Nick Cave on aging: “grow a porn star moustache and learn the electric guitar”

Sean Furtado

Nick Cave has been answering fan questions and doling out life advice through his The Red Hand Files site for quite some time now, and his latest answer is more the former. Remko from Belgium writes in, "I’m struggling a bit with the fact I’m turning 40 in a week. Some people say 'You’re in the brightest part of your life,' others say you are an 'old man.' What is your perspective on getting old?"

Nick answers the question with his customary thoughtfulness and wit, writing, "My advice to you is to grow a porn star moustache and learn the electric guitar — it worked for me — and try to hang in there until you’re sixty. Then you’ll find you don’t have to worry about what people say any more and, as a consequence, life becomes a whole lot more interesting."

He continues:

Entering your sixties brings with it a warm and fuzzy feeling of freedom through redundancy, through obsolescence, through living outside of the conversation and forever existing on the wrong end of the stick. What a relief it is to be that mad, embarrassing uncle in the corner of the room, a product of his age, with his loopy ideas about free speech and freedom of expression, with his love of beauty, of humour, chaos, provocation and outrage, of conversation and debate, his adoration of art without dogma, his impatience with the morally obvious, his belief in universal compassion, forgiveness and mercy, in nuance and the shadows, in neutrality and in humanity — ah, beautiful humanity — and in God too, who he thanks for letting him, in these dementing times, be old.

Nick is touring in Europe in summer of 2022, including stops at Primavera Sound's Barcelona and Portugal editions. He promises more shows will be announced soon, too. Stream "Letter to Cynthia," a single inspired by a question he answered on The Red Hand Files in 2018, below.