Nick Cave - Rock's Bad Seed

At a packed press conference, Nick Cave presents his new album with the Bad Seeds, "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!".

Where did you find the inspiration for "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!", and why Lazarus specifically?

I couldn't say. I don't know where inspiration comes from. I don't even know what inspiration is: I consider myself a worker.

I thought Lazarus could be an excellent guide through the underground world of this record.

Your lyrics are full of characters from the past brought into the present day.

Yes, it's something I do often. Taking characters from mythology - like Orpheus, or in this case Lazarus - and relating them to our own time carries a lot of emotional weight in our psyche. The moment you take a character out of its original context, you reach a different level of understanding that lets you present the story in a different way. Singing "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!" carries a very different weight than singing "Dig, Giovanni, Dig!!!".

How did you come up with the idea of linking Lazarus to Houdini?

While I was writing the song "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!", I was reading the biography of Houdini written by my New York friend Larry Sloman. Houdini spent a huge amount of his life trying to expose people who posed as mediums and made money off it. There was a fairly natural connection there. I have a lot of admiration for Houdini. He was the first man to fly a plane in Australia. I bet you didn't know that.

Did "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!" turn out exactly as you wanted, or were you thinking of a completely different record?

The idea was to make a somewhat acoustic album, driven by acoustic rhythm guitar. We were thinking of making a record that was acoustic, aggressive and joyful, full of sound effects. And that's what "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!" is: joyful noise.

Do you see it as a continuation of the Grinderman project?

Grinderman is a long-term project and won't be limited to just one album. In fact, we're working on the second one right now, these very days.

Obviously it's had a considerable impact on this Bad Seeds record, an extremely positive one, because no one will know what the next record is going to sound like, and that stops us from resting on our laurels and getting complacent with ourselves.

What pushed you to start the Grinderman project?

I wanted to play on a record that had a completely different sound: I'd realized that on the last four or five Bad Seeds albums everything revolved around me and my piano, and the best way to get away from that kind of sound was to set the piano aside and write songs using other instruments. I wrote maybe five songs using a toy keyboard belonging to my twins, who are 7, which only has one kind of rhythm that you can speed up or slow down. It was fantastic, because I found myself working with a totally new instrument. Now I know the best way to write songs is to use instruments you don't really know how to play.

What was the Bad Seeds' contribution to this album?

Huge. The Bad Seeds wrote about a third of the music, another third I wrote together with Warren Ellis, and I composed the rest on my own.

I'd be nothing without the Bad Seeds.

Do you miss Blixa?

Yes... Yes.

Do you think his absence has been well absorbed within the band?

No.

How has Warren's role within the Bad Seeds evolved?

When Blixa decided to leave us (he lifts his glasses and pretends to wipe away a tear) he left a huge void. Blixa always took care of the noise, that was his role within the band, and I think that over the years his interest in noise had waned. The moment Blixa left, it created space for Warren, who's filled it well. Now it's Warren who takes care of the noise. Both in the studio and during live shows.

How did you come to choose to record at State of the Ark Studios?

Nick Launay, the producer we've been working with lately, had worked at those studios before and thought it was the right choice because there's so much analogue equipment there.

Another recent project was the soundtrack for “The Assassination of Jesse James”, composed together with Warren Ellis.

We wrote a lot of tracks for that soundtrack, tons of really beautiful music. Some of the songs only exist on the CD, because Andrew Dominik, the director, preferred to pick out certain passages and use just those on a loop, to give the film a hypnotic atmosphere.

So we can say the music on the CD is definitely more interesting than what you hear in the film. I think that record is really beautiful.

Come on, doesn't anyone want to ask me about my private life? Come on, anything at all!

When you were twenty, would you ever have expected that at fifty you'd be making a record like this?

Actually, when I was twenty, I never expected to make it to fifty at all!

Is it true you wanted to write the sequel to "Gladiator"?

No, I actually wrote it. It was fantastic, a masterpiece! Now it's sitting in Ridley Scott's wastepaper basket.

You've appeared in a few films here and there. Do you ever get offered more substantial roles?

I'm often asked to act, but I always turn it down: acting is incredibly boring, it's tedious, and it's just not for me.

Will you be publishing any more books? It's been a long time since "And the Ass Saw the Angel".

Yes, I'm thinking about writing a new novel, but very different from "And the Ass Saw the Angel".

One record that really split critics and audiences was "The Boatman's Call". What do you think of that record now, 10 years on?

I think it's a very solid record, but definitely not my favorite. I think every record I've made is solid, each in its own different way, but solid all the same. That said, of all the records I'd never listen to again, "The Boatman's Call" is one of them: too many women in it that I try not to think about anymore.

Has your approach to making music changed?

I think it's more playful. The music is more playful, but the lyrics are angry.

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