My second-ever Hot Press cover story was in early 1996. I was flown to London to interview the great Nick Cave about his Murder Ballads album.
I was slightly nervous going over. We'd had a minor altercation four years previously in Galway, after The Bad Seeds played Leisureland. I'd been assured that I'd have a post-show interview with him (for a free local publication called The Word), but he was far more interested in partying than he was in talking to a fresh-faced youngster such as myself.
What can I say? I was fairly inexperienced, and he was totally off his head. It all got a bit messy at the end of the night (by which time I was totally off my head, too).
The London interview went well. I was worried that he'd recognise me, but I needn't have been. It wasn't until we'd finished, and the tape was safely stashed away, that I mentioned that we'd actually met before...and it hadn't gone so well. "Oh? Remind me," he said, and I told him the story.
Cave looked at me blankly and insisted, "But I've never been to Galway in my life."
In fairness, he wasn't too long out of rehab at the time…