3,741 More Days on Earth
A Love Letter to Aging Prodigiously
Happy birthday, Nick Cave.
Nick has been making music since the ’70s, and while I was aware of him and even owned one of his CDs in the pre-Spotify days, I hadn’t truly discovered the man until 2014, when he performed at Toronto’s Sony Center. It was thunderous. I didn’t know a single one of the songs he played that night, and that made my conversion all the more powerful.
Paul Simon was 44 when he put out Graceland, 48 when he put out The Rhythm of the Saints. His most ambitious and debatably his best music when almost all of his peers were already into the “infinite greatest hits tour” phase of their careers. I was only a teenager, but it made a big impact on me that he was still making art — doing anything, really — that mattered at his age. Ever since then, this is what I have looked for for inspiration: people who embrace risk and the new. People who continuously change and grow.
I am older now than Paul Simon was then. He continued to make new music until just a few years ago, and some of it was quite good, but he wasn’t breaking boundaries. He wasn’t awing us. I have a new hero for awe: Nick Cave, a man whose creativity and passion accelerate as he grows older.
Let’s take a look at what Nick has done since June 25, 2013. Why June 25, 2013? Because that is the day of Nick Cave’s life that was “docu-dramatized” in the beautiful, funny, and odd film 20,000 Days on Earth.
First, the quantifiable. In these past10 years and three months, Nick Cave put out four records of new songs. On Metacritic, the website that aggregates critical opinion, three of those were the number one album of the year. He’s the only artist ever to do this three times. Two other artists have done it twice: Bob Dylan, who has won a Nobel Prize, and Kendrick Lamar, who has won a Pulitzer.
The one record that didn’t place first in Metacritic, 2013’s Push the Sky Away, remains my personal favorite. It doesn’t have a single skip-it track. Here is a New Yorker article about the glory of Jubilee Street. Higgs Boson Blues remains my favorite Nick Cave song. Push the Sky Away is a bit like the Beatles’ Rubber Soul or Radiohead’s OK Computer— a transition record. It has rockers and ballads that reflect what you love about the artist, but it points toward the future. It is the first record Nick cowrote with Warren Ellis, who had been in his band, the Bad Seeds, since 1993, but only became Nick’s core creative collaborator over these 10 years. A key lesson in growth — letting other people in.
I recommend Push the Sky Away as a starting point, but when it’s all said and done, I think 2019's Ghosteen will go down as his masterpiece and will be listened to 50 or 100 years from now. It does not have a clear precedent: in the tradition of classical music or Gregorian chants, it is a direct pursuit of the transcendent.
What else has Nick Cave done between his 55th and 65th birthdays? He was the subject of two more excellent documentaries. One More Time with Feeling chronicled the recording of the Skeleton Tree album and the time around it. Bracingly open, it was made in the aftermath of the accidental death of Nick’s 15 year old son, Arthur, an incident that animates everything he has made since. This year’s This Much I Know to be True films the recording of the Ghosteen and Carnage albums. It’s a bromance as much as anything else: Nick and Warren’s friendship is wildly charming.
There is also Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace, a live-streamed, single take of Nick performing 22 songs on piano recorded late in the first year of COVID. From the love songs and murder ballads of previous decades to the beautiful abstraction of the new songs, each one stands tantamount beside its studio version.
What else? Nick and Warren composed and performed the music for 12 movies, most recently, Blonde, which comes out next week on Netflix. His latest book Faith, Hope and Carnage, came out just days ago. He released a book-length poem, The Sick Bag Song. This Much I Know to be True opens with a vignette on Nick’s work in ceramics. Not kidding!
There is no doubt Arthur’s passing informs all of Nick’s work since, but The Sick Bag Song, the scores, the change in musical and lyrical direction — all of these happened before that. His is a lesson in handling grief, yes, but his pursuit of the new was ingrained long before. I am sure that the latter serves the former.
Then there is The Red Hand Files, a website and e-mail newsletter of Nick’s responses to letters from fans. The UK’s Guardian describes it thusly: Nick is showing us a new, gentler way to use the internet. He has become a philosopher and a healer — while sharpening his skills as a comedian.
I’ve included a selection from the Files at the bottom of this post; it is worth an hour of your time.
Last but certainly not least, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are, to my mind, the best fucking rock and roll show going right now. The man is like a volcano on the stage. Their shows are ominous and then hilarious, hushed and then exploding. The dictionary definition of “lithe” should have a video of this retirement-age man next to it. Transcendent is a word that is thrown around a bit too easily, but by God, it applies. Rolling Stone Magazine cut to the chase in the title of its review of the last tour: “Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ ‘Carnage’ Concerts Are Better Than Church.”
Each time I have seen him perform has etched an image in my memory:
> The Sony Centre, Push the Sky Away Tour. Nick keeps walking off the stage and deep into and over the audience, standing on the arms and backs of chairs. From my balcony view, it looks as if the people are a sea that Nick was wading in as the band played on a beach behind him.
> Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto, Conversations with Nick Cave Tour. With a piano and a microphone, Nick took questions from the fans and answered them with words and songs. A man on the verge of tears describes the ongoing pain of his divorce. Nick walked to the piano and plays Leonard Cohen’s Avalanche.
> Massey Hall, CARNAGE Tour. On the edge of the stage, a middle-aged woman looks up at Nick, who stares into her eyes as he sings. She collapses to the floor. The people around her catch her, raise her up. She collapses again, she pulls herself up, collapses a third time.
> Scotiabank Arena, Skeleton Tree Tour. He extends his arm over the front of the crowd to a woman on her friend’s shoulders. They clasp hands and he looks into her eyes as he sings the chorus of Push the Sky Away. But he doesn’t let go of her. He holds through the next verse and then a second chorus, Some people say that it’s just rock and roll/Ah but it gets you right down to your soul
Selections from the Red Hand Files
#109 — on mercy (and how it is languishing)
This essay is dedicated to my friend Mike Gauthier, who passed away from a sudden illness last year. He was a bigger fan of Nick Cave than I have probably ever been of any artist. I hope those nearest to him found some sort of solace in Nick’s words on grief: #1, #6, #23, #74, #95, #106, #119
I wish I could talk to Mike about Faith, Hope, and Carnage. This book came out just two days ago, and I haven’t finished it, but — true to the spirit of this essay — I am beginning to believe that it may be Nick’s greatest legacy. Per the book jacket, Faith, Hope, and Carnage is “a profound and thoughtful exploration, in Cave’s own words, of what really drives his life and creativity. The book examines questions of faith, art, music, freedom, grief, and love. It draws candidly on Cave’s life, from his early childhood to the present day, his loves, his work ethic, and his dramatic transformation in recent years.”
Thank you, Nick. You are a beacon to so many of us — of unashamed complexity and the deeply examined life, and for showing us everything that can come with it: empathy, kindness, connection, humility, family, angst, resolve, earned wisdom, and the spirit of forward, forward, forward.
