Nick Cave has opened up about current status of rock music, suggesting that the genre may need to “die for a while” in order for something “truly monumental” to rise up.
Over the last few months, we’ve seen numerous acts have hit out at the current state of rock music.
While Maroon 5’s Adam Levine was admonished by Slipknot’s Corey Taylor for saying “rock music is nowhere”, Bring Me The Horizon also chimed in, stating that rock music today is “mostly shite”.
The latter noted that they believe hip-hop music is the cause, stating that “rap is almost the new punk”, while Rammstein backed up this notion as well.
However, in a recent response to some fans on his Red Hand Files website, Aussie icon Nick Cave suggested that this might not necessarily be a bad thing.
After being asked about the genre’s current state, another fan asked Cave’s opinion on the trend of connecting an artist’s personal shortcomings with the quality of their music, and what it means for the future of rock.
“Rock music has lurched and shuddered its way through its varied and tumultuous history and somehow managed to survive,” Cave responded. “It is within the very nature of rock ‘n’ roll to mutate and to transform – to die so it can live again.”
“Not so long ago the big idea in the world was freedom of expression. It looks like the new big idea is moralism. Will rock music survive this one? We shall see.”
“My feeling is that modern rock music, as we know it, has anyway been ailing for some time now. It has become afflicted with a kind of tiredness and confusion and faint-heartedness, and no longer has the stamina to fight the great battles that rock music has always fought,” he continued.
“It seems to me there is little new or authentic, as it becomes safer, more nostalgic, more cautious and more corporate.”
Check out Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ ‘Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!’:
“As far as rock music goes, I think that the new moral zealotry that is descending upon our culture could actually be a good thing,” Nick Cave continued.
“Maybe, it is exactly what rock ‘n’ roll needs at this moment in time. Contemporary rock music no longer seems to have the fortitude to contend with these enemies of the imagination, these enemies of art – and in this present form perhaps rock music isn’t worth saving.”
“However, in the world of ideas the sanctimonious have little or no place,” Cave concluded. “Art must be wrestled from the hands of the pious, in whatever form they may come – and they are always coming, knives out, intent on murdering creativity.”
“At this depressing time in rock ‘n’ roll though, perhaps they can serve a purpose, perhaps rock music needs to die for a while, so that something powerful and subversive and truly monumental can rise up out of it.”
In related news, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are on track to release a new record sometime in the near future, with the group’s namesake labelling it “amazing” back in January.
While there’s little chance it will contain a sound most would associate with rock, it appears that the genre is not one that Cave has a lot of faith in at the current time.
Check out Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ ‘Skeleton Tree’:
