Nick Cave is attending King Charles III’s coronation on Saturday (May 6). The trip might seem out of character for the midnight-dim singer-songwriter best known for murder ballads, patented jaundiced view of the soul of man and his death’s creep baritone voice. But in a letter on his Red Right Hand Files site posted this week, Cave responded to a series of letters asking why the Australian-born singer was making the trip, including one who wondered what a young Nick would think of the 65-year-old Cave tipping his hat to the new monarch?
“I am not a monarchist, nor am I a royalist, nor am I an ardent republican for that matter; what I am also not is so spectacularly incurious about the world and the way it works, so ideologically captured, so damn grouchy, as to refuse an invitation to what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age,” wrote Cave, who noted that he had to be quick because he’s still working out what to wear.
“Not just the most important, but the strangest, the weirdest,” added “The Weeping Song” singer, who said he once met the late Queen Elizabeth at a Buckingham Palace event for an event he thought was titled “Aspirational Australians Living in the UK” (or something to that effect).
“It was a mostly awkward affair, but the Queen herself, dressed in a salmon coloured twin-set, seemed almost extraterrestrial and was the most charismatic woman I have ever met,” he recalled. “Maybe it was the lighting, but she actually glowed. As I told my mother – who was the same age as the Queen and, like the Queen, died in her nineties – about that day, her old eyes filled with tears.”
Cave said that when he watched the Queen’s funeral on TV last year to his surprise he found himself weeping as her coffin was “stripped of the crown, orb and sceptre and lowered through the floor of St. George’s Chapel. I guess what I am trying to say is that, beyond the interminable but necessary debates about the abolition of the monarchy, I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals – the strangeness of them, the deeply eccentric nature of the whole affair that so perfectly reflects the unique weirdness of Britain itself. I’m just drawn to that kind of thing – the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefyingly spectacular, the awe-inspiring.”
As for young Nick, well, like many youngsters, Cave said his teen self was “young and like many young people, mostly demented, so I’m a little cautious around using him as a benchmark for what I should or should not do.” Regardless of what you might think, Cave said he’s looking forward to the event and, yes, he’ll probably wear a suit.
Cave joins a short list of artists attending the event, including Sunday’s Coronation Concert performers Katy Perry, Lionel Richie, Take That and Andrea Bocelli. In the months leading up to Charles’ coronation there were a raft of stories about the many artists who had reportedly declined invitations to attend or perform, including such British pop royalty as Harry Styles, Elton John, Ed Sheeran, Robbie Williams, Adele and the Spice Girls.
