» Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Interview
Goth-rock legends Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds play the Brighton Centre this week. Nick Aldwinckle spoke to Bad Seeds and Grinderman drummer and frontman of The Vanity Set, Jim Sclavunos
What have you been up to lately?
I’ve been doing a lot of sessions in New York. I have a studio and a friend down in Long Island and we’ve been working with a band called The Bellmer Dolls. They’re named after the Dadaist Hans Bellmer who used to make obscene doll sculptures. I’m about to do a Vanity Set session too. We’ve just finished a US Bad Seeds too, so this is my ‘in-between time’. We played the Hollywood Bowl with Spiritualised and Cat Power on the bill. It was a thrill to play such an iconographic venue. We’re heading to Europe for a tour, playing a few places we haven’t played before.
Do you come to Brighton much?
The last time we were in Brighton was with Grinderman, when we played a secret gig at the King Alfred Centre. It was fun. What’s not to like about Brighton?
The Bad Seeds are curating the Australian version of All Tomorrow’s Parties. How’s that been going?
Yes, God help us! This is the first time it’s been done over there, so we’re really dipping our collective toe into icy, cold water. Ideally, we each get to choose a few bands to play, but the economics and logistics are the major determining factor in the line-up ultimately. Unlike ATP in England or America, it’s a lot more expensive to get people to Australia. There are a lot of music makers in Australia but it’s probably not as wide a pool by any measure as you might have if you had access to all the bands of Europe or America. So, you don’t want it to be just Australian music and you want to try and get a few international acts, which quickly gets very expensive. So we’re kind of walking that tightrope. The line-up’s changing on a daily basis and I’m sure there are a few confirmed but I’m not sure, so don’t want to give out any info yet!
Have you been doing much recording with The Vanity Set lately?
I haven’t really been doing any for a year, because 2007 and 2008 have been quite busy years with Nick. I really dropped the ball on that. I was mid-way through an album and now it’s time to try and squeeze in a few dates again before I have to dash off to England. It’s not the kind of band that has deadlines. Maybe none of the bands I’m in have deadlines, but The Vanity Set has the luxury of taking its sweet time to do things. When we’re finished recording, we’re going to do a few UK shows. I’ve been talking to a small label in the UK about putting out the new record and reissuing the first two, which never really had proper distribution anywhere, being essentially self-releases. I do think that’s a 2009 event, though it’s not imminent.
“It’s basically gonna sound like a Britney Spears record with a very different looking frontperson!”
How do you think the new Vanity Set album will sound?
I think it’s gonna be a bit more danceable, believe it or not! I’m going back to my Studio 54 roots. I think there’s going to be one disco song on there. Overall, it’s going to be a bit more electronic. There was synth and Theremin on the first two records, but more subtle on the new one. I’m just gonna get more blatant. That’s my career trajectory. All the subtlety will be slowly drawn away from the band and we’re only going to focus on the most obvious things. It’s basically gonna sound like a Britney Spears record with a very different looking frontperson!
The new Bad Seeds album seems to have more of a percussive focus than before. Was that at your prompting?
We went a bit percussion-nutty after the Grinderman album and I guess that carried straight over into the Bad Seeds record. That was fine with me, because I got brought into the band as the percussionist in ’94 for the Let Love In tour. It’s always been a key thing for me, but now everyone in the band thinks they’re a percussionist! It’s a lot of fun when everyone’s going at it, you know? It’s really quite amusing. It’s somewhere between Carl Orff and kindergarten! I didn’t do any prompting. I’ve always tried to stick some percussion on every record but the songs on the new album are a bit groovier and that suits having so much percussion. There was a while when Nick was writing all these slow-paced piano ballads and that just didn’t suit percussion, whereas something like Moonland, you can load it up with as much percussion as you like- it’s always appropriate. I was poised and ready with a whole flotilla of ridiculous instruments ready to join the fray.
“I think in each of the bands, all of the members are very individualistic, and it’s a miracle the bands have stayed together”
Does everyone get a chance to write or is it just what Nick says goes?
It depends on the song. We’ve had this situation emerge in the last few years where the members of the Nick Cave ‘solo’ band/Grinderman, myself, Marty, Warren and Nick, we’ve done some writing together because we spend a bit more time together. Nick and Warren spend an awful lot of time together so they’re writing a lot of songs together. I think it’s just a matter of proximity as opposed to anything else. I think it’s a bit more fun for Nick to write something with somebody else rather than alone.
Is there going to be anymore Grinderman stuff?
Yes, but like The Vanity Set, I think we’ll take our sweet time. Nobody was sitting around demanding the first Grinderman album; it wasn’t like the world was holding its breath waiting for that album. The world might be asphyxiating waiting for the new one, but we’ll do it when we’re ready to. I don’t think we’re very good at conforming to long-term plans, schedules and deadlines, but we want to do it and we’re excited about doing it.
What’s your ‘main’ band?
(laughs) There’s no way I can begin to answer that question- I have no idea! I think in each of the bands, all of the members are very individualistic, and it’s a miracle the bands have stayed together despite that. I guess it’s a coalescing of mutual interests that makes it work. No-one in the bands has been able to put marketing concerns above their own intrusive creativity.
What next for you?
Apart from the Bad Seeds tours and recording the new Vanity Set record, I’m doing a couple of shows with Lydia Lunch. We’ve done this Teenage Jesus and The Jerks reunion show in New York that was intended to be a one-off. Thurston Moore had put out a book about the no wave, and we played the gig as a book launch, but then thought we’d do a few more shows. We’re doing it again with Thurston Moore this time at the Mike Patton and The Melvins ATP Nightmare Before Xmas.
