Nick Cave on attending Charles III’s coronation: “I’m not a monarchist”

The coronation of Charles III and his wife, Camilla, as king and queen of the United Kingdom takes place on Saturday at London's Westminster Abbey. While Robert Smith will not be there, Nick Cave is attending. In this week's update to his Red Hand Files website, he answers the questions many are wondering: "Why the fuck are you going to the King’s coronation?," "The coronation. Seriously????," "Are you a Monarchist? Why go?" and "Nick Cave going to the coronation??! What would the young Nick Cave have thought of that?!"

Like all of Nick's Red Hand Files posts, his answer is nuanced and thoughtful and not without humor, opening with, "I’ll make this a quick one because I’ve got to work out what I am going to wear to the Coronation."

From there he gets more serious, saying that while he's not a monarchist, a royalist or "an ardent republican," he is "also not is so spectacularly incurious about the world and the way it works, so ideologically captured, so damn grouchy, as to refuse an invitation to what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age. Not just the most important, but the strangest, the weirdest."

Nick also recounted his one face-to-face encounter with Queen Elizabeth II, calling her "the most charismatic woman I have ever met," and admitted when he watched her funeral, he wept. "Beyond the interminable but necessary debates about the abolition of the monarchy, I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals – the strangeness of them, the deeply eccentric nature of the whole affair that so perfectly reflects the unique weirdness of Britain itself. I’m just drawn to that kind of thing – the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefyingly spectacular, the awe-inspiring."

As for what he thinks his younger self might think of all this, he writes wryly, "The young Nick Cave was, in all due respect to the young Nick Cave, young, and like many young people, mostly demented, so I’m a little cautious around using him as a benchmark for what I should or should not do. He was cute though, I’ll give him that."

Read Nick's full response below.

Nick is going on a solo tour with Radiohead's Colin Greenwood this fall including a show at, apropos for this post, Kings Theatre.

Why the fuck are you going to the King’s coronation?

I’ll make this a quick one because I’ve got to work out what I am going to wear to the Coronation.

I am not a monarchist, nor am I a royalist, nor am I an ardent republican for that matter; what I am also not is so spectacularly incurious about the world and the way it works, so ideologically captured, so damn grouchy, as to refuse an invitation to what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age. Not just the most important, but the strangest, the weirdest.

I once met the late Queen at an event at Buckingham Palace for ‘Aspirational Australians living in the UK’ (or something like that). It was a mostly awkward affair, but the Queen herself, dressed in a salmon coloured twin-set, seemed almost extraterrestrial and was the most charismatic woman I have ever met. Maybe it was the lighting, but she actually glowed. As I told my mother – who was the same age as the Queen and, like the Queen, died in her nineties – about that day, her old eyes filled with tears. When I watched the Queen’s funeral on the television last year I found, to my bafflement, that I was weeping myself as the coffin was stripped of the crown, orb and sceptre and lowered through the floor of St. George’s Chapel. I guess what I am trying to say is that, beyond the interminable but necessary debates about the abolition of the monarchy, I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals – the strangeness of them, the deeply eccentric nature of the whole affair that so perfectly reflects the unique weirdness of Britain itself. I’m just drawn to that kind of thing – the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefyingly spectacular, the awe-inspiring.

And as for what the young Nick Cave would have thought – well, the young Nick Cave was, in all due respect to the young Nick Cave, young, and like many young people, mostly demented, so I’m a little cautious around using him as a benchmark for what I should or should not do. He was cute though, I’ll give him that. Deranged, but cute.

So, with all that in mind, I am looking forward to going the Coronation. I think I’ll wear a suit.

Love, Nick