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The Beat Goes On

DETROIT—So what’s the first thing that Nick Cave wants to know upon his arrival in Detroit? He wants to know where all the murders are happening. Seems we have a reputation for that sort of thing around here, and murder is definitely something Cave finds interesting.

November 1, 1984
John Neilson

The Beat Goes On

NICK CAVE’S IN!

DETROIT—So what’s the first thing that Nick Cave wants to know upon his arrival in Detroit?

He wants to know where all the murders are happening.

Seems we have a reputation for that sort of thing around here, and murder is definitely something Cave finds interesting. The themes of degradation and violent death wind their way through all his songs, as Cave’s detatched eye watches over the wicked and the dead, catching every detail.

“I don’t think that I am didactic,” Cave replies, when asked if his narrator is making any moral judgements on the squalor he depicts. “I don’t think that I’ve ever, ever tried to describe a situation and say ‘There, look at that, this is how sick the world is.’ Basically they’re just sorta like murder ballads—-they’re little tragedies in the classic sense.”

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