Nick Cave details lyric-writing process, says he lost his "beloved" Ghosteen notebook last year

In a new interview with Interview Magazine, Cave has discussed the process in which he writes songs, and has also revealed that he's been working on ceramic figures during the pandemic.

On how he writes his lyrics, Cave explained, "My process of lyric writing is as follows: For months, I write down ideas in a notebook with a Bic medium ballpoint pen in black. At some point, the songs begin to reveal themselves, to take some kind of form, which is when I type the new lyrics into my laptop. Here, I begin the long process of working on the words, adding verses, taking them away, and refining the language, until the song arrives at its destination. At this stage, I take one of the yellowing back pages I have cut from old second-hand books, and, on my Olympia typewriter, type out the lyrics. I then glue it into my bespoke notebook, number it, date-stamp it, and sticker it. The song is then ‘officially’ completed."

He continued, "Last year, I lost my beloved Ghosteen notebook with all the scribblings and typed lyrics in it. I have no idea what happened to it. It was very distressing for me at the time. A few months ago, in lockdown, I sat and retyped all the lyrics, date-stamped, stickered, and numbered them, in an attempt to reclaim them. This process reconnected me to the words that I had lost. A number of these pages are now available as handmade reproductions."

Cave also spoke about his pandemic hobby of creating ceramic figures, "During the pandemic, I have spent time hidden away in the studio of the sculptor Corin Johnson, working on a series of ceramic figures. These figures, religious in nature, are based on the Staffordshire ‘flatbacks’ that were popular in the Victorian era, and were often painted by children in the ‘dark satanic mills'."