Nick Cave writes about seeing Radiohead at the O2

Nick Cave went to one of Radiohead's four O2 nights in London in November, and writes about it in Issue #347 of The Red Hand Files, his letters answering readers' questions, published on 17 December. He was one of about 20,000 people there. Bizarrely, it was the first time I had ever been in the audience at such a large show, and I was stunned by the depth of love in the room⁶.

He was answering Jordan, from Dublin, who says concerts no longer do anything for them and asked whether Cave likes going to them. On tour he stays away from other people's shows, because they overload him, but after a couple of months off the road he wanted live music again, and went to see Bob Dylan, Swans, Radiohead, Cameron Winter and Dirty Three.

One of the five has played with him. Colin Greenwood stood in for Martyn Casey on bass with the Bad Seeds on the Wild God tour, and accompanied Cave alone on his European solo dates this summer.

At the O2 people danced, screamed, cried and hugged. Like everyone else there, I was deeply moved and humbled.⁶ Cave swims in a lake, goes to church, walks in nature and meditates, and none of it gives him what a concert does. He thinks the crowd was answering the music, which he calls astonishing, and the band's sheer nerve to stand before a crowd and offer up their souls⁶.

In the same issue he comes back to that nerve for Manuela, a singer-songwriter from Sunnmøre in Norway who has stage fright. He points her to the band at the O2, as an example of the ordinary courage it takes to stand in front of an audience.