Hear Cave and journalist Seán O’Hagan read an excerpt from their new book ‘Faith, Hope and Carnage’
Can I ask about your creative relationship with Blixa, which, to put it mildly, ended pretty abruptly?
Well, Blixa is the least nuanced person I’ve ever met in my life. With him, everything is black or white. I admired that in a way, because he’s able to make difficult decisions in the studio. I found that enviable because I was often indecisive. That brutality of thinking, that resoluteness, that German-ness, is what Blixa brought – alongside his distinctive guitar playing, of course.
Did you ever write a song together?
No, we never sat down and wrote together. In fact, most of Blixa’s guitar was laid on the tracks as overdubs after the song was recorded. That was his preferred way of working. Blixa liked to spend a lot of time deciding what he was going to play and then methodically applying it to the song that was already there. And he did that in a very beautiful and considered way. He really thought about the song, the lyrical content, and what his contribution should be, conceptually, rather than just strumming along, which a lot of guitarists tend to do. I really appreciated that. Blixa never thought his job was to carry the song. He thought his job was to augment the song. In my experience, that’s very rare.
Given all that, his departure from the Bad Seeds must have been a difficult moment.
It was, yes. The suddenness of it. It was typically Bargeld in its cut-throat ruthlessness.
How did he let you know he was leaving the band?
He sent an email. Out of the blue. “I’ve decided to leave the Bad Seeds.” A weird “Dear John” letter of the most rudimentary and unsatisfying kind, almost as if it had been written by a robot. I was stunned. I loved him. He was a giant. For me, he’s very much a symbol of a certain, extremely fertile period of the Bad Seeds. And he took a lot more with him when he left than just his presence. He took a point of view, a way of thinking and a way of working. I think he just found that our way of making music had become too traditional. Having said that, his contributions to the records we were making, post-Boatman’s Call, had become pretty inconsequential. In the end, he did the right thing by leaving. He ripped apart the band and allowed us the opportunity to change, to grow. It was the shock that we needed.
Were there no signs that Blixa was unhappy before the email arrived?
I think the last time I recorded with him, he stormed out of the studio. He was angry with me, or himself, or the world. It was often hard to tell with Blixa.
What were you recording?
We were recording a song for a Wim Wenders documentary about the blues [The Soul of a Man]that he was making for Martin Scorsese. Wim had asked various musicians to perform his favorite blues songs. I wanted to go against type and do a super-upbeat version of “I Feel So Good” by J. B. Lenoir, mostly because, at the time, the thought of the Bad Seeds doing some slow, lugubrious oh-so-worthy blues cover filled me with horror. But these up-tempo songs are tricky and not as easy as they seem. They require a certain amount of technical finesse that Blixa, despite being one of my favorite guitarists, lacks. Plus, I suggested to the band that we base our performance on the Muppets – just totally frenetic and mad and super-whacked-out.
Anyway, Wim is there and he’s filming away, and we’re jumping about the place like fucking idiots, doing take after take, and Blixa is getting increasingly frustrated by the whole thing because, well, I guess he couldn’t get to grips with the song. I don’t know. Also, in certain situations, Blixa doesn’t have a very well-developed sense of humor, to say the least. And he has a famously explosive temper. It’s impossible to exaggerate the performative level of Blixa’s fury. Eventually, he just leaps to his feet, throws down his guitar, and screams those immortal words: “I didn’t get into rock & roll to play rock & roll.” Just to be really annoying, I said, “What about the Muppets?,” at which point he marched over to me and shouted, “Fuck the Muppets! You be a fucking Muppet!” Then he marched out of the studio, and I think that was the last time I ever saw him, as a member of the Bad Seeds.
Quite a moment!
Yes and never one to waste a good catastrophe, I turned to Wim and said, “I hope you filmed that.” But Wim is just standing there with his mouth open and the camera hanging by his side. And I’m like, “Wim, tell me you fucking filmed that!” But he hadn’t. I think he was being respectful or something.
West Berlin Buckow 1983. Kölner Damm near the corner with Lipschitzallee. The significance of this place is that the Berlin Wall ran alongside the path on the left, behind the trees. Kölner Damm stops here because it comes up against the border wall behind the camera. This is the south-east corner of West Berlin, and the border here is with the DDR proper, not East Berlin.
These are screencaps I took from a documentary they showed which I’ve never seen before. It was apparently filmed shortly after the Wall came down, and Blixa is showing some guy around Anhalter Bahnhof and (then still deserted) Potsdamer Platz and the Hansa by the Wall studio.
“The first time saw Blixa Bargeld was when I met him when the Bad Seeds had come to Los Angeles, and the Road Manager said “I have had enough of these guys, will you baby sit them for one day?”…. I walk into their hotel room, boy scout that I am, and there were Nick Cave and Blixa Bargeld crashed out asleep on two separate beds, literally naked and half naked girls here and there. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven! I walk in and go “Woah! Is this how you live when you’re a rock star?” And I woke Nick up, I go, “Nick, I’m you’re new Road Manager today. In your gear! We gotta go and do an in-store.” And the guy with all the human hair stapled to his leather overalls must be Blixa Bargeld, I’m like, “Hey Blixa, how do you do? Love your work!”. And he goes, (Henry does a growly impersonation here) “You… you look like Henry Rollins, so you must be Henry Rollins”. I went, “Yes and you’re gonna have to brush those teeth if you wanna ride with me!”. And I took them down to Long Beach, and let’s see, I lost Nick. He went away with some people, and then I barely got Blixa back to town. I lost Hugo Race somewhere. I was able to get Barry Adamson and Mick Harvey down to the show to see the Gun Club later on, and I ended up waltzing to The Gun Club with Blixa in that weird leather outfit he insisted on wearing every day. But, anyway, that was Blixa Bargeld.”
The Immaculate Consumptive ft. Lydia Lunch, Nick Cave, Marc Almond, and J.G Thirlwell. NME Nov. 12, 1983
The four met in London while Lunch was filming 'Like Dawn to Dust'. Cave and Thirlwell were working on the track 'Wings Off Flies' from Cave's debut album. Both had previously worked with Marc Almond, who was taking a break from Soft Cell.
They traveled to New York for a Halloween event Lunch had planned and performed from October 27th to the 29th. The group only lasted 3 days, with Cave bored with the group.
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