This diary finds me nearly a third of the way through a two-month tour of Europe, playing bass guitar for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Last year I’d recorded some parts on their new album, the ferociously euphoric Wild God, and have stepped in temporarily while their bassist, Martyn Casey, who has been ill, gets better at home in Australia. We have driven through, stopped, and played arenas in Oberhausen, Berlin, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg; now we’re heading to eastern Europe towards Łódź and Kraków. Tonight we’re playing in Budapest. Most of the shows are sold out, averaging around 13,000 very excited fans of all ages.
I’ve been doing this for years with Radiohead, and have just made a book of photographs documenting similar experiences on the road across America and Europe. I’m still struck by the sheer size and scale of the enterprise, of what it takes to put such a big show on the road. Arriving backstage at these enormodomes, you’re faced by a phalanx of shiny black and silver articulated lorries, ferrying tonnes of black boxes that throw out all that weightless sound and light into an arena stacked up to the gods with people who speak and dream in other languages, cultures and lives. But for me, it’s become a home, the stage a safe place to stand just above Nick at the piano, keeping time with his keyboard and drummer Larry Mullins’ windmilling arms as he rolls between his solid steel drum kit and a pair of timpani for those moments of orchestral longing in the songs. I’d recently got back together with Radiohead for a couple of days’ rehearsals in London, to check in with everyone, and playing with the Bad Seeds has that same feeling: the reconvening of a fellowship, old friends who treat each other with courtesy and humour.
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