Great Reading: Nick Cave’s Mercy On Me by Reinhard Kleist

I haven’t blogged about Cave for a little while now. I’m been having these seizures where I vomit, shit and piss all over myself which I think must be a side effect of not writing/blogging about him!

So yesterday I was maybe being little negative but here’s something now totally positive. I love reading about this bloke and this book could be the best bio even written about him. I finished it last night so here’s an early morning post all about it now.

It’s a graphic novel or comic book but couldn’t be more prefect, I picked up at my local bookshop just the other day. It’s unbelievably great and I repeat yeah, by far the best bio ever written about the man! If your a fan you have to get it maybe you already got it? I don’t know if you are not a big fan, some of it maybe will not made any sense at all. Really that’s not a bad thing might make the readers that don’t know it explore it more like his back catalog of songs, albums, even read his debut novel And The Ass Saw The Angel. It made me put out the book again and re-read bit and pieces, writing this now makes me even more wanna read it again. Ass/Angel is one of the greatest books ever written, no joke!

The mix of comic book images, his life, his myth, his bands, his song, his character from the songs, from the novel, Anita Lane is like the main person from his life after him here too, I don’t know what Susie Bick will think about that fact that she only being refereed in one line as now beautiful wife and Lane stealing the show. Berlin features as the main city of the whole book too, maybe could have been called the Berlin years but Australia, Brazil and England features too. The writer is Germany, you know? But his heroin dark day with Lane and Germany is center of Cave’s myth and it all translate prefect here in this book. Kylie Minogue’s Elisa Day comes alive here too with Euchrid Eucrow battling it as main characters but even more others from the albums come alive too. Even Robert Johnson gets in his car while hitchhiking right at the end. No Bunny Munro or Miley Cyrus etc. which a good thing, so some bits are skipped over or not even included here in this book but just like a great editor. The writer Reinhard Kleist just focus just on some of the best bits of his crazy life, song, books etc. but it works perfect this way as the reader of the book. It jumps all over the place too and if you don’t know his facts it all might be a bit confusing but a little chaos is like Nick’s middle name.

Now I’ve read all the books written about him, yeah I’ve read all of them! Maybe, I should write a blog post about all of them at some point? I can’t say a bad thing about Mercy On Me. If someone was mad to make a bio-pic film about him you couldn’t get a more prefect screenplay right here and it’s got the storyboards. The whole graphic novel thing is a totally great idea, when I first heard about it, I did think that’s a stupid idea. NOT the case at all, the total opposite in fact! Total recommending it here on my blog, if that count for anything at all?

My past book posts on this blog have been a bit of total fails but it’s only Cave’s own book from 2015 called The Sick Bag Song Book that seems to be viewed even his mad screenplay for Gladiator Two: Christ Killer was a hit but then again all my Nick posts are more likely my biggest hitters, if you wanna know? So to finish off this post for Thursday this book has five chapters named after his four songs and that book so thanks to YouTube again here are those for you listen too. But off course way more songs jump up in this book but I think this is a nice way to finish up this post about the book! So enjoy and I reco you to buy this book!

Chapter 1: The Hammer Song

Chapter 2: Where The Wild Roses Grow

Chapter 3: And The Ass Saw The Angel

Chapter 4: The Mercy Seat

Chapter 5: Higgs Boson Blues