Arguably, at 68, Nick Cave is more widely known and commercially successful than he has ever been in his more than half a century of performing. Which is unusual, since most artists barely hang on to any relevance as they age. The many incarnations of Cave have attracted their own acolytes, but his most hardcore fans have followed him from the beginning of Cave time. He emerged with school friends to form The Boys Next Door, which morphed into The Birthday Party, became the Bad Seeds, then he detoured through Grinderman, went back to the Bad Seeds, and intermittently performed alone at a piano. He’s a TV and film composer, poet, author, actor, screenwriter and blogger. But beneath the feral, confrontational guy who once fronted a group billed as “the most violent band in the world,” there has always lurked a crooner.
“Shivers,” written by 16-year-old Rowland S. Howard, was originally intended to mock the hysterical romantic feelings of his classmates. But a young Nick Cave got hold of it and turned it into an intense, emotional ballad that reeked of true heartbreak and sincerity. And even though it still holds up nearly 50 years later, Cave seems to regret recording it. In the 2011 documentary Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard, Cave said Howard’s vocals should have been recorded instead of his own because he was “never able to do that song justice.”
I disagree.
