Nick Cave has revealed the songs he wants played at his funeral.
Taking once again to his Red Hand Files website, Cave answered a question from a fan who had recently lost his father, and gave him an Elvis-themed funeral.
“No, we didn’t dress up in white jumpsuits, but his coffin had Elvis pictures and lyrics, and Elvis songs were played for him,” the fan wrote. “I don’t know if anyone has asked you this before in The Red Hand Files, but what songs would you like played at your own funeral?
Cave replied: I was very moved by your letter. I’m sure your dad would have been very happy with his Elvis themed funeral. Thinking about it, I would be very happy with one too — to be ushered into the next world by the voice of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll singer of them all.
“Kentucky Rain, that’s what I’d like, Kentucky Rain and How Great Thou Art — Elvis singing gospel, with heaven and all its angels listening. It was a lovely thing to do for your dad. Sounds like you did a great job.”
Elsewhere on the Red Hand Files, Cave recently revealed that helping a friend find the drive to create art is what boosted his own songwriting for his new lockdown-created album ‘Carnage’.
‘Carnage’, last month’s surprise release made in collaboration with his Bad Seeds bandmate Warren Ellis, was written over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, at a time when Cave said he had “nothing in my head but a whole lot of dread and uncertainty” but that after helping his friend, the California-based British sculptor and painter Thomas Houseago, who had suffered a breakdown, Cave made his own artistic breakthroughs.
In a five-star review of ‘Carnage’, NME wrote: “‘Carnage’ is arguably Cave and Ellis’ best record since The Bad Seeds’ latter day reinvention on 2013’s ‘Push The Sky Away’, or maybe even ‘Abattoir Blues’. It’s certainly two master craftsmen at the peak of their melodramatic powers.
“Cave and Ellis have taken a bold leap into the COVID era’s dark night of the soul, and found a truth that we all share.”
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