Masaryk University, Brno Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies
“Let Love in” – Love Lyrics of Nick Cave The Shift from Sexuality to Spirituality
(B.A. Thesis)
Petr Husseini
Supervisor: PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr.
Brno 2007
Declaration I hereby declare that I have worked on this B.A. thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
Petr Husseini
Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr., for his kind help, support and valuable advice.
Table of Contents
Introduction ……………………………………….....………………………………………5 1. Nick Cave’s Lyrics – The Background …………………………………………………..6 1.1 The Beginning ….…………………………………………………………………6 1.2 Berlin Years …….………………………………………………………………...9 1.3 São PauloYears ………………………………………………………………….13 2. The Sexual and Violent Lyrics…………………………………………………………...17 2.1 Introduction ………………………………………………………………….….17 2.2 Female Clothing ....…………………………………………………………..….18 2.3 Murder and Love Within ………………………………………………….…...20 2.4 Sexuality and Darksome Love ……………………………………………....…25 3. Spiritual Love Lyrics …………………………………………………………………….30 3.1 Introduction ……………………………………………………………………..30 3.2 Nick Cave’s Love Song ...…………………………………………………….....30 3.3 The Boatman’s Call ……………………………………………………………..33 3.4 No More Shall We Part …………………………………………………………36 3.5 Nocturama ………………………………………………………………………39 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………..42 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………44 Appendix ...…………………………………………………………………………………..48
Introduction
Nick Cave is an artist who has a huge impact on popular music with his songs.
Starting in Australia in the late 1970s he has been one of the most visible artists during the so- called “post-punk era”. Later in the 1980s as a musician, scriptwriter, and writer Cave became famous all over the world. The theme of love is his constant preoccupation. Initially in the
1980s Nick Cave’s lyrics dealt primarily with sexuality, physical expression of love, male power, and violence. Later in his career there appeared an alteration in his writing where he did not change the subject of love but modified his approach to it. Since the 1990s Cave deals mainly with the topic of spiritual love, often addressing God.
In my thesis I would like to discuss the shift from sexuality to spirituality in Nick
Cave’s lyrics. My aim is to find the purpose for the change in writing and particular musical traditions that Cave follows. The work will show a detailed analysis of the main points relating to the turn from the early sexual songs to the spiritual side of his work, that is from the late 1970s until recent years. Although love is a very common feature in popular music
Cave deals with its subject in a different way. His lyrics where the topic of physical and spiritual love is quite central can be regarded as a sophisticated piece of work because art within music remains for Cave a very significant issue.
The work is divided into three chapters. The first one describes the background of
Nick Cave and his bands in Australia, his stay in Berlin, and in São Paulo. I will relate Nick
Cave’s lyrics to the punk and post-punk era, to blues music, and Latin America elements. The second chapter deals mainly with the sexual and violent love lyrics and is divided into three parts. Each one illustrates a special feature, namely roles of female clothing, murder, and sexuality. The third one discusses the shift to spirituality and pure love and puts Cave’s early songs in contrast with the more recent work. 1. Nick Cave’s Lyrics – The Background
1.1 The Beginning
The popular music of the early 1980s in the English speaking world saw the rise of bands and musicians who shared the legacy of the punk-rock era. This period of rock and roll music mostly prominent in Great Britain with bands such as The Sex Pistols and The Clash gave rise in the late 1970s and early 1980s to the so-called post-punk era. In the early 1980s appeared many bands which tried to follow the punk music tradition. The age of revolt was replaced by another one, maybe a gentler one. New talents grew up in Europe (e.g. U2,
Talking Heads, The Police) just as in the U.S.A. (e.g. R.E.M., Pixies). However, one of the most visible artists of these days started his career outside Great Britain and the United States
– Australia saw the musical birth of Nick Cave.
Australia stands physically outside the world of music of Great Britain and the United
States. Nevertheless the influences of the British and American punk bands were visible there as Clinton Walker points out that “much of the music would seem to have been inspired by similar stirrings in England and America” (7). The time of the late 1970s marked an epoch of an Australian musical movement which moved rock and roll towards its own invention and identity. Independence is one of the key words of punk music. That was also followed by the
Australian bands; they were not at the real centre of that significant movement, however the new wave independently occurred in a number of countries around the world (Walker 7).
During the last years of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s Australian bands underwent an important process of development from rather unknown musical groups to popular ones. In particular, that set of changes can be symbolically demonstrated on Nick
Cave’s bands – The Boys Next Door changed to The Birthday Party and moved from Australia 1. The Birthday Party was not the only band that moved from Australia to become famous all over the world; however, they were probably the most prominent rock group among them. To name some of the bands that changed Great Britain for Australia in the early
1980s: The Go-Betweens, The Triffids, and The Moodists (Hanson 45). In this period of time we can already trace Nick Cave’s love, sex, and violence lyrics in The Birthday Party’s songs.
However, without any sign of his later spiritual approach. The singer and his band went on a tour through Europe and found a favourite place in Berlin which symbolizes Cave’s turbulent time of his career – night-life, alcohol, and drug addiction for instance.
In all of his bands Nick Cave as a member has been the leader and the exclusive author of all the lyrics. Primarily, Cave’s early songs in The Birthday Party were dealing with topics close to the ones presented in punk music. Fear of women and fear for women were one of the examples of issues that concerned sexual matters in punk-rock during the 1970s and in Nick
Cave’s earlier production. Simon Reynolds in his article “Flirting with the Void: Abjection in
Rock” provides two remarkable topics of punk music, in particular abjection and maternal horror. Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (song about “lust-for-abasement” (87)) and Sex
Pistols’ “Submission” and “Bodies” are instances for the subject of sexual issues in punk-rock. “Submission” explores a mission into the mysterious depths of female sexuality with the woman on the side of darkness, devouring men (88). The fear of women and female power on one hand and their vulnerability on the other one are at the centre, just as in
“Bodies” for instance – an anti-abortion song – portraying the woman as a powerful killer of her baby. Nick Cave’s writing might be illustrated with the example of the mysterious and frightening side of female sexuality in “She’s Hit” – a “blues lament for women’s vulnerability, bemoaning the way they’re prone to liquefy into ‘woman pie’ at the hands of man” (92). The meaning of the songs discussed in this paragraph might be explained
1 According to Walker. See pp. 7. psychologically, namely that the woman stands for a mother and a partner as well. The man – like a child – is weaker than her and scared of her possible fragility. The man puts himself into a position of an inferior individual.
The “lust-for-abasement” can be traced in another Nick Cave’s writing as well. The song “Zoo-Music Girl” from The Birthday Party’s Prayers on Fire album offers an idea about the concept:
My body is a monster driven insane
My Heart is a fish toasted with flames
I kiss the hem of her skirt
We spend our life in a box full of dirt. (Cave 28)
The character in the song is presented as a weak individual; that phenomenon in “Zoo-
Music Girl” is a so called “self-loathing” (Gladwell 147). It might be in fact compared with
Walker’s “lust-for-abasement” in Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog”. Both categories deal with a kind of gender domination feature. Gladwell claims:
Here a dilemma is clearly apparent. Self-loathing in the face of the female’s imminent
ruination – seen as a theft of sorts – and self-disgust at his own weakness as far as
‘she’ is concerned. More often than not, in Cave’s work the voice of reason/logic
inside spurns and also spurs violent reactions against the threat she presents to his
rationality – as an opposite/obverse or even complement. (147-8)
The revolutionary genre of punk music followed the ambitions of young musicians of the early 1980s. Consequently these songs – “She’s Hit” and “Zoo-Music Girl” – show that namely Nick Cave as a representative of the post-punk era has followed popular issues of his predecessors, punk-rock bands from Great Britain – The Sex Pistols – and the United States –
The Stooges. Europe made Nick Cave famous and later put him in a position of a respected musician who later underwent a number of changes regarding his work. Nick Cave proved to develop from a singer of the post-punk band The Birthday Party of the early days to his later and present position of one of the leading songwriters of his generation (Sturges) 2.
1.2 Berlin Years
In 1982, as has been already mentioned above, Nick Cave and the Birthday Party moved to Berlin. The year 1982 and the following one became the band’s “swan song” because the music group’s career was finished. The Birthday Party was dead. On the other hand for Cave started a new part of his career (Hanson 53). In the German capital, the rock band became famous but also saw its end. The city of Berlin signifies an important age for
Cave’s work.
Berlin became very attractive for rock and roll musicians in the 1970s and 1980s.
Many of them recorded their albums here. There is a number of milestones for Cave’s career during the 1980s in Germany. In Berlin, Nick Cave started to form his new band called The
Bad Seeds. Its name derives from The Birthday Party’s EP The Bad Seed from 1982, a release picked up at Hansa Studios where for instance David Bowie and Iggy Pop recorded several albums (Johnston 121). Nick Cave’s creativity bloomed in Berlin; he tried to come up with a new style of music. In fact, he was becoming increasingly bored with The Birthday Party’s music and the audience’s reaction to it. Cave wanted to incorporate completely new genres to his own production, such as western, blues, and epic sixties pop ballads (Johnston 123).
There have appeared new approaches in relation to his work in the early 1980s. Bible, for instance, became the source of Cave’s writing during his Berlin years. He started incorporating biblical language and features of Christian culture into his songs. The Bible itself had been a very important source for his writing technique and a remarkable piece of inspiration (Dax 71). The biblical/Christian imagery has been essential not only for his love
2 See Fiona Sturges’ “Wild Rose”.
February 1983:
Hold me up baby for I may fall
Hold my dish-rag body tall
Our bodies melt together (we are one)
Post crucifixion, and all undone. (Cave 56)
In “Wild World” the sexual connotation is linked to the crucifixion in a methaporical way. Nick Cave wants his girlfriend to comfort him in a very remarkable way – we can once more observe a notion of Reynolds’ “self-abasement” with the powerless man pleading for the woman’s help and care. “Wild World” is a “creamy languish in the guise of spoken word” and is close to the Beat style poetry (Hanson 47). The oral presentation of the lyrics becomes now as important as the whole song’s concept.
Another element that appeared during the time spent in Berlin in Nick Cave’s work was a stylization into a desperado, a renegade, who wants to escape punishment because he has killed a beloved woman. This model which is highly popular in the western culture became one of Nick Cave’s typical features. The rebel who stands between good and evil is attractive for the popular culture. The message of the songs remains often in the space between these borders of good and evil. The murder of a woman and the outlaw stylization stay an important issue on many Bad Seeds’ albums just as its narrative style. The topic of love appears in the “murder-ballads” as well; there is no contradiction (for instance, in 1988 in “The Mercy Seat” from the Tender Prey album). However for the first time in Nick Cave’s songs, we can observe the search for new styles and genres on the Mutiny! EP, the last record of The Birthday Party, which was made in November 1983 in the Hansa Records studios 3. Let us look closely at “Swampland”, a song about a flight of a murderer:
They cum with boots of blud
With pichfawk and with club
Chantin out mah name
Lucy, ah’ll love you till the end!
They hunt me like a dog
Down in a Sw-a-a-a-mp Land! (Cave 75).
The new genres of music that Cave wanted to embed in his work are apparent in this song. The tradition of the country and blues music and the American south are central for this piece. The Swampland is unmistakably the Mississippi Delta of William Faulkner. This place is seen as a mythical birthplace of the blues music (Dax 73). The chasers hunt the character
– a wanted man – because he has killed his girl, Lucy: “Lucy, ya made a sinner out of me /
Now ah’m burnin like a saint” (Cave 75). However, he confesses his love to Lucy (“ah’ll love you till the end” (75)). That is a stylization into a rebel who stands between good and evil; thus the character might be seen from a positive or negative point of view.
The Mississippi Delta is related to the blues music and consequently Cave becomes a narrator as the traditional blues singers whose lyrics have been the main point of their songs.
As an author, Cave elevates himself to a position of a medium that knows how the world works. His story has a message. That is also the central point of this kind of songs, just like the blues singers’ stories of the early 20 th century. Thus the meaning of the lyrics is more important than the music (Dax 73). Consequently an significant issue is that Cave put a number of autobiographical features into Swampland, namely himself as a rebel among the
3 See Hanson pp. 50. musicians who stands out as an individual and the hunters who represent his critics and fans
(Johnston 132). We can trace once more that the form of the oral performation becomes essential – the singer is the narrator, a storyteller.
Nick Cave’s message in the course of the Berlin years followed the tradition of blues and also of the songwriters. That was namely the legacy of the famous folk singer Bob Dylan and the country singer Johnny Cash. During the 1980s Cave made covers of songs originally recorded by these two musicians: Bob Dylan’s “Wanted Man” from the The Firstborn Is Dead album and Johnny Cash’s “The Singer” from the Kicking against the Pricks album. In
“Wanted Man” Cave has rearranged the lyrics by Bob Dylan for his own version. “The original is a long euphonic list of all the places the outlaw of the title, a bounty on his head, can no longer dare show his face. Cave added a few extra lines and reworked the melody together with Harvey, thus turning the song into a tragicomedy with biographical undertones”
(Dax 92). The original song by Dylan is another instance of the issue of a rebel in the western culture that has been incorporated into the popular music and later rearranged by Cave.
During the Berlin years, Cave reflected his own musical vision of the blues with
Christian imagery and became an acknowledged artist in the popular music and an author of songs whose progress has continued years on 4. The narrative side of his work has become unique already in the 1980s. Moreover he is one of the poets among the musicians who have been following a tradition of blues and songwriting. Like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen,
Nick Cave has remained on of the few singers-songwriters whose lyrics need not to be read with music but on their own (Nashawatty 47). Later I will discuss a specific parallel between
Cohen and Cave.
4 Nick Cave has been appreciated by rock and roll musicians. He has received a rare accolade by Bob Dylan in being authorised to make changes to compositions by him. (See Dax pp. 92.) 1.3 São Paulo Years
The last decade of the 20 th century presented new topics into Cave’s songs again. After the turbulent years and the drug addiction in Berlin Cave found new places to stay. Although the singer visited many places on tours with The Bad Seeds all over the world there was a location that inspired his writing in an extraordinary way – São Paulo.
After a storm comes serenity. Symbolically storm in Nick Cave’s life can mean his stay in Berlin. There he became addicted to drugs, wrote songs of violence and depraved sexuality. Cave left Berlin for good. The actual effect then was a detoxification at a facility in
Weston-Super-Mare in the South of England; the singer left West Berlin which has been his home for six years and returned to London (Dax 124). In Berlin and in London as well Cave was at the centre of media. Nevertheless he looked for anonymity. This fact actually guided him to Brazil (one of the places on band’s tour) where he found his partner, mother of his first son – fashion designer Viviane Carneiro. They met on one of The Bad Seeds’ concerts and
Cave had fallen in love with her 5. Later they made up their home in São Paulo together. Brazil has been unexplored by The Bad Seeds recently and Cave himself was not one of the most famous artists there.
With his move to Brazil Nick Cave embarked on a new direction in his life and, for the
first time ever, started to live in a semblance of an ordered existence. [...] But in the
anonymity of this colossal city that spoke Portuguese and not English and where rock
music hadn’t become the kind of ersatz religion it had in England, Cave didn’t feel at
all impinged upon by the interest Brazil showed in him (Dax 128).
The genius loci – or the spirit of a place – made contribution to his work. In comparison to his previous life Cave became more temperate and that had also effect on his songs. Viviane Carneiro became a new source of inspiration for him. “The change of
5 See Johnston pp. 258. surroundings gave Cave a wholly new perspective. ‘Everywhere you looked,’ he enthused,
‘there was something strange and wonderful and magical,’ and the songs he was now writing would reflect that dynamism” (Hanson 74). Last but not least, the singer started to use
Portuguese as one of the flavours of his lyrics.
In São Paulo in 1990 Cave recorded his new album The Good Son which is musically calmer and which incorporates the New Testament, the person of Jesus Christ, and God in the lyrics. There is a certain number of romantic ballads like “The Ship Song” for instance. What represents mainly Nick Cave’s work of the 1990s – the spirituality in love songs – has been started off in Brazil. The core of the religious subject matter in lyrics lies therefore in relationship with the years spent in São Paulo. It is no secret that Christian faith plays a key role in the Brazilian culture. The opening song of the album – “Foi na Cruz” – is a “love chant” of how “two people missed a golden opportunity to fall in love” (Dax 129). The song possesses a “reverential hush” to remain within terms of Christian culture (Hanson 81). The imagery of Jesus Christ is quite central; in addition, a traditional Portuguese anthem has been used for the chorus:
Foi na cruz, foi na cruz
Que um dia
Meus pecados castigados em Jesus
Foi na cruz
Que um dia
Foi na cruz. (Cave 163)
The translation from the Portuguese: “He hung on the cross / One day / Jesus was punished for our sins” (Dax 129). The central idea of the song is the unrequited love:
Love comes a-knocking
Comes a-knocking upon our door But you, you and me, love
We don’t live here anymore. (Cave 163)
It seems the former complexity of Cave’s love songs was gone and now the straightforward lyrics tell the story. Songs like “Foi na Cruz” were at that moment more fascinating because of the simplicity, loose associations, and secrets in comparison to his earlier work full of complicated and hidden answers (Dax 129); (e.g. the complicated issue of self-abasement in “Zoo-Music Girl”). “Foi na Cruz” is a perfect example of how Cave began inserting folk elements of Latin America just as previously features of blues during the Berlin years. That involved not only the text components on The Good Son album but particularly the musical ones as well. The Latin America swing on the album replaces the former rock and roll sound – for instance in “Lament” and “The Weeping Song”. Together with the instrumentation and rather gentler rhytms the album is completely different in relation to previous Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds releases (Hanson 81). Thus the personal relationship has not been the only change that had its effect on his records. The Brazilian culture changed
Cave’s music as well. The unfulfilled love that is present in “Foi na Cruz” stays a pattern for many songs that should follow on later Nick Cave’s recordings.
Furthermore the Christian imagery that started to be essential for his further work is not purpose-built. “Modern pop rock songwriting is full of it, but it is usually used for its aesthetic, rather than religious, potency. Cave’s use of Christian imagery is different in that he is a believer (Bartlett) 6”. We can assert that what we hear from Nick Cave is forthright and that there is no cliché in the lyrics concerning the cross-reference to Bible and Christianity – in particular, spirituality and Christian symbolics play for him a key role; they are the fundaments of his writing since the last decade of the 20 th century. Thus The Good Son is probably a turning-point album for Cave because of a completely new experience of Latin
6 See Thomas Bartlett’s “The resurrection of Nick Cave”.
Brazil Cave found his new identity in relation with his age of “maturity”. His partner and the whole culture brought new insights to his work. On the whole Cave became inspired by the people of São Paulo; hence The Good Son was less an album for fans, but an album for its author himself (Hanson 81).
The first chapter pointed up Nick Cave’s shifts in writing from the late 1970s to early
1990s in relation with the individual and cultural background. During this time span Cave has experienced a number of changes in life characterised by movings from Australia to Europe – first to London, second to Berlin – and from Europe to rather anonymous Brazil. This period of approximately 15 years had a remarkable effect on his work. From the representative of the post-punk era Cave has developed into a musician who follows the songwriter tradition of
Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. Later as the author of romantic ballads he has become
“a reverential love songwriter” (Hanson 73). Prior to the early 1990s Cave’s lyrics evolved and reached a turning point in Brazil with The Good Son . Of course the transformation of the love theme was not finished then. The alteration in writing got only started with a new life style, new culture, and new partner. Similar topics as on the “Brazilian album” occurred on the following ones as well (Henry’s Dream (1992) and Let Love In (1994)). There were however more romantic ballads on The Bad Seeds’ releases since the São Paulo years. The issue of spirituality in love plays a major role mainly on two records: The Boatman’s Call
(1997) and No More Shall We Part (2001). The next chapters will depict particular songs with the topic of love at its centre in detail.
2. The Sexual and Violent Lyrics
2.1 Introduction
The previous chapter has shown a general description of the background of the creation of Nick Cave’s songs. The second section of the thesis will be a more detailed look upon the individual lyrics where the theme of love is linked to such expressions as sexuality, violence, and murder in particular. Presently I will not strictly follow the chronological order.
I am going to look for instances of rather physical attraction in Cave’s lyrics during the whole
1980s and 1990s. The chapter is divided into three special units regarding distinctive categories in songs – 1) female clothing, 2) love and murder, and 3) sexuality and darksome love. As a consequence each division of the chapter will deal with particular songs. The last point – sexuality in Nick Cave’s work – comes intentionally as the final crucial theme of the second section because the analysis and the results will than be put in relation to the third part of the thesis which will explore the shift to romantic ballads and spiritual tendencies mainly in the later work.
The female sexuality and fascination for physical love appears already in the earliest songs by Nick Cave. Although the subject of love – sadness, girls, professions of love – in the rock and roll music is often a cliché and has a notion of purposeless contemplation, the songs by Cave have a different concept concerning its subject matter; namely in the artistic principles – Cave considers his music and lyrics unique regarding his own muse which is in no competition with anybody. He stands outside the world of glittering prizes (Nick- cave.com). It has been already mentioned above that his lyrics tend to be read without music – as poetry 7. Cave is not a usual singer and musician; he is one of the representatives of poets among them. Moreover Nick Cave tries to tell a story and pursues the songwriters’ tradition
7 Nick Cave’s lyrics have been oficially published also as two collections of poetry: King Ink and King Ink II . of the generation before. The following parts of the second chapter will point up three particular categories in the sexual and violent love songs.
2.2 Female Clothing
The female clothing and the particular colour of woman’s clothes and – principally – dresses is a feature that is to a certain extent repeated in Nick Cave’s lyrics. The significance of the clothing imagery in relation with sexuality is usual in popular music. Some of the early songs by Cave are a perfect example of how the music is linked to a very interesting symbolism of dresses, their red colour, and sexual matters. In Cave’s songs the symbolic red dress is the female sexuality in a wretched state. The colour signals some dark issues – in most cases relates to murder, obsession, self-abasement etc. The singer pays particularly fethishistic tradition to the significance of the red colour (Gladwell 135-7). That assertion leads us to the particular Birthday Party’s songs where the woman’s dress is a central element:
1) “Zoo-Music Girl” and 2) “Kewpie Doll”. The former one’s fethishistic elements are related to the noticeable fact of murder which will be explored later on:
I murder her dress till it hurts
I murder her dress and she loves it
If there is one thing I desire in the world
Is to make love to my Zoo-Music Girl. (Cave 28)
Here the sexual undertone is quite apparent. Cave puts two elements together:
1) making love by murdering her dress – maybe undressing her, 2) murder that hurts but/and feels good (“she loves it”). The sexuality is thus closely related to violence, male power, and fetishism. A similar feature, particularly a fascination of dressing and undressing, is present in
“Kewpie Doll”:
Well I love the kewpie doll
Yeah I bought her in a show
I dressed her up in a cheap red cotton dress
But everything was either fished-out or spat-out. (Cave 45)
The doll might symbolize a woman – or a virgin – whose future lies in the man’s hands. The red dress stands here for the sexual attraction and the female sexuality in a wretched state. Cave sees and adores the significance and meaning of the dress, namely the complete and unchaste sexuality (Gladwell 148).
One of Nick Cave’s songs – “From Her to Eternity” – from the same called 1984 Bad
Seeds debut album shows a fascination with bare feet. The piece is a chant of a depraved character who longs for a girl who lives in a flat above him, in the “Room 29”. The record became one of Bad Seeds’ first hits. Few years later, in 1988, German director Wim Wenders used the song as one of the central musical constituents of the film Wings of Desire 8. The song is above all a tale of emotional voyeurism (Reynolds 29).
Ah wanna tell you bout a girl
You know she lives in Room 29
Why that’s the one right up top a mine
Ah start to cry, ah start to cry-y
O ah hear her walkin
Walkin barefoot cross the floor-boards
All through this lonesome night
And hear her crying too
Hot tears come splashing down
Leaking through the cracks
8 Wings of Desire featured Nick Cave in one of the supporting roles, starring himself.
It seems that the character is obsessed by the image of the girl. It is interesting that he can not know for sure that she is barefoot; however, he declares the she has got no shoes on.
The sexual undertone of her bare feet is to be associated with nakedness. She becomes the centre of his dreams and the floor is the only thing dividing him from the girl herself. It is by all means a fethishistic attraction again that is present here just as comparably the red dress magnetism discussed above. This desirability for her and the voyeurism are thus cases of depraved sexuality in Nick Cave’s early lyrics. “From Her to Eternity” is a love song
(regardless of the unrequitted feelings), just free from any conventional clichés. Hence the role of clothing plays a major part as a feature of sexuality and physical obsession.
2.3 Murder and Love Within
Murder ballads have a special status in Nick Cave’s work. They appear both in the
1980s and in the 1990s. We can trace several patterns in these songs – 1) a murderer kills his beloved woman and – as an outlaw – waits for his punishment; 2) the lover lusts after his female object desperately; nevertheless, he can not reach her – the longing after her is overruled by the desire to take her life; 3) the lover is a violator and the woman is just a defenceless and vulnerable prey. Let us dicover the relation between the lover and the murderer rolled into one – in 1) “The Mercy Seat”, 2) “From Her to Eternity”, and 3) “Where the Wild Roses Grow”. They might be viewed as love records because they explore in their way that line between love, hate, and murder might be very thin.
The feature of a rebel-murderer has been already discussed in the first chapter. Cave works with this popular cultural issue just as Johnny Cash before him for instance 9. “The
Mercy Seat” was originally released on the Tender Prey album (1988). The record was, as a
9 The country singer sang also about criminals, for instance on his At Folsom Prison album. whole, very well received publicly and by the press; “The Mercy Seat” became one of the classics by Nick Cave 10 . Besides, the song has been covered years later by Johnny Cash. On the album Cave reflects his own musical vision of the blues and the American South. The
Bible’s imagery is still present (Hanson 72). The character is a prisoner who waits in the death row for the execution; his life should end on the “mercy seat”, on the electric chair. His thoughts are full of feelings of guilt and resignation. The prisoner contemplates his sins before the execution. The lyrics have a rich Biblical imagery: e.g. “In Heaven His throne is made of gold / The ark of His testament is stowed” (Cave 136). However in this case the key point lies in the message of love:
My kill-hand is called E. V. I. L.
Wears a wedding band that’s G. O. O. D.
’Tis a long-suffering shackle
Collaring all the rebel blood. (Cave 136)
The whole lyrics are sixteen verses long. Yet these four lines unravel the convict’s crime. The meaning of this fragment is present in the contradiction between good and evil – the same hand that wore the wedding ring also commited the murderous crime. In other words the one who can be devoted to a woman and love her might take her life as well. The wanted man is placed between good and evil and might be viewed from different perspectives.
Therefore the line between love and hate – or black or white – is pictured as a very thin one.
Let us get across to another song now. There is a remarkable pattern that I would like to explore in “From Her to Eternity” again, namely a suggestion that longing after a beloved person might be fatal and more important than a requitted love. To love also means to possess in a sense. In particular, a supreme moment of power over somebody is attractive. Death via
10 See Hanson pp. 72-3. an amorous murder runs from Marquis de Sade and Romantic poets to lyrics by Iggy Pop and
Nick Cave. “From Her to Eternity” is a song of devotion and devastation (Reynolds 31-2).
The character is a peeper who is fascinated by a girl living in a flat above him.
Actually the lyrics are a “monologue of a man who, pacing up and down in his apartment, sees in the woman upstairs at number 29 the fulfillment of all his dreams” (Dax 86). He becomes allured by everything she does and tries to get hold of all that is associated with her daily life: “Ah read her diary on her sheets / Scrutinizin evry lil piece of dirt / Tore out a page
‘n’ stufft it inside my shirt” (Cave 84). He is scared of the state she is in and listens to every sob she makes: “But ah can hear the most melancholy sound / Ah ever heard / Walk ‘n’ cry!
Kneel ‘n’ cry!” (84-5). All he wants is to own her; nevertheless the desire to have her is stronger than anything else. Therefore he decides to kill her because he is afraid of the possibility of possessing her. That would mean not to crave for her anymore. The only way out is to steal into her apartment and to take the girl’s life eventually:
This desire to possess her is a wound
And it’s naggin at me like a shrew
But ah know that to possess her
Is therefore not to desire her
O, O, O then ya know, that lil girl would just have to go!
Go! Go-o-o! From her to eternity! (85)
The affection of the song’s character for the woman is another instance of depraved emotionality. It is one of the examples of the wicked side of affection in Cave’s lyrics. Love and desire here turn into lust and murder. We can notice as a result that the line between love and hate is in reality – as previously depicted – thin. Further words will be dedicated to “Where the Wild Roses Grow” from the Murder
Ballads , a concept album from 1996 11 . The song contains examples of murder and love within. It became probably the comercially most famous record Nick Cave ever made. The songs share features in common; the release is planned as a whole – the indivudual tracks are about morbidity, murder, and insane killers. Cave planned to make a concept album, not individual hits 12 . Nevertheless the record became the best sold album of The Bad Seeds.
There are two traditionals among others – “Stagger Lee” and “Henry Lee” – and a cover of
Bob Dylan’s “Death Is Not the End”. Cave reached the peak of issues of violence and sexuality with this collection; subsequently there occurred a sharp break from the era of sexual and violent matters to the preoccupation with spirituality and pure love on The
Boatman’s Call and following albums.
“Where the Wild Roses Grow” is a duet featuring the Australian pop star Kylie
Minogue. There are in fact six verses and a chorus which opens the song and is sung by the woman, Elisa Day:
They call me The Wild Rose
But my name is Elisa Day
Why they call me it I do not know
For my name was Elisa Day. (Cave 242)
The chorus is followed by two verses throughout the song, each one sung either by
Minogue or Cave on their own. The record portrays three days; it is a story of a young girl who falls in love with a stranger. Every two verses of eight lines altogether represent a day, first sung by Cave, second by Minogue:
11 Concept albums were nothing new in rock and roll music by the time of Murder Ballads . To name some of the preceding well known ones: Pink Floyd’s The Wall , David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs , Genesis’ Selling England by the Pound, The Who’s Tommy , E.L.O. ’s Eldorado , Jethro Tull’s Aqualung etc. 12 “‘The record was intended to kind of cut the wheat from the chaff,’ Cave insisted. ‘I thought our popularity was kind of getting a bit out of control with Let Love In . I don’t want to be very popular. Basically, we tried to make an extremely difficult record, which would turn a lot of pepole off us. We tried to make kind of like a Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait … But of course it didn’t happen that way.’” (Hanson 107) From the first day I saw her I knew she was the one
As she stared in my eyes and smiled
For her lips were the colour of the roses
That grew down the river, all bloody and wild
When he knocked on my door and entered the room
My trembling subsided in his sure embrace
He would be my first man, and with a careful hand
He wiped at the tears that ran down my face. (242)
The story follows kind of a “Beauty and the Beast” pattern where the girl is innocent and young and – on the other hand – the man is strange, mysterious, and older than her. She falls in love with him and lets him do anything he wants. On the second day he brings her a rose and tells her to go to the place “where the wild roses grow”. The last day becomes the climax of the song; the man reveals himself as a murderer:
On the third day he took me to the river
He showed me the roses and we kissed
And the last thing I heard was a muttered word
As he stood above me with a rock in his fist
On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow
And she lay on the bank, the wind light as a thief
As I kissed her goodbye, I said, ‘All beauty must die’
And lent down and planted a rose between her teeth. (243)
Cave shows here again the personification of good and evil in one man. Although
“The Mercy Seat” and “From Her to Eternity” that have been explored recently are different types of songs (featuring a renegade and a peeper), they both follow a pattern of the thin line between love and fondness on the one hand and sinister emotions on the other. All of the three instances in this section illustrate the murder theme in love lyrics which has been significant for Nick Cave during the 1980s and 1990s. The author demonstrates the closeness between love and hate and – life and death. The violence in the lyrics is not purpose-built. The author’s notion of desire and affection is simply intimately near danger and destruction. That concept became one of the characteristic signs of his writing. Cave presents passion and desire in a remarkable way, namely in relation with agony, pain, and fury. These shocking features are in a sense central for Cave’s unique work
(Gray) 13 .
2.4 Sexuality and Darksome Love
Sexual attraction and to a certain extent murky side of love lyrics is another category of Cave’s work. We can observe physical magnetism and personification of sexuality and affection on some of the albums by him. I am going to look at three particular songs where the theme of sex is apparent – 1) “Hard on for Love”, 2) “Loverman”, and 3) “I Let Love In”.
These records – with issues of sexual attraction – stand on the bridge to the shift to spirituality and rather mental emotionality in his later work of the 1990s.
The first example, “Hard on for Love” 14 , shows Cave’s ability to picture sexual desire.
The song’s character is a sexually disturbed man who feels a great deal of attraction for a female object. The piece contains also features discussed above, i.e. red colour, female clothing, and violence. Nevertheless the sexual craving connects all of them together:
I am the fiend hid in her skirts
And it’s hot as hell in here
Coming at her as I am from above
13 See Louise Gray’s “Nick Cave – Being a Musician with a Passionate and Shocking Talent”.
The lyrics’ intention goes truly straightforward towards its purpose. Besides Cave uses the Old Testament depiction to draw the image of the woman:
Well I swear I seen that girl before
Like she walked straight outa the book of Leviticus
But they can stone me with stones I don’t care
Just as long as I can get to kiss
Those Gypsy lips! Gypsy lips!
My aim is to hit this Miss. (127)
As a result the Biblical subject matter stays close to sexuality throughout the entire song: “And I’m movin in (I’m moving in) / Comin at her like Lazarus from above” (127) and
“I am his sceptre and shaft / And she is Heaven and Hell / At whose gates I ain’t been delivered” (127). The lyrics as a whole treat the woman as an object: “Just when I’m about to get my hands on her / Her breasts rise and fall” (128). Cave delivers these lyrics of lust and desire with an outstanding vigour. Such a diction and tone overpower the later “Loverman”
(Hanson 65). Once again the song contains a feature of possessing a woman. Together with the subject of sadistic pleasure is the song comparable with “From Her to Eternity”.
The next record comes from the publicly very well received Let Love In album 15 –
“Loverman” from 1994. Nick Cave presents once more a dangerous, lustful, and ruthless lover for whom the woman represents just a sexual object and a centre of erotic desire.
Besides to correspond with the “fierce” lyrics, the band performs a sound of rock and roll and one of the 1990s’ loudest Bad Seeds songs 16 . The loverman himself is portrayed as the devil
(“There’s a Devil waiting outside your door / He’s weak with evil and broken by the world /
15 Recorded at Townhouse Studios in London, 1993; released in 1994; See Hanson pp. 98-9. 16 “Loverman” became one of the covers on the Garage Inc. album (released in 1998) by the legendary thrash- metal band Metallica.
Take off that dress, I’m coming down
I’m your Loverman
[……………………………………..]
There’s a devil crawling along your floor
With a trembling heart, he’s coming through your door
With his straining sex in his jumping paw
[……………………………………..]
I’ll be your Loverman! I got a masterplan
To take off your dress and be your man. (214-5)
Nevertheless what makes the song attractive is the narrative part between verses. The lyrics “finally reached fruition with the addition of two spoken passages in which Cave would literally spell out the theme of the song” (Johnston 298-9). Yet again the audience can perceive the lusty, sexual subject loom ahead from each line:
L is for LOVE baby
O is for ONLY you that I do
V is for loving VIRTUALLY everything that you are
E is for loving almost EVERYTHING that you do
R is for RAPE me
M is for MURDER me
A is for ANSWERING all of my prayers
N is for KNOWING your Loverman’s going to be
the answer to all of yours. (214) The lyrics’ central theme lies again in sexuality and seduction and the topics of obsession and violence (rape, murder, forced undressing, straining sex etc.). The meaning of the song derives thus from the physical – sexual – matters. Its directness is very similar to
“Hard on for Love”, namely in the bodily attraction. Although they were both written at different times they follow the same pattern of a woman as an object.
“I Let Love In” is in fact almost the title track from the Let Love In album. The song has two main similarities with the ones discussed above in this part of the chapter. Namely
1) its dark feeling associated with love and sexuality and 2) one person as an object of physical interest. There is nevertheless a different view for the reason that the object is not a woman but a man. That does not change its purpose. Cave presents three “siblings”: Love,
Despair, and Deception.
Despair and Deception, Love’s ugly little twins
Came a-knocking on my door, I let them in
Darling, you’re the punishment for all my former sins
I let love in
[……………………………………..]
Well, I’ve been bound and gagged and I’ve been terrorized
And I’ve been castrated and I’ve been lobotomized
But never has my tormentor come in such a cunning disguise
I let love in
[……………………………………..]
So if you’re sitting all alone and hear a knocking at your door
And the air is full of promises, well buddy, you’ve been
warned
Far worse to be Love’s lover than the lover that Love has scorned
I let love in. (Cave 221)
Cave’s lyrics show here that one may not be aware of the dangers of love. The metaphorical issue points out that love may have different faces. The character first did not recognize the diverse sides of love which may have a pleasant face and a sinister one. It is probably no surprise that for him the punishment was a physical one, namely regarding the sexual matter – castration, although it is meant metaphorically. The bodily interest remains a key element which is common for the three featured songs. The fact that the object is a man becomes thus the only distinction.
The second chapter was dealing with violence and sexual attraction in Nick Cave’s work. There are two main points that the issues have all in common: 1) depraved emotions of the characters and 2) a thin line between good and evil. Two main stages of Cave’s career stand out regarding both categories: specifically, first prior to The Good Son and second from this album to Murder Ballads . The topics of love and murder, love and sexuality appear in both periods; however, since The Good Son emerge more romantic ballads on female beauty and love. Subsequently sexuality and subjects of violence and murder did not disappear from the lyrics; its extent has become nevertheless smaller. When regarding love in the production of Nick Cave of the 1980s one has to trace it in relation with the darksome issues discussed in this chapter. The poetic issues that have started to appear in a greater extent in the early 1990s have initiated the shift from sexuality to spirituality in the songs by Cave. As a result then, the author has not changed his constant preoccupation but altered his approach towards it by viewing love from a different perspective, probably from a more milder one – the shocking features of murder and violence simply disappeared and were replaced by images of pure emotionality. The last chapter will deal with spiritual topics in love songs during a third era after Murder Ballads that provided the climax of the sexual and violent lyrics. 3. Spiritual Love Lyrics
3.1 Introduction
The last part of the thesis will discuss the spiritual, romantic, and emotional issues of
Nick Cave’s love songs. The first aim of this chapter is to describe the main elements that represented the shift from the earlier work to such a sort of love lyrics that had predominantly appeared since the recording and working on The Boatman’s Call album, released in 1997.
This collection presented not just a different approach to music with the piano as the lead musical instrument; it had to offer a reaction to the last two records – Murder Ballads and Let
Love In – which brought Cave and the Bad Seeds a remarkable commercial success. The chapter’s second target is to confront the spiritual love lyrics to the preceding ones and to find reasons for that change.
There are four sections in the third chapter apart from the introduction. The first one will illustrate Nick Cave’s own opinions on love songs, namely its characteristics and its uniqueness. Each one of the following divisions then will discuss particular albums. Presently, chronological order will be followed. The first part will be dealing with The Boatman’s Call , the second one with No More Shall We Part , and the last one with Nocturama . The aim of this specific division is to trace the process of songwriting after the shift to spirituality in a compact way; I will attempt to analyse the development of specific patterns that characterised each release. As a result, regarding Cave’s lyrics on these three records, the last part of the thesis will be dealing with the work published from 1997 to 2003 when Nocturama was released.
3.2 Nick Cave’s Love Song
Although the subject of faith in relation to love has always been a key element that flows through a great number of songs by Nick Cave, its importance has become increasingly essential since the second half of the 1990s. Let us present a number of Cave’s thoughts on the love song and its relation to faith.
Nick Cave is dealing with the love song throughout his whole career. An explanation for that occupation may be given on the release of a two-lecture-CD with an address “The
Secret Life of the Love Song” 17 . The record has been originally presented in 1999 as a lecture, delivered at the South Bank Centre in London. Cave in the role of a “teacher” introduces theories of writing love songs. He acknowledges that his artistic life has been centred on the need to articulate feelings of loss and longing that have occurred in his personal life. He claims that a majority of his two hundred songs are considered to be love songs. Consequently regarding popular music, love does not contain only the cliché of holding hands and happiness. What is more important is that Cave tries to follow artistic methods and creativity by writing lyrics: “Here our creative impulses lie in ambush at the side of our lives ready to leap forth and kick holes in it – holes through which inspiration can rise”. Hence Cave’s motivation for writing love lyrics derives from the need to express notions via songs whose central theme is love as the argument for creativity.
Spiritual matters and addressing God become key elements of his love song-writing.
God and Jesus Christ are on the same level as love itself. The spirituality and Christian imagery have been incorporated into lyrics since the Berlin years and later intensified as concepts of the love songs in the 1990s. “Writing allowed me direct access to my imagination, to inspiration and, ultimately, to God. I found that through the use of language I was writing
God into existence. [...] The actualizing of God through the medium of the Love Song remains my prime motivation as an artist”. Therefore it proves that the issue of faith stays in relation to love throughout a major part of his career: let us name for instance two love songs
– a) “Bless His Ever Loving Heart” and b) “There Is a Kingdom” – where the author directly
17 The original title of the record is The Secret Life of the Love Song. The Flesh Made Word: Two Lectures by Nick Cave ; the album was released in 2000. For details see
(Cave 335), and ad b) “There is a king / And He lives without / And He lives within” (271).
Let us carry on with the mood of the love songs; Nick Cave defines the ambience which marks the feeling of individual records that are to a certain extent dark, sinister, and gloomy no matter at what time he wrote them. That has to do with his attitude towards the lyrics:
I believe the Love Song to be a sad song. It is the noise of sorrow itself. [...] Those
songs that speak of love, without having within their lines an ache or a sigh, are not
Love Songs at all, but rather Hate Songs disguised as Love Songs and are not to be
trusted. These songs deny us our human-ness and our God-given right to be sad, and
the airwaves are littered with them.
According to the theory that a love song has to be sad, there may be no doubt why all the violence, sadness, despair, and painful longing occurs in the work; it has to be depressing in some way. Regarding the lyrics’ mood, there are two main terms for Cave: “saudade” and
“duende”. As the author explains both of them have to be the core of a real “Love Song”.
“We all experience within us what the Portuguese call ‘saudade’, which translates as an inexplicable longing, an unnamed and enigmatic yearning of the soul, and it is this feeling that lives in the realms of imagination and inspiration and is the breeding ground for the sad song, for the Love Song”. The latter term “duende” (which comes from Spanish and has been originally described in a lecture by Federico García Lorca) Cave explains as an “inexplicable sadness”.
All things considered, Cave does explicitly express the development of the love song- writing which has to imply sorrowful characteristics and has to contain spiritual issues, namely God and faith. These were also indiscerptible elements of his earlier songs (“The
Mercy Seat”, “Hard on for Love”, etc.). Nevertheless the shift only confirms the claim that Cave did not change the key subject of his writing but regards love from a different point of view, which is a more moderate one – the “unexlicable longing and sadness” seem to be the crucial features of his songs. They have appeared in the past already and both remain in more recent lyrics. The characters of “From Her to Eternity” and “Loverman” are driven by sexual desires and later, songs like “Brompton Oratory” and “And No More Shall We Part” are remarkable for its unique professions of love. In other words Nick Cave’s writing changed in its form but the actual subject matter – the longing for love – still continues to occur. The following sections will throw more light on particular albums.
3.3 The Boatman’s Call
The album was released in 1997 and became a sharp break in Cave’s writing. After an era which mingled romantic ballads with songs of violence and murder came a completely new age of pure expression of love and spirituality. The first step towards that shift began with The Good Son ’s “Foi na Cruz” and the process of change was completed with the tracks on The Boatman’s Call . I am going to discuss three songs in particular: 1) “Into My Arms”,
2) “Lime Tree Arbour”, and 3) “Brompton Oratory”. I would like to point out what they have in common and why they represent the whole collection as a marking point of Cave’s work.
The lyrics are full of sadness and unfullfilled love. They are – according to Cave – perfect examples of love songs. The author was inspired by authentic events from his personal life 18 . The Christian motives are apparent in a number of them. First, let us look upon “Into
My Arms”. The author confronts his ideas with his beloved one’s, namely on faith:
I don’t believe in an interventionist God
But I know, darling that you do
18 Dax claims that “the singer had looked within himself and now started to regard the world and his relationship to women in a more introspective way” (149) and Gray maintains that the album “is an intensly moving account of the collapse of his relationship with singer PJ Harvey”. See Gray’s “Nick Cave – Being a Musician with a Passionate and Shocking talent”.
Not to intervene when it came to you
[……………………………………..]
And if he felt He had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms. (Cave 265)
Cave continues and compares the woman with an angel (“And I don’t believe in the existence of angels / But looking at you I wonder if that’s true” (265)). The “brutality” of the earlier lyrics has vanished and now a completely new approach is present – tenderness, care, and senistivity. The message of the song lies in the final verse:
But I believe in Love
And I know darling that you do too
And I believe in some kind of path
That we can walk down me and you. (265)
Cave expresses his belief in love. It is very interesting because in the previous verses he claims he had not trusted in angels or an interventionist God in contrast to his beloved woman. When we compare the earlier lyrics to “Into My Arms”, we can watch the main change in considering the woman not as an object. Hence the approach is different but the message of love stays actually the same.
Another song from the album is “Lime-Tree Arbour”. There is a noticable feature of a
“protective hand” which can in fact belong to a woman or to God (or to both of them).
According to Hanson, “one of his loveliest compositions” (127) is quite short – only four verses and a chorus. I will display two verses and the chorus:
The wind in the trees is whispering
Whispering low that I love her
She puts her hand over mine Down in the lime-tree arbour. (Cave 267)
Actually these lines may not contain anything extraordinary; however the image of the hand goes through the whole song; for instance in another verse:
There will always be suffering
It flows through life like water
I put my hand over hers
Down in the lime-tree arbour. (267)
Finally, the chorus (which finishes the record) restates the lyrics’ meaning once again:
Through every word that I speak
And every thing I know
There is a hand that protects me
And I do love her so. (267)
The chorus opens a question whether the protecting hand belongs to God or to a woman. Nevertheless the lyrics show that the spiritual imagery is again very close to the professions of love just as in “Into My Arms”. Both songs’ message of love comes along with the final lines. The concept of the album is constant – the beloved person and God appear in the lyrics. Cave’s theory of “duende” is as well continual since the sorrow is present.
Finally, the last piece from The Boatman’s Call I would like to discuss is “Brompton
Oratory”. The song, just as the previous ones in this section, has a reverential mood according to the text and the singer’s civil performance. At this point Nick Cave praises woman’s beauty:
And I wish that I was made of stone
So that I would not have to see
A beauty impossible to define
A beauty impossible to believe [……………………………………..]
No God up in the sky
No Devil beneath the sea
Could do the job that you did
Of bringing me to my knees. (Cave 270)
The power of woman’s love and beauty and its relation with God is present in these lyrics again. That concept is very close to the image of a woman and an interventionist God of
“Into My Arms” and the protecting hand of “Lime-Tree Arbour”. Actually, Cave combines the earthly and heavenly power on The Boatman’s Call with a poetic art. Gray describes the intention of the last four lines of “Brompton Oratory” as a “facility with which he moves between sacred and secular 19 ”.
The Christian and Biblical imagery has appeared for the first time already in the
1980s; however, on this album Cave shifted to the New Testament completely. It is necessary to mention that the entire spiritual imagery is in relation to love and adoration. The songs have a pure emotionality towards a woman (not a female object!) and God in common. That album’s mood has been something completely different in comparison to Cave’s earlier work.
Namely, there is no sign of any violence, abjection, sadistic pleasure, male power etc. The process of the shift from sexuality to spirituality has begun during the São Paulo years and as a whole was finished in 1997. The form has changed but the preoccupation with love has remained. Hence The Boatman’s Call has marked a new stage of his career.
3.4 No More Shall We Part
The album followed the preceding one after four years; that is in 2001. Let us explore the mood of the lyrics and point out what has been new after the breaking point of The
19 See Louise Gray’s “Nick Cave – Being a Musician with a Passionate and Shocking Talent”.
1) “And No More Shall We Part” and 2) “Love Letter”.
If the previous album has been a “break-up” record, No More Shall We Part has to be described as a “wedding” one. “Whereas the earlier set cast Cave as the budding or spurned lover, this was very much his Wedding Album, with the celebratory tone of that description marred only by Cave’s apparent reaction to marriage” (Hanson 130). However it does not mean that the individual pieces are somewhat happier. The “duende” and “saudade” is again omnipresent. Nick Cave is weaving “the essence of Leonard Cohen” on the album. The songs flow as a pure poetry just as in the work of the Canadian poet/singer Cohen (Hanson 130)20 .
The title of the song “And No More Shall We Part” reveals that the track is dealing with the topic of union (marriage, at this point). Actually Cave married model Susie Bick and settled in England (Hanson 127). Hence the song (and the whole album) corresponds with reality in its essence:
No more will I say, dear heart
I am alone and she has left me
And no more shall we part
The contracts are drawn up, the ring is locked upon the finger
[……………………………………..]
All the hatchets have been buried now
And the birds will sing to your beautiful heart
[……………………………………..]
And no more shall we part
Your chain of commands has been silenced now. (Cave 305)
20 There are more similarities between Cave and Cohen. Although we can find a number of break-up records for instance, let us name The Songs of Leonard Cohen from 1967, a famous album containing the topic of breaking- up (see Nadel, pp. 86-8). There are a number of marriage symbols in the lyrics. By some means the singer makes comments on the actual state of being, which in fact is a kind of putting up with the reality that has its authentic grounds in Nick Cave’s life. The author follows a style of a calm melancholic delivery just as on The Boatman’s Call . Whereas the previous title record was dealing with separation of lovers, the actual track’s occupation is based upon a union before
God. Such a claim only confirms that actual features from Cave’s life have changed his artistic approach and shifted the lyrics towards romantic and spiritual side.
The song “Love Letter” 21 is not actually a love letter but rather contemplation about writing it. The musical characteristics consistently follows a fairly calmer production with the piano’s accompaniment. The initial verse:
I hold this letter in my hand
A plea, a petition, a kind of prayer
I hope it does as I have planned
Losing her again is more than I can bear
I kiss the cold white envelope
I press my lips against her name
Two hundred words. We live in hope
The sky hangs heavy with rain. (Cave 309)
The author stays within the subject of pure professions of love and emotionality. The difference to the three discussed songs from The Boatman’s Call is above all no reference to
God, who is replaced by the nature’s elements (i.e. rain, wind, and storm). At this moment
Nick Cave’s maturity seems to have a major effect on his writing. Whereas formerly the singer’s delivery and lyrics were often wild (e.g. “Loverman”), now mostly calm, mild lyrics are the core of his love songs. This is Nick Cave as a poet, not only as a songwriter.
21 Cave makes comments on love letters in “The Secret Life of the Love Song”. He compares them with love songs. The singer claims that “both hold within them a permanence and power that the spoken word does not”. The No More Shall We Part collection put forward Nick Cave’s love songwriting. The matter of God and faith remained key aspects of the lyrics. The theme of spirituality and pure expression of love and beauty developed also in accordance with the music. Previous records before the shift were mostly unthinkable without an electric guitar; however, piano has later frequently become a solo instrument. The mood as a whole regards Cave’s theory of “duende” and “saudade”; the songs continue to be grieving, nevertheless with a sense of equanimity.
The singer’s marriage proved to have its effects.
3.5 Nocturama
The album completes a “triptych” of the records after the change in songwriting.
Although the previous two releases were mostly praised by critics, this collection was not received very well by the press 22 . Let us present the whole title initially with two love songs representing Nocturama – namely 1) “Wonderful Life” and 2) “Still in Love”.
In contrast to the mood of the two preceding records which were distinguished by a gentle voice and a rather calm musical accompaniment, Nocturama provided two faces: songs coming back to Nick Cave’s punk-rock roots (e.g. “Bring it On”, “Dead Man in My Bed”, and
“Babe, I’m on Fire”) and melancholic pieces that followed the path of The Boatman’s Call and No More Shall We Part . That was an interesting mixture, generally speaking.
I will discuss the album’s soother side and try to find the points characteristic for the balladical era of the second half of the 1990s. “Wonderful Life” is the opening track of the whole album. The song contains a typical feature of the last recordings – the singer openly addresses his beloved one:
Come in, babe
Across these purple fields
22 All Music Guide considered Nocturama Cave’s “worst record title ever”. See Hanson pp. 139. The sun sunk behind you
Across these purple fields
[……………………………………..]
There will be nothing between us, baby
But the air that we breathe. (Cave, Nocturama Booklet 3)
The lyrics show their emotional side which is fairly characteristic for Cave’s later style. There is once more no sign of anything close to the picture of physical expression of love in his earlier work; the author’s poetic, emotional, and sorrowful spirit prevails.
Subsequently, the elements of nature seem to replace God – “Plunge your hands into the water / And drown it into sea” (3) – but the melancholic and sad mood remains. However the chorus leads to the title’s optimistic message: “It’s a wonderful life that you bring / It’s a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful thing” (4).
The title of the song “Still in Love” is characteristic for Nocturama . To put it in a different way – Cave is always preoccupied with love in his lyrics. The chorus symbolizes on the one hand his whole work – the topic of love – and on the other his changing approach to emotionality and senitive songs. Cave addresses his beloved one again:
And I say to the sleepy summer rain
With a complete absence of pain
You might think I’m crazy
But I’m still in love with you. (Cave, Nocturama Booklet 10)
“Still in Love” just as the whole Nocturama album does not contain such a strong spiritual imagery as lyrics on The Boatman’s Call for instance. Nevertheless the individual songs remain in the spirit of the last recordings represented here by “Wonderful Life” and
“Still in Love”. The relationship between a man and a woman tends to be the core of the love songs, thus in this way in accordance with the last three record titles. The last chapter was dealing with two main elements of Nick Cave’s production of the late 1990s and early 2000s; i.e. emotionality and spirituality. Both of them marked the author’s writing as the major features of the later work. Let us confront the earlier work: mostly violent, sexual, and sinister subject matter dominated his former songwriting with The
Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds; since the early 1990s these themes have not disappeared but accompanied the emotional and spiritual face of Cave’s lyrics. The Boatman’s Call brought the final variation; the preoccupation with the poetic form outweighed the past approaches – the songs discussed above (e.g. “Into My Arms”, “Brompton Oratory”, “Love
Letter”, “Wonderful Life” etc.) have no sense of any shocking features like murder and sadism. Cave has changed his approach. However he has remained exclusively an author of love songs. Consequently the shift from sexuality to pure love can be illustrated as a process.
Just as other artists, Nick Cave and his songs have undergone a change. The meaning of his lyrics depends mostly on individual interpretation. In fact, it does not matter whether we regard the “Australian bard” as a poetic singer or a singing poet.
Conclusion
Nick Cave’s recent lyrics are different in comparison to the early work with The
Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds. The distinction lies utterly in the form and approach – the topic of love has not disappeared. Consequently the particular shift has replaced depraved sexuality, violence, sadistic pleasure, and murder by fondness, emotionality, faith, God, and celebration of love in life. Cave’s writing has developed in accordance with his professional and personal life. The cultural surroundings have always had a dominant effect on his lyrics.
The punk-rock era has ignited the rebel in Nick Cave. His rebel-style was later developed in relation with the blues legacy in Berlin. Brazil’s anonymity made the author calmer again.
Specifically maturity and family relationship have brought new insights to his writing.
Break-ups and marriage for instance have shown the autobiographical features in his work.
The love lyrics have always been at the centre of his interest; therefore the shaping from a representative of the post-punk era to a respected author and songwriter has formed individual records. The shift from sexuality to spirituality has occurred as a process in relation with Nick
Cave’s life.
What tendencies does the Australian singer follow? Nick Cave has developed into a poet, just as his “teachers” Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen who represent the older generation.
He traces their tradition of songwriters, poets, and narrators. The real literary ambitions go hand in hand with Cave’s lyrics. In general he has led a life of an individualistic person of popular music whose work should stand over the mediocre ones. Just like the rebel in his lyrics, Cave has always stood outside the world of conventions and mainstream. His exceptional work with love lyrics at its centre has had an effect on other artists’ production
(e.g. Johnny Cash). Such appreciation – along with popularity among his fans – has always been more important for him than any competition. Nowadays, among popular musicians, Nick Cave is a unique artist who might be regarded in the future as an icon just as Dylan,
Cash, and Cohen. Cave’s work is outstanding and matches their genius with his love songs.
Let us conclude with a quotation from a letter that Cave sent in 1996 to MTV as a reaction to a nomination for the “Best Male Artist”. “My music is unique and individual and exists beyond the realms inhabited by those who would reduce things to mere measuring. […] My muse is not a horse and I am in no horse race and if indeed she was, still I would not harness her to this tumbrel” (Nick-cave.com).
Bibliography
Books Cave, Nick. And the Ass Saw the Angel . London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2001. ---, King Ink . Los Angeles: 2. 13. 61 Publications, 2001. ---, King Ink II . Los Angeles: 2. 13. 61 Publications, 1997. ---, The Complete Lyrics 1978 – 2001 . London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2001. Dax, Maximilian. The Life and Music of Nick Cave . Berlin: Die Gestalten Verlag, 1999. Gladwell, Adele Olivia. Bridal Gown Shroud: Fiction and Essays . London: Creation Books, 1992. Hanson, Amy. Kicking against the Pricks: An Armchair Guide to Nick Cave . London: Helter Skelter Publishing, 2005. Johnston, Ian. Bad Seed . London: Little, Brown and Company, 1995. Nadel, Ira B. Leonard Cohen. A Life in Art . Toronto: ECW Press, 1994. Walker, Clinton. Inner City Sound: Punk and Post-Punk in Australia, 1976-85 . Portland: Verse Chorus Press, 2005.
Articles and Essays Bartlett, Thomas. “The Resurrection of Nick Cave”. Salon . 18 Nov. 2004. 13 Nov. 2006
Albums Bowie, David. Diamond Dogs . RCA Records, 1974. Cash, Johnny. At Folsom Prison . Columbia Records, 1968. Cave, Nick. The Secret Life of the Love Song. The Flesh Made Word: Two Lectures by Nick Cave . King Mob, 1999. Cave, Nick and the Bad Seeds. From Her to Eternity . Mute Records, 1984. ---, Henry’s Dream . Mute Records, 1992. ---, Kicking against the Pricks . Mute Records, 1986. ---, Let Love In . Mute Records, 1994. ---, Murder Ballads . Mute Records, 1996. ---, Nocturama . Mute Records, 2003. ---, No More Shall We Part . Mute Records, 2001. ---, Tender Prey . Mute Records, 1988. ---, The Boatman’s Call . Mute Records, 1997. ---, The Firstborn Is Dead . Mute Records, 1985. ---, The Good Son . Mute Records, 1990. ---, Your Funeral… My Trial . Mute Records, 1986. Cohen, Leonard. Songs of Leonard Cohen . Columbia Records, 1967. Dylan, Bob. Self Portrait . Columbia Records, 1970. E.L.O. Eldorado . Warner Bros. Records, 1974. Genesis. Selling England by the Pound. Charisma Records, 1973. Jethro Tull. Aqualung . Reprise Records, 1971. Metallica. Garage Inc. . Elektra Records, 1998. Pink Floyd. The Wall . Harvest Records, 1979. The Birthday Party. Mutiny! . Mute Records, 1983. ---, Prayers on Fire . 4AD, 1981. ---, The Bad Seed . 4AD, 1983. The Who. Tommy . Polydor Records, 1969.
Songs Cave, Nick. “And No More Shall We Part”. No More Shall We Part. Mute Records, 2001 ---, “Babe, I’m on Fire”. Nocturama . Mute Records, 2003. ---, “Bless His Ever Loving Heart”. B-Sides and Rarities . Mute Records, 2005. ---, “Bring it On”. Nocturama . Mute Records, 2003. ---, “Brompton Oratory”. The Boatman’s Call . Mute Records, 1997. ---, “Dead Man in My Bed”. Nocturama . Mute Records, 2003. ---, “Foi na Cruz”. The Good Son . Mute Records, 1990 ---, “From Her to Eternity”. From Her to Eternity . Mute Records, 1984. ---, “Hard on for Love”. Your Funeral… My Trial . Mute Records, 1986. ---, “Henry Lee”. Murder Ballads . Mute Records, 1996. ---, “I Let Love In”. Let Love In . Mute Records, 1994. ---, “Into My Arms”. The Boatman’s Call . Mute Records, 1997. ---, “Kewpie Doll”. Junkyard . 4AD, 1982. ---, “Lament”. The Good Son . Mute Records, 1990 ---, “Lime-Tree Arbour”. The Boatman’s Call . Mute Records, 1997. ---, “Love Letter”. No More Shall We Part . Mute Records, 2001 ---, “Loverman”. Let Love In . Mute Records, 1994. ---, “She’s Hit”. Junkyard . 4AD, 1982. ---, “Stagger Lee”. Murder Ballads . Mute Records, 1996. ---, “Still in Love”. Nocturama . Mute Records, 2003. ---, “Swampland”. Mutiny! . Mute Records, 1983. ---, “The Mercy Seat”. Tender Prey . Mute Records, 1988 ---, ”There is a Kingdom”. The Boatman’s Call . Mute Records, 1997. ---, “The Ship Song”. Henry’s Dream . Mute Records, 1992 ---, “The Weeping Song”. The Good Son . Mute Records, 1990 ---, “Where the Wild Roses Grow”. Murder Ballads . Mute Records, 1996. ---, “Wild World”. The Bad Seed . 4AD, 1983. ---, “Wonderful Life”. Nocturama . Mute Records, 2003. ---, “Zoo-Music Girl”. Prayers on Fire . 4AD, 1981. Cave, Nick and Bob Dylan. “Wanted Man”. The Firstborn Is Dead . Mute Records, 1985. Cave, Nick and Johnny Cash. “The Singer”. Kicking against the Pricks . Mute Records, 1986. Dylan, Bob. “Death is not the End”. Down in the Groove . Columbia Records, 1988. Lydon, John. “Bodies”. Nevermind the Bollocks . Virgin Records, 1977. ---, “Submission”. Nevermind the Bollocks . Virgin Records, 1977. Pop, Iggy. “I Wanna Be Your Dog”. The Stooges . Elektra Records, 1969.
Booklets Cave, Nick and the Bad Seeds. Booklet. Nocturama . Mute Records, 2003. Films Wings of Desire . Screenplay by Richard Reitinger. Dir. Wim Wenders. Perf. Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander, Peter Falk, and Nick Cave. Road Movies Filmproduktion, 1987.
Internet Metallica.com . Ed. Jeff Yeager. 2007. Metallica.com. 6 Mar. 2007.
Appendix
Compact Disc Track List: 1. “Zoo-Music Girl” 10. “Loverman” 2. “Swampland” 11. “I Let Love In” 3. “Wild World” 12. “Into My Arms” 4. “Foi na Cruz” 13. “Lime-Tree Arbour” 5. “Kewpie Doll” 14. “Brompton Oratory” 6. “From Her to Eternity” 15. “And No More Shall We Part” 7. “The Mercy Seat” 16. “Love Letter” 8. “Where the Wild Roses Grow” 17. “Wonderful Life” 9. “Hard on for Love” 18. “Still in Love”