Why mick harvey left bad seeds

I think that some things have changed inside the band and my role in the band had changed gradually and things that I was doing outside the band had changed gradually," Harvey told Spinner. As is hinted at in the Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's film that accompanies the forthcoming Murder Ballads reissue, it was around the time of that album being recorded that Harvey began to feel his role within the Bad Seeds had started to change.

I thought some of the stuff was being dumbed down but that's just my opinion. But it wasn't a good situation. Share this article:. If you love what we do, you can help tQ to continue bringing you the best in cultural criticism and new music by joining one of our subscription tiers. As well as the unparalleled joy of keeping the publication alive, you'll receive benefits including exclusive editorial, podcasts, and specially-commissioned music by some of our favourite artists. And it would fall to me in the later stages of the recording to finish overdubs etc.

Those recordings have got my fingerprints all over them. Everyone had to make up their parts; at that point it was a really collaborative work which was a constant with the Bad Seeds, it was very much a band functioning properly. These little digs at Nick flare up every now and then, and in a world in which nobody has a bad word to say about The Great Nick Cave anymore, are really rather refreshing. Not to mention mostly affectionate, which is something of a relief.

Scott Fitzgerald. I got that out of my system when I was a teenager! In fact, I would have preferred it if some of those elements were just not there, actually. With Grinderman, Warren laid down the rules about it. Ah yes, Grinderman. But I think both albums are really good, actually.

I had to play just about everything else. Who know only half of what Mick Harvey knows, in other words. Drowned in Sound's 21 Favourite Albums of the Y Drowned in Sound to return as a weekly newsletter. Many of his recent songs have been a collapsing of both. With Cave's own unique slant. The viewpoint of a wretch. Nick might feel sorry for himself beyond belief, but belief is often the problem, the search for or lack of it. That or Cupid's eyes poked out blind. His talent is he can tell fantastic musical stories that encapsulate those emotions.

From the Boys Next Door, through the Birthday Party, to the present day Bad Seeds, Cave has often striven for things that can't be resolved: salvation and unrequited love. Along the way he has left a narrative trail of picaresque characters. And so much for that. Up there with Dylan. Anybody you care to mention. Hey, but mention writers … because, as Nick is the first to admit, he's technically a lousy singer.

Backstage tonight it's like a grave. There's no party. Kid Congo, now with a moustache, diligently packs his guitars while Mick Harvey picks up the takings and the rest of the band flop out. He's one of nature's organisers, with a Filofax in his head rather than his pocket, as well as a wicked wit. It's a joke, that's why I set up the tours.

It's not hard. I have this new system. I get everything organised in advance. Then when members of the band come up to me and say, 'Hey, have you seen this or got that?

After all, they're big boys now. Cave, meanwhile, is slumped in his chair. He looks ash-grey with exhaustion. This is more than the result of tonight's exertion, it's a cumulative thing. Nick has been going through perhaps the most productive year of his life so far. Aside from writing and recording the exercise in musical styles that form the forthcoming album, he's virtually finished editing his novel And the Ass Saw the Angel, and had King Ink — a collection of lyrics, snippets of prose and short plays — published by Black Spring Press.

The latter is the story of prison authorities deliberately making inmates' lives hell in order to instigate an insurrection which they then violently squash, thereby gaining legitimacy for increased penal powers.

In Ghosts, Cave plays a psychotic provocateur with a death wish. This simply involves a lot of swearing, rolling of eyeballs, gouging of flesh and spitting. Cave, on this appearance, doesn't seem to have the makings of a great thespian. The soundtrack parts provided by Bargeld, Harvey and Cave, are, however, fine.

Back in the dressing room, Cave has been cornered by a piece of rotting flesh called Moan. We're all fatigued. Somebody doles out that vitamin known as speed. I don't refuse the offer.

Two days and one country later, just before a glass comes whizzing by my head and smashes against a wall, Cave will insist that "people don't bring us drugs … all that happens backstage at our gigs is that people drink our alcohol". Right now, though, our hearts are pounding like jackhammers.

The world seems like a fine place, full of people to bore senseless with our speed-babble. As the sun comes up like a pat of rancid butter over the canals, it feels like we're engaged on a one-way trip to purgatory. Drugs can do strange things to people. Nick Cave's voice, late afternoon in the bar of Amsterdam's Museum hotel, is laced with humour. He looks sharp, dressed in an immaculate black evening suit topped off by a belt with a massive gaudy buckle depicting Christ.

He's just been doing television interviews. I told them, 'No way', and took them off to interview me among the prostitutes. I mean, can you see me on one of those contraptions? Publicist, photographer, Seeds piano player Roland and I crack up at the thought. Together we head off to eat. Nick escorts us to a Surinamese cafe. As soon as we're seated, he disappears off into the red-light district.

With Cave gone and Roland captive it seems a good time to interview the classically trained German keyboardist. Our conversation goes like this:. It destroys your body, fucks up your mind," says Roland.

Stranger than kindness, the singer returns and takes us back to sample his go-faster vitamins at the hotel.

Thirty minutes later he's onstage at the Paradiso Club. As the Bad Seeds' rhythm section of Harvey and drummer Thomas Wydler deliver the uppercut of another new song, Oh Deanna, Cave jack-knives around the stage. Nick's lyrical concerns might sometimes rattle like skeletons in shallow graves, but his current band set his prayers on fire like no other.

Riding on the wave of energy, with typical perversity Nick rasps. We played here when we were the Birthday Party. I remember smashing somebody's teeth in with my microphone stand. Three in the morning. Night hangs like a lead shroud. Nick Cave's voice speaks in quiet, measured tones in the hotel lounge. Any hesitation is due, not to inarticulacy, but to wanting to frame precise answers.

I had hoped that Bleddyn would be here. Aside from being a fine photographer, Butcher is a long time friend of Nick's who takes most of the shots for the Bad Seeds' record covers. Between us we hoped to map the definitive guide to Cave's creativity.

The only problem is not even Jesus could raise Bleddyn from his bed. No problem. A tired Antipodean snapper? Well miracles take a little longer. Nick says he often comes over as retarded in interviews because he can't trust journalists, especially English ones, who nod in agreement to his halting answers and then ridicule him in print. He cites two interviewers who've recently grilled him for another British paper as a case in point. Nick Cave is a journalist's nightmare.

An artist, who through such emotional blackmail tactics, expects a writer to snip off the barbs of their questions and place their tamed tongues in his rectum.

He wants respect but doesn't seem to respect a journalist's freedom to inquire. Cave has even written a song about two ex-NME writers called Scum. It bookends his anthology King Ink. That's how obsessive he is about the press …. The songs on the upcoming album seem to have less narrative form than before. The new record is coming back to a more conventional sort of lyric.

There still are stories, but they're a lot more disguised. Like Oh Deanna is a retelling of a true relationship that I had with somebody through the story of somebody else, even if it doesn't begin with 'Once upon a time'. Deanna was a girl I knew when I was about eight.

She lived in a trailer on the outskirts of the town with her old man who was basically this drunken, wretch of a character. Our relationship was kept a secret from him because he frequently beat her. I was just one day older than her. It was a very equal relationship we had. It was impossible to get to because of the briar that surrounded it.

But she made this tunnel through the briar. Inside this place she had a collection like a magpie's nest.