Legendary Australian rocker Nick Cave revealed that he felt “extremely bored” at times when attended King Charles III’s coronation in London earlier this month.
The 65-year-old was one of just a handful of Australians represented at the royal event, and claimed he went not out of political motivation but out of pure curiosity.
During a wide-ranging interview with the UK’s Channel 4 News podcast “Ways to Change The World” with Krishan Guru-Murthy, the “Where The Wild Roses Grow” singer said he had a “conflicted” emotional experience at the coronation.
“I went along to the Coronation entirely out of curiosity and found the whole thing to be acutely interesting, to say the least, I would say… because I thought I would feel things when I went to the coronation,” Cave said.
“But I didn’t know that I would feel them in such an extreme way and they were conflicted feelings, and sometimes I felt extremely bored, other times completely awestruck by the event, extremely moved by the music.”
In particular, he described George Frideric Handel’s “Zadok The Priest” as “something from outer space, kind of amused by what was going on, angered by what was going on so… it brought up a lot of different sorts of things.”
Cave, who famously fronts his group Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, slammed musicians and other celebrities who snubbed at a royal invitation to the coronation.
The singer said he chose to go to experience the immense pageantry of the “most historical event in the UK of our age,” which cost between an estimated $63 million and $125 million.
“I am not a monarchist, nor am I a royalist, nor am I an ardent republican for that matter,’ he wrote on his personal blog The Red Hand.
“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,” he added.
When a fan pressed him online about why he would ever go, he told the story about the time he had the opportunity to meet with the late Queen Elizabeth II. When he was watching her funeral, he said he found himself weeping.
“I’m just drawn to that kind of thing – the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefying spectacular, the awe-inspiring,” he added.
Cave, who has teased upcoming new music, was named an Officer of the Order of Australia six years ago for his ‘distinguished service to the performing arts’.
