Nick Cave tells Desert Island Discs work repelled him after sons’ deaths

The frontman of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 67, told host Lauren Laverne of his changing attitude: “It has a lot to do with Arthur and Jethro… I always just thought art was, kind of at the end of the day, everything.

“I mean, it’s a terrible thing to say, but it was, it was always there. It was always reliable.”

He said he would go into an office each day, lock the door and “work away… sort of, you know, in awe of my own creative potential”.

“And I think after Arthur died, I just shut the office, and I haven’t gone, I just locked it up,” he said. “I was just repelled by it in some way. It seems so indulgent.”

Cave has previously spoken about his grief over losing his sons, saying after Arthur’s death that he felt his presence all the time.

“Grief and love are forever intertwined,” he wrote in an open letter. “Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable.”

He told Laverne that while he still works “very, very hard” it is no longer the “be-all and end-all of everything”.

Cave, known for songs including Red Right Hand and Into My Arms, continued: “I find my responsibility towards my children and my wife, and to be a citizen, a husband, these things are the actual animating force behind, or should be the animating force behind our creativeness.”