Nick Cave, the surprise revelation: “I wanted to be Freddie Mercury”

An unexpected reference point for Nick Cave. The Australian singer-songwriter has revealed that, as a teenager, his role model on stage was a figure few would associate with his artistic world: Freddie Mercury. In a new answer published on the Red Hand Files, the Australian musician recalled how struck he'd been by the charisma of the Queen frontman after seeing him perform live at Melbourne's Festival Hall in the mid-Seventies. “Freddie radiated a total, unshakable confidence: a peacock strutting across the stage, a frontman who seemed born to be there. As a teenager, watching him, I felt that longing I would always feel whenever I saw a great entertainer; more than anything, I wanted to be like Freddie: a performer.”

Cave explained that he has always admired that ability to command the stage, while acknowledging a substantial difference between the character he imagined himself to be during concerts and the perception he had of himself once he stepped off stage. For this reason, he confessed that he almost entirely avoids watching footage of his own performances. “I try to avoid watching footage of myself on stage, and I've never done it voluntarily. I often think I should, out of a sense of professional duty, but I simply can't bring myself to do it.” According to the Melbourne-born artist, the discomfort stems from the contrast between the ideal image every artist builds in their own mind and the reality a recording gives back. “When I'm on stage I imagine I'm Elvis Presley, or Michael Jackson, or Beyoncé, or even Freddie Mercury, but in reality I'm not,” he wrote. “On the rare occasions I've watched myself perform live, the illusion shattered quickly and brutally. I don't resemble any of these almost divine figures in the slightest. Whatever others see when they look at me, I don't see it. I am, for better or worse, simply myself: the same all-too-human figure that looks back at me from the mirror every morning.”
In his reflections, however, Cave notes how his relationship with his own image has changed over time. That sense of inadequacy that accompanied him in his youth has gradually faded, giving way to greater peace of mind: “It has been replaced, it seems, by a growing compassion and acceptance of myself.”

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