"It's a sad song, but you're a sad-looking bunch of people," he said Nick Cave before it's on Kalemegdan On August 7, he sang "Bright Horses". It was a very Cave-like way to go from humor to something completely different in a matter of seconds
Cave is already well known to the audience in Serbia - he performed with the Bad Seeds several times in Belgrade and at Exit. Nevertheless, the concert of almost two and a half hours, without real breaks and with very little idle time, left a strong impression on the audience, not only because of the repertoire, but also because of the way it was conducted.
Four decades with the Bad Seeds
Cave has been backed by The Bad Seeds for over four decades. From 1984's "From Her to Eternity" to today, the members, the sound and the phases the band went through have changed, but not their significance in his career.
A special place in that story has long been Warren Ellis, Cave's most recognizable collaborator and counterpart on stage. Their collaboration has long gone beyond the band itself: together they compose music for films and series, while Cave has been writing novels and film scripts for a long time.
In recent years, he has written and spoken more and more about faith, loss, art, family and relationships with other people, which forms an important part of both his music and the way he speaks to the audience.
Nick Cave is clearly loved by the audience, but it is equally visible how important contact with them is for him. Sometimes at the piano, sometimes at the very edge of the stage, during the entire concert he returned to the people in front of him and included them in what was happening. With Cave, it has long been not just the usual communication between two songs, but an important part of the performance itself.
Red Hand Files and the relationship with the public
For years, Cave has been building a relationship with the audience outside of the concert stage. Therefore, it was not unusual that before the start of the performance, there was a QR code for "The Red Hand Files" on the big screens.
Cave started Red Hand Files in 2018 with the idea of answering questions from people who listen to his music. In the meantime, it has grown into something much broader: every week he receives hundreds of letters, from the very ordinary to the very personal, which he reads himself and chooses the ones to answer.
There are no moderators, ads or monetization, and those who sign up receive new answers by email. Thus, over the years, the Red Hand Files have become an almost parallel part of Cave's creativity - a space where people share their experiences, and he responds to them from his own.
The QR code for Red Hand Files on the screens before the start of the concert was a clear indication of how important communication with the audience has become in Cave's work.
Cave's evening at Kalemegdan
The concert started around 21.10, almost without delay, with the song "Get Ready for Love". On the ramparts above the Lower Town, people who had gathered outside the concert venue to listen to Cave could be seen.
Over the next two and a half hours, The Bad Seeds went from loud and energetic songs without much warning to ones that would leave Cave at the piano and almost complete silence in front of him.
During "Papa Won't Leave You, Henry" Cave got right up close to the front rows and then stepped on their raised hands. The audience held him as he balanced on them as he continued to sing, further raising the already strong energy of the song and the audience.
During one of the short breaks between the two songs, "Pump" began to roar through the audience.
Cave paused, listened for a while to a chant whose meaning he obviously did not know, then said:
"I am making an assumption that that was a good thing."
The laughter and applause that followed was a clear enough answer.
With "O Children" a large part of Kalemegdan sang along with him. During the evening, Cave asked for it several times, and at certain moments he stopped singing just to hear the audience.
Announcing "Wide Lovely Eyes", Cave said he wrote the song for his wife Susie and dedicated it to her. By the way, earlier in an interview he talked about how the song was created when he watched Suzy leave their house in Brighton and go towards the sea, with discomfort and fear that one day she might not return.
"Hollywood", "Skeleton Tree" and what remains after loss
And then came "Hollywood" - a fifteen-minute song that ends with the story of Kisa Gotama, a woman whose child dies. She refuses to accept his death and asks the Buddha for a cure.
He tells her to find a grain of salt in a house where no one has ever died. Visiting the houses, she realizes that there is no such thing.
During "Hollywood" the audience became almost completely silent.
However, an even more personal moment came with "Skeleton Tree".
Cave said that he didn't perform the song for a long time because it was too sad for him, but he decided to sing it with us that night.
It's the first song he's written since the death of his son Arthur, who died after falling off a cliff near Brighton in 2015. Cave later wrote how difficult it was for him to return to her and that, only from the distance of time, he began to hear something in her besides the emptiness he felt while writing it.
Seven years later, in May 2022, his eldest son, Jethro Lazenby, Arthur's half-brother, also died.
Cave has repeatedly said that the deaths of his two sons changed him. When he returned to performing, he wrote that he became much more aware that the people standing in front of him also come with their own losses and pain. He also spoke about the fact that it was work and the community that helped him to continue.
Maybe that's why the way the concert ended was so natural.
The last song was "Into My Arms".
Cave started to sing it, but left the ending to the people in front of him. He turned the microphone towards the audience.
Several thousand voices continued the song without him, while he stood on the stage and listened.
When the song ended, he thanked the audience in Serbian and left the stage.
This time he had nothing to add.
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