Nick Cave fell under the spell of the art of songwriting at a young age – and it’s truly never left him. ‘Wild God’ – his latest record with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – was announced earlier today, and the wonderful title track was placed online.
In passing, CLASH observed that it contains some DNA of Bob Dylan’s work – the vocal, the loose arrangement, and the passion for word play.
On the surface, the comparison may raise a few eyebrows, but in truth Nick Cave is a huge fan of Bob Dylan’s work. Indeed, Dylan lore is a subject he has returned to at different points in his career.
Take this 1995 interview, archived by Far Out. Musing on his enduring passion for Dylan album ‘Nashville Skyline’, he commented: “I constantly buy the same record over and over again: I’ve bought so many versions of ‘Nashville Skyline’ – I must be keeping Dylan in… whatever that is he needs keeping in.”
Naming ‘I Threw It All Away’ from that album as a song he wished he had written, Nick Cave explained: “There was always something about that song, that was so simple, and an audacity to this sort of simplicity to that song. But it was so… so powerful at the same time. For me, at least. I was always ragingly envious of that song.”
In a later note on the Red Hand Files, Nick Cave discussed his ‘Hiding Songs’ – tracks that “serve as a form of refuge for me and have done so for years…”
He added: “I can literally hide inside them. They are the essential pillars that hold up the structure of my artistic world.”
Of course, Bob Dylan features – with his incredible song ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’.
Still a hopeless Dylan fanatic, Nick Cave later waxed lyrical about ‘Murder Most Foul’, the lengthy song released as an introduction to ‘Rough & Rowdy Ways’.
The instrumentation is formless and fluid and very beautiful. Lyrically it has all the perverse daring and playfulness of many of Dylan’s great songs, but beyond that there is something within his voice that feels extraordinarily comforting, especially at this moment. It is as though it has travelled a great distance, through stretches of time, full of an earned integrity and stature that soothes in the way of a lullaby, a chant, or a prayer.
Finally, Nick Cave has ever covered Bob Dylan a few times – here’s his take on ‘Wanted Man’.
Photo Credit: Megan Cullen
