Nick Cave answer my question on his website The Red Hand Files

ISSUE #16 / JANUARY 2019

What would be a list of 10 of your most favourite pieces of music, by artists other than yourself? And number 11 must be a Gun Club song.
G, FALLS CHURCH, USA

Can you put together a list of your top five albums and ask Warren Ellis to do the same?
WILLIAM, PERTH, AUSTRALIA

Dear G and William,

In my extended poem, “The Sick Bag Song”, I wrote about Leonard Cohen and the effect that he had on me as a young boy when I first heard him sing.

“Leonard Cohen will sing, and the boy will suddenly breathe as if for the first time, and fall inside the laughing man’s voice and hide.

The boy will grow older, and over time there will be other songs – not many – ten or maybe twenty in a lifespan, that stand apart from the rest of the music he will discover. He will realise that not only are these songs sacred, they are ‘hiding songs’ that deal exclusively in darkness, obfuscation, concealment and secrecy. He will realise that for him the purpose of these songs was to shut off the sun, to draw a long shadow down and protect him from the corrosive glare of the world.”

*
Occasionally people have asked me what those ‘hiding songs’ were. I have never revealed them in their entirety. Perhaps, I felt a strange ownership over them and that to release them to the world may constitute a form of betrayal. Do you ever feel like that about songs – that they were designed with you especially in mind, and that no one could ever begin to understand them in the way you do? My ‘hiding songs’ serve as a form of refuge for me and have done so for years. They are songs that I can pull over myself, like a child might pull the bed covers over their head, when the blaze of the world becomes too intense. I can literally hide inside them. They are the essential pillars that hold up the structure of my artistic world. There are hundreds of other favourite songs, of course, and one day maybe I can do a list of some of those, but not today. Today, I give you the ‘hiding songs’.

G and William (and anyone else, for that matter), I’d be interested to know if you have any ‘hiding songs’, and if so what they are. You know where to find me!

10 HIDING SONGS

Avalanche, Leonard Cohen

Katie Cruel, Karen Dalton

On the Beach, Neil Young

Tupelo, John Lee Hooker

T.B. Sheets, Van Morrison

It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, Bob Dylan

Plain Gold Ring, Nina Simone

Holocaust, Big Star

Becalmed, Brian Eno

One Fine Morning, Bill Callahan

*
William, I called Warren in Paris. He was happy to make you a list of his top five albums.

World Galaxy, Alice Coltrane With Strings

The Rite of Spring, Igor Stravinsky

Another Green World, Brian Eno

I’m New Here, Gil Scott-Heron

The Velvet Underground & Nico

*
Oh, and G – ‘Mother of Earth’ by The Gun Club.

Nick Cave and Nina Simone in London backstage!

In the very first issue of 2019 earlier today on his new-ish website which I’ve just cut and paste above but linked here too, if you wanna look? It does look better than mine, you know that? I’d asked more than one and he’s edited me down from my long winded ramble mess to a nice line or so! Maybe I should hire him and he can edited my blog but nope, I couldn’t pay him at all and I can just ramble on and on like normal but I will not do that tonight. I’ve added and embedded all the songs and albums above because I had to have a listen to all them as soon as I’d seen and read it so you can too, if you want too? I’ve got even more but a so much younger Cave blog post already planned for tomorrow morning here on my blog!

NC and The Gun Club’s Jeffery Lee Pierce in jail together!

The best new years day gift ever, oh yeah it’s suppose to be Xmas day gift. Anyway thanks to Nick and Warren for a great start to 2019!

Edited and updated: the official Nick Cave channel on spotify has got it’s own playlist of his ten songs which might be easier to listen to them all on?

Cheers 🙂

Advertisement