{"id":230623,"date":"2026-01-10T09:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T09:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/230623\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T09:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T09:00:09","slug":"nick-cave-talks-about-writing-title-song-for-train-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/230623\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Cave Talks About Writing Title Song for ‘Train Dreams’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRock legend Nick Cave<\/a> might have been a natural to ask to write a theme song for \u201cTrain Dreams<\/a>,\u201d even if he didn\u2019t have any personal connections or ins with the filmmakers or cast. One of his most acclaimed albums, \u201cGhosteen,\u201d deals with grief following the death of his teenage son, and even his prior and subsequent work is inclined toward a big-picture take on how we grapple with the joys and sorrows of a lifespan spent with and without loved ones, on through his most recent release, \u201cWild God.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tBut Cave did know the movie\u2019s leading man, Joel Edgerton<\/a>, who had some idea just how close the source novella for \u201cTrain Dreams\u201d was to the singer-songwriter\u2019s heart. There were still some slight speed bumps on the way to Cave co-writing the theme, like the fact that he had little inclination to horn in on territory he thought belonged to the film\u2019s composer, Bryce Dessner, of the National fame. And then, as Cave recounts the story, it just happened anyhow, his conscious will about the whole thing notwithstanding.<\/p>\n

\n\tVariety spoke with Cave by phone while he was in London, wrapping up some tour dates with his longtime band, the Bad Seeds.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did the request to consider doing a song first come to you? Did you first hear from Bryce Dessner about it, or would it have been (director) Clint Bentley first?<\/p>\n

\n\tFirst of all, I think it should be known that \u201cTrain Dreams\u201d has always been, like, my favorite book. Whenever I\u2019m asked about books, \u201cTrain Dreams\u201d always comes up. It\u2019s a little like (Cormac McCarthy\u2019s) \u201cBlood Meridian\u201d or something to me, just a perfect piece of literature, and especially powerful because it\u2019s a novella \u2014 it\u2019s just a short and beautiful thing. So I\u2019ve always had a deep attachment to that book. I know the main actor, Joel Edgerton \u2014 he\u2019s an Aussie \u2014 and I think he just texted me and asked if I had any interest. And I didn\u2019t really have any time to do it, so it\u2019s quite something. I had all sorts of misgivings about it.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat stopped you from leaping right at it, if you loved the book, apart from the time factor?<\/p>\n

\n\tI also do scores myself, and the last thing anybody who\u2019s done a score for a film wants is for the producers to come in and dump some song at the end of it that doesn\u2019t relate to the score, just to have a kind of rock song at the end. It happens to us all the time when we do scores; it\u2019s unbelievably insulting. And I didn\u2019t really want to do that to Bryce. But I saw and just really, really loved the film. I thought that they did a remarkable job of capturing this beautiful gem of a novel. But still, I was hesitant about sticking my nose into Bryce\u2019s score.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen I watched the film, I fell asleep, I woke up in the morning and I had these lyrics pretty much as you read them in my head, and I quickly wrote them down and really liked them. I never, ever get songs like that. Songs never come to me in that way; it\u2019s like pulling teeth for me to write a song, and this came so easily and beautifully. So I rang up Bryce and said, \u201cLook, I\u2019ve written some lyrics,\u201d and he really liked them, and I said, \u201cBut I don\u2019t know how to make that into a song for your film.\u201d Then I watched the end of the film again and realized I could just sing those lyrics over Bryce\u2019s existing score, which was a really beautiful piece of music that drifted into the credit sequence. So that\u2019s essentially what I did: I took his piece of music that he\u2019d already written into the studio, chopped it around a bit to sort of make it more song-like, I suppose, with a bit more form to it, and sang these lyrics over it. The whole thing came very, very easily, and I was really blown away by it. I have to say, it was something about the sparseness of Bryce\u2019s music with the lyric over the top that had something about it that was, for me at least, extremely emotional.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo the way that it came to you was\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, it came to me in a dream. I\u2019m not joking when I say that this is actually what happened. Because I kept thinking \u201cthey want me to write a song for it,\u201d and I was on holiday, so the last thing I wanted to do is to have to go into a studio and try and write a song. But the images from the film were in my mind when I went to sleep. And a lot of what I\u2019m talking about in the song is directly related to the film and the book, actually. Usually that sort of thing doesn\u2019t really work. With a song where you actually reference the film itself, it\u2019s definitely a recipe for disaster. But I thought it was a rather beautiful kind of way of summing the whole thing up.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, literally a song about dreaming that came in a dream.<\/p>\n

\n\tA train dream.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou mentioned things that are not in the film, and a reference to Elvis stands out, so I\u2019m wondering whether those were taken from the novel or\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, the Elvis thing is from the book. I just remember this amazing scene where he [the character Robert Granier] goes to the town \u2014 I might have this slightly wrong \u2014 and this train has passed through with this guy on it that all the girls are going mad over. And he doesn\u2019t know who this person is, but it\u2019s Elvis Presley, with this magical voice. It\u2019s a beautiful part of the book, and it\u2019s not in the film. So there were some images that came out of the book, and some I made up myself.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat did you connect with most about the book?<\/p>\n

\n\tI mean, I\u2019ve known it for a long time. I like Denis Johnson\u2019s writing a lot anyway, especially the final book that he wrote that was published after his death (\u201cThe Largesse of the Sea Maiden\u201d). But the thing about \u201cTrain Dreams\u201d was that it was an unremarkable life, you could say, but at the same time, it was, on a human level, an extraordinary life. And the way Denis Johnson writes about that in a kind of plain language \u2026 there\u2019s an enormous amount of humility to his language that tells this story that suddenly becomes this crushing story about grief. It\u2019s a weird little episodic thing of him coming back to his wife and going back to his job as a timberman and these things that he sees and weird shit that goes on. And then he comes back and she\u2019s no longer there, and his life just becomes this strange, dreamlike grieving situation. It really sneaks up on you, the whole idea of what the book is actually about, which is a comment on grief and mortality.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s been such something you\u2019ve grappled with so much in your work. One reason why so many relate to your recent work is because we deal with those things ourselves and we\u2019re interested by how you are processing it. So it\u2019s interesting that there\u2019d be a continuity there with this project.<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, there are similar things that I\u2019ve been through, and they pretty much leak into everything that I do. But it\u2019s not that I try and write about that stuff. It\u2019s that my boys\u2019 presences are infused in all that I write. I find that very difficult to separate myself from. It gets easier, but it\u2019s been very difficult. So I\u2019ve read \u201cTrain Dreams\u201d many times, starting many years ago, and obviously it takes on a different force with the things that have gone on in my own personal life. There\u2019s something about the way he writes about grief that you don\u2019t even really understand that it\u2019s about that until, towards the end, you go, \u201cOK, this is what this book is actually about.\u201d There\u2019s something that I found deeply affecting about that I can\u2019t really even describe it \u2014 that it is both an ordinary life and a life full of wonder. Which our lives are. And the film echoes that beautifully as well.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou write in the song about \u201cthe strange and wondrous things I\u2019ve seen, measured in truth,\u201d and then you talk about \u201ca tendency to pain.\u201d You\u2019ve perhaps striven to have that kind of balance in a lot of what you write.<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, it holds all of those things very lightly, like the book. Neither the film nor the book are ever morbid. There\u2019s something life-affirming about this devastating story. And that\u2019s the beautiful paradox of grief, really.<\/p>\n

\n\tDid you approach watching the film itself with any trepidation, since the book was so dear to you?<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, I did approach it with a whole lot of trepidation, but I was just really drawn into it. It\u2019s its own thing; I think it\u2019s totally different than than the book. There\u2019s another (variation) of a major work of art that\u2019s out there that\u2019s connected to the book too, and that\u2019s Will Patton\u2019s reading of \u201cTrain Dreams,\u201d the audio book. The audio book, I just recommend it to anybody, as the most beautiful reading of an extraordinary book. But the book is a little kind of quirkier, I think. There\u2019s a sort of playful element to the book, and I think that the film feels more a serious look at grief, you could say. But I think they both handle the reigns very lightly on this subject matter.<\/p>\n

\n\tLiterally there are dreams in the book and film, and then you capture that in the lyrics, and you talk about \u201ccrazy dreams that go on for hours.\u201d Do you spend a lot of time thinking about how we process loss or or relive things through dreams and that?<\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t dream\u2026 You know, my wife dreams all the time, and it\u2019s an active part of her existence, her dreams. She wakes up in the morning, every morning \u2014 \u201cOh God, I had this dream last night.\u201d I just don\u2019t have that. I dream through her, you could say. And a lot of her dreams are very much like dreams in the song. You know, they are about our boy, and they\u2019re very, very beautiful and very simple, and we feel it very much a way of him finding us and kind of being with us for a while through Suzy. It\u2019s very beautiful, the whole thing. So, yeah, we have a very strong relationship with dreams, although I personally am not the one who\u2019s doing the dreaming. I\u2019m very jealous of that.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTRAIN DREAMS \u2013 (Pictured) Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier. Cr: Netflix<\/a> \u00a9 2025<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n

\n\tDid this affect at all how you feel about collaboration?<\/p>\n

\n\tI really liked Bryce\u2019s score, and I noticed it when I was watching \u201cTrain Dreams,\u201d so that\u2019s why I didn\u2019t really want to interfere with it. But we found a way of doing it that didn\u2019t change the mood of the score at all. In a way, it feels, at least to me, as if the score is moving towards the song in a way. And that\u2019s largely thanks to his beautiful piece of music. Normally, I just work with the people that I work with, Warren Ellis and the people in the Bad Seeds. I very rarely collaborate with anyone outside of my very tight circle. So that was strange and a new thing for me to do, moving out of my comfort zone a little bit to do something with somebody else. It was quite lovely.<\/p>\n

\n\tApart from this song, it has been a good or fruitful season for you, especially with things people are seeing overseas than they might be in the U.S. right now, like the \u201cVeiled World\u201d special and then the series \u201cThe Death of Bunny Monro\u201d and your soundtrack for it. Those have been well-reviewed.<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, \u201cThe Death of Bunny Monro\u201d has done really well. People have been spent trying to make that for 20 years or something. I wrote that (novel) 20 years ago, so that\u2019s amazing to see that be on TV. It\u2019s a challenging series, and I think Sky were pretty courageous and allowed it to be the way that it was.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019re touring Australia, New Zealand and various places through August of next year. It might be greedy for your U.S. to want to have you back in the States right away, when you just toured with the Bad Seeds in 2024. But are there any plans to come back to America, or is that too far off to speculate?<\/p>\n

\n\tMe? Not the band, but yes, I am (for solo shows), yeah. I haven\u2019t announced that, but yes, I\u2019m doing some.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rock legend Nick Cave might have been a natural to ask to write a theme song for \u201cTrain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,73899,409,400,95616,73900],"class_list":{"0":"post-230623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-joel-edgerton","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-netflix","14":"tag-nick-cave","15":"tag-train-dreams"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}