Nick Cave and Warren Ellis

My brother used to have this line that ran "I don't need to hear it to know I don't like it", which actually captures a surprisingly common human attitude. Certainly, I didn't need to hear anything by Nick Cave to know that he wasn't my cup of tea.

And then, for my birthday in 1993, on the recommendation of the lovely chaps at the long gone and much missed Smyths Records in Kendal, my first wife, Katherine, bought me a copy of 'Henry's Dream'. It took a while but I fell in love with the album, and with Cave and his band.

We went to see him live at the Town and Country Club the following year. It was the most exciting gig I'd ever seen in my life, although my abiding memory is of Katherine - then pregnant with our third daughter, Izzy - disappearing into the most pit and returning with a can of Grolsch that Cave had been drinking from.

For the next twenty years, I don't think I missed a tour by Cave, whether it was with the Bad Seeds, solo, or playing with Grinderman. I saw him at Glastonbury, I saw him at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, and then it various cities around the UK.

The last time I saw him, the venue was too big and the Bad Seeds didn't seem to be quite as on it as they'd once been. Tracks like 'Stagger Lee' had taken on a slightly pantomime aspect. And that's fine: the audience has changed and grown bigger and it was only with a mild regret that I skipped the last tour.

Interestingly, over the last two or three albums, the music has become more electronic, particularly on the most recent, 2019's 'Ghosteen', which was concerned on part with the death of Cave's son, Arthur. It is a beautiful, painful listen. And then earlier this year, Cave released an album, 'Carnage', with his musical wingman, Warren Ellis.

I first saw Ellis when his band, Dirty Three, supported Cave on a solo tour. It was at a small venue in Edinburgh - the Queen's Hall, maybe - and I was blown away by them. Ellis went on to join the Bad Seeds, taking on the roles vacated over time by Blixa Bargeld and, to a lesser extent, Mick Harvey.

Dirty Three and Ellis hold a special place for me and the Minx, too, as that was the first gig we went to together, seeing them at Manchester Cathedral. 

Anyway, all of that is a huge precursor to saying that this evening we saw Cave and Ellis playing live at De Montford Hall in Leicester. It was wonderful. I mean, for a start, it was great to see Cave back in a small(ish) venue again.

But the music was incredible, too. With songs largely taken from 'Ghosteen' and 'Carnage', plus a couple of surprises from the Bad Seeds' back catalogue ('God Is In The House', and 'Henry Lee'.). Cave and Ellis were accompanied by three backing vocalists and an additional musician.

High points for me were 'Leviathan' - "I love my baby and my baby loves me" - and an incredible performance of 'Hollywood' with that heartbreaking line "The kid drops his bucket and spade and climbs into the sun".

But, really, the set was engrossing from start to finish. Such extraordinary power and beauty in the music and the lyrics, and thinking about it now I realise that whilst being so very different from those early gigs when I saw him, this evening Cave displayed all of the qualities that made him my favourite live artist, prowling the stage, living inside his music, delivering his compelling lyrics, moving from fury to tenderness and back again. He even did a knee drop!