{"id":396346,"date":"2026-03-21T08:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T08:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/396346\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T08:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T08:52:08","slug":"how-did-i-stay-so-young-twenty-years-of-drug-addiction-and-a-good-face-cream-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/396346\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018How did I stay so young? Twenty years of drug addiction and a good face cream\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t see Nick Cave<\/a>. The Australian singer is talking from his home in London, favouring the telephone because he is convalescing from the flu. \u201cThe whole of London is infected with this thing,\u201d he says with a sigh. <\/p>\n

In the popular imagination, Cave has jet-black hair, a high forehead, an indomitable stare and, over his thin, angular frame, an open shirt and crisp, tailored dark suit, like that worn by a preacher, which some fairly say he is.<\/p>\n

What is he wearing while poorly? Does he cleave to the suit even in such straitened circumstances? \u201cYes. More or less.\u201d He laughs as he considers the image. \u201cWell, I\u2019m indoors. I don\u2019t have my jacket on. I\u2019m sick but not bed-sick. I\u2019m not sitting up in bed in my suit with a thermometer sticking out of my mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

It makes sense that the 68-year-old would preserve ritual even while coughing up a lung. Formal structure interests Cave. Suits matter. Offices matter. The Bible matters. <\/p>\n

Ever since he arrived on the scene in the 1980s, first with The Birthday Party, then with The Bad Seeds, the artist has banked on an unpredictability couched within the solid framework of his musical collaborators (particularly the formidable Warren Ellis<\/a>), a devotion to the scriptures and an understanding that, to be radical in art, rigidity helps. <\/p>\n

\u201cI get up in the morning, put on my suit, kiss my wife goodbye and go to the office for the day. I literally don\u2019t have a creative idea outside office hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

For 30-odd years Cave sold fire and brimstone in a bottle. Songs such as Tupelo, From Her to Eternity and The Ship Song drove the faithful, and enduring classics \u2013 such as the incandescent Into My Arms \u2013 made it clear he was an artist for the ages. <\/p>\n

Whether conjuring electrifying, tooth-rattling magic on stage, flirting with the mainstream on Where the Wild Roses Grow, his 1990s duet with Kylie Minogue, or being covered majestically by Johnny Cash, Cave\u2019s pathway in life seemed set.<\/p>\n

Everything changed when, in 2015, his 15-year-old son Arthur, twin brother to Earl, died<\/a>, accidentally falling from a cliff near the family\u2019s home in Brighton after taking LSD. The loss for Cave and his wife, the Vampire\u2019s Wife fashion designer Susie Cave, was crippling. <\/p>\n

\"SomeSome say Nick Cave is a kind of preacher. Photograph: Megan Cullen <\/p>\n

In 2022 his son Jethro, a model in his early 30s, born to Beau Lazenby, died<\/a> in Melbourne. <\/p>\n

Grief lives with Cave now. There is no point sidling up to the story of his loss. It is part of the fabric of his being. He holds space for grief in The Red Hand Files<\/a>, the online column he created in 2018, where he answers questions from the public, often about bereavement or other traumas, and how to be in the world afterwards.<\/p>\n

He and Susie have found an anchor in their love for one another. Grief can split up a couple, I say. \u201cI was alert to that at the beginning,\u201d Cave says. \u201cI saw a moment where Susie was just unreachable, very early on, in the first few days. And I felt on some level that I\u2019d lost her as well. <\/p>\n

\u201cI made a concerted effort for that not to happen, and Susie made a concerted effort for that not to happen. That we remain close. That we never blamed each other for it. That never happened, although that\u2019s often the case with couples.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just understood that our relationship would forever be defined by a catastrophe but that we were also deeply in love, and the only way either of us could get through the whole thing is to have the other. I couldn\u2019t imagine life under these circumstances without Susie.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has mentioned in the past that Susie sometimes dreams about Arthur. Does he dream about him?<\/p>\n

\"SusieSusie and Nick Cave in Los Angeles, California, earlier this month. Photograph: Neilson Barnard\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he says. \u201cA mother\u2019s connection to her child is different. I believe that Arthur does visit Susie in her dreams. The dreams are not complicated. He comes and he sits with her, and she talks to him or brushes his hair. They feel like visitations. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t dream very much anyway, but I feel I have my dreams through Susie. She says, \u2018I dreamed about Arthur last night.\u2019 And she\u2019ll tell me. It\u2019s something we share together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cave is deeply grateful for their closeness, because he sees how it could be otherwise. <\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people contact Susie who\u2019ve had their children die. They want to talk to her. She had lunch with a woman whose son had died seven years ago, and she still hadn\u2019t spoken to her husband about it. It can be incredibly …\u201d <\/p>\n

He trails off. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt can, as you say, split the relationship. We see that all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

He and Susie sold their Brighton home after Arthur\u2019s death, because it was too painful to live there. They found refuge in a \u201csmall, pink\u201d house in London. <\/p>\n

\n

It is fundamentally weird that musicians police other musicians in their views. I find that intensely creepy<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Nick Cave<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His move was reminiscent of another fleeing: his first great leap from rural Victoria, Australia, to London in 1980, in the wake of his father\u2019s death in a car crash, when Cave was 19. He remembers his childhood with great fondness. His father was a teacher, his mother a librarian at the school where his father worked.<\/p>\n

The young Nick was carefree. \u201cI had a very happy life as a young country boy, a free-range, happy childhood, and that continued, even though I became problematic as I grew up.\u201d <\/p>\n

It would, he says, trace \u201ca neat line\u201d to argue that his drug-taking began after his father\u2019s death, spiralling into a heroin addiction that took six stints in rehab to kick. In fact Cave was \u201cwell into drugs\u201d before his father\u2019s death. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut after he died there was a weird urgency or subterranean anger. I rushed away from Australia. I couldn\u2019t handle what was going on.\u201d <\/p>\n

If the first 10 years of drug-taking was giddy and sociable, the second span of years was isolating, as an existential reckoning took place.<\/p>\n

\"NickNick Cave performing in McCarthy’s Bar in Baltimore in West Cork in the late 1990s <\/p>\n

Some of that late recovery period he spent in west Co Cork, in Skibbereen<\/a>, my hometown, where I first encountered Cave in the late 1990s. He would come to the Liss Ard Estate, just outside the town, on and off, over several years, writing songs such as Love Letter on its piano, and occasionally performing to dozens of people in a room or bar, offering a cappella renditions of Birthday Party tracks such as Dead Joe. <\/p>\n

\u201cI had amazing times in Skibbereen,\u201d he says. \u201cI have very pleasant memories of sitting over a pint of Guinness in a pub in Skibbereen.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also visited Nenagh, in Co Tipperary, on a hard winter\u2019s day in 2023, for the funeral of his friend Shane MacGowan<\/a>, at which he performed<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cI had a deep relationship with The Pogues<\/a> over the years. It was very special and, I think, brought me quite close to what Irish music was essentially about, which was not something I knew too much about until I started to spend time with Shane.\u201d <\/p>\n

He feels \u201cfull of so much debt\u201d to MacGowan and The Pogues for the lessons they taught him about the live experience. <\/p>\n

\u201cSomething would happen to me in those Pogues concerts that is beyond mere entertainment,\u201d Cave says. \u201cIt becomes a kind of religious experience or transcendent experience. I feel like music is one of the last legitimate transcendent experiences that this modern world leaves available to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a description that could well be applied to one of Cave\u2019s own gigs. Whether before a crowd of awed locals in a small bar in Baltimore in west Cork or to 25,000 people at Malahide Castle, in Co Dublin, Cave stalks the stage, half-prophet, half-threat. <\/p>\n

If he had a terse, dangerous energy in his 1990s days, in recent years a more complex tapestry has been at play. The performances are cathartic, choral and emotional. There are times when Cave \u2013 gaunt and thin at the piano \u2013 sings songs that haven\u2019t always been written directly for his lost children, but seem to have been. <\/p>\n

\u201cJust breathe, just breathe, just breathe,\u201d he repeated in Dublin at his 2024 gig at 3Arena<\/a>, a whisper from Skeleton Tree, his grief-stricken record from 2016, as the big screens zeroed in and the pain on his face scalded the crowd. (Live God<\/a>, his recent live album, is as complete a reliving of the experience of that tour as one could hope for.)<\/p>\n

\n

I don\u2019t want to use my songs to further punish my fans because of very egregious acts of their government<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Nick Cave<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His songwriting is led not by intellect but by heart, whether it\u2019s the guttural roar of Tupelo, the doomy foreboding of Red Right Hand, the frenzied screech of From Her to Eternity or the fragile ethereality of Bright Horses. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I write is almost entirely emotional,\u201d he says. \u201cThe coupling of two lines: what happens when you put one line with another line? The thing I\u2019m looking for is a kind of internal shimmering. Meaning comes second and is revealed later on.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cave finds inspiration in the Bible, which he says he reads daily. \u201cThe stories of the Bible are a part of me. Whether you believe or not is another thing, but, just as a basic idea, it\u2019s full of so much creative fruit and so much depth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joy, and how to seek it after a pain so immense it is annihilating, is a subject that has become important to Cave in recent years. The small pleasures in his life stem largely from home. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt often feels to me that the paradises we can build on Earth are of the most simple [things],\u201d he says. \u201cIt is spending a little bit of time with my grandson and sitting and working on ceramics \u2013 it looks like I\u2019m becoming a ceramicist in later life \u2013 and spending time with Susie. I swim in the lake in London all through the year. It\u2019s small, basic things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cave became a grandfather in 2024 to Roman, who is the son of Luke Cave and his wife, Sasha. (Luke is the second of Cave\u2019s four children, born 10 days after Jethro, to Cave\u2019s then partner, Viviane Carneiro.) <\/p>\n

Does he change a nappy? \u201cCan I change a nappy or do I change a nappy?\u201d he says. \u201cI haven\u2019t had the privilege of changing my grandson\u2019s nappy yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now in his elder-statesman era, Cave is coming up on the age Johnny Cash<\/a> was when he covered Cave\u2019s The Mercy Seat for his Rick Rubin<\/a> sessions. \u201cOh really?\u201d Cave says, sounding a little startled. He is. <\/p>\n

\"NickNick Cave performing in New York last year. Photograph: Megan Cullen <\/p>\n

What keeps him fit and limber enough for the knee-drops on stage? \u201cHow did I stay so young? Twenty years of drug addiction and a good face cream,\u201d he says, with a dry laugh.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll be putting his moisturiser to good use in the days after we talk, as he flies to Los Angeles for the Oscars<\/a>. His song Train Dreams, which he wrote with Bryce Dessner<\/a>, is nominated in the best-song category. <\/p>\n

Is he looking forward to the event? \u201cTough question. My wife loves the Oscars. She loves to see what people are wearing, all that sort of stuff. So I got nominated and I thought, I\u2019ll take my wife on a date to the Oscars. So yeah! Maybe. I don\u2019t know.\u201d <\/p>\n

Train Dreams winds up missing out on the Academy Award in favour of Golden, the theme song from KPop Demon Hunters, but that\u2019s okay, because Cave has worked on his game face for the announcement. \u201cI\u2019ve got to practice that stoic humility that actors practice when they don\u2019t win.\u201d <\/p>\n

We\u2019re coming close to the end of our phone call, and there\u2019s a lot we haven\u2019t got to yet. The recent screen adaptation<\/a> of his novel The Death of Bunny Munro, for example, or his new version of Red Right Hand, recorded, at Cillian Murphy<\/a>\u2019s behest, for the Peaky Blinders film<\/a>. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Cillian Murphy: \u2018It was one of the greatest weeks of my life. I haven\u2019t talked about it much\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

He does tell me a little about the Irish music he\u2019s enjoying. \u201cThere\u2019s lots. I can listen to Kneecap<\/a> on occasion.\u201d <\/p>\n

And he\u2019s looking forward to his European tour with The Bad Seeds this summer, which starts in Dublin in June. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat mad, loony energy of the Irish,\u201d he says. \u201cThe first gigs have a particular energy to them. They always feel unhinged and dangerous. I love Dublin.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Cave sounds as if he has mellowed with age, then that\u2019s arguably true, but it doesn\u2019t represent him in his totality. He remains defiantly himself. He doesn\u2019t suffer fools. He\u2019s nobody\u2019s pawn. <\/p>\n

Recently, on The Red Hand Files, Cave used his platform to support comments by the film-maker Wim Wenders<\/a> that art and artists are \u201cthe opposite of politics\u201d. Cave has consistently opposed the cultural boycott of Israel. \u201cI don\u2019t want to use my songs to further punish my fans because of very egregious acts of their government, so I stand firm around that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople suggest to me that to take this position means you just don\u2019t have a fully functional heart. That might be true in my case, but I can\u2019t find it in myself to construct my whole worldview around the hatred of one particular candidate or, indeed, one particular people.\u201d<\/p>\n

He believes The Red Hand Files can offer some good \u2013 \u201cPeople write in, finding that what I\u2019m talking about has been an enormous help\u201d \u2013 but he doesn\u2019t have a personality that is naturally political, and he doesn\u2019t believe he should pretend that he does. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just not that guy,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

He does not like to be told what to do. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is fundamentally weird that musicians police other musicians in their views. I find that intensely creepy, to have other musicians looking over your shoulder and seeing whether [you] behave in the way they think you should behave.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI follow my path intuitively and emotionally and do what I feel and think is right. And, you know, f**k it if people don\u2019t agree.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds<\/a> play Malahide Castle on Wednesday, June 10th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I can\u2019t see Nick Cave. The Australian singer is talking from his home in London, favouring the telephone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[7118,90436,18,117,2215,19,17,6389,4066,180360,113691,7012,180359,36193,103813,129262,34499],"class_list":{"0":"post-396346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-cillian-murphy","9":"tag-bryce-dessner","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-for-you","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-johnny-cash","16":"tag-kneecap","17":"tag-malahide-castle","18":"tag-nick-cave","19":"tag-oscars","20":"tag-rick-rubin","21":"tag-shane-macgowan","22":"tag-skibbereen","23":"tag-the-pogues","24":"tag-wim-wenders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116266319726745157","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}