Nick Cave has defended his decision to accept an invite to King Charles’ coronation this weekend, insisting that he is “not a monarchist”.
It was reported this weekend that Bad Seeds singer would attend the coronation as part of an Australian delegation, alongside prime minister Anthony Albanese, footballer Sam Kerr and others.
Addressing the invitation on his blog The Red Hand Files, Cave responded to fans who appeared confused at his decision to attend, with one writing: “What would the young Nick Cave have thought of that?!”
“I’ll make this a quick one because I’ve got to work out what I am going to wear to the Coronation,” Cave replied in his post.
He continued: “I am not a monarchist, nor am I a royalist, nor am I an ardent republican for that matter; what I am also not is so spectacularly incurious about the world and the way it works, so ideologically captured, so damn grouchy, as to refuse an invitation to what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age. Not just the most important, but the strangest, the weirdest.”
The musician then went on to recall once meeting the late Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, which he described as a “mostly awkward affair”, but that the Queen herself “seemed almost extraterrestrial and was the most charismatic woman I have ever met”.
“Maybe it was the lighting, but she actually glowed,” he continued. “As I told my mother – who was the same age as the Queen and, like the Queen, died in her nineties – about that day, her old eyes filled with tears.
The ‘Red Right Hand’ singer also explained that, while watching the Queen’s funeral on TV, he was “weeping myself” when the coffin was “stripped of the crown, orb and sceptre and lowered through the floor of St. George’s Chapel”.
“I guess what I am trying to say is that, beyond the interminable but necessary debates about the abolition of the monarchy, I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals – the strangeness of them, the deeply eccentric nature of the whole affair that so perfectly reflects the unique weirdness of Britain itself,” he continued.
“I’m just drawn to that kind of thing – the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefyingly spectacular, the awe-inspiring.”
The musician concluded: “And as for what the young Nick Cave would have thought – well, the young Nick Cave was, in all due respect to the young Nick Cave, young, and like many young people, mostly demented, so I’m a little cautious around using him as a benchmark for what I should or should not do. He was cute though, I’ll give him that. Deranged, but cute.
“So, with all that in mind, I am looking forward to going the Coronation. I think I’ll wear a suit.”
In another recent instalment of The Red Hand Files, Cave opened up about holding centrist political views, saying that he doesn’t “really know about anything for sure”.
The singer also recently shared his thoughts on the AI-based platform, ChatGPT, saying that it should “fuck off and leave songwriting alone”.
More recently, Cave paid tribute to The Pop Group’s Mark Stewart, sharing that he “taught me many things about life”.
In other coronation news, Take That, Katy Perry and Lionel Richie are among acts that will perform at a concert to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III on the grounds of Windsor Castle.
The Proclaimers, meanwhile, have been removed from the official Coronation playlist due to their “anti-monarchy views”.
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