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Nick Cave opens up about his son’s passing, emotional chaos and the healing thereafter

Nick Cave has opened up about the very unfortunate death of his 15-year-old son Arthur in July of 2015.

Cave stated that his son’s passion brought on 24/7 emotional chaos, with the band barely being functional during the recording of Skeleton Tree.

Photo credit: Stevie Double

Nick Cave described the tracks on Skeleton Tree as raw, becoming a mirror of the tragic incident and feelings that were a result of it.

Touring for the first time in three years, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds are finally on the road again, with 2016 album Skeleton Tree dedicated to his son’s passing.

Speaking to Noisey, here’s what the 59-year-old musician had to say about his son’s death: 

“The further we get away from that time, it’s easier to – it’s not always possible – but it’s easier to divide your time. So there’s what we call a remembering time and then there’s time where we work, and we’re able fairly successfully – not all the time – to be able to somehow divide that up. And in the remembering time, things can be… we’re in no condition to work and stuff like that.”

“But we’re able to step out of that quite effectively and do our work and do our jobs and be with each other and all that sort of stuff. So we’re getting better and better at that. It’s… you know… Not always successful.”

Image credit: NME

Skeleton Tree is a record heavy with grief, followed by the documentary One More Time With Feeling which captures the emotional aftermath suffered by Cave and his family.

Initially despising the film, it wasn’t until Cave took to social media and read the positive reviews, which seemed to touch a lot of people who had similar stories. Cave then watched the film himself, which helped him finally come to terms with his grief over Arthur.

“What Andrew did was to create this extraordinary movie, which I think he made as some kind of gift, to give something back to me. And to Arthur. I think that was his agenda, and something I had absolutely no idea of at the time”. 

Arthur Cave fell from a 60-ft cliff to his death in 2015, after reportedly taking tabs of LSD and freaking out. 

Via Noisey.