Nick Cave gave his keynote interview at SXSW today calling his hit with Kylie Minogue “a little camp”.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 2013, Photo By Ros O'Gorman
The 1995 Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue duet ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’ brought the alternative Cave to the mainstream where he found his first commercial radio airplay and a Top 40 hit.
“Maybe it was a little camp, but it didn’t feel that way at the time,” Cave said.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are in Austin, Texas this week to showcase their new album ‘Push The Sky Away’ at the SXSW music conference and festival. Cave also addressed delegated at the Austin Convention Center.
He talked about growing up in Australia who was often bullied for being gay even though he wasn’t. “I didn’t do sports so it was assumed I was homosexual,” he told the SXSW delegates.
After moving to London in 1980 with his band the Birthday Party, the punters at the gigs became his new antagonists. “People came to the gigs to beat the shit out of us. It was like being back at school,” Cave said.
Cave discovered heroin, moved to Berlin and then to Brazil where he straighten out. He then moved back to London for drug rehabilitation.
Cave and wife Susie Bick have had a nomadic life. “It’s not that I can’t deal with the real world. The imaginative world to me is more reliable. I have more control over it. And in some ways, it’s more interesting,” he said.
The imaginative world is his songs. “When the songs are looked at individually, they seem overwrought and hysterical and unreal. Within the context of the rest of the songs, there’s a world there they can live in,” Cave said.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds will showcase ‘Push The Sky Away’ at Stubbs BBQ in Austin, Texas for SXSW on Wednesday, March 13 at 7:45pm. The event is open to platinum and music badgeholders.
