Nolte: Punk Icon Nick Cave – ‘Being Conservative and Going to Church’ ‘F**ks with People’

Australian singer and musician Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds perform on stage on the last da
Ferdy Damman/AFP via Getty Images
John Nolte

Punk icon Nick Cave believes that the best way to “fuck with people” in 2023 is to “go to church and be a conservative.”

Cave was appearing on UnHerd with host Freddie Sayes to promote his new memoir Faith, Hope and Carnage.

Cave rose to fame in the 70s and 80s with his band The Birthday Party, followed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I’ll always remember him from his appearance in Wim Wenders’ 1987 masterpiece Wings of Desire (my review is here). Cave and his band appear in a dazzling nightclub sequence where he sings two songs: The Carny and From Her to Eternity.

Cave went on to write novels, screenplays, and movie scores. A major part of this punk rocker’s current biography is his turn toward Christianity.

In his younger days, he described it as a duty for punk rockers to “kick against the establishment.” Cave admitted, “That was not me. I was much more concerned with irritating my peers and…my audience. What I mean by irritating is to ignite their imagination, get them thinking about things, and challenge them about things.” He further explained, “This felt like the way to make good art—to confront people.”

“I didn’t have that political fury” of those in the punk world who raged against people like Margaret Thatcher, he added,” I was much more concerned with fucking with people on a different kind of a level, a different kind of thing,” Cave told UnHerd. “I was always sort of at odds with my peers, I would say.”

The UnHerd host asked Cave how he fucks with people today.

“You be a conservative,” Cave said. “Yeah, you go to church and be a conservative.”

Sayer asked Cave’s opinion on the current state of our culture, specifically if he believes people have to be more careful. “Does this impinge on the creative faculties?” the host asked.

“Of course it does,” Cave answered. “If you’re writing into a censorious [cultural] mood, a fragile, brittle [cultural] mood, and you’re worried about that [mood], of course, you second-guess what you’re writing. This is just not good for the business of songwriting.”

Cave said he doesn’t censor himself when it comes to “offensiveness,” but “there has been a kind of wet blanket thrown over art in general, and this is just not good.”

He described his metaphorical “wet blanket” as “squeamish, censorious, merciless [culture]… the idea there are certain things you can get away with saying and certain things you can’t.”

“I get tired,” Cave continued, “of people saying ‘You can’t say this. I think this, but I can’t say it’.”

Cave suggested people should say what they want but be ready to face the consequences, although the consequences, he admitted, can be “merciless” and “unjust.”

Cave is my kind of people. He is his own man in an increasingly suffocating, fascist, and conformist culture.

All my faith in the glorious punk movement of my youth (I didn’t enjoy the music as much as the attitude) was lost when Johnny Ramone died, and Henry Rollins(!) endorsed Obamacare. Good heavens, that was the equivalent of Alvin Bragg embracing the Constitution.

It’s heartening to see an unafraid Nick Cave still waving the flag.

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

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