Nick Cave says he had a “transcendent, spiritual” experience at Radiohead’s concert.
The Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds frontman, 68, embraces a range of “spiritual” practices – from lake swimming to church and meditation – but maintains that nothing rivals the transcendence of live music.
Asked on his Red Hand Files blog if he goes to other artists’ concerts, he replied: “When I’m on tour, the last thing I want to do is go to someone else’s concert.
“I feel sonically and emotionally overloaded, and the live experience is simply too intense. However, I’ve had a couple of months’ break from touring, life has settled down, and, to my surprise, Jordan, I’ve had the urge to go and see live music. Over the past couple of months I’ve attended many gigs – incredible evenings, all of them – including Bob Dylan, Swans, Radiohead, Cameron Winter, and Dirty Three.”
The Australian musician believes live music has “the capacity to repair the world with its goodness”.
Cave continued: “At the Radiohead concert at the O2, I was sitting among twenty thousand people. Bizarrely, it was the first time I had ever been in the audience at such a large show, and I was stunned by the depth of love in the room – people dancing, screaming, crying, hugging each other, throwing themselves around. I was struck by the realisation of just how powerful live music is – that a group of individuals can come together and concoct a sound unique to them, and that people can connect with that distinctive vision as if it were their own experience. I could feel its moral quality – how this singular force has the capacity to repair the world with its goodness.”
Reflecting on the power of live performance, Cave contrasted his spiritual practices with the unique energy of concerts, adding: “I engage in various spiritual activities – I swim in a lake, go to church, walk in nature, meditate – but none offer the transcendent opportunity of a live concert. It is a form of human activity that radiates goodness, working its way through the crowd and into the world as a reparative, cosmic force, improving matters, keeping the devil at bay. I believe Radiohead’s audience was responding not only to the music, which was astonishing, but also to the courage of the performers – the sheer nerve to stand before a crowd and offer up their souls. Like everyone else there, I was deeply moved and humbled.”