“For most of my life, I was just sort of in awe of my own genius” Nick Cave has reflected on the death of his two sons, and explained how the grief he felt allowed him to feel “more connected” to those around him. The Bad Seeds frontman opened up about his experience of grief during a new interview with ABC Australia , which was recorded in May on the anniversary of his son Jethro’s death, and broadcast last night (August 12). The theme of grief has been an underlying motif in Cave’s work and personal life for many years now, and came to a head following the unexpected death of his 15-year-old son Arthur in July 2015 .
He was one of the twin sons Cave shares with his wife, Susie, and died following a fall from a cliff near Brighton. In 2022, the artist confirmed that his eldest son, Jethro Lazenby, had died at the age of 31 . His passing came after he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Now, in the new career-spanning interview, Cave opened up about how the experiences have shaped him in both his personal and professional life, and led to him placing his art on less of a pedestal. “That idea that art trounces everything, it just doesn’t apply to me anymore,” he said. “Rather than making me bitter, it did the opposite in some way.
It made me much more connected to people in general.” “There is the initial cataclysmic event [where] we eventually rearrange ourselves so that we become creatures of loss as we get older, [and] this is part of our fundamen.