Nick Cave has ‘inexplicable attachment’ to royal family ahead of Australian Coronation delegation attendance

Bad Seeds frontman Nick Cave has answered fans’ questions after it was revealed he is attending the coronation along with other famous Australians.
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Australian rocker Nick Cave has explained that he “holds an inexplicable emotional attachment” to the royal family as he prepared for King Charlescoronation this Saturday. Answering shocked fans in his newsletter the Red Hand Files after it was revealed that he would be attending the ceremony as part of an Australian delegation, Cave said he is “not a monarchist, nor am I a royalist, nor am I an ardent republican for that matter”.

In the letter, he said: “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.”

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The response comes after four fans, including one Brit and three Australians asked the Mercy Seat singer “why the f**k” he is going to the King’s coronation, questioning “what would the young Nick Cave have thought of that?”.

Nick Cave, who has lived in Brighton since the early 2000s, will be attending the coronation at Westminster Abbey alongside Aussie prime minister Athony Albanese, footballer Sam Kerr, Comedian Adam Hill, along with other representatives. Having met Queen Elizabeth II at an event at Buckingham Palace, he said she “seemed almost extraterrestrial and was the most charismatic woman I have ever met. Maybe it was the lighting, but she actually glowed”.

“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”, he said. “I’m just drawn to that kind of thing – the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefyingly spectacular, the awe-inspiring.”

Nick Cave will attend King Charles coronation as part of an Australian delegation.Nick Cave will attend King Charles coronation as part of an Australian delegation.
Nick Cave will attend King Charles coronation as part of an Australian delegation.

Cave, who was born in Australia, admitted that he cried watching the Queen’s funeral on television “to [his] bafflement”. The Bad Seeds frontman was named an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2017, an honour established by Queen Elizabeth.