Nick Cave on Songwriting, Behind the Lyrics of ‘Ghosteen’ Track “Hollywood”

The kid drops his bucket and spade / and climbs into the sun. Nick Cave offers up an abstract scene in “Hollywood.” Closing Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ 17th album Ghosteen,  “Hollywood” is an enigmatic poem set to a moving arrangement with musical partner Warren Ellis, and one that recently inspired Cave to delve deeper into what songwriting means to him.

In a letter to the poet, singer/songwriter on his blog, The Red Hand Files, one reader asked Cave specifically about the aforementioned “Hollywood” lyrics and his “creative process for coming up with these lyrics that may not have an obvious meaning but are nonetheless trying to say something important,” which prompted Cave to reflect on the art of songwriting.

“I find that many of my favorite lyrics are those that I do not fully understand,” said Cave in his response to the reader. “They seem to exist in a world of their own—in a place of potentiality, adjacent to meaning. The words feel authentic or true but remain mysterious as if a greater truth lies just beyond our understanding. I see this, not just within a song, but within life itself, where awe and wonder live in the tension between what we understand and what we do not understand.”

Cave admitted to often writing words that “seem to vibrate with potential,” though he may not know their meaning at the time.

“That vibration is a promise,” Cave said. “It promises that, in time, all will be revealed. I have learned to trust that intuition, because I know I am dealing with a metaphoric form that is essentially mystifying, and that a seemingly insignificant couple of lines have the capacity to reveal, in their smallness, in time, all of the world.”

He added, “‘The kid drops his bucket and spade/ And climbs into the sun’ are such words. Two short lines that draw to an abrupt and brutal halt the main body of the epic song, ‘Hollywood.’”

The fuller “meaning” of the song is one that may resonate with anyone who has experienced loss and does explore the after-effects following the death of a child, something Cave has experienced twice, first with the death of his son Arthur Cave at the age of 15 in 2015 and most recently when son Jethro Lazeny, 30, died in May of 2022.  

“[These lyrics] are a lovely image,” said Cave. “However, looking at them now, these lines are perhaps not so obscure, and without wanting to take away their power by attaching my own meaning to them, their intent seems fairly clear. They mean, the child stopped what he was doing and died.”

Cave added, “‘The child stopped what he was doing and died’ is also a beautiful line, perhaps a better line, but sometimes some truths are too severe to live on the page, or in a song, or in a heart. Hence, metaphor can create a merciful sense of distance from the cruel idea, or the unspeakable truth, and allow it to exist within us as a kind of poetic radiance, as a work of art.”

Photo: Joel Ryan/ Nasty Little Man PR