Nick Cave became one of the most prominent voices back in the 80s. The Australian led his band, ‘Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’, and made it onto the list of most influential celebrities. Although his professional career is marked by success, in his personal life he has received several blows. One of them, the death of his two children. On this topic he has been sincere in his last interview, ensuring that, as a father, he cannot help but feel a sense of “guilt.”
It was in 2015 when his son Arthur, just 15 years old, died from a tragic fall from a cliff near the family home on the coast of Brighton (England), after having ingested LSD. Seven years later, another of Cave’s sons, former model Jethro Lazenby, died at the age of 31, just two days after being released from prison in Melbourne. The young man had been in prison for a month after attacking his mother.
Now, in a recent interview with The Guardian, the interpreter has opened up about these hard blows. He did it after talking about the new exhibition of his ceramic sculptures. “They tell a story about a man’s guilt in the loss of his son, and they address that in a way that I really couldn’t,” he says. This confession leads the journalist to ask if Cave “feels guilty” for the death of his children.
“I think it’s something that people who lose children feel regardless of the situation, just because the only thing you’re supposed to do is not let your children die,” Cave says in this interview. “Forget it. The only thing you’re supposed to do is protect your children,” she said.
“I always wanted to do beautiful things, but at the same time it’s about not wanting to be a victim of what happened to Arthur, not wanting to be paralyzed for the rest of my life. And, of course, wanting to show Earl the best way to survive this. We had to stay calm for him and not let him feel afraid of losing his parents,” the musician said in 2017, in an interview about his fashion brand, titled The Vampire’s Wife. The musician then assured that his creativity had been a way of dealing with his pain.
Lazenby was found dead inside the Coburg Motor Inn hotel in northern Melbourne in May 2022, days after being released from prison for assaulting his mother, Beau Lazenby. For his part, Cave has two other children. One of them is Luke, who was born 10 days after his half-brother Jethro, the result of the artist’s relationship with his then wife, the Brazilian journalist Viviane Carneiro. The young man was born in Brazil before moving to the UK, where he now works as the frontman of the alternative band Cavey.
On the other hand, the late Arthur’s twin brother, Earl, is 23 years old now. As for his profession, he has a promising career ahead of him as an actor in films such as The End of the Damned World, The Days of Bagnold’s Summer and The True Story of the Kelly Gang. Tragedy shook Cave’s life, but he decided to cope with the loss of it by creating art with his pain.
