A crucial influence

From post-punk to the napalm of the Birthday Party, from the gothic blues of his early solo work to the dark, noir atmospheres of the Bad Seeds, on through the redemption ballads of his mature years and the sonic fury of side project Grinderman: the career of Nick Cave has unfolded through multiple musical identities, always managing to hit the mark. One element common to his entire output, though, is a propensity for explosiveness: every song, whether or not it actually erupts in a primal emotional scream or simply stays coiled in latent tension, always carries the possibility of collapsing under the weight of its own intensity.

It's a trait many artists share, but one which, according to the Australian singer-songwriter himself, can be traced back to a very specific influence: one of the greatest prog bands of all time, King Crimson. In the July 2019 issue of Cave's monthly newsletter, "The Red Hand Files", responding to a fan who asked him about his favourite guitarists of all time, the bard of Melbourne named King Crimson leader Robert Fripp as one of his key sources of inspiration, precisely for that ability to capture explosiveness.

"King Crimson could combine extraordinary moments of purity and fragility with incredibly powerful rock'n'roll," Cave said. "They probably imprinted on my mind the blueprint for some of the more schizophrenic Bad Seeds songs. King Crimson were masters of the sudden, violent eruption. Bill Bruford, their drummer, was simply out of this world, and Robert Fripp was my favourite guitarist at the time, alongside David Gilmour, of course."

While Nick Cave's music doesn't always reach the same labyrinthine complexity, it retains that same capacity to explode: a quality he has managed to develop at every stage of his intricate artistic journey.

But what seems to have inspired the teenage Cave was the entire prog genre: "I was a huge fan of English progressive rock. Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Procol Harum, Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer: I loved that stuff." And speaking again of Robert Fripp and David Gilmour, he reiterated: "They're giants to me, and remain among my favourite guitarists. They play as if they were singing, with a sound that's delicate, thrilling and epic all at once." To describe Fripp's guitar playing, he then used words like "radical, menacing and unpredictable".

The former punk messiah of the Australian basement scene who fronted the Birthday Party and later the Bad Seeds, and who over the years has softened his wild blues-rock into a more reflective, composed songwriting style in the vein of Dylan/Cohen, thus has deep prog roots, which are in fact clearly perceptible in certain instrumental passages and in the explosive crescendos of some of his songs. Further proof that the supposed punk's aversion to progressive rock exists only in the minds of those who wanted to keep the myth alive.

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06/05/2026