Nick Cave shares the one song he ‘wishes he had written’

The Bad Seeds’ frontman Nick Cave has shared the one song he “wishes he had written.”

While Cave may have some all-time greats to his name, including The Mercy Seat, Into My Arms, and Jubilee Street, he remains in awe of a song from a legendary songwriter. The songwriter in question, Bob Dylan, would inspire Cave time and again, with his Down in the Groove track, Death Is Not the End, featuring on Cave’s Murder Ballads album in 1996. But Cave has since shared which album of Dylan’s he would “constantly” buy, and the song which features on it that he “wishes he had written.” In an interview given back in 1995, The Bad Seeds frontman confirmed Nashville Skyline had a song which was “so simple” but “so powerful”.

Cave said: “I constantly buy the same record over and over again: I’ve bought so many versions of Nashville Skyline – I must be keeping Dylan in… whatever that is he needs keeping in.” He then shared the song from Dylan’s discography he wishes he had written.

He added: “Well I like that Dylan song I Threw It All Away off Nashville Skyline. There was always something about that song, that was so simple, and an audacity to this sort of simplicity to that song. But it was so… so powerful at the same time. For me, at least. I was always ragingly envious of that song.”

Cave’s love for I Threw It All Away appears long-lasting, as he picked the song as part of a MOJO Magazine compilation. He said of the song: “The production is so clean, fluid and uncluttered, and there is an ease and innocence to Dylan’s voice in its phrasing, in its tone that is in no Dylan recording before or after.

“There is a perfectly measured emotional pull to the singing… I can put this song on first thing in the morning or the middle of a dark night and it will make me feel better, make me want to carry on. The song serves the listener as it should and that’s its genius.”

Dylan’s lasting influence on Cave was documented in the latter’s book, The Sick Bag Song, a collection of thoughts and poems from the Australian stage veteran. Cave wrote of encountering Dylan at Glastonbury Festival in 1998. The poem reads:

Then slowly, extending from his sleeve,
A cold, white, satin hand took mine.
Hey, I like what you do, he said to me.
I like what you do, too, I replied. I nearly died.
Then his hand retracted up his sleeve,
And Bob Dylan turned and took his leave,
Disappearing back into the rain.

In a further interview, Cave confirmed a “crack of thunder” brought his attention to Dylan. He said: “It was raining heavily and I was standing in the doorway of my trailer in the band enclosure, watching the water rise quicker and quicker, so that now it was running into my trailer.

There was a crack of thunder, I looked up and saw a man in a hooded windcheater rowing a tiny boat across the enclosure toward me. The water is now up to my knees. The man pulls the boat in and extends a hand that has a long thumbnail. His hand in mine feels smooth and cold, but giving. The man, who is Bob Dylan, says something like, ‘I like your stuff,’ and before I can reply, he turns the boat around and rows back to his trailer.”