Songwriting colossus Nick Cave has launched a new web portal, through which fans can ask him questions directly – and even receive answers, if they’re up to snuff.
One fan took his moment to ask Cave if there are any plans to resurrect cult side-project Grinderman, a hard-rocking two-album vehicle formed with Bad Seeds bandmates Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey and Jim Sclavunos.
Grinderman recorded a brace of well-received eponymous LPs in 2007 and 2010, before sadly disbanding in 2011. They reformed for a one-off show at Coachella in 2013.
Okay, here’s Martin from Idaho’s question verbatim:
“Any plans to rock out again a la Grinderman. Ya know, polish off the ol’ guitar and give the music world a huge middle finger and sweat like a Fourth of July whore in heat?“
And here’s Cave’s reply in full, because fuck it why not:
“Dear Marvin,
“Many of you have asked about the reformation of Grinderman, although most not with the same lurid flair as you, so I sat with Warren and we discussed whether it was a good idea. We both thought the world needed Grinderman, considering its current emotional climate.
“Warren wanted to wait until Trump got re-elected, in the hope he would invite us to play ‘No Pussy Blues’ at the presidential celebrations. I’m not sure if he was joking or not. I personally felt there was no urgency, and that the older we got, the better Grinderman would be – the more deranged, the more priapic, and the more morally dubious.
“We both thought that Grinderman appeared to be a lot more popular now than when it existed, and we wondered whether that was simply the band passing into folklore, or whether the world had become, in the last years, more puritanical, less playful, and more hypersensitive, and that there were a lot of people out there, like you Marvin, who just wanted to listen to a band that fucked things up a bit.
“We both thought releasing a Best of Grinderman record was a good idea. We thought it should be a double album.
“Finally, we both didn’t know what a Fourth of July whore was.”
Well there you go.
Got a question for Nick Cave? Get on over to The Red Hand Files. And keep it lurid, kids.
https://theredhandfiles.com/
