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Nick Cave mesmerises crowd while dedicating song to his two sons

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds headlined the Primavera Festival in Barcelona, Spain, enthralling the audience with a legendary performance.

Performing a few nights ago in Barcelona, Nick Cave left a beautiful impact on the crowd, engaging the audience with a beautiful performance of I Need You, dedicated to two of his sons.

The band played a vast catalogue of songs from Cave’s four-decade career, but it was this song that saw the audience fall silent for the first time.

Nick Cave at Primavera Sound
Credit: LOUISE MASON

Speaking to the crowd, Cave said: “This is a song I want to dedicate to my two boys, Luke and Earl. They’re probably over there waiting for Bauhaus to begin.”  The song, which was released on the album Skeleton Tree following the tragic death of Cave’s son, Arthur, felt further raw as the world heard about the death of Cave’s eldest son, Jethro Lazenby, just weeks prior.

Yesterday’s show was only the second show Cave has played since the death of his son, after The Bad Seeds headlined Northside Festival earlier this week.

After the song had finished, and the crowd held their collective breath, Cave broke the ice. “Hang on, is my hair alright?” he asked the crowd, receiving a roar of laughter.

Commenting on the subject of grief on the Red Hand Files, Cave wrote: “For us, grief became a way of life, an approach to living, where we learned to yield to the uncertainty of the world, whilst maintaining a stance of defiance to its indifference. We surrendered to something over which we had no control, but which we refused to take lying down.”

“Grief became both an act of submission and of resistance — a place of acute vulnerability where, over time, we developed a heightened sense of the brittleness of existence. Eventually, this awareness of life’s fragility led us back to the world, transformed.”

For one such as Nick Cave, his strength, resilience, and wisdom is to be admired. And, of course, his hair always looks great. Elvis would be proud.