Nick Cave thanked Muriel for special things, Zenith Concert, Paris, Tuesday November 19th

“Thank you Muriel, for those special things” said Nick Cave tonight, at his concert in the Zenith, Paris, looking at a member of the audience.  Well I was left at the end wondering ‘Well, who was Muriel?’ and no doubt the whole packed concert hall wondered.  What special things he was meaning? 

Vampire hankering for love

I thought back over the concert, and wondered who Muriel had been.  There was something different about this concert, it was true.  The last one I saw was Grinderman: and there was longing... a longing for something, like a vampire, being haunted at night for something it hungered....  This concert had a new feeling.  Was it during ‘From here to Eternity?’  Then ‘Jubilee Street’? 

As soon as Nick had come on, he inspired the same hoots and howls and cries as one would hear in a bullfighting amphitheatre… something about his bull like tread, his determined pace, and his will to get his songs sung.  Something about his gold latex Elvis shirt, unbuttoned to reveal an unhairy chest, something about the paradox of the sensitivity and violence in his songs… the hurt and the anger…

He capered about the stage on black pipe cleaner legs, his black eyes in a trance, his black hair falling down his back like a cloak.

The Bad Seed Band stood behind with a ghostly menace, with Warren Ellis at his most rampaging and most whining, with violin and sometimes a flute at its most haunting…hurrying around while Cave paced with the passion of a Heathcliff in full sweat….  

The songs crescendoed, became louder, the audience more excited, it seemed that the next song had to be more passionate, more drums… only then, flirtily, he came to the front of the stage and took the hands of his adoring fans.  He stood upright among the lily long hands which waved about his waist, plucking at his belt straps, as he was singing a song from his new album, Push the Sky away, Mermaids… something about the unproveable being proved:

‘I believe in God,

I believe in mermaids…

I believe in rapture,

For I have seen your face

On the floor of the ocean’

The curtains at the back are velvet red and the lights bright as flames, the effect like red hot glowing coals..  Mercy Seat plays, and the audience is a rapt rhythmic meadow of fists…

Then Nick Cave says “This is a Classic,” and we hear ‘West Country Girl’, a song about PJ Harvey.

With Nick Cave there is a story, always a story, something about having seen not only the devil… but also the face of god… the story of a journey … a path,

Suddenly from being a bull ring of ruthless fans,  the concert calms…becomes intimate…  you might hear a pin drop…the Zenith, once stadium large, is small and all are silent, huddled around Cave at his guitar.  Even the noisy caterwaulers are quietened into intent babes having stories… and ‘Into your arms’

And I believe in Love

And I know that you do too

And I believe in some kind of path

That we can walk down, me and you

So keep your candles burning

And make her journey bright and pure

That she will keep returning

Always and evermore

In ‘Into your arms’a gangly, wiry mover, full of thrilling shakes and skips, Nick Cave caused an oven of pleasure, a Johnny Cash or Elvis Presley.  Followed by God is in the House, Higgs Bosun Blues,  there was always the preacher in him ‘Push the Sky Away’… words that rock and comfort… voice that is gritty but full of emotion… sometimes screaming like a Halloween horror ghoul… sometimes heavenly in love, a romantic… this spectrum of emotions moves the packed Zenith.

“If you got everything and you don’t want no more

You’ve gotta just keep on pushing

Keep on pushing

Push the sky away’

But it’s when the audience is virtually carrying him, when he wades into the crowd and this is when Muriel must have done the ‘special thing’.  He is holding the hands of the front row, as they reach up to him, like small children in cots. 

He sang the lines:

‘Yeah, I'm stagger lee and you better get down on

Your knees

And suck my dick, because if you don't you're gonna be

Dead

Said stagger lee

But this must have been where Muriel came in, when he was swinging his hips and swaggering in a hip high clump of adoring hands, for one wouldn’t have been surprised if someone was willing to do this for him as he basked in the love.

But no-one could fault the amusing swaggers of his groin in Muriel's direction... for it was not love given him, but love he has given… love and humor he has inspired… for with Nick Cave, his loves have helped him to vault those trappings and let love in big time… so the vampire in him seems soothed and fed....and by a presence of love in that Zenith tonight.