Det var givetvis lysande och som det senare också alltid varit när Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds är på en scen. Samma kväll köpte jag ett turnéhäfte där en grön flexisingle följde med. ”Scum”hette låten och var en ren hatlåt till en journalist.
”He was a miserable shitwringing turd Like he reminded me of some evil gnome Shaking hands was like shaking a hot, fat, oily bone.
His and herpes bath towel type If you know what I mean I could not look at him, worm
I think you fucking traitor, chronic masturbator, Shitlicker, user, self-abuser, jigger jigger! What rock did you crawl from? Which, did you come?
You Judas, Brutus, Vitus, Scum! Hey four-eyes, come That’s right, it’s a gun Face is bubble, blood, and, street Snowman with six holes clean into his fat fuckin guts”
Låten är som många andra av hans furiösa låtar från den tiden, otroligt bra och när jag senare började kolla upp vad journalisten i fråga egentligen skrev och vad det var som utlöste Nicks raseri.
I Guardian 2008 berättade Mat Snow som var en ung journalist på NME att han hade sett Birthday Party 1980 och blivit alldeles knäckt.
”In 1980 my old school buddy Barney Hoskyns was writing for NME and wanted someone to go to gigs with. I became his plus one. The Birthday Party were just fantastic, incredibly exciting, wild and feral, and we became part of their scene, which consisted of hanging out, playing records, doing drugs and drinking.
I had a straight job and by night morphed into a nocturnal creature. It was an exciting scene to feel vicariously part of. It felt like you were living through a Velvet Underground song. I remember Nick setting his hair on fire with a candle: everything was part-Baudelaire, part-Keith Richards. But by 1983 the Birthday Party had broken up and Nick was forming the Bad Seeds. He and his girlfriend Anita were asking for somewhere to crash for a while, and the pair moved in with me. He was still doing heroin but he was discreet. He was a good housemate. It was funny because he was always nagging Anita about her diet, yet he was shooting up! They moved down the road and we lost touch.
I raved about his From Her To Eternity album in NME but then, in a singles review, happened to drop in that the forthcoming - second - Nick Cave album “lacked the same dramatic tension”. A year or so later I found myself interviewing Nick formally for the first time. He kept me and the photographer waiting for hours. The PR was very jumpy. I got a very unusual interview. I asked him what the problem was and he said, “I think you’re an arsehole” and mentioned that he’d written a song developing this theme. Weeks later, I bought for £1 a green seven-inch flexidisc called “Scum.” I think it’s one of his best songs, and very funny. Like Dylan’s Mr Jones, I’d rather be memorialised as the spotlit object of a genius’s scorn than a dusty discographical footnote. My wife to be was a big Nick Cave fan—“Scum” is “our song.”
Även om det här var en tid då Nick hade mer illegala substanser i sina vener än blod så måste detta utbrott på en journalist vara ett av det kanske mest överdrivna aggressioner som gjorts i musikvärlden, i hård konkurrens med när Sid Vicous slog ned Nick Kent med en cykelkedja.
Peter Alzén
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