It turns out Chris Martin managed to convince Nick Cave to dramatically alter one of his finest recent songs.
The Australian musician actually recorded his 17th album, 2019’s Ghosteen, at Martin’s Malibu studio, with the Coldplay singer would occasionally show his face.
In the new book Faith, Hope And Courage, a collection of over 40 hours of interview recordings between Cave and journalist Seán O’Hagan, the musician opened up about Martin’s influence (as per NME).
“He’d just bound into the studio full of that manic, ecstatic, life-loving spirit of his, and he’d be flying around the studio like a fucking pinball,” Cave said.
“When he’d calm down enough, we’d play him the song we were working on. He would listen, but listen hard you know, with his deep understanding of the nuts and bolts of songwriting and pop music, and hit-making.”
Martin, who Cave describes as having a “perverse sense of humour,” also turned out to be “disarmingly forthright.” While he mostly “loved the stuff” Cave and the Bad Seeds were producing, “occasionally he made what were quite challenging suggestions that, if taken on board, would have radically altered the song.”
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It notably happened on ‘Waiting for You’. As Cave explained, the song had a “very loud, super aggressive industrial loop that played completely out of time of the song – you can hear it at the very beginning of the song.”
When ‘Waiting for You’ was played to Martin, he had some doubts. “I love you guys very much, but is there any chance I could hear the song again without the fucking canning factory?” he asked.
While Cave and Warren Ellis were “not so pleased,” filmmaker Andrew Dominik, who happened to be in the studio, agreed: “Thank god someone suggested that.”
It worked out. “We took away the industrial loop and what was left was a very beautiful, vulnerable song shimmering there on its own – a classic, old-school ballad, raw and fragile and unimpeded. So thank God for that!” Cave added.
Does this mean we’ll one day witness a Nick Cave and Coldplay collaboration? Probably not, but Chris Martin and co. have been working with unexpected artists like BTS recently. Who really knows.
Faith, Hope And Carnage is out now. You can listen to ‘Waiting for You’ below.
