E: I didn't know what to expect when Nick released his first LP.

M: No? I was surprised, too.

E: I was impressed by it.

M: It's alright, for a first album, it's not that great.

E: I don't like Wings Off Flies very much, though...

M: Oh, it's just really... everything's obviously done in a completely different manner to the way we'd done things before. Some of it worked, and some of it didn't.

E: Which were the songs that you thought didn't?

M: Dunno... it's overall, in a way, I mean Cabin Fever doesn't really work, although its got some great things about it; the same thing with From Her To Eternity, that doesn't really work, although it's got great things about it; it's actually just a kind of mess.

E: Maybe I should ask you what your favourite Bad Seeds songs are?

M: Why?

E: Well, you've said that so many of the songs seem to be patchy...

M: No, that's just the first album, which is not to criticise the songs necessarily, its just the way they were handled or recorded, or whether they were effective. I mean, From Her To Eternity is a great song, and we've actually recorded a version of it for the Wim Wenders film. (Wings of Desire -KB) There's a new version with this line-up in it, which is a very different version. I'm not sure it's totally the way it should be, it's kinda like a live version of the song, and it's a lot stronger than the old version on the first album.

E: Who the hell is Tim Rose?

M: He's this strange guy... he used to be in this group called the Fug (? text blurred) Three in the early/mid sixties, and who's done a few solo albums. One of them had a song he wrote called Morning Dew on it, which has been covered by quite a few people including Lee Hazelwood, Marc Almond, and Neubauten on their last album... but I think Neubauten did a bad version of it...

E: Their version of Sand was good.

M: Yeah! Their version of Sand was good, but I don't like their version of Morning Dew... but a lot of people have done that song anyway... there's this one Tim Rose album, I think Blixa got it from some Canadian radio station, I think he stole it, this really rare record! It's got some great stuff on it, a great version of Hey Joe, long before Hendrix's, Long Time Man... I've got a tape copy of it back in Berlin, but it's a pretty scratchy record, I should think it would be impossible to find, I've never seen a copy of it anywhere.

E: Do you think the Bad Seeds will do any live albums?

M: Hahahaha!

E: No? I gather not...

M: No, we wouldn't be organized enough. I don't think there's much need, there's enough bootlegs going round, about three or four live records going around in Germany, from different concerts, I don't feel the need to do that. If people really want it, they can get it.

E: Just wondered... I mean, some of the things that happen on stage, some of the things Nick says, are just kind of peculiar to the stage... like Black Betty last night, with you and Blixa with those big silly grins...

M: Singing out of sync with each other?

E: Yes, that was wonderful!

M: Well, we don't exactly practice that song...

E: How often have you actually done that song?

M: Um..er... about twice...

E: It sort of showed...

M: Well, we actually did a really great version of that in Italy once, which went for about fifteen minutes because Nick was just really drunk, and improvised the whole time, so we kept going. It was much faster, and we had a stage with wooden floorboards, so everyone was stomping and stuff. It was great, and quite funny. I mean, it must have been alright if Nick kept it going for fifteen minutes. I think he went straight into some song, and we had to start playing it, going, 'What the fuck is he doing?!'

E: Tell me about the Bad Seeds new album.

M: Why? Why d'you want to know?

E: 'Cause I'm nosy.

M: Well, we've recorded about fifteen songs, we just have to finish a few of them, and decide which ones we want on the record, which ones we want to go ahead and mix for the album. It's extremely varied in style, so I couldn't tell you what the album's going to end up like, 'cause it all depends on what we choose, we could choose a few particular songs, and the headlines would scream 'Nick Cave Records a Pop Album!'... but they probably won't be on the record, so I won't say that. It's a lot more 'up', the songs are more... pacy, a lot of our records have a lot of slower songs on them.

E: Are you going back to England to do another tour?

M: I'm not going back to England, hopefully, for any tour!

E: Well, the Bad Seeds, then.

M: Well, we might do a couple of gigs there... by default!

E: I gather you don't like playing there?

M: No, not at all. It's a shithole.

E: Other than climate, why?

M: There does seem to be a severe problem in England that the people have preconceptions, England's the worst place for that by far. You can smell it in the air, and you can't combat it really, so it's like, apart from maybe 10% of your audience, it really feels like you're wasting your time, because they've got a set idea about what they wanted before they arrived, and very often they get it, even if they didn't get it at all, because they wanted to get it, that's how bad it is.

It's very difficult, we do play there occasionally. We didn't play there at all last year, but we didn't play in a lot of places last year.

You can play and get a reasonable amount of money in London, if you can discount the British audience problem being at its worst in London... it's just the conditions... once you go touring around the country... the way you get treated by the clubs... the food you have to eat that's always in a lump... y'know, it's kind of unpleasant, you just don't really have a good time... each club varies, of course, but it's just everything really.

By contrast, when you get to the Continent, you just get treated so well by everybody... usually they have all the right equipment, they take you out for dinner, and they're really interested in the group. Most of the people in Europe who run clubs and do tours are really interested in the groups they're working with, whereas in England they couldn't care less.

E: You've just repeated a lot of what Lizard Train told us about Europe.

M: Yeah well, that's what it's like, that's the way it is, it's so patently obvious after the first few minutes of being somewhere how you're being treated, that you can't help but notice. Itıs just not very pleasant, playing in England.

E: Kind of a shame.

M: No, not really, why bother playing there? Germany and France are much bigger markets than England, if you want to talk about markets. There's also this press thing in England, where so many people pay attention to the British press.

E: It does seem to be rather an annoying situation, then.

M: It is, yeah.

E: The thing is, we can't get European music papers out here, except for the English ones, and even if we could get the European ones, most of us wouldn't be able to read them, so we'd have to go by the British ones, which are often wildly inaccurate.

M: Yeah, we can't get around that, unfortunately. We just go to England, put in a minimum number of gigs, just to make an appearance in the country... the situation exists because of the appalling state of radio in England. The music press exist to service the youth of Britain who are interested in music, usually they're in their late teens and have no decent radio to listen to. It's completely different in Australia, if it were the case here, then RAM, and papers like that would be influential. They're not influential, they're just a service.

E: I think that the music papers in England tend to say that a band is 'such and such and such' and the reader thinks, 'well, that sounds like the sort of stuff I'd be interested in', and they go and see the band, and if the band's not like that at all, the reader will blame the band for not living up to the promise that the music paper ascribed it to; when of course, it's not the band who've made the mistake, but the music paper. On top of that, if the music paper had've been more accurate, that same reader who'd been manipulated into disliking the band for 'false pretenses' might've actually liked them.

M: Yeah, but also, people don't often get to hear and decide what the group is like in England; they decide before they've heard the group, 'cause of the music press... as a consequence, the music press has become very powerful, and they sell a lot of papers; they cover a broad area, all sorts of groups that are up and coming, and people in America and Australia get to hear about these groups in that way too.

If there was strong radio in England, the music press wouldn't exist in this form, they couldn't. They wouldn't get away with what they get away with now because people would hear the music first, and then make up their minds, and we wouldn't get these journalists being able to completely bullshit the whole time about things.

One thing I've noticed is how many groups in Australia still seem to be able to follow their own path... there still seems to be the potential for groups to be really good here, untainted somehow.

In England, the lures of big money and fame is just so close, and just so easily accessible that people fall for it really quickly, early on in their careers; they see the temptation, and the ones with the biggest egos who are usually the singers and songwriters, they go and get taken in by it. But here, that just don't exist really, unless you always intended to be commercial anyway, you're given years to develop, to feel bitter, to work it our over and over.

E: Ollie Olsen's been going for a while now.

M: Yeah, I know...

E: He's done some very good stuff...

M: I know, I know he has, he's quite bitter, too!

E: Is he bitter, or... ?

M: I think, actually, he is quite bitter, yeah. We all started off in Melbourne around the same time, and there is... although I don't get involved in it... a very strong level of competition between the people who started off around that time; there was in the late seventies anyway, a very bad competitive streak running through... it can be healthy, I suppose, but usually it isn't... Ollie's always had a bit of an obsession about Nick anyway, and one about Rowland (Howard), because Ollie and Rowland were in a group together (The Young Charlatans) at one stage; writing half the songs each, and singing half the songs each...

Ollie's still here, still struggling, trying to get a start in some way, and I think he must feel pretty bitter about The Birthday Party going overseas and getting popular, and now Nick's band... I really like a lot of Ollie's stuff... if he wasn't so bitter he'd probably like a lot of our stuff too.

E: Don't he like it?

M: Oh, I don't think he'd allow himself to...

(later)

M: Is Adelaide really dead these days? It seems to be.

E: Not many people go out to gigs as much as before, I think... they go out and see that crud that support you now...

M: The Mad Turks?

E: Oh, they're the most dull bunch of...

M: Yeah, they did seem quite dull to me.

E: They pull fairly big crowds, though...

M: Do they? But not last night, cause it was $12?

E: The best bands, I think, in Adelaide at the moment are The Lizard Train and Bloodloss, and a couple of other bands aren't bad.

M: I just remember Truck. Truck were wonderful! Truck were great. I like Truck!

E: Hahaha!!

M: Truck are a good band!!

E: You should have seen their first few shows, they were funnier than the time they supported you...

M: I bet! They were all funny... in fact, they might be doing a guest spot tonight for twenty minutes. I invited them... Well, after The Mad Turks I thought we need something, we were a bit stunned backstage with that group... we were going 'Oh my God... what a throwback... '

E: What do you think of the Swans?

M: I don't go for the Swans really. Nick thinks the Swans are just unbelievably fantastic.

E: How's your hearing?