But, quickly, you realise that, actually, it’s the binding agent to humanity, because everyone is going through these things, or they will.

“This was absolutely life-changing for me. I found myself, for the first time, connected to a world I had always prided myself in living on the periphery of.”

He added: “When Arthur died I realised I was part of a greater thing.”

The singer said that making music is “great for the soul” and that his 2019 album Ghosteen is “so full of meaning”, but that he should not have done his 2016 record Skelton Tree shortly after his son’s death, as it is the only album that made his mental health worse.

He said his forthcoming album Wild God, being released on Friday, was originally going to be called Joy.

“Because, for me, joy is not happiness as such, but those heartfelt explosions that lift us out of the baseline for humans, which is loss,” he said.

“Those moments help us understand the world meaningfully and show our beautiful capacity, as human beings, to rise beyond various losses.”

The singer said his mother’s advice to live with your head held high is “fundamental” to the way he leads his life.

“I’m very uncertain about what happens after you die, but it concerned me how the spirit of Arthur would feel if he saw the misery his mother and father were going through – because of his passing,” he said.

“And one thing we can say to him now is that things are OK. I say that cautiously. There’s no closure.

“Things haven’t settled back to the place they were, before Arthur or Jethro died. However, we are happy.”

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

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

Cave has two other sons, actor Earl Cave, and Luke Cave.