Nick Cave's Boatman's Call and Losing Music in a Breakup

by editor Michele Catalano

As I walked toward a makeshift altar in my parents’ backyard in 2002, to the strains of Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms,” I couldn’t imagine that there would be a time when the song would signal heartbreak and despair, that, in fact, the whole of Cave’s catalog would become unusable to me, an artifact from a life from which I was trying to separate myself.

This is the problem when you assign a soundtrack to specific times in your life, when you attach songs and albums and artists to people and places and things. A storybook marriage gone awry takes with it all the romantic musical interludes when it dissolves. A broken friendship leaves a distaste for the songs you shared; memories of a car accident mean letting go of the song that was playing when it happened.

I lost so much when that second marriage ended on several bad notes. The music we listened to—Nick Cave, Faith No More, Stabbing Westward— tied us together and bound us with memories that were soundtracked by these bands. As such, I could not bear to listen to them once the relationship was over. A void existed, a dark hole where the pleasure of that music once lived, and I was careful not to step into it lest I lose myself.

I resented that loss. I was angry that something I loved so much was in essence taken away from me. When my then-husband and I parted, we had no shared property, no kids together, no money tying us to each other. We just had the music we loved, and I gave him custody of that because I could no longer trust myself to take care of it.

I was pretty unfamiliar with the music of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds until late 1998, when they were ten albums into their discography. The Boatman’s Call had been out about a year, and I had no knowledge of it. At that time I was long-distance dating the guy who would become my second husband. He was a huge Nick Cave fan and had been trying to get me to listen. I finally relented and went to Uncle Phil’s Record Store and asked for the latest Nick Cave. Uncle Phil gave me Boatman’s Call, with the suggestion that I wait to get home to listen to it, instead of starting it in the car. “You gotta listen to the whole thing at once,” he said.

I still wasn’t expecting it to be special, so I decided to make dinner while I listened on the portable CD player in the kitchen. I was two minutes into “Into My Arms” when I turned the stove off and put the CD in the good stereo in the living room. I started from the beginning.

I sat still for the whole album, then I called my partner in Pennsylvania and cried about it. I told him it was the most beautiful music I had ever heard. From that moment on, Nick Cave was ours. I listened to everything I could find (not easy in 1998), then gave up and bought Let Love In and Henry’s Dream, and later, Murder Ballads. But it was Boatman’s Call that lived in my heart. This became our album. We bonded over it. We cried over it. We’d sit in an AOL chat room, and he would type lyrics at me as we listened at the same time. “Are You the One That I’ve Been Waiting For*”* and *“*Into My Arms” became songs that tied us in what felt like a knot that could never be undone.

And that’s how I found myself three years later, on my fortieth birthday, walking arm and arm with him through that wedding arch in my parents’ backyard. The DJ played, as instructed, “Into My Arms.” We approached the altar and the judge who would marry us, and we stood there, letting the song play out.

But 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

It was romantic, it was beautiful, it was perfect. I thought this moment would stay with me forever, and I was right. At first it was a touchstone I would reach for when things were going bad. Then it became my solace, my reminder that things had been good and they could be good again. And, finally, it became an enemy.

The whole album was my nemesis. It was the one thing that still tied me to him after we parted; it was something that would forever remind me of him, of us, of hopes dashed and dreams shattered. Boatman’s Call was ripped from my heart, as if Nick Cave himself had reached his fist inside me and pulled from my heart everything good I had felt, every warm feeling, every good thought I had about this album. We were done. My marriage was done. My relationship with Nick Cave’s music was done. There was never any doubt that as one went, so did the other.

I was mad. Not mad that it was over; that was a relief. I wasn’t even mad at him. I was mad that something that once gave me such great pleasure was taken from me. It wasn’t just Boatman’s Call. It was Murder Ballads. It was No More Shall We Part. All of it. I had tied two good things together, and when one of them went bad, they both did. Nick Cave was gone from my life, as if I had divorced him and not my husband.

I went nearly four years, from January 2006 until late 2009, without listening to Nick Cave. There was no big fanfare about it. I just decided it was time to move on. But it was hard. My heart ached when I listened to Boatman’s Call, but I was determined to get through it and take it back.

Eventually I was able to ease that music back into my life. But there are still instances where it stings, where everything comes rushing back, and I have to let it all go again. Some days, I’ll skip over the Nick Cave on my playlist because I’m feeling vulnerable or sad, and I’ll be reminded all over again of how much value I place on the music I listen to.

I’ve listened to Boatman’s Call on vinyl twice while writing this—it was one of the first albums I bought during the pandemic when I decided to start collecting again—and it now feels to me like nothing more than beautiful music. There’s no wistfulness, no heartache, no sadness. I’m singing along to “Brompton Oratory,” and it feels good instead of bad. The days when I turned away from Cave’s music are long gone, as is most of the hurt and angst of those earlier days. What was once lost is found again. I’m grateful to have it back.

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