On Being in an Indie Power Couple, No.1: Nick & Susie Cave

"And so if you have a good indie-power-couple story, go ahead, share it. share as many indie power couple stories as possible!"

amanda palmer x

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I recently came across this lovely article by Amanda Palmer entitled 'On Being in an Indie Power Couple' in which she invited other people to explore their favourite, most inspiring Indie Power Couples, as well as celebrating their own sense of being in an Indie Power Couple, if they felt they were part of one. This whole idea began because of a Twitter post in which somebody described Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaimon as being an Indie Power Couple, which then caught her attention and which then grew and grew as people began to reveal their Indie Power Couple stories. And I have to admit, this Indie Power Couple idea sent my imagination into overdrive as I feel I've learned a great deal about relationships and how inspiring they can be from my musical and artistic heroes. The first, and probably most informative relationship that I first witnessed, was the incredibly beautiful and loyal relationship my Nain & Taid had. They were married for 65 years, and the care they had for each other and the way they respected each other taught me something incredibly profound. Although they probably couldn't be described as an indie power couple, oh boy did they adore and support each other. As I got older, I started noticing things and learning about how others saw and valued their relationships, and, as a fascinated observer of the human animal in all its strange and wonderful behaviours, this started to interest me enormously, too. It was quite strange for me, though, as when I entered my late teens and headed into my early twenties, most of the people I knew didn't seem to prioritise romance or their relationships. Most of my friends who happened to be in relationships usually played down their affection for their partner and I also noticed that the next generation up seemed to have what can, at best, only be described as relationships of convenience. The women would moan about their men constantly and would only get dressed up in the hope of catching the eye of anyone other than their supposed fella or, even worse, make any excuse under the sun so as to be able to spend as little time with them at all. And in turn, the chaps would refer to their wives/girlfriends as the "ball and chain," who they were delighted to be away of from for a couple of hours so they could get down to the real fun of ogling other women whilst talking about their own current partners with disdain. Why on earth would anyone choose to live in that way was my immediate reaction to all this. And fortunately, I had different guides to call on who offered an enchanting alternative, and who were ready to come to my rescue. There were, of course, the Romantic poets I came to adore, who placed love & sex & sensuality & connection as something sacred & miraculous in the human universe, in fact one of Life's greatest gifts, and wrote about the life changing and enriching experience of being in love. And they wrote passionately of the importance of refusing to be with or stay with someone out of convenience, particularly writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, as in most of the cases in their period of history from which they were writing about, was from the viewpoint of women. There were others also, who I will talk about in future blogs of this series, such as David Bowie, who wrote and sang of Romance in a way that echoed directly the feelings in my own heart, especially once Lydia and I began courting, and who always insisted that his wonderful marriage with Iman, not his successful records, was the thing that he was most proud of and thankful for having in his life. Bowie's gentlemanly, dandified stance on his marriage to Iman oozed grace and dignity, and showed me how glorious and meaningful a relationship can truly be. The obvious sizzle & frisson that quite clearly existed between them also showed me that the boring old adage that long term couples can't find each other sexually alluring after many years together to also be absolute twaddle. (That was a relief! wink, wink!) But, for this first instalment of my 'On Being in an Indie Power Couple' series, I want to focus on another of my favourite artists, Nick Cave, and his wife, the model & clothes designer, Susie Bick. For so many reasons, when I reflect on it, they are definitely in the 'On Being in an Indie Power Couple' bracket, and here's just some of the reasons why I find their relationship so inspiring.






Nick Cave reflecting on his first date with Susie:
https://www.theredhandfiles.com/what-is-shyness/



Nick Cave's music and words touch me deeply, no doubt predominantly because they are so gloriously romantic. His achingly gorgeous song, 'Into My Arms,' which I have had the immense fortune to sing a few times, is, to me, an atheist prayer to the beloved via the road of angels, muses and gods. It is a search for meaning in a universe that may quite possibly have no meaning whatsoever. And there's the rub for me. That's what being in a relationship can be all about. Nick Cave's music has grown deeper & more profound over time, as well as more cheeky ("I've got the No Pussy Blues!") he sings in one very naughty lyric, as the protagonist of the song is continually and hilariously rejected and frustrated by his paramour, with each quite hilarious attempt to get some desperately sought nookie:

"I bought her a dozen snow-white doves,

I did her dishes in rubber gloves,

I called her honeybee, I called her love,

But she just still didn't want to...

She just never wants to...

Damn!"

And artistically, he and his wife both share their lives and help with each other's work and dreams. Susie, for example, appeared on the cover of Nick's Push The Sky Away album...



...an album cover which sent the twittering moralistic classes into meltdown, and who decided, in all their holier-than-thou wisdom, that it was "obscene," and where they then proceeded to all but crucify Nick for apparently "objectifying and exploiting his wife." Rather than defend this mysterious cover myself, I'll let Nick himself do it. This is what he had to say about how the picture came to be used as the cover for the album:


Our dear friend Dominique Issermann was photographing Susie, at our home in Brighton, for a fashion magazine. I was the designated assistant for the day and when I poked my head in the room to see if anyone wanted a cup of tea, Dominique asked me to go to the bedroom window and open the shutters to let the sunlight in. Susie was changing for the next shot and was naked under her robe and in a purely improvised act of subversion dropped the robe as I opened the shutters. Dominique, the most fast-thinking and attentive photographer I have ever met, snapped the picture – one photograph and that was it. We were not attempting to shoot an album cover, rather this was a moment snatched from time, which we promptly forgot about.

The next day, as Susie and I sat with Dominique looking through the shots, we found this remarkable photograph. It instantly spoke to us, reminding me of Masaccio’s fresco, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, a much-loved Old Testament story of mine, and I thought it would make a great cover for Push the Sky Away, as it felt in keeping with many of the record’s concerns. I showed it to the band and they seemed happy and everyone in my office loved it. So that was that, the Dominique Issermann picture became the cover.
How lovely the cover is and how beautiful my wife looks – the animal stance, up on her toes, the defensive positioning of her arms, and her face hidden in her hair. It is a brave and unsettling picture pulsing with ambiguity, mythology and life, and is probably Susie’s most treasured shot of herself and a favourite of Dominique’s as well.

When the record came out there was a flurry of disapproval from a handful of people that questioned why Susie was naked and I wasn’t, that it was exploitative and sexist, inferring that I had somehow forced Susie into taking the picture. I was flattered that there were people who thought I had Svengali-like powers over my wife, and could cast spells on her and do with her as I pleased, but sadly this is not the case. I would say, in fact, that the situation is completely the reverse.

I understand why people may have found the cover disturbing, but in the end, beauty knows best – it leads us beyond our narrow notions of what is appropriate into the realms of the enigmatic and discomforting. Here, beauty creates a dissonance in the mind that inflames the imagination. This fire of the mind is the place where the angels and devils play happily together. I hope this is also the place where many of my songs reside.

Dominique’s photo is an uncanny and haunting work, born of a happy accident and full of contradictions, that will be forever attached to Push the Sky Away and of which Susie and I are immensely proud." 

-Nick Cave, Red Hand Files, no. 31.

So much for the twittering classes and their supposed higher wisdom of all things, eh? How wrong they were, as they invariably have been throughout history. And Nick also supports and helps Susie's career in equal measure. The images used to promote her clothing range, the wonderfully named 'The Vampire's Wife,' often include Nick in them, and they sometimes offer a unique insight into the tender bond the two of them have, and the pictures are often works of art in their own right:



But it's also the way they have both responded to unthinkable tragedy, and helped and supported each other through that, and also supported each other's dreams, the knowing of which makes the above picture with the flowers so incredibly poignant. For their son, Arthur, tragically died four years ago, aged just fifteen, when he fell from a cliff near their home in Brighton. Nick has spoken many times since about how the outpouring of sympathy they received helped him reconnect with life, and with the public. Lydia and me were fortunate enough to attend one of the 'In Conversation With Nick Cave' concerts last year and it was a truly profound experience. He never shied from the toughest questions, and refused to take any cliched easy way out answers. He also responds to fans' questions on his Red Hand Files website and the answers he gives, along with the subjects explored, are an absolute treasure chest of wisdom, humour and poetry. The way that Nick and Susie have supported each other through personal tragedy is as clear as crystal, and offer a real glimpse into what it means to love and support another human being.

And so I give you, in the first of this 'On Being in an Indie Power Couple' series, Nick and Susie Cave. They inspire me, not just as individuals, but as a couple also. From the outside looking in, they seem to me to have the kind of relationship that is one worth aspiring to. Supportive and tender, Romantic and sensual, individual and unashamed, and with each of them somehow finding a balance between their personal and professional lives, even though Nick does talk about how difficult it is for them both when he is away from home on tour.

And they obviously have a very deep and profound connection. I hereby salute them both. Nick Cave, the Prince of Darkness, and Susie Cave, The Vampire's Wife. And while some people have Christianity's Ten Commandments, or Buddhism's Four Noble Truths as guides, I myself prefer more Pagan sources, preferably ones that don't denigrate the astonishing physical world that we reside on, and, distressingly, attempt to minimise its vast array of riches. One of these is Nick Cave's ideas of The Nine Muses & Nine Angels, which he uses as spirit guides and which he describes thus:

1. The Seraphs, who keep us sexy & freewheeling:



2. The Cherubs, who stop us doing anything too stupid:




3. The Thrones, who keep us Strong and Virile:




4. The Dominations, who free our minds, Right on!:




5. The Principalities, who stop us getting weepy
& nostalgic:




6. The Powers, who transform us into small gods:




7. The Archangels, who deal with the cops: 



8. The Virtues, which keep us humble:  


9. And the ordinary angels, who keep us childlike:

So, thank you Nick & Susie for your inspiration & sharing your souls so openly with us.

"And so i would love to remind you all that love and art and making and being-together in this life is so much more gigantic than we remember to remember."
- Amanda Palmer