(Credits: Ian Allen)
Fri 5 December 2025 12:30, UK
Nick Cave has mastered his approach to creativity. Once the wild punk or the volatile addict, he’s now settled into his role as a kind of wise sire or a mage, passing down advice and moving through life with this new sense of calm.
Nothing shows that better than his daily routine, which, when he told it to The Times, does certainly have a Patrick Bateman-esque air to it. “Depending on my mood, I choose one of three dark suits. I always wear a suit, because I have important work to do and I’m not going to go to work in a pair of bermudas and bright flip-flops,” he began, setting the tone instantly.
That’s his uniform as he heads out the door to his office, where he works like any other stable, salaried employee, all day, although slightly cooler. “I will smoke and drink tea continuously until 12 o’clock and do one of three things,” he said, “Write, which means writing or staring into the middle distance; play the piano; or, when I’m really desperate, read other people’s stuff.”
After a break for lunch, he goes back to it, working again until “a small alarm clock goes off at five o’clock. So, on the dot, I desist from all work.” That’s how Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds albums are born. Despite the breadth and intensity found in the records, they all begin there in that rigid type of work and in Cave’s own distinctive type of perfectionism.
That’s what makes it so surprising that, actually, the Bad Seeds album he’s found the most enjoyable was one that broke out of that structure – one he barely touched at all.
“That was Mick Harvey’s pet project,” he said to Magnet magazine in a conversation about the band’s 2005 release, B-Sides & Rarities. Gathering up over 20 years of unreleased tracks, it was the band’s bassist that took charge here. While Cave continued charging on in his routine, Harvey dug back into the archives.
However, when Cave then got to hear the album, he loved it. “From my point of view, it’s probably the most enjoyable Bad Seeds record,” he said. That could come down to the simple fact that Cave essentially put out a new album without doing any work. But it could also come down to the music and how the distance from those songs allowed Cave to enjoy them again.
“I couldn’t even remember doing some of those songs. A lot of the stuff we record, we never play it back. I was in awe of Mick,” he said. It’s baffling that Cave could ever forget or underestimate some of these songs. Not only are there some amazing previously unheard tracks that move through years of Cave’s lyrical style, but there are also some great demo versions, acoustic takes or alternate attempts at hits, putting songs like ‘Deanna’ or ‘The Mercy Seat’ into a different context.
Recalling fondly, Cave said, “That’s a great record. That was something that arrived on my doorstep pretty much complete.”
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