Nick Cave says he “regrets” recording ‘Skeleton Tree’ so soon after his son’s death
Nick Cave has admitted that he regretted recording his 2016 album ‘Skeleton Tree’ so soon after his son’s death.
Arthur Cave unexpectedly died at the age of 15 in July 2015 after falling from a cliff near Brighton. At the time, Cave was working on his 16th studio album, which was later released the following year.
Speaking in a new interview with The Sunday Times, Cave said he now wishes he had not thrown himself into the project so soon because it worsened his suffering.
“That is the only album that made matters worse,” he said. “My mental health was made worse, because I did it very soon after my son died, and I shouldn’t have done.”
Cave went on to admit that he and his wife Susie Bick have managed to find some happiness again, but they will never have “closure” following the loss of Arthur and the subsequent death of his elder son Jethro, who passed away aged 31 in 2022 after he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
“I’m very uncertain about what happens after you die, but it concerned me how the spirit of Arthur would feel if he saw the misery his mother and father were going through – because of his passing … One thing we can say to him now is that things are OK. I say that cautiously,” he said.
“There’s no closure. Things haven’t settled back to the place they were, before Arthur or Jethro died. However, we are happy.”
It comes just weeks after he previously reflected on the death of his two sons, and explained how the grief he felt allowed him to feel “more connected” to those around him in an interview with ABC Australia.
He said at the time: “There is the initial cataclysmic event [where] we eventually rearrange ourselves so that we become creatures of loss as we get older, [and] this is part of our fundamental fabric of what we are as human beings. We are things of loss. This is not a tragic element to our lives but rather a deepening that brings incredible meaning.”
He continued: “For most of my life I was just sort of in awe of my own genius, you know, and I had an office and would sit there and write every day and whatever else happened in my life was peripheral. This just collapsed completely and I just saw the folly of that, the kind of disgraceful self-indulgence of the whole thing.”
Elsewhere, Cave and the Bad Seeds recently shared ‘Long Dark Night’ – the third single from their upcoming album ‘Wild God‘.
Set for release on August 30, the LP will comprise of 10 songs and has been co-produced by Warren Ellis. You can pre-order it here.
Later this autumn, the band are set to embark on a UK and EU tour. Visit here to purchase tickets.
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Damian Jones
NME
