1 June 2024
Adam Steiner is a book/essay writer, poet, and journalist who works for several magazines and websites. He’s based in London and Coventry. His new book DARKER
WITH THE DAWN — Nick Cave’s Songs Of Love And Death is out. We had a chat with Adam about the making/writing of.
You’re a versatile writer of articles, essays and reviews (books/music), a poet, an educator, a creative producer, and an author. Sounds like you’re a workaholic, Adam?
“I wish I wasn’t. I tend to focus down on one topic, very intensely and pursue it through
to completion. If that sounds a bit mindless and thoughtless, that’s because it is. Books demand hours of work done, on research and working out your ideas – and hours more just to see it through: finished, edited, rewritten etc. But – without the passion for the subject or the idea you are pursuing it would not be enjoyable, it could easily become
just another job.
So the saving grace is having some sort of belief in what you’re doing; perhaps even a hope in what you’re trying to explore or express and the particular mode you’ve found in which to say it. the late music journalist Neil Kulkarni said that writing about music was the best job in the world, Ultimately, I have to remind myself sometimes that writing books and having other people read your work is a privilege!”
You already wrote a book about NINE INCH NAILS’ classic album ‘The Downward Spiral’, DAVID BOWIE’s ‘Scary Monsters’ and now one about NICK CAVE. What makes you want to write about musicians?
“I’m not entirely sure how I ended up doing music books. Ultimately, I’m writing about artists and albums that I love. Again, it’s a fortunate kind of project to be pursuing. I think writers, sometimes failed musicians (or very successful in their own write!) are fascinated and intrigued by the musician’s lifestyle but also the mystery of how they seem to pluck inspiration out of the air – on both sides of the divide we’re just doing our thing.
But the artist and the critic enrich and sustain one another; writers ‘embiggen’
the work of the musician, nourishing its public profile and representing it to the fan or casual listener. I hope the books deepen the readers’ understanding and appreciation of the music, even though I’m equally inspired by the fan’s passion and perspectives – in
that sense there is no top-down tier – but mutual appreciation!”
Your new book “DARKER WITH THE DAWN: Nick Cave’s Songs Of Love And Death”
is out now. What was the overall goal that you wanted to achieve with it?
“I love certain key records across The Bad Seeds discography, so I wanted to explore
the connective tissue between those records. It’s a very different person who wrote
“The Mercy Seat” to “Push The Sky Away” and yet there remains a common thread all
through it.”
“So I enjoy looking at what makes those records stand alone but also seeing how the artist can entertain all these conflicting, contradictory states. I originally wanted to write more about later Cave, from 2013 onwards, but Cave did the Carnage book so I thought there wasn’t really space for me there.
Instead I looked across all the albums and dug deep on the main themes of love, death, violence, god, the universe – big ideas but drawn down to a granular, individual level – that’s what great art achieves.”
You talked with a lot of people who know CAVE, you did tons of research,
and you consulted lots of sources. Did you also talk with the man himself?
“I spoke to a couple of people, but Cave himself keeps his thoughts and collaborators
close. It was not an official, endorsed book –and that’s ok – in some ways, it gives the
writer a more open-ended challenge.
There’s an interesting challenge for the musician to own their narrative, but also to promote themselves where it best endorses or sustains that image and the things they want to focus on. I respect Cave’s need to look forward, like Bowie, I don’t think he has much time for examining the past.
Being creative is the most life-affirming, sustaining
force; so I imagine being in his shoes, within reason.”
How long did you work on this detailed Nick Cave opus?
“Piece of string that forms its own noose. You can indulge the writing, and
the research for a very long time; edit a manuscript to death, make it worse
even. So while I tried to remain a healthy even keel, I was actually writing
my Bowie book at the same time.
So writing two quite different projects concurrently is a bit of a killer.
I started thinking and researching back in 2019; it all went from there, finally
submitted it in autumn 2023. All in, it was a bit of a killer; but the work is addictive!”
The book confirms my principal idea about CAVE. He’s a complex person and an almost obsessive observer of the human psyche. What’s your conclusion after dissecting countless songs and albums?
“Damn. As mentioned, I admire Cave’s persistence to just do his thing. The early
Bad Seeds, like The Birthday Party, were so spiky, acerbic, intriguing – they really
stuck out from any kind of scene and resisted definition – a contradiction really.
It was only around Your Funeral…My Trial, Cave went more introspective and started to craft more nuanced verse-chorus tracks. If you think about it, those early albums are very experimental and piano-led alongside the drums. more musique concrete, so the idea that Cave became something of a balladeer is strange, he has the pleasure of being able to do both!
But to answer your question, I think Cave has very specific interests and a strong voyeuristic eye on human weakness and the enduring better angels of our nature
that seem to raise us up beyond mutual destruction, ‘evil’ if you like…”
Which public /audience did you want to reach out to?
“That’s a huge question. I think like a lot of writers I’d like everyone to read, enjoy and understand/appreciate my writing. Already, that’s a big ask. To go deeper I’d like to find my tribe; people who are attracted to going further around the cultural context of music and to embrace new approaches and speculations to its meaning.
I’m not looking for the ‘right’ answers to a musician’s work, equally I’m not making unfounded/ irrelevant claims. I’m looking to embrace that middle ground between
fact-finding and the imagination. Art invites us to read between the lines.”
From his destructive era with THE BIRTHDAY PARTY to modern-day crooner. From Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll. After analysing CAVE’s repertoire — what was instrumental in your opinion, Adam, for his transformation, personal and artistic over the years?
“It would be easy to focus upon the loss of Cave’s son Arthur in 2015, followed by the more recent death of one of his older sons, Jethro. And that is a major shift in Cave’s personal and creative life, from Push The Sky Away and the rupture of Skeleton Tree and then the reckoning of Ghosteen – it’s an amazing transition and I’m grateful for it as a listener, but like most of us, it was arrived at through such an unimaginable human cost that no-one should have to experience.
While Cave has claimed this is a closed chapter, it has continued into his work on
The Red Hand Files, the sometimes heavy-handed approach to interviews (where he sidesteps talking endlessly about grief, but is often invited to weigh-in on the state of
the world, like a seer), and with the new album, Wild God. It promises a ‘return’ to basics, odl school Cave and rock and roll, etc.
When, in reality, I think The Bad Seeds and Cave have always been great at reimagining
rock and roll; pushing boundaries while maintaining a passion for more traditional music, like the blues, and latching onto southern gothic imagery – eventually to a point of near-parody. So, I love Your Funeral… My Trial but get a bit bored with The Firstborn Is Dead, for example.”
I could easily cut the discography in half but I know that all the records together mark a continual and necessary progression – part of my reason for writing a book with a wide span, that nonetheless digs deep on what makes Cave quite unique (an impossible task!)
What did/do you want to express with the book’s title?
“I love the song, Darker With The Day, and as my original focus for this book project
was just to explore the loose trilogy of PSTA/Skeleton Tree/Ghosteen I thought the idea
of waking up to darkness (and through a play on light) was both relevant to those albums and subverted the idea that night and day, good and bad are entirely divisible – in real life – this is rarely the case.
So Darker With The Dawn draws us back to the continued struggle
of living, set against death, when really it’s all one endless cycle.”
The cover is impressive. To me, it feels like CAVE’s eyes want to look into your
heart and soul. What did you, along with designer Johnny Nicholds, want to communicate with the artwork?
“Jonny Nicholds is a great artist in his own right. He has a great sense of proportion and control in producing portraits of well-known artists and musicians and renders a very strong likeness. I was really impressed with a portrait he did of Bowie and asked if he would ever consider producing a Nick Cave image for my book.
By chance, Jonny is also a big fan and had already done some sketches. We talked about presenting Cave alongside many of the symbols and cyphers of his songs, but realising that has already been done in the Lovely Creatures best-of artwork.
Instead, Jonny focused on producing a deeply textured image of Nick Cave, looking austere, intense and serious. Originally, Jonny created Cave’s image with paint drips running like blood into a typewriter, emphasising Cave’s deep commitment to the written word; as a reader and a writer.
This interest in books alongside the craft of songwriting sets him apart from a lot of musical artists. Like Bowie, Cave would read as source of creative inspiration and go beyond the text; absorbing and reimagining his reading into something new.”
What have CAVE and BOWIE in common as human beings and artists?
What are the main differences between the two?
“I’ve always been interested in their different status as artists. They started in different eras, but while Bowie defined the decade of the 1970s and inspired a whole new raft of musicians with each new record, these gathered into new mainstream momentum that steered the culture overall. And despite Bowie’s extreme confrontation with the wonderful world of the secret strange, he was able to have both hits and produce singular experimental records.
Cave has always sat on the edges of the musical world, he avoids being pigeonholed
and in that he persists as an alternative musician but not completely outside the realm of traditional music, as I said. I think he always ploiughed ahead with the kind of music he wanted to make, in stark defiance to other people’s expectations.
Instead of selling-out Cave would always be challenged with ‘mellowing out’ and it is only now in his later years that he has become a major public figure. Before that, it was the ballad “Where The Wild Roses Grow” a duet with Kylie Minogue that brought Cave and The Bad Seeds to Top Of The Pops on television and made their 1996 album, Murder Ballads a chart hit.”
“In spite of all this turnaround, Cave has never been equipped to produce pop-centred hits – the true definition of a great musician. Although he has continued to reinvent himself, although not in such a drastic fashion as Bowie, it was Cave and close collaborator Warren Ellis, who created dark, electronica and heavily produced late albums, Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen, akin to the dark revision of Gil Scoot Heron’s, I’m New Here in 2010.
So I remain divided but adoring of both artists for all of their differences.”
Your Top3 CAVE albums?
Henry’s Dream (2010)
Your Funeral… My Trial (2009)
Push The Sky Away (2013)
Your Top 3 of songs by this once-in-a-lifetime artist?
Stranger Than Kindness (from Your Funeral, My Trial – 2009)
Stagger Lee (from Murder Ballads – 2011)
Idiot Prayer (from The Boatman’s Call – 2011)
Thank you very much for this chat, Adam!
You can find the various outlets through
which you can order the book HERE.