TOWERS OF SONG: a Nick Cave Sings Covers listening thread and poll

Sibling band Die Haut, usually instrumentally-focused, had recruited Cave to sing on most of their 1983 album Burnin' The Ice. They turned again to drummer Wydler's Bad Seed bandmates to staff the vocal side of 1988's Headless Body In Topless Bar LP. Anita wrote her own lyric, and Kid "Congo" Powers wrote two, but Nick - with Mick on bass and piano - took a swing at Mickey Newbury's Just Dropped In (originally recorded in 1967 by The First Edition, a Kenny Rogers-led band with a session guitar intro by Glen Campbell on the record). tbh, he does not sound like he's in much condition to see what condition his condition was in.

Die Haut - I Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)

Harvey stayed on piano for his own vocal take on the aforementioned Sad Dark Eyes, not released by the Bad Seeds two years before. The Loved Ones song had been the other cover in the Birthday Party's live repertoire in 1982, and a regular setlist fixture for the Bad Seeds in 1985. Cave gave it another swing around the stage at a 1992 Die Haut show released on the 1993 live album Sweat.

Die Haut - Sad Dark Eyes (studio version, Mick vocal)

Die Haut - Sad Dark Eyes (live Berlin Tempodrom 1992, Nick vocal)

By the way, the video for the original is pretty great for an Australian group in 1967.

Die Haut also filled the second side of their 1992 album Head On with Seed associates - Anita, Kid Congo, Lydia Lunch and Blixa variously write and sing four of them, but there's one cover: Peggy Lee and Victor Young's theme song to the 1954 Nicholas Ray / Joan Crawford Western "Johnny Guitar."

Die Haut featuring Blixa Bargeld - Johnny Guitar

Die Haut - Johnny Guitar (live Berlin Tempodrom 1992, Blixa vocal)

1989 saw Nick Cave releasing a cover under his own name again, for the Neil Young tribute album The Bridge. The song Helpless was a 1969 Young composition, released by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in 1970. For the solo-credited Cave version, Kid Congo Powers played slide, and Mick Harvey played stationary guitar, bass guitar, drums, produced the record and multitracked a small choir of himself (with a touch of his Crime & The City Solution bandmate Bronwyn Adams) singing backing vocals.

Nick Cave - Helpless

I love that one so much

that whole comp is pretty solid iirc

Not a release, but a new (and eventually the most stable) lineup of the Bad Seeds returned to another of their 1985 staples for a quick knees-up on Later With Jools Holland in December 1990. Martyn Casey had been recruited on bass after The Triffids split, and having broken the dam on adding Australians for the first time since the band formed in 1984, Conway Savage joined on piano-shaped things.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Cindy Cindy (live on Later)

Their version of the American folk song was based on the one adapted by Ben Weisman, Buddy Kaye and former Ed Wood girlfriend Dolores Fuller for Elvis Presley (circa 1970?), and covered by Johnny Cash. Cash himself returned to the song in his latter-day Rick Rubin sessions, as a duet with Nick (backed by various bluegrass allstars, and possibly Benmont Tench and / or Glen Campbell.)

Johnny Cash With Nick Cave - Cindy

(released on the Redemption Songs album in 2002's posthumous Unearthed boxset, comprising four new Cash / Rubin joints and a best-of-their-first-four disc.)

In 1991, the Bad Seeds released their first newly-recorded cover since 1986. The Leonard Cohen tribute album I'm Your Fan (best tribute LP title ever?) featured two Antipodean/German takes on the same song, the other headlined by former Birthday Party squatmate Robert Forster. The Bad Seeds created their take on Len's 1988 Tower Of Song by jamming it in a variety of genres for 80 minutes, then editing down a five-minute medley.

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Tower Of Song

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Tower Of Song (long 33-minute edit)

Despite breaking that drought, the band were relegated to nigh-anonymity on the next year's all-covers nigh-EP. The A-side was Nick Cave & Shane MacGowan covering Louis Armstrong's 1967 UK #1 What A Wonderful World (wr. Douglas/Weiss). The b-side saw each singer covering the other: Nick on the Pogues' Rainy Night In Soho (from 1986's Poguetry In Motion EP), and Shane on Lucy (from the Bad Seeds' 1990 LP The Good Son).

Nick Cave & Shane MacGowan - What A Wonderful World
Nick Cave - Rainy Night In Soho
Shane MacGowan - Lucy (Version #2)

Nick also did Rainy Night solo circa 1997 for that year's Shane MacGowan doco The Great Hunger.

Somewhere around the time of their Lee & Nancy cover, Barry and Anita (and some Germans) took a similarly sultry/unsettling swing at Marvin Gaye's 1982 Sexual Healing.

Anita Lane - Sexual Healing (c. 1992)

The Bad Seeds' next cover took over a decade to come to light. Recorded for an album of Australian country tribute album that never came out, it debuted on the B-Sides & Rarities box set. A recording appeared on the songwriter John Ashe's 1974 Advance Australia Fair Dinkum LP (NOT to be confused with 1973's Fair Dinkum Mate!, or with 1971's Fair Dinkum Aussie Fun), but Cave probably knew it from Chad Morgan's 1964 single.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - There's No Night Out in the Jail (c. 1993)

Morgan versions can be found on the 1974 Chad Morgan Sings John Ashe LP, and the 1981 Sheilas, Drongos, Dills And Other Geezers - 20 Chad Morgan Greats compilation. At 87, he's still performing, though I assume this 2020 Cruisin' Country package holiday was cancelled.

Anita Lane's 1993 LP Dirty Pearl had been recorded piecemeal over a decade, so it was in keeping with that languid pace that its lead single didn't come out until 1995. It was probably the recording of the B-sides that prompted the release at all. As part of his first two solo albums, an array of his own English translations of Serge Gainsbourg songs, Mick Harvey recorded Anita and Nick doing Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus. Presumably in the same session, they knocked out an interpretation of Drimble Wedge & The Vegetation's Bedazzled, from the titular Cook / Moore film.

Anita Lane - I Love You... Nor Do I (Nick Cave vocal duet, all instruments by Mick Harvey)
Anita Lane - Bedazzled (as per)

* non-eligible single-Seed sidebar:

Harvey retranslated the Gainsbourg song into German two decades later for his second batch of two Serge albums, and his official youtube channel has an English version of that recording, which appears not to have been released anywhere else.

Mick Harvey featuring Andrea Schroeder - Ich Liebe Dich... Ich Dich Auch Nicht
Mick Harvey - I Love You... Nor Do I

and Barry Adamson had a go at the original French lyric on his 1993 album The Negro Inside Me:

Barry Adamson - Je T'aime ... Moi Non Plus

There are seven more Mick & Anita takes on Gainsbourg songs across Mick's Intoxicated Man album, the Initials B.B. single b-sides, and a bonus 7" that came with the 2014 LP reissue. If I run out of Cave-sung covers before the month is out, we'll dip back.

Nearly a decade after their last bout of reinterpreting traditional songs, the Bad Seeds knocked out a solid fistful for the 1995-96 Murder Ballads b-sides and LP. Folks are probably familiar with the Lee twins...

Nick Cave & PJ Harvey and The Bad Seeds - Henry Lee
and
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Stagger Lee

...but let's also note

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - The Willow Garden
(the trad song is also known as Down In The Willow Garden and Rose Connelly, here sung by Conway Savage. A live take with Nick is here, for the curious)

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - King Kong Kitchee Kitchee Ki-Mi-O

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Knoxville Girl

Despite the credits, that last is just Nick singing with James Johnston of Gallon Drunk on guitar. Remember the name!

The album closed with a full-on Bob Dylan cover, with in-band and guest vocals by Nick, Kylie Minogue, Blixa, Shane MacGowan, PJ Harvey, Thomas Wydler, and Anita Lane.

Nick Caev And The Bad Seeds - Death Is Not The End

I was oblivious to the Chad Morgan connection. Nice!

https://i.imgur.com/PkSTRJN.jpg

yeah that was a good tidbit sic - nice one

The uncanny thing about Cave's cover of Death Is Not the End is that it seems to entirely flip the message of Dylan's original. Whereas Dylan is saying that it doesn't matter how bad things get in this life, because everything will be fine in the afterlife, the way Cave and the rest of them sing it, they seem to be saying the exact opposite – that death brings no end to suffering, which continues eternally.

speaking of

In the next 25 years, The Bad Seeds will release just one more cover. But still in 1996, the core of the band snuck another Dylan version out on the Blixa Bargeld / Nick Cave / Mick Harvey soundtrack to regular collaborator John Hillcoat's film To Have And To Hold (with additional arrangements by Barry Adamson, and a sole guest singer).

Scott Walker - I Threw It All Away

Death Is Not The End had appeared on Dylan's extremely unbeloved Down In The Groove album in 1983, with the bemusing one-song-only backing band of Sly & Robbie, Mark Knopfler & Alan Clark (Dire Straits & Local Hero keyboardist), and Full Force and Clydie King on BVs.

I Threw It All Away was a single from the better-regarded Nashville Skyline in 1969, backed by an array of country session guns & songwriters like Norman Blake and Charlie Daniels.

Nick wasted no time in continuing to issue covers outside the band. The same year, he made two appearances to close out Current 93's All The Pretty Little Horses, the middle LP of 93blokey David Tibet's The Inmost Light trilogy. One was the titular American lullaby, one was based on extracts from mathematician & philosopher Blaise Pascal (d. 1662)'s Pensées.

Current 93 - All The Pretty Little Horses
Current 93 - Patripassian

was just listening to that record the other day, to say that Cave's appearance on that record was a surprise in 1996 is a serious understatement

i had totally forgotten about these and had never known Patripassian was a cover, of sorts. Will add that.

plain gold ring off live seeds is one of my favorites

A 1959-released hit for Miss Toni Fisher, written by Wayne Shanklin for his own Signet Records label, is claimed to be the first record with flanging on it. In 1997, Cave teamed up with that former one-B-side-only (and Lollapalooza) Bad Seed James Johnston and his group Gallon Drunk to cover it, for Jez Butterworth's film adaptation of his play Mojo.

Nick Cave & Gallon Drunk - The Big Hurt

The same year saw the Most Likely Cave Cover ever, from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's 1928 The Threepenny Opera. The recording was done for a documentary / tribute album coordinated by Hal Willner. Remember the name!

Nick Cave with Spanish Fly and Kenny Wolleston - Mack The Knife

Perhaps spurred by Harvey's recent acclaim covering a French songwriter, in 1999 Cave and Bertrand Burgalat took on Polnareff's decade-earlier comeback hit Goodbye Marylou, for the album Hommage À Polnareff. (Written by mysterious svengali Michel Polnareff, lyrics co-written by Jean-René Mariani.)

Nick Cave - Goodbye Marylou

Rowland inaugurated the new millennium with an Iggy Pop cover, for Dogs In Space director (and his future biographer) Richard Lowenstein's film adaptation of He Died With A Felafel In His Hand. Full credits aren't readily available, but let's face it, it's probably Mick Harvey and Brian Hooper. (Seed associate and future Rowland tribute album contributor Noah Taylor stars in the film, so there's one extra link.)

Rowland S. Howard - The Passenger (2001)

Written with guitarist Ricky Gardiner, for Mr Pop's 1977 album Lust Is Life.

For that year's soundtrack to Jessie Nelson and Kristine Johnson's film I Am Sam, Cave recorded a Beatles cover. By plan or chance, he recorded a second one while he was at it, which came out the next year as a single.

Nick Cave - Here Comes the Sun (single 2002)
Nick Cave - Let It Be (OST 2001, b-side 2002)

lol wtf

Something of a counter to my "most likely Cave cover ever" earlier.

Johnny Cash and Nick squeaked one duet from their session out just before Cash's 2002 death, on American IV. Rick Rubin had asked Cave what song he would most like to record with The Older Man In Black, given the opportunity, and he nominated one frequently covered by Cash, originally released as a Hank Williams b-side in 1949.

Johnny Cash with Nick Cave - I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry

(Music by Williams, lyrics disputed.)

Also in 2002, Nick returned to the Velvet Underground catalogue with electronic popper Chris Coco.

Chris Coco feat. Nick Cave - Sunday Morning

(Like his kicked prick, from the 1968 debut LP Velvet Underground & Nico.)

Still in 2002, Pulp's Bad Cover Version single came with two good cover versions as its b-side. Moloko's Róisín Murphy questioned the band's Sorted For E's And Wizz, and Nick Cave quested retroactively for 1995's Disco 2000, backed by Richard Hawley and Martin Slattery, and unspecified full-time members of Pulp.

Nick Cave - Disco 2000

Four years later, Pulp put a different version on a different kind of B-side - presumably from the same session.

Nick Cave - Disco 2000 (Pub Rock Version)


Another 14 years after that, Universal Music Group published it to the Bad Seeds' youtube page, claiming that it was previously unreleased. The future really works.

2003 saw the only non-Cave-composition released by the Bad Seeds in the last 25 years. At one minute 47, they really made the most of it!

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - I Feel So Good

From Wim Wenders' documentary The Soul Of A Man, about blues musicians Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir, this cover is of the latter circa 1954.

2006 saw Cave crack out half a dozen non-originals for various Hal Willner projects, before taking five years off from covers again.

Just fifteen years too soon for this week's TikTok trend, Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Song And Chanteys was a loose waft of a tie-in with the Pirates Of The Caribbean films. Executive producer credits for J. Depp and Gore Verbinski gave Willner the excuse to convene two discs of all-stars. Nick's two songs include Kate St. John, Leo Abrahams, Martyn Barker of Shriekback, Andy Newmark of Sly & The Family Stone, and Warren in the backing band. (The same group also back Bryan Ferry and David Thomas of Pere Ubu, amongst others, on the record.)

Nick Cave - Fire Down Below
Nick Cave - Pinery Boy

Another Willner project was compiled that year from a series of concerts he'd staged in 1999 and 2001, with a similar array of contributors to the pirate record. No idea what year or who played on Nick's contribution to the 2CD/2DVD The Harry Smith Project: Anthology Of American Folk Music Revisited - the director stays in head-and-shoulder shots on Cave and the female backing singers.

Nick Cave - John the Revelator (Live)
Nick Cave - Shine On Me (Live)

Nick had also, unsurprisingly, sung twice at Willner's "Came So Far For Beauty" Leonard Cohen tribute shows. A 2006 documentary based on the 2005 Sydney Opera House version was accompanied by a soundtrack mainly recorded at the Brighton Dome installment in 2004.

Nick Cave - I'm Your Man (Live)
Nick Cave, Julie Christensen, Perla Batalla - Suzanne (Live)

Five years on, what could bring The Dark Professor Of Serious Adult Music back to other peoples' songs, but a chance to record for the soundtrack of a "sexy vampires" soap opera?

Neko Case & Nick Cave - She's Not There

Brief may have gotten confused somewhat - Neko and her co-singer are covering some zombies here, from 1964.

Here's one I had in the wrong place, due to: figuring out the complexities of the Jools Holland R&B Orchestra's similarly-designed & frequently-retitled discography is not something I expected would be necessary tbrr. This was written by TV host Jools and 1980s popster Sam Brown, and in fact might not technically be a cover here at all, by some lights. It appears as a ukulele demo on a self-released EP by Brown later though, and almost certainly wasn't written for Cave, so let's count it.

Jools Holland Rhythm & Blues Orchestra feat. Nick Cave & Sam Brown - Kiss Of Love (2003)

Well that's interesting. I'd forgotten about all about Brown. I used to have her first (I think) record (well, cassette) as a child.

used to have

did you Stop!?

While we're going back in time to visit jaunty pop with a melancholy twist, here's a super rarity to download. At the turn of the century, both the Bad Seeds drummers teamed up for a side band, with a variety of floating guests (including former Seed Kid Congo Powers, and future Seed Larry Mullins/Toby Dammit).

Their self-titled album closed with a hidden track, duetting the Bacharach / David song written for 1969's Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, which became a huge hit for BJ Thomas.

The Vanity Set - Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head (mp3 link for two weeks)

The band's followup album, in 2003, included an unsecret cover of the Bee Gees' I Started A Joke, but Sclavunos assembled a completely different array of musicians around him that time.

thank youuuu <3

voted!

where is sarahell

sleeve otm

RIP sarahell

jfc that scared me for a minute - not cool

can you change that link to just say Covers Poll pls

tbc I hope sarahell is having a nice rest!

(she is not, she is posting busily in a deems thread on ILE)

Producer (and guitarist) T-Bone Burnett recruited Nick and Warren for the 2015 True Detective telly soundtrack album. They took on a 1979 #1 single by Larry Gatlin And The Gatlin Brothers Band, notably performed at Ronald Reagan's second inaugural gala. Bringing in a star violinist saw Laurel Canyon Rambler and Punch Brother Gabe Witcher switch to bass from fiddle for this track.

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - All the Gold In California

Big fan of this one