An Open Love Letter to Nick Cave

My Dear Nick,

THANK YOU for your most recent Austin show. It was so wonderful. Driving home I felt more alive, electrified and fully present than I have since before lockdown. Pragmatically speaking, this was extra excellent. You see, I bought my ticket months ago, before I realized that I really shouldn’t drive at night anymore. I’m old now. Not quite as old as you—haha. But old enough to panic when I am behind the wheel after dark. 

Not that night, though. I was alert and aware, the entire world lit up, my neurons full-on firing. I spent the next few days still buzzing, thinking about the effect you have on me, on so many of us. 

I admit I came late to the Nick Cave party. It was 2013 and I was in the throes of my brief, misplaced crush on Jason. I hadn’t yet figured out the true role he played in my life, clarity that would not come until after his death. Jason loved you so much and went on about you often. That was a good enough recommendation for me and in short order I bought nearly everything you ever recorded. 

To be honest, I still haven’t listened to all of it. No offense but the Birthday Party stuff and the Grinderman stuff are not as accessible to my ears as your solo work and the Bad Seeds recordings. Even if I don’t listen to it all, I so admire your versatility, the way you push yourself in different directions when, let’s face it, you could sell out shows around the world just performing Red Right Hand and Into My Arms on a loop. Thank you for not resting on your laurels. Thank you for demonstrating over and over there’s a massive universe to tap into, and that the tapping in is the point. 

How will Nick connect with the universe today? I wonder whenever I am on my way to see you. And then you show me yet another angle, and in showing me you allow me to find new ways of my own to tap in. That is pure magic.

At your most recent concert, I knew going in there would come a moment when your voice would send me to That Other Place, a place where Jason was still alive and I could see him and hear him and feel him (dare I say, a sort of Lazarus effect). Sure enough that moment came. I closed my eyes, felt the power of your energy, and for a glorious little bit my long lost friend was beside me again.

Thank you.

Do you remember that scene in Buckaroo Bonzai where he’s on stage performing and he stops the show because he senses someone in the crowd is crying? He requests a spotlight be shone upon the crier and sings directly to her. I think you make every one of us in the audience feel like that, as if a sole spotlight is on each of us, like you are simultaneously reading every one of our individual minds. Like you are some Emotional MacGyver summoning from your soul words and tunes to defuse the time bombs of suffering that tick within us all.

I was 12 years old in 1976, a seventh grader at the junior/senior high school my older sisters also attended. My sister Mare was dating a football player, Fred, who was so handsome and kind and wonderful. Times I answered when he phoned the house for her, he would patiently talk to me, as if he had actually called for me. 

What a crush I had on him. 

I was in the marching band—believe it or not I used to play the saxophone. There was a big pep rally one Friday in the football stadium. The senior football players ran onto the field dressed in drag, a pretty wild thing for a bunch of small town boys to do in 1976. Fred was Little Bo Peep. There came a moment when these players went into the stands, each to pick one special person to cheer for them at the next day’s game.

I sat frozen on the bleachers among my fellow band nerds, awkward, pimply, hiding my face behind my hair, hoping, wishing to be Fred’s Chosen One. Chastising myself for hoping this, for entertaining such a foolish, unrealistic dream. And then, lo, Fred picked me! I stood beside him on the track, his arm around my shoulders. I never felt so seen in my life. 

Fred died when I was fourteen and he was nineteen. I never got over that. I don’t suppose I ever will. Twenty-five years later, through a bizarre series of events, I became pen pals with his mother, who once wrote she thought her son had been my soul mate, that had he lived perhaps I would not have gone on to suffer so much at the hands of one cruel man after another. 

In October 2019 you did your Q&A show at ACL Moody Theater, fielding queries from the audience. My inner seventh-grader wanted to be picked. I put my hand up. Then I put it back down, admonishing myself for wanting your attention. Then back up again, hoping beyond hope.

Up. Down. Up. Down. Up.

Right after you sang Into My Arms, to my joy and astonishment, an audience monitor handed me the microphone. I spoke to an earlier remark you’d made about all the gun-toting Christians in Texas. I told you I was a nontheist with a license to carry and invited you to my ranch to shoot. I asked you when you first became aware of your charisma, noting that when I first saw you—with the Bad Seeds in 2013– the sexual tension in the air was so thick I was surprised people weren’t shagging in the aisles. You humbly said that honestly, the whole thing started in your youth when you noticed girls like guys in bands, that that had been your motivation, not some belief that you were more magical than anyone else.

Then I told you about how, when Jason died, I took custody of his ancient service dog Luna. She was pretty much deaf but whenever I played your music, she perked up. She might not have been able to clearly hear you, but she could very clearly feel you. I knew she’d listened to all of your stuff, the whole catalog, a lot, when Jason was still alive. Oh how she wagged when I put the speaker next to her ear. You brought him back to life for her, too.

For those few moments we bantered it was like lightning bolts flew through the air. You’d already told the audience, “No more hugs,” because everyone kept asking for hugs. I really am a fan of boundaries and yet out of my mouth it slipped, “Can I have a hug?” 

You said yes. Thank you for saying yes. Thank you for the hug.

Last year when I saw you, the night was extra weird, the audience so unruly they seemed to be getting on your nerves. They were certainly getting on my nerves. Then a guy front row center had a heart attack or something. A big enough event to stop the show. It was all very confusing and unclear what was going on. I was sitting very close to the stage and I watched you watch the guy, the paramedics, the commotion of it all. Your face crumpled as you transformed from Nick Cave God and Guru to Nick Cave Man and Ghost. I could see you were trying to decide how to proceed which, eventually, you did with such grace.

Which brings me to the Red Hand Files and still more gratitude. I am so deeply sorry for the loss of your sons. I know there is no greater suffering a human can experience than outliving a child. I know you could have crumpled permanently and chosen to experience your grief in private and this would have been entirely understandable. That you have chosen instead to channel your pain and grief journey into a source of comfort for so many—well thank you for this gift, too. Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for not sugarcoating the madness. Thank you for carrying on and, in doing so, inspiring others to also carry on.

Most of all, thank you for being so utterly and uniquely you. For not pandering. For being Nick Cave. For making all of us feel so special and loved in the spotlight of your mighty presence.

With Big Love and Boundless Gratitude,

Spike

p.s. You are still invited to come shoot with me anytime.

p.p.s. I named a handsome young bull after you.

p.p.p.s. Do you remember if you kissed me on the cheek? My friends at the show insist you did but it was all such a blur. I haven’t washed that cheek since, just in case it’s true.

Little Nicky Cave

NOTES:

Welcome to all the new subscribers and thanks all of y’all for reading. If you are up for becoming a paid subscriber for $5 per month/$50 per year, please know your generous support helps me keep all the animals fat and sassy. One-time tips also gratefully accepted on Venmo @spike-gillespie. Another way you can help is to share this with friends you think might dig it. 

I’ve got a four-week mini memoir writing workshop for women coming up at the ranch starting November 21st. Tuesdays 11 am - 1 pm. $100. Holler if you want more details. 

Tickets are not on sale yet but mark your calendars. Old Spike is turning SIXTY in January and I’m celebrating with a show at Hyde Park Theatre on January 7th. It will be a matinee because, really, I need to stop driving at night. 

This week’s question: What band/musician moves you more than you can say?