Nick Cave on death of sons: My disgraceful self-indulgence collapsed

Nick Cave says his “disgraceful self-indulgence” and focusing on his music “every day” collapsed following the death of his two sons.

The Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds frontman, 66, lost Arthur, 15, in 2015 and seven years later Jethro, 31, who had schizophrenia, died in Melbourne.

Cave told ABC programme Australian Story: “For most of my life I was just sort of in awe of my own genius, and I had an office and I would sit there and write every day and.. whatever else happened in my life was peripheral, even annoyances, because I was involved in this great work…

“And this just collapsed completely and I saw the folly of that, the kind of disgraceful self-indulgence of the whole thing.

“My priorities changed; I still work all the time, I still go on tour, I still piss everyone off because I’m maybe depressed because I can’t write songs.

“The same things still apply, but that idea that art, sort of, trounces everything, just doesn’t apply to me anymore.

“I’m a father and I’m a husband and a person of the world, these things are much more important to me than the concept of being an artist.”

The Australian musician, known for hits such as Into My Arms and One More Time With Feeling, has been outspoken about the death of Arthur, who died after taking LSD for the first time and falling from a cliff near Cave’s home in Brighton.

Cave and his family, including fashion designer wife Susie and Arthur’s twin brother, moved to Los Angeles soon because they were “triggered too much” by living just down the road from where it happened.

He was speaking to Australian Story on the second anniversary of fashion model Jethro’s death in May 2024, and the episode was released on Monday.

Australian journalist Leigh Sales, who is host of the weekly documentary show, apologised that the interview “landed on the anniversary of your son’s death”, and Cave attempted to reassure her, saying: “It’s not your fault.”

He added: “For me, when I do interviews, it just very quickly lands back at this place.”

Speaking about his grief about Jethro, Cave said: “I had an understanding of the process because I’d been through it already.

“There is the initial cataclysmic event that we eventually absorb or rearrange ourselves so that we become creatures of loss as we get older, this is part of our fundamental fabric of what we are as human beings, we are things of loss.

“And this is not a tragic element to our lives, but rather a deepening element, and that brings incredible meaning into our life. In general, I think… our lives collect meaning from these sorts of things.”

He also said the grief was like a “void”, that filled him with “more compassion towards the human predicament” and made him “less embittered”.

“I’ve always had a religious temperament even as a child but no need for it,” he added.

“I was drug addicted for a couple of decades, and had a great interest in this sort of stuff, but no need for it.

“And I think after Arthur died, not immediately, but, it’s been quite a while now but rather than feeling anger towards that sort of stuff or rejecting that sort of stuff, I felt a slow movement towards a religious life that I’ve found extremely helpful.”

Cave says that he did not turn to drugs again, as he knew it would not be “a relief”.

He added: “Mostly, I had responsibilities to other people, it wasn’t just me, it was an honouring of the people that had actually died for one thing and I had my wife to look after, who was going through… mothers, who’ve lost children go through something different, it’s a different thing than a father that’s lost a child.

“It’s a different calibre of suffering, it’s a sort of hell unto itself.

“And the idea that I would go off and become a junkie again, or whatever,  was clearly a bad idea. And there were the other children too, so it just wasn’t something that crossed my mind.”

Cave has another child, Domina actor Earl, with Susie, and also has a son Luke with his first wife Viviane Carneiro.