Nick Cave says one Leonard Cohen record is ‘the first that really had an effect on me’

An album from legendary songwriter Leonard Cohen is the first that “really had an effect” on fellow musician Nick Cave.

The Bad Seeds’ frontman would share how he spent hours of his time listening to one Cohen record in particular, and that it shaped his worldview. Cave would praise the So Long, Marianne songwriter, saying the “sadness” heard throughout his earlier works is “inspiring” to him. Speaking on French TV in 1994, Cave would consider the effects of Cohen on his own work and relationship with music, saying he found a lot of energy in Songs of Love and Hate where many were finding morbidity and depression. Cave said: “I discovered Leonard Cohen with Songs of Love and Hate. I listened to this record for hours in a friend’s house.

“I was very young, and I believe this was the first record that really had an effect on me. In the past, I only listened to my brother’s records. I liked what he liked, followed him like a sheep. Leonard Cohen was the first one I discovered by myself.

“He is the symbol of my musical independence. I remember these other guys that came to my friend’s house that thought Songs of Love and Hate was too depressing. I’ve realised that this ‘depression’ theory was ridiculous.” Cave would consider the notion that Songs of Love and Hate is too depressing a “ridiculous” feeling to have, especially given how “inspiring” it was to him.

Cave added: “The sadness of Cohen was inspiring, it gave me a lot of energy. I always remember all this when someone says that my records are morbid or depressing.” It’s not just Cohen who had a profound impact on Cave, with the songwriter praising Bob Dylan too for his 1969 album, Nashville Skyline.

Dylan would inspire Cave time and again, especially 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.”