Nick Cave says tour fans helped him cope with son's death

5 May 2018

Nick Cave says connecting with audiences on tour helped him cope with the death of his son.

Nick Cave

The Bad Seeds frontman's son Arthur, 15, fell off a cliff near the family's home in Brighton in 2015 and died from his injuries and Nick admitted he wasn't sure if he would survive the loss at first.

The effect of Arthur's death on Cave's family and also his music was explored in the 2016 documentary 'One More Time With Feeling' and he was overwhelmed by the public response from this fans on tour and those who watched the movie.

Speaking at a Q&A with fans in New York, RollingStone.com reports that he said: "Talking to the audience has actually been extraordinary healing for me. My son died and I thought that we would not really survive that - my wife and I. It didn't look good. And this film we just made ['One More Time With Feeling'] ... the extraordinary thing about the film is you don't expect this from your own work that it will do you good - or at least I've always hoped it was of some help to other people - but this film had an extraordinary effect on both my wife and I in the sense that the response back to the film we got back on social media and people sending us letters was not so much in sympathy for us but it was people telling us their own stories. And it was suddenly very, very apparent to us that we were very much connected together as people by suffering and grief. There was just so many people that were grieving."

And Nick, 60, will always be grateful to audiences for helping him through.

He said: "This had a huge impact on us because it really brought home the transitory nature of our lives and how quickly they can go ... There is a feeling of incredible urgency for us to feel connected to the present moment and people around us, and that's what we got from playing live. There was a kind of contract between the band and the audience that was extremely powerful. It wasn't about sympathy, it wasn't even about support, it was about communal, collective transcendence from our own sense of suffering about things."