News: Kylie Minogue x Nick Cave
Aussie star on how the Bad Seeds singer set her back on the path to pop glory
Kylie Minogue just gave a terrific interview over on The Quietus, with occasional Pigeon scribe Simon Price putting the questions. Among other topics covered — read the full thing here — the Australian pop star gave a cracking account of her friendship with Nick Cave, whose 1996 duet with Kylie ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’ they recently re-recorded at Abbey Road.
Minogue told Price how a friend mentioned that Cave wanted to duet with her about six years before they got originally round to making the track. When the Bad Seeds frontman restated his interest further down the line, that’s how she decided she should go ahead and collaborate.
“[...]At that point, whenever it was, in ’96 or something like that, there was a lot of post-modern stuff happening, and if this had come out of the blue, I might have thought ‘Oh great, here’s someone coming to take the piss.’ You know? But I knew this was for real, and I knew it came from an honest place.
Adding that she had some difficulty squaring her perception of Cave with what she’d read about him, Minogue said: “After working with him and recording this, ultimately a tragic song but this very tender, beautiful, sexual song, then I speed-read a biography on him. And then I realised, ‘Wow, is this the same guy?!’ I read about The Bad Seeds, and even before that The Birthday Party, and oh my god, the things they got up to, the life that he led! And it just seemed in complete contrast to who I met, and who I recorded with, and what we did together.”
Intriguingly, Minogue went on to add that Cave helped reconcile her with her pop roots after a move into indie-inspired territory drew a mixed response in the mid-nineties: “When we worked together, I was going through my whole Impossible Princess stage. And Nick said to me — I’m really paraphrasing, I can’t remember exactly, but — he said he preferred — he wanted to hear me sing — pop music. Which again, is kind of odd compared to what you’d think he would say. And the big turnaround was at the Poetry Olympics at the Royal Albert Hall, reciting ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ which he willed me into doing. I tried to find numerous excuses not to do it, but I did it, and it really set me on a different course[...] I just went, ‘OK, that’s it! I’m facing That Girl.’ I don’t know if I was scared of her, or felt eclipsed by her, or too defined by her, I dunno… but it was like meeting her face-to-face and going, ‘OK, I’m not going to get rid of you, so let’s join forces.’ From that moment on, I learnt to embrace my past and embrace pop.”
