Nick Cave has declared his music “braver” after the deaths of two of his four sons, speaking in a new interview published in today’s Big Issue (Monday 19 August).
“We change; sometimes multiple times, shattered by events,” Cave reflects. His 15-year-old son Arthur died in a cliff jumping accident in Brighton back in 2015, while his eldest son Jethro passed away aged 31 in 2022. “This can fundamentally change the way that you perceive the world and the way you behave.
“I think that happened to me to some degree. Made me a little less precious about my own place in the world. The worst had happened. It maybe made me a little braver about things.”
Cave reflects on the song O Children, first released in 2007 and still his most-listened song on Spotify. Many will recognise it from a poignant scene in the seventh Harry Potter film, where Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Hermione (Emma Watson) dance to the track at their lowest ebb.
“I wrote [O Children] 22 years ago watching my children when they were little playing in a playground. I wrote about this fucked-up world we were creating and that we had no way of protecting our children from. That seemed relevant when it came out but it’s always found its theme.
“From a personal level, I was not able to protect my children. Today, too, children are dying everywhere in their thousands. And it asks the same question – what kind of a world are we creating for our children?”