Hi, come in. Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Nick Cave. I'm happy to be here, very happy to be here. Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these clothes? Chose the clothes because they're the clothes I always wear. The suit is by Bella Freud. Well, as you know, you've been making my suits, my day suits and stage suits, actually, as it turns out, for... I don't know, years now, right? Do you know how long? Must be about eight years. Yeah. I think. And very...
I mean, it's all I wear, essentially. So I always wear a suit. When I wake up in the morning, I put a suit on. I don't like... differences in things so it's always the same cut of soup it's the same one that we've been making now for years And so I'm wearing that, one of those, one of the many I have now. And a shirt that's made by the same guy who makes all my shirts, who's made my shirts for years. And a tie from a vintage tie. Because you wear quite, you use the word conservative.
that for a certain type of condensed look but I've always noticed that your shoes are always the wild card you never can they always have this kind of cowboyish this swagger that the thing I always associate with how you walk like you've just swung open the door into a saloon well The problem is with shoes that no one makes good ones. In my view it's an absolute disaster to try and find a decent pair of men's shoes. Women's shoes are entirely different.
And there's the most gorgeous shoes in the world out there. But men's shoes, the kind of shoes that I like, are very difficult to find. And I'm extremely particular about... the shoes that i want thankfully um some years ago as well gucci made me a pair of shoes under my direction um and makes them for me and just sends the same pair to me whenever I need a new pair, rather wonderfully free of charge.
So it's good for me. So the shoes actually never change. Nothing ever changes, essentially. I just have the same look day in, day out. You know, suits me fine. And what was the first garment that changed the way you felt about yourself when you noticed the connection between what you were wearing and what it gave you, how it made you feel? Well, I was the third boy, so I tended to get hand-me-downs. We grew up in a country town.
Parents didn't have a huge amount of money. And so I wore a lot of hand-me-down clothes for my brothers. But at some point, I think I was... or something like that. Well, a couple of things happened with clothes before that that were sort of little mini disasters. But the first time I really coveted an article of clothing deeply... was in the little country town that I lived in, there was one menswear shop and in the window of the shop there was a pair of brown woolen herringbone.
style flares and it was the first pair of flares in the country town. that I grew up in. And no one wanted them. No one even knew what flares were, essentially. But I loved these trousers. Eventually, I wore my mother down and she bought these trousers for me. And I loved them, like, deeply. And the problem... with them though was that they were incredibly itchy. They were unbelievably itchy woolen trousers and almost unwearable as a consequence.
And so there's a sort of slightly tragic story attached to this because I wore them to the school, a kind of a mixed school dance in the local... school hall when I was about I guess 11 or 12 and because they were unbearable the itchiness was so awful I would wear my sister's tights underneath the trousers to stop the itching. And I wore them at this dance. And I told my best friend that I had a pair of my sister's tights on. And he then told his best friend.
And eventually this sort of went around the event and... A bunch of guys got me when I was in the bathroom and attempted at least to take down my trousers and reveal the women's tights underneath, which I was wearing women's tights. Or girls' tights. And they didn't actually get them off, but they had a shot at it. And so I don't know what that did to me, but...
Yeah, that was the sort of what happened. But I loved those. I loved those trousers and that set off a kind of this feeling of seeing things and sort of... coveting them and them being slightly out of my, that I was unable to get them. And there were a lot of clothes that I would see. And my mother, it took a lot of persuading for my mother to buy.
These sorts of things for me. Yeah. Because your mother, you told me your mother gave you one really good bit of advice, which was head high and fuck them all. Which seems like... That's right. It worked. Did she embody that as well? She protected me. She was always... on my side all through my school days and into my adult life, regardless of how glaringly obvious it was that I was at fault at any given time.
You know, I was in a fair amount of trouble as a teenager with the police and so forth. And she was always there for me and on my side. You know, she would mumble, you bloody bastards, and stuff like that under her breath when she was sort of, you know, getting me out of... You know, when I'd been arrested for something or something. She was always there for me in that respect. And kind of right through to the end, you know, she served as a sort of safety net.
I think if you've got that fundamental love as a child and support, you can... do a lot and survive a lot as a consequence, even if it's just a sort of kind of subterranean feeling of security. I always had that with my mother. Yeah, I had that with my father as well. Even though I didn't grow up with my father, I felt that he was an ally. And what you're describing, I...
I agree, it makes you able to cope with these attacks that happen later in life, whatever they are. Yes, and maybe similar to your father, it's not like my mother showed it particularly. She was a warm individual, but she was very stoic, didn't go in for a lot of... You got on with things in an Australian kind of way. They used to call... Australian women, the little Aussie battlers, they used to call them. She was a battler in a way, in the sense that she was quite awful things.
tragic things happened to her. But she just, you know, carried on. And it's not that she... required that from us, essentially. But, you know, it was, there's something to be said for that sort of stoicism, I think. Yeah. Was your father... similar or did he have a different style? Yeah, my father was much more flamboyant. Oh, really? Extremely flamboyant character. A sort of archetypal 70s man. So he was involved in the arts and he dressed not dissimilar in a way to the way that...
I dressed for a while as a young man, which was 70 shirts that were sort of unbuttoned. He was always... wondering whether he should buy a medallion or not. He was this kind of character. He was like a typical arty sort of an Australian. not quite something bit off about the whole thing. But a very intelligent, cultured sort of man who knew his stuff, you know.
because you wear suits all the time now pretty much most of the time but you used to wear you used to have more of an undone look you know more wild and that was Did you look at him for any of those pointers? Not really. But it did coincide, weirdly, now I'm thinking about it. But, you know... The sort of idea that I have a kind of a retro look, like a 70s retro look, but I actually am from the 70s. Yeah. You know, the look that I had was not initially when I grew up.
when I could establish a kind of look before I could afford, say, suits, was a kind of 70s shirt, big collars, open, a couple of buttons down. some sort of gold jewellery, tightish sort of flared trousers. That kind of look was actually the look of the time. It wasn't a retro look so much at the time. There was a slight sense of irony about it, I guess, that we understood. But we actually loved that look. I've always...
I mean, a lot of us Australians from that time love that look. And I've always stuck to it on some level. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, there's so much glamour. There's so much to play with from the 70s. And I never think of you as retro, but there is an endless mine of stuff to have from the 70s. There were so many... gorgeous things and then things referenced from the 30s you know that real elegance but just just messed up a bit in in the 70s
The irony as well. I mean, even when people were deadly serious, it was kind of a joke because it was so gorgeous. I love it. Well, I just think, personally, I... I think trousers mostly should be flared for men. I mean, maybe not for everybody. Maybe that's not actually right. I have a deep aversion. to skinny tight trousers at the bottom. I can't think of anything worse.
And that particular British suit that's tight and skinny lapels and tight trousers. Do you know what I mean? The ones that cling. That kind of lad look. That cling to the calf. That's my worst look on earth. Or cling all the way down. Yeah. Cling on the thighs. I just find that absolutely grotesque. And it sort of still hangs in there, that look, for some reason. I know. It's a very, I don't understand it. You'd think they'd learn. You'd think they'd see themselves in a photograph.
And understand how diabolical that look actually is. It's so unflattering, that's my main... Deeply, deeply. The sort of proportion. that's emphasised is always the wrong bit. Yeah, exactly. But I wanted to ask you as well about your feelings about your body because you're very self-disciplined, which I can relate to a lot. And you're very, very thin and you look after yourself, you maintain yourself, you even go cold water swimming. And I wondered when that...
Was that something that started as a very young person? I'm naturally thin and I'm tall, so I can carry fluctuations of weight relatively easily. I was a... drug addict for 20 years so that keeps the pounds off not that i'm recommending it um and and after that i i just kind of basically look after my weight i have a kind of um a certain weight that i prefer and and eat accordingly in a way i don't um you know eat a lot and then i don't eat so much and
It's the French diet, is that what they say? Is it? What's that supposed to be? I think that if you've eaten an enormous amount the night before, you don't eat so much the next day. Yeah. You know, I think, maybe you've got that wrong. Anyway, I tend to do that. I don't... Go to the gym. I don't do any of that stuff. The only activity I do, which is relatively recently, I think I've been doing for about two years or so, is walk.
to a lake and swim in the lake. And that's not like, that's a sort of gentle, that's much more to do with the water being cold. than actually doing exercise as such. It's an exhilarating feeling, isn't it? It's catastrophic to jump into... I mean, if you're a sort of person who can find mornings difficult or have a slightly gloomy temperament... that they don't like, swim in cold water. It's literally impossible to feel depressed if you jump into freezing water.
Because the attack on the nervous system is so extreme, it just blows all that sort of stuff away. All of the kind of interior... The awful interior conversations that you're having about yourself and about the world or whatever are obliterated. It's absolutely amazing. There's a writer, Roger Deacon. I'm paraphrasing him slightly, but he said, you leap in with all your devils and come out a giggling idiot.
You know, so I've mixed two things up, I think, with that one, but it's essentially very, very true. It's extremely good for the soul. Yeah, really, I do a cold shower every morning for that reason. Yeah, me too. After the hot, I think, am I really going to do it? And I do it because I know it. gets rid of this sad feeling that I... How long do you do? Well, I do two minutes. I'd like to do three, but I'm doing two. You don't have the time.
I've got too much else to do. Yeah. There's always something to strive for, so I'm striving for three minutes. But it is, it's miraculous the way the lightness comes afterwards. Yeah, I do the same thing. It's wonderful. It's wonderful to know that too. Even though I can't remember before I do it, I do it in faith and then it always works. Yeah. It's amazing.
You mentioned being a bad drug addict for a long time, but you still managed to be productive and make records and deliver things. And I wondered... When you stopped taking drugs and drinking, what kind of new disciplines came to life? First of all, I was a heroin addict and that is a discipline in itself. I always look at it as the sort of conservative's drug in the sense that it requires its...
otherwise it's complete chaos. So you wake up in the morning and you have to score and you need to score. to score again or take your drug in the evening as well. This sets up a kind of sort of ritual and sort of weird stabilising. process in your life. The problem is if you're disorganized or you don't have money, let's say, which I've been a heroin addict and had no money.
stops you being able to do this and which sends your life into absolute disorder and chaos. But provided you can... you remain sort of organized in some way, you can lead a weirdly stable existence. But it's actually difficult to stay, you know, to stay organised. But once I gave that up, I did have a lot of... things already in place. I worked in an office and I worked at a desk and I wrote my songs in what I called the office. So I had these sorts of things.
that contained me in some way set up, you know, and that I'd always done, even in Berlin, which were days of unbelievable excess. and chaos, I still worked every day. What record were you making around that time in Berlin? In Berlin, what records? Yeah. I think Tend to Pray was one of them. The Firstborn is Dead. So it was the sort of mid-80s. Right up until the wall came down. I left pretty much exactly when the wall came down. Not because of that, but coincided with that. Yeah.
But, you know, I'm sure it was like this for your father. And from what I... It was like that, say, for Francis Bacon. The work was in its way ordered in the sense that you woke up and you went to work. This was not an optional thing and it wasn't... predicated on inspiration or anything like that, you just did your job until a particular time and then you went out and did whatever you did after that. I've always followed that.
That idea, which actually I learned off the painters because I went to art school for two years and I had a lot of painters who were in the years above me. And I got on really well with these people. And they led pretty extreme wild lives, you know. But they always were at work in the morning. regardless of what state they were in. And this sort of... It's not even... People say it's discipline, but it becomes...
second nature after a while. God, that's so interesting. But that's how I've always acted as a musician and that I've worked every day. But of course, musicians are very different creatures than painters, artists. They work when they feel like it. do nothing for a week and then eventually a song sort of floats down and they write it down and strum their guitar every now and then. There's a kind of, there's no...
real work ethic going on, especially in my day with musicians. But I always had one. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what my father did. It's so interesting that you learnt that. at art school and everyone people associate artists with being very whimsical in their application and yeah and they are the opposite because otherwise Nothing happens. Nothing gets done. Yeah. I learned my work ethic from sitting for my father and watching him and him saying, he used to say, up comes before everything.
And that was evident, you know, I didn't live with him or anything. But because he was an affectionate father in his kind of atmosphere, like... Your mother, he wasn't demonstrative, but I felt it. It was such a lesson of especially battling the sort of gloom. If I work, something will happen and something has to happen. And I mean, you do so much anyway, as well as writing songs. Well, I actually, in the end, don't think that, what you've said. I don't think art becomes art.
becomes before everything. I used to feel that. I used to be sort of have these feelings when I would write. and make my art of a kind of super capability about things. And it was no problem for me to go into... to the office and completely be absorbed in the process of songwriting and whatever I was doing, writing. the books I've written or whatever those other things were. It was very easy for me to fall into that. And I always had this sort of underlying feeling of my own.
capabilities. I've always I've sort of never doubted that even when there was no real evidence. of those capabilities. When I was young, I always had this sort of feeling that what I was doing was of great import. And so that was this sort of engine of creativity. But in the end, I think it took a devastation in my life with the death of my son. to realise that this is not true. This is fundamentally the wrong way of looking at how you live a life. You may leave things behind you, but I think...
Personally, it's a life ill-lived to be completely consumed with your own internal abilities. at the expense of everything else. And if I have regrets, is that I thought that too, that art was everything, and it's not. And I tend to feel other things are more important. My position as a citizen, as a parent, as a husband. as a friend. These things are really the sort of the true sort of juice of life.
Yeah. If you understand what I mean. I totally. And you can be a great artist, but you can also be a terrible human being as a consequence. Ultimately, I don't feel comfortable with that anymore. It doesn't mean that I don't work anymore. It's just that I spend more time consciously. spend more conscious attention on these other things. Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, I remember my father saying that when I was very...
you know, when I was 10 and things, and thinking, okay, I get, you know, it's a difficult thing to hear from the person you love most in the world. I would have thought that was a difficult thing to hear. And I think he...
I mean, I'm inventing this, but I think part of why he said those things was so that he could be as ruthless as he was. But he did... care about other he did care about people and i wonder if he was afraid of sometimes those feelings interfering with his his you know his rigorous But I mean, I agree with you that I think you can be dedicated and you can expand your heart and your mind to be able to...
love people and let them in. Yeah, that's beautifully put. I think that's absolutely possible. You know, that idea of sacrificing everything. for your art for me sits with um the idea that say drugs uh give you an edge or something like that these these sorts of um ideas, extraordinarily self-serving ideas that are actually just completely untrue as far as I can see. Yeah. You know, because I've done both.
You know, the amount of times someone's told me, look, I need to take drugs to write or, you know, I need to lead a dissolute life. to be able to write or whatever these sorts of things are. That's just not true. And it's also not true that you need to sort of sacrifice. your sort of relationship with the world in order to be like a great artist. Yeah, it's a narrow... I mean, many did, many did, obviously.
But I don't think it's necessarily the way. I'm glad. And you talk a lot. Susie, before I came, sorry, Susie, before I came said... Make sure you're funny. So funny. I was going to ask you about Susie because she's such a... Well, she's the one who should be lying here. She's... by far the interesting one. I hope you are. Are you trying to get that happening? Yeah. I hope Susie will be here one day. But as you know, she's a...
most elusive character. And with all her demeanour of gentleness and demureness, she's the most strong-willed person I've ever met in my entire life. And you're such a, you know... You seem such a dominant character, but no one can get one over Susie. No, I'm not really at all in that respect. It's your style, her.
Your style is a style of authority, but you're a very gentle person as well. It's because I wear a suit. I wanted to ask you about... the effect that Susie's had on you, because in 20,000 Days on Earth, the sort of film about you, documentary, you have this chunk where... there are these iconic moments from life, including Marilyn Monroe and the death of Kennedy. And you say, then I met Susie. And I wondered, were you...
did you always think you would meet this love that was that big or did it just happen when you met her? Yeah, well, I don't think I always thought that, no.
It's difficult to say in a way. I don't think I had any. At the time that I met Susie, I was struggling with all sorts of things, you know, and I was in no way in kind of... showroom condition as you know um i mean you you have had such a extraordinary a pivotal sort of position in our lives because um Not only were you Susie's dear friend and someone that kind of looked out for Susie too because she had her own...
problems back then. You were also the reason why we met. There was a show at the National History... Right? Correct me if I'm wrong here. And it's quite something because I didn't know you very well. It was the first... Show I'd ever been to in my fashion show I'd ever been to in my life and we had I Was in the front row and there were little name name name tags on each seat. And there was my name. And then I was sitting next to James Fox, who I thought was the actor James Fox.
And I'm not sure who was on. And Susie was on next to James, who I hadn't met. I'd sat down, I got there early and I'd sat down and I was waiting for things to happen. And I was very much, I was with my ex-partner who'd kind of come along for the ride. And... I didn't really know what to expect in a fashion show or anything. I was a little bit at sea being there anyway. And I was just sitting there and this woman walked in, Susie.
And you hear about this sort of love at first sight type of thing. And what I tried to say in that little piece in... in 20,000 Days on Earth of the effect that she had when I saw her, but it was an absolute impact. It was a complete impact in every possible way. And I just never seen anyone so beautiful.
It's difficult to put into words. But her sort of, as she walked past and sat down next to James, the effect... was not unlike we're talking about jumping into freezing water it was catastrophic and it changed everything for me it completely reassembled what it was, my notions about everything, including beauty. There is an extreme beauty to Susie that is extremely mysterious. It seems to change every day.
that even still after, I don't know, 25 years of marriage or whatever it is, I can't really put my finger on. And it was... rather beautiful because james was sitting in between each other but i kept kind of glancing across james at susie and she sort of was glancing across at me and there was a sort of It was just this feeling. And then I went backstage and she was backstage. And I was literally too overwhelmed to be able to speak to her. But we did have a brief exchange there.
And, you know, I said hello and that it was lovely to meet you or something like that. She said, it's lovely to meet you. In this Susie way. I know. And I think that was all I could handle and kind of, I'm not quite sure what happened after that. Then over quite a... A long period of time we gradually got together. I actually had to work out what to do about pursuing someone that, you know, I had these feelings for. I'd had no...
practice at that whatsoever. I'd never had to ask a woman out on a date or anything in my entire life. I'd just been in a band. You just go from hello to waking up with them the next morning. There's no... Do you understand what I mean? Yeah, of course. There's none of that kind of... Anyway, I had to sort of work that out and that eventually we slowly got together. But I've forgotten what I was talking about. Sorry, it's this sort of...
It's the psychiatric couch. I think just the impact of Susie on your... Well, I suppose I always think I always had this idea I would meet someone and... The world would change and it would be the opposite of my parents who worked together briefly, but I would meet this life-changing person. And in a way...
Well, you did meet the life-changing person, but it sounds like you didn't have a plan as such, and Susie has just become... I mean, you have such a... You have one of the great loves of... this century you know it's it is a just such a moving thing and you wrote that piece in the red hand files about you when Arthur died and using your grief as a superpower. And I've read that lots of times. I've sent it to people whose children have died. And I always remember...
having breakfast with you about five or six years ago, and I was really down. And you said, I can experience happiness. i always remember that moment thinking about what you've been through and it was really like a life raft to me because i It wasn't that I think if you can go through this, why am I feeling this? It was just this feeling of possibility and that you extended that to me. And I wondered how you'd created that.
Yeah, I mean, that's lovely for you to say that. And I think for me, and maybe it's always been this way to some degree. That, you know, for me personally, this may not apply to everyone, but for me personally, the sort of antidote to despair is order and knowing what you're doing. in your life, knowing why you're here, and having practical things that structure a life. And I really have to do that, even though marriage...
is one of those things. It's a kind of ordering of love, in my view, in a very beautiful way. But Susie is chaotic. Susie is this element of disorder and chaos and sort of unmanageability that I have no control over. that exists within my life. And so who, as you were saying, just does what she wants to do, you know, is... Very free in that way. Yeah. But for me, I have to, as a response to that, I have quite an audit.
way of living, you know, going through my day, for example. And I don't like disorder because I get sad. if things are chaotic and I don't know what to do next. You know, it's just bad. It's just bad for me. Not everyone's like that, and I'm not saying that you need to be like that, but for me personally, that idea, if we go back to fashion even, of wearing a suit for me is something structured.
a kind of, you know, it's like a stabilizing element in my life is to wake up in the morning and put on a suit with all its kind of structure and architecture and its angles and everything like that. You know, I don't like soft clothing. I don't like, you know, I like to be kind of kept. I love the structure and strictures of things, mostly really because I think that's when I can allow the imagination to be run.
completely free as long as there's some sort of order around things. And in a way, we go back to the idea of painting and stuff. I think that that... That is a way of making order out of chaos. Yeah. Anyway, that's absolutely essential for me and for... my happiness and also, I would say, the sort of success of our relationship, one of the reasons for that is a marriage. And that we are contained in something that's sort of bigger than our own selves in some way. Yeah. You know, that we work.
You know, I think we both understand that on some level. Yeah. Sorry. No, it's wonderful. I mean, it's such a useful... thing to know about yourself because often people don't know what makes them happy or what is a structure to make things productive or for life to feel you know
going forward. That's right. The more you know, I find, the more you know what suits you, the more you can do. I mean, I fundamentally disagree with the concept of... that sort of untrammeled freedom that we're all sort of supposed to be making our way towards, the sort of destruction of the institutions and all the things that...
that holds the society together and these ideas of marriage and these sorts of things, and also creativity, that we're at our most creative when we're at our most free. I don't think that's true. I think we're, in my experience at least, at my most creative when I'm operating in a system of quite rigid, controlled experience. that's when the good stuff really happens for me. Yeah. And I find that too in the idea of marriage. For me personally, I'm not...
I can only speak for myself in these matters. And there's people who have excellent lives in all sorts of different ways. But for me personally, That antidote to despair has a lot to do with the habits and rituals that I have operating in my life. Yeah. I like to have to do things. Yeah. Because then I can get them done and even traveling. But I always feel you're very ordered. Yeah.
Yeah, but only... I mean, there's an attempt that you understand the sort of despairing nature of chaos. Yeah, totally. Because of the way you were brought up.
Is that right? Yeah, very much so. I feel it's the antithesis of being able... You had hippie parents and you didn't have to go to school. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, definitely it was. And I found... order made me able to have ideas and the less order the more of a mess I just can't make decisions and when when I feel indecisive I feel totally you know without any power. So I relate very much to this whole thing about work. I love going to work. I like being at my desk and having deadlines.
I love it. It's great. I mean, in fact, when Susie was doing The Vampire's Wife, her amazing fashion brand, and there was a... the trade fair in Paris called Premier Vision, which is the most boring. Wow, the memories. And she would manage to get out of going, but she'd send you. Yeah.
We used to go around this huge place. It's like there's no air. It's like breathing dust and thousands of stands. But you were really good at it. You're able to do things that a lot of... would find totally phasing and uh have you you've have you felt so confident i'm I was the only person at Premier Vision that actually liked being there, I think. I think so. Because I was there with, you know, there was a bunch of other, I think Philip Tracy was there or Stefan or you and...
I mean, I went to a few of them and everyone loathed going to Premiere Vision because it's just such a sort of shit show. But, you know, it was new for me. But, yeah, Susie, you know, had a...
whatever, at the last minute. And so I'd... She'd get a headache and then you'd come. Yeah, she'd get a headache or whatever that might be. That was great. But I loved doing that. Yeah, you seemed... to have a lot of, you give a lot of thought to each other's work and you're very collaborative without collaborating in an official way. you listen to each other. That's the impression I get. Yeah, that's true. It's true. Susie's actually very musical.
much more innately musical than I am. I mean, she just didn't learn an instrument or anything, but she hears music in a very musical way. I'm quite good with clothes and stuff. At least I have my own ideas about it. I have, you know, very violent reactions against things that I don't like. In the same way as Susie does, there's no two ways about certain things in regard to fashion for us.
So that's good. And we're pretty aligned on those sorts of things. And if you fancy someone and don't like what they're wearing, does it kill your attraction? I mean, Susie is the great love in your life. And if she wears something, you're quite, as you said, particular about things. And what happens? Well... Do you mean I'd be put off someone if they wore something that I had a particular dislike? Yeah. They'd have to work a lot harder, if you know what I mean. You know, I mean.
You know, I don't know. There's certain things I don't like. Do you want me to say what they are? Yeah, because I know there are certain shoes and things you don't like. Yeah, I have sort of issues around certain shoes. What kind of shoes? You know, I mean, I don't like ankle boots. I really don't like them. Any particular reason? And I know many people to wear them. With dresses. Right. I think they're a bit of a disaster.
Can you describe what it is you don't like? I think it's a shortening. They basically, in my view, shorten the legs. Don't you think? Do you think?
It depends on... Do you have a whole lot of them in your bedroom? I've only got a pair of white cowboy boots. Am I sort of wading into... No, it's a very... It's a popular look amongst sexy girls who wear... ankle boots but yeah i don't like that i don't i mean i just don't like that um yeah i know the look i mean that's just me it's nothing actually wrong with them It's just a sort of thing, for example. Do I sound like some sort of fascist? No, it's amazing how affecting it is when...
Someone wears something that you don't like and how you have to reconfigure your intention towards them. Is it over? Or do you kind of find something else? demand they take it off if you are in that privileged position yeah or you know, understand in some way that friendship or whatever is really a kind of series of sort of small forgivenesses. And it's okay. You know, it's not the end of the world. Ankle boots aren't the end of the world.
They're adjacent to the end of the world, but kind of forgivable too, right? So I remember when I came to Brussels for your exhibition of the... the ceramics at Xavier Hoskins. And I came and Susie... Susie and I had lunch and then she said that you didn't like the shoes she was wearing and so she went you went to a shop and she put these shoes on and then
They cost about £2,000 and she was really pleased she'd managed to get these wonderful new shoes because you'd objected to whatever it was she was wearing. So it had quite... a good outcome is that why she wears her shoes apart from to your credit card but yeah she's she's got a lot As well as touring your new album, you've been exhibiting your work, your sculptures of the series The Life of the Devil, and there's something very endearing about it.
about him and the clothes he wears as well I wondered how you decided what he would look like because I mean I love your drawings anyway and These sculptures and these figurines are just so beautiful and full of pathos. And the devil's wearing these sort of amazing clothes as well. And I wondered how you chose to... make him have this kind of touching element as well as being the devil. Yeah, I mean, they're based on Staffordshire style or Staffordshire figurines.
You know, they're imitations on some level of Staffordshire figurines, which were made in the, you know, 1800s and later, but essentially then Victorian. And so sometimes the costumes are Victorian. There's a narrative of 17 figurines that tell the story of the devil. And I think it's the 14th one where he is in despair, in remorse, in remorse, the devil in remorse. He suddenly just wears a black suit.
And I think that's an attempt to suddenly pull it into the contemporary. It's very effective. Yeah, thank you. And as well as everything you do, I remembered a while back when... Russell Crowe asked you to write Gladiator 2, and you did, and it sounded quite funny, and I wondered what happened to that. What happened with that, the whole thing? I'd written the script for a film.
called The Proposition. It was an Australian Western. It's a brilliant film. That John Hillcoat directed. One day I get a phone call and it's Russell Crowe. And this is just when the whole of the proposition project had collapsed before it got working again and became a film. And he asked me if I wanted to write another script. And I'm like, no fucking way. I don't want to have anything to do with that. That's just a sort of dog's job. You know, it's just a complete waste of time, et cetera.
And he goes, what about Gladiator 2? And I'm like, okay. And then I'm like, didn't you die in Gladiator 1? And he goes, no, you sort that out. You sort that out. And because he wanted to be in it. And as far as I know, Ridley Scott was interested in the idea too. And so I set about writing that script. I just knew that the idea that I had would never be made in Hollywood anyway. So it was a kind of rather fun fool's errand. They never got made.
It was a good story. I bet. It was called Christ Killer, which was going to have problems in Hollywood anyway. Gladiator is sent down from purgatory in order to kill the Christians because they were sort of taking over and the ancient gods were dying. In one of the versions, he ends up being the centurion that sticks the spear in the side of Christ. Wow. It went all over the place. Anyway.
I sent it to Russell and I'm like, what do you think? And he goes, don't like it, mate. Oh, God. And I'm like, what about the end? Nah, mate. And so that was the end of that. And it's just sort of sat around, you know, on the... On the internet, you can read it, I think. Oh, really? Oh, I'll definitely read that. I love films that bring in the gods, anything to do with ancient.
Yes, he wakes up in purgatory and the gods know he is gladiator. And so they send for him and all the gods are dying because there's this force down on earth that's taking over, which is Christianity. and Christ and these disciples, and they know their days are numbered, so they send Gladiator down to earth to kill Christ and all the disciples. Oh, dear.
Anyway. That's really funny. It was a good idea, but it didn't wash. I remember once when we were figuring out... some suits for you ages ago and you said i just want to look like a big old spider on stage which is such a kind of powerful image and My shrink said that people attach their phobias to, especially spiders. But you describing yourself like this, and yet everyone is drawn towards you, and I just...
wondered what you were thinking when you said that. Well, you know, I think what I was probably thinking is I wanted to be long and lean and all angles and, you know.
like a big old spider yeah um it's a great description you know i i think what what i've always tried to do and what you've we've talked about before actually is that the idea of the silhouette and and for me on stage that that's that's what it's all about it's why i tend to wear dark suits or black suits and because They're good from a distance in the sense that your figure is cut out, the silhouette is clean and angular and cut out in a dramatic way.
And you write a lot about black hair and you and Susie have this incredible black hair and I wondered if you'd ever been attracted. It comes from the same tube. Have you ever been attracted to blonde? Yeah. I've had blonde girlfriends. Feels weird to say, actually. Yeah. I can't even imagine it now, but I have, yeah. The thing about black hair for me, it has its origin story, which is the first girl that I was really attracted to or that I was, like, mystified by.
I don't mean in love with, but that was, I thought was of a kind of beauty that was... I was very young. I was 14, 15 or something like that. I had absolutely no idea what to do with this person. But she had black hair and a kind of... She would wear pale makeup. And this was a long time ago. And that... I was, you know, deeply attracted to this person. I mean, deeply attracted. And she left suddenly...
She just sort of disappeared out of my life. And after that, I started to dye my hair black. Really? I was... you know really upset by the whole thing it's like the first the first sort of heartbreak and uh i um dyed my hair black and uh i basically kept it black ever since weirdly enough, for all sorts of different reasons. There's something about when you and Susie come into a room and you're both, you have this glossy raven black hair and it's just...
It's so romantic. It's incredible. Well, it's because we've sort of probably dyed it on the same day out of the same, you know. Do you do it yourself? You don't go somewhere. I've been dyeing my hair, allegedly dyeing my hair for, I don't know, 50 years. Thank God. You told me once about the Enneagram personality typing system based on ancient spiritual traditions, which describes...
people's motivations in terms of their desires and fears. And I did the test. You said you were an eight and I did the test and came out an eight. I was kind of... Very relieved to be an eight too. And I just, do you enjoy that kind of thing sometimes? Yeah, not really. Not really. It's a little kind of... woo-woo, that kind of stuff. But I think the Enneagrams are actually very accurate. I found them at the time. It's one of those things. I probably raved you about it at the time.
When I got my character type back, I recognised a lot of very detailed things that I saw in myself. And the one that moved me... was Susie's Enneagram when she did it. She was a six, and that was someone that was essentially fearful. You can grow into your Enneagram type, I think, and Susie's... has throughout her life an extraordinary amount of horrendous things, you know. The sort of reason for Susie is predicated on a whole lot of dark subterranean forces in her life that she is afraid of.
And when I read her thing, I found it unbelievably moving because she's just a six. You know, these things, these confounding...
deeply difficult aspects of her nature are there because she is a six. And that was really... moving to me you know a six literally dresses beautifully all the time because they're afraid of being physically attacked wow you know it's and so they they feel that they need to maintain be visually beautiful to the world or else the world will turn on them i mean it's an unbelievably moving thing and you know and and and on some level
It makes sense with Susie. She... She... You know, I found that really... You know, the thing about... The Enneagram is that they really humanize people. You read an Enneagram and you understand why someone is the way that they... I find the Enneagram in the end very moving sort of thing. Whenever I've doubted Susie, she's proved me wrong. in the way that I would least like it. What do you mean? Well, I remember once we went on holiday in Italy and we went to this beach and...
She said, I'm worried that there's snakes. And I said, oh, don't be silly. It's fine. And, you know, I've been there loads of times. Yeah. Anyway, I looked round and there was something that looked like the Loch Ness monster just coming up and down out of the sand. And it was like she just proved to me... Yeah, that... I'll never forget that. That happened. That happens all the time with me. That is a six thing without going back to the Enneagrams too much, but a six can see.
danger and disaster coming way before normal human beings can and and have an intuitive response to people that's often susie is like be careful of that person yeah what the we just met we just met them you know um and she's generally right yeah i always pay attention Yeah, I've learned to pay attention. Yeah, yeah. Because I want to reassure her, but I also want to pay attention because she's...
Or onto something quite a lot of the time. She's generally onto something. Yeah. But at the same time, I don't personally, I'm trusting of the world, trusting of people. I kind of like people even if I don't like them. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm the same. I just like them in theory. I think I'm more afraid of fear than I... then I'm fearful. Fear is such a potential stopper that I've often throughout my life set myself tests.
Not even consciously some of the time, but it makes me feel very... Well, like when I was a child, I used to do... When I learned about the Spartans, I did all sorts of endurance tests. Really? yeah like when i was 11 and 10 i i constructed i would I would sleep with one blanket in the winter and not allow myself a second helping. That's brilliant, really. I mean, that's why all the cold water and all that stuff, I'll embrace that. That seems easy.
Having a genuine fear feels so much more threatening and more paralyzing that I I like all the continuity and anything that sets that up, like you described. Yeah, it's funny. I'm not fearful. I'm not saying I'm brave. I'm saying I just don't have that sort of paralyzing fear or a kind of suspicion towards certain things. that Susie has, and she has very good reason for it, you know, if you start to dig back through her life, the things that she's gone through.
It's no wonder. And I haven't had that kind of life. I haven't had those sorts of experiences. You know, so people have generally been good. Yeah. To me and that I've seen in the way that they are. I have a sort of fundamentally different way of viewing the world. But the world is often difficult and Susie's often right, you know. And I'm often left looking kind of naive about things.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah, she has this kind of... Like she understands the geology of what's happening. It's so deep. Yeah. It's really... Unlike anything, anyone, I don't know anyone like her. And she's, yeah. Yeah, it's funny that you mention the snake. You know, when she said, you've got to be careful of snakes. This sort of thing has played out with me so many times. And, you know, I'm Australian, so I'm like...
Blase about all that sort of stuff. The dangers lurking behind everything. And we've had absolutely hilarious and tragic. scenarios in that way. I think I remember hearing something about finding a scorpion under a rock. She kept worrying about spiders in Australia and I'm like, for fuck's sake, you know. Yeah, there are spiders, but you're not going to find them anywhere. And we were in a rented house, and she was putting the nappy.
onto one of the children. And there was a whiteback, which is a particular spider that if it bites you, you sort of blister up in all these pustules and stuff. It was an unbelievably horrible spider. sitting in the child's nappy. And she's like... It was typical. Anyway. Yeah. She'd find it and she'd save the day. It's a deadly combination. Yeah, that's right. I've been listening a lot to your song Love Letter and I love that song so much.
There's a line where you say, I said something I did not mean to say. And I wondered if you remembered what that was. I don't know, but that is from that period. in our early relationship. Susie claims, although I can't remember doing this, but there's probably very good reason I can't remember doing this, that I... put a love letter into her letterbox at Castellane when she lived there in Maida Vale that I think it was after.
I think we'd broken up. We were together and then she stopped seeing me. I think I was just too fucked up to have a relationship with. And couldn't find her. Do you remember this? Yeah. And you held this party here or the other next door. In my old flat, yeah. In your old flat.
And I was kind of bereft by this stage. Susie had completely disappeared off the face of the earth. I might have the order of things wrong, but Susie turned up to that party wearing... a little dress that she cut off that was so fucking short and long purple gloves up to here and this flimsy tiny little skirt. And looked unbelievable. I mean, she looked unbelievable. I can't, you know, it was deeply unfair, deeply unfair that she sort of re-entered my life.
And I'm not sure if she didn't disappear again. I can't really remember. But anyway, that night apparently I sort of ran through the rain and sort of delivered a letter into her letterbox, which... That song Love Letter comes from. Yeah. I'm not so sure that's true. I seem to remember things. But I was pretty, you know, I was pretty out of it. So I probably don't know. I can't remember.
really remember that well you courted her in the way and um i always remember her telling me that she just decided one that you were the one And she came to your door and rang the bell and said, I don't care what you're going through, but I'm never leaving you again. Yeah, that's right. That was after eight months of...
Disappearing, essentially. Yeah. She just arrived back. Yeah. There's a song about that. There's a song, Final Rescue Attempt, it's called. Yeah, I've been listening. Which describes that. It's so beautiful. I love that. The last time you came around here was to rescue me. You arrived. with your customary flair. You rode through the rain all the way from Castellane with the wind, with the wind, with the wind in your hair. Yeah, that was quite...
Yeah, that was quite something. And then she just stayed. She just stayed. So once again, you're sort of involved in our lives. Wow, that's been great. Joy for me to have you and Susie as my family and our sons. It's a family thing. It is. It feels very close and very... You know, talking of freedom, it does feel, it has this freedom of how we come and go, but we're always there.
it's one of the great joys of my life yeah me too it's one of the reasons why i wanted to come in and do this in a way apart from that i've seen other ones that you've done and they're really amazing it's a sort of lovely idea you know we've had countless meals together and conversations about things and but there was something there's something about this idea that i that i saw on some of the other people this kind of drifty thing that goes on
just to lie here and talk about things. It's a unique way to, you know, conduct an interview in a way. Thank you so much. Good idea. Thank you so much, Nick, for being here and being on Fashion Neurosis. It's my pleasure, Bella. Thank you.