Nick Cave has said he has “feelings of culpability” over the deaths of his sons.
The Bad Seeds singer, 66, made the comments after losing two of his children in the space of seven years.
His son Arthur died aged 15 after he fell from a cliff near his home in Brighton in 2015. It came after he took the drug LSD for the first time, an inquest heard.
Then in 2022 his 31-year-old son Jethro, who had schizophrenia, died in Melbourne.
The 66-year-old, speaking during an interview with The Guardian, said it was “against nature” for a parent to bury their child.
When asked if he feels culpable for their deaths, including Arthur’s given Cave’s own struggles with substance abuse, he said: “There could be some element of that”.
He added: “Look, these things are in our DNA, they’re inherited. I don’t want to make any assumptions about Arthur, who was just a young boy. It’s not like he was into drugs.
“On a fundamental level, it’s against nature to be burying your children. And there can’t help but be feelings of culpability.”
Soon after Arthur died, Cave and his family moved to Los Angeles because they found it too difficult living down the road from where the tragedy took place.
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Cave said he felt like he had to grieve publicly after the death was widely reported.
However, he said the experience of bereavement after Arthur’s death helped when Jethro died, because he knew he “could get through [it]”.
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The musician also addressed accusations that he has previously sided with the extreme alt-right online movement.
He said: “The concept that there are problems with the world we need to address, such as social justice, I’m totally down with that.
“However, I don’t agree with the methods that are used in order to reach this goal – shutting down people, cancelling people…
“The problem with the right taking hold of this word is that it’s made the discussion impossible to have without having to join a whole load of nutjobs who have their problem with it.”
Cave also denied he was a Tory and said he had never voted for the party.
