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.