Back to the grind

“God it’s a beautiful day today here. What’s it like over there?” effuses Nick Cave.

Er… it’s a bit overcast unfortunately.
“Blue skies all the way here.”
Cave’s startling bonhomie happily confounds expectations. The legendary antipodean songsmith has a reputation for being an occasionally prickly interviewee, but on this occasion proves thoroughly convivial. He is only too happy to chew the fat on a range of topics; even the royal nuptials make it onto the verbal agenda.
“I didn’t watch it at the time but I did see some shots of the bride,” says the UK resident. “She looked good. Especially with the veil down, the veil looked amazing… she looked like a ghost.”
Cave is on the promo trail in advance of Grinderman’s upcoming Vicar St. and Live at the Marquee dates. Since the release of their lauded second long-player (a compelling sonic cacophony of lust and sleaze, more abstract and unconventional than its predecessor), the band have been uncharacteristically active on the gig circuit.
“We were meant to finish up at the end of last year but we decided to carry on and do more concerts through the summer,” he says. “This is unheard of for us, usually we’re desperate to finish touring. But we’re just discovering something in the live situation that seems really important to us at the moment.”
The extensive live duties included an appearance at the Big Day Out festival in Australia, where they were joined on stage by Bobby Gillespie. The Primal Scream frontman was in fact a bona fide member of the nascent outfit.
“He got up with us for the first few shows and played percussion” confirms Cave. “There was a lot of added percussion on the first Grinderman record and we didn’t really know how to deal with that in a live situation. We needed an extra pair of hands to shake maracas and to help out with backing vocals. We are very dear friends with Bobby and asked him to help us out.”
More recently, Cave called on the assistance of another Briton when he invited Robert Fripp to play guitar on Grinderman 2’s ‘Heathen Child’.
“I’m a huge Robert Fripp fan and I really wanted to hear him play one of his rock ‘n’ roll guitar solos that are so extraordinary,” he says. “Robert is a stylist and can play all sorts of different things and does so beautifully with King Crimson and his solo projects. He’s the shit, that guy.”
Reportedly the guitarist referred to himself in the third person throughout the recording. How did Nick find the sessions?
“Pretty strange,” he laughs. “He was a very sweet guy but a strange guy too.”
According to Cave, the Grinderman recording process is in stark contrast to that of the Bad Seeds.
“With Grinderman I just go into the studio with absolutely nothing,” he explains. “We just write in the studio, most of it is ad-libbed.”
“It’s an attempt to get away, especially lyrically, from the more considered approach of the Bad Seeds,” he asserts. “When I do a Bad Seeds record, which I’m doing at the moment, I’m stuck in a room for months writing, and then I take that and present it to the musicians. What I do with the Bad Seeds has great personal meaning to me, but Grinderman is certainly more enjoyable.”
Arguably, the first Grinderman record set the mould for Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! Will the current album do the same for the next Bad Seeds release?
“I’m only in the first week or so of starting to write, so I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing,” he admits. “It takes a long time to find out what you want to do. It’s important not to panic and scare the whole thing away, and to just give it time to come and find itself.”
The next Bad Seeds album will be the first in 27 years without the input of founding member Mick Harvey, who departed the camp in 2010 citing “personal and professional reasons”.
“I think it will have a huge effect,” muses Cave. “It’s quite frightening to go into a project with things so shook up, but it can also can make you go to a different place. Hopefully something good will come from it. At the moment for me it is quite scary. I'm in the office now working on it and I'm just taking baby steps at the moment.”
The aforementioned office is located near to his Brighton home, where he has been based for the last nine years. In true neighbourly fashion, he took time out last year to record with fellow south coast residents UNKLE on their recently-released EP Only The Lonely. He handles vocal duties on ‘Money And Run’.
“They’re my mates,” he smiles. “Some of them live in Brighton and I got to know them around the traps. They sent me a piece of music which I really liked and I wrote some words. It turned out beautifully, they have amazing pop credentials. You don’t hear that kind of radical pop music anymore, with an old time hook. It sounds really modern but also has a lot of classical pop influences. I love it.”
Another recent collaboration saw Cave share vocal duties with Neko Case on a cover of The Zombies' ‘She’s Not There’ for the drama series True Blood.
“I was in LA recently and I was roped into singing,” he explains. “We toured with Neko many years ago and she was amazing, she has a really beautiful voice. It was a pleasure to do that.”
The song has been covered over the years by a plethora of artists including The UK Subs, Crowded House and even Tim Curry. What did Cave and Case hope to achieve with their cover?
(Pause) "I have no idea."
As opposed to the Santana one?
‘Is there a Santana version? Ah well, that would be the one right? It’s supposed to be a full-blooded sexy kind of version, it’s not for me to say whether we achieved that or not.”
That was the intent?
“I think that was the producer’s intent. I was just a tiny cog in the machine.”
A pawn in the game?
(Laughs) “Yeah.”
Turning to screen work, Cave reveals he has just finished a script with long-time collaborator, director John Hillcoat. The film is based on the Matt Bondurant novel The Wettest County In The World.
“I just received the trailer for it and it looks amazing,” he notes. “It’s a rural gangster film set in the hills of Virginia at the end of prohibition so it is about the illegal alcohol business. It’s the same group of people that did The Proposition and it stars Shia LeBouf, Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman.”
On a related note, I mention the reports that his latest novel, The Death Of Bunny Munro, is to be turned into a television series.
“We tried, but as far as I know it has been rejected by the TV station,” he says.
They have no taste obviously.
“The fools,” he deadpans. “I think we are going back to try to turn it into a movie. I wanted it to be a TV series and it was commissioned by Channel 4. I wrote up the first one but then there were changes in the directorship of that department or something and the new guy didn’t like it.”
The lascivious prose of his novel parallels the salacious lyrics of Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! and Grinderman, would it be fair to say Cave’s writing is becoming more prurient at a time when some would say he should be mellowing out or heavens forbid embracing respectability?
“Probably yeah,” he sighs. “But it’s the last vice that’s left to me. They all die away as you get older, they wither on the vine.”

Grinderman play Vicar St. on June 18 and 19. Grinderman 2 is out now on Mute.