Leigh Sales has issued an awkward apology to Nick Cave during an emotional interview after the Aussie music icon spoke about his eldest son on the anniversary of his death.
The uncomfortable situation unfolded when the veteran ABC presenter was interviewing the 66-year-old rock legend for an episode of Australian Story, which aired on Monday night.
Cave was discussing the heartache of losing his eldest son Jethro, 31, in May 2022, when he revealed that the interview was being filmed on the two year anniversary of his death.
Jethro, who had schizophrenia and battled drug addiction, died in Melbourne two days after he was released from jail.
He died nine years after the Australian-born Bad Seeds frontman lost a younger son, Arthur, 15.
‘Today is the anniversary of Jethro’s death,’ Cave explained to Sales.
Sales immediately apologised over the unfortunate timing.
‘I’m sorry that this interview has landed on the anniversary of your son’s death,’ she said.
Rock legend Nick Cave (pictured) was discussing the heartache losing his eldest son Jethro, 31, when he revealed the episode was being filmed on the anniversary of his son’s death
Cave said the difficulty in doing sit-down interviews was the conversation quickly turns to his sons.
‘It’s odd that we’re jumping straight into this and I just… it’s not your fault,’ Cave replied.
The father-of-four also spoke about the grief of losing younger son Arthur.
The teen took LSD for the first time before he plunged 60ft from a cliff near his home in Brighton, England in 2015.
‘I had an understanding of the process because I’d been through it already,’ Cave said.
‘There is the initial cataclysmic event that we eventually absorb or rearrange ourselves so that we become creatures of loss.
Cave says he felt ‘disgracefully self-indulgent’ following the death of his two sons.
‘For most of my life I was just sort of in awe of my own genius … I had an office and I would sit there and write every day and whatever else happened in my life was peripheral. Even annoyances. Because I was involved in this great work,’ he said.
‘And this just collapsed completely and I just sort of saw the folly of that … disgraceful sort of self indulgence of the whole thing.’
Veteran ABC presenter Leigh Sales (pictured), who interviewed Cave as part an episode for the ABC’s Australian Story program, immediately apologised over the unfortunate timing
Jethro (pictured right), who battled drug addiction, died in Melbourne in 2022 two days after he was released from jail (pictured left Nick Cave)
Cave said the ‘art trounces everything’ no longer applies to him after the death of Arthur and Jethro.
‘I just sort of saw the folly of that and the kind of disgraceful self-indulgence of the whole thing, it just…my priorities changed,’ he said.
‘I’m a father and I’m a husband and a kind of person of the world, these things are much more important to me than the concept of being an ‘artist’.’
Despite the personal tragedies, he was able to find a different outlook on life that has enabled him to see the world differently.
‘I mean this is quite a complicated thing, but the sort of void that was left, there was a kind of rushing in of meaning that came into that void in all sorts of different ways,’ Cave said.
‘[It] allowed me to see the world in a different way [and] allowed me to be much more compassionate towards the human predicament’.
Cave’s son Arthur (pictured) tragically fell to his death from a cliff near Brighton after taking LSD in July 2015
Cave said it was a ‘counterfactual response’ that made him less embittered.
‘It did the opposite… it made me much more connected to people in general,’ he said.
Cave says he now gives priority to his role as a husband and father rather than being a musician.
He’s also now a grandfather, which makes him ‘extraordinarily happy.’
‘My priorities changed. You know, I still work all the time, I still go on tour, I still p*** everyone off because I’m making a new record or I’m depressed because I can’t write songs,’ Cave said.
‘I’m looking forward to being the sort of grandfather that sort of sits, you know, in the armchair that says inappropriate things and has a terrible influence over everybody but that the child secretly loves.’
Cave believes he’s a good dad and finds fatherhood to his surviving two children easy.
‘I have quite a gift with children in general, I think- I’ve always been quite good with kids,’ he said.
Nick Cave has opened up about tragic death of his two sons. The Bad Seeds musician, 66, has lost two children in the last 10 years. Pictured with wife Susie Cave
‘I meet other fathers and other parents and they seem to be kind of exhausted by the whole thing.
‘I don’t…I find it really energising.’
Cave also revealed how he turned to his Christian faith, which he had cultivated during his younger years after becoming consumed by his ‘own genius’.
‘I always had a religious temperament, even as a child, but no need for it…I was sort of drug addicted for a couple of decades,’ he said.
‘I think after Arthur died, rather than feeling anger towards that sort of stuff or rejecting that sort of stuff, I’ve felt a slow movement towards a religious life’.
‘I’ve found [that] extremely helpful and kind of widening thing that’s happened in my life’.
Cave went on to disclose that even though he ‘lives in a rock and roll world’, he no longer struggles with drugs and alcohol.
‘Those sorts of things are around me all the time,’ he said.
‘I’m not tempted to return to that way of life but I still recognise it and identify with it.’
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