Love Changes Everything<\/a>, and tours.<\/p>\nThe trio first played in New Zealand in the mid-1990s, a tour Ellis remembers for the possibility that he might have never gone home again. The day before the first gig at Auckland\u2019s long-gone Kurtz Lounge, he and his bandmates went bodysurfing at Piha. He was ground headfirst into the sand, and was found unmoving, covered in blood and needing an ambulance ride to Auckland Hospital, where it was found he hadn\u2019t actually broken his neck as feared.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do have very fond memories of sitting in that hospital wondering if that was the end of my career and then getting out the next day and playing the greatest show of my life in front of, like, 20 people in some cafe.\u201d<\/p>\n
This writer remembers the show well. Especially how Ellis stamped his boot heel into the stage with flamenco force as his violin scorched the air.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, dude, I had just come back from knocking on heaven\u2019s door. Dylan was there. I was like, \u2018Fuck, Dylan was there.\u2019 The acoustic guitars were all out, and the nurses were all singing the harmonies and next day I was in a little cafe in Auckland, living my best life. I had a few drinks that night.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Ellis]()
Ellis on stage in London on the Wild God tour which is headed to Wellington. Supplied\/Megan Cullen<\/p>\n
That was also about the time Cave was inviting Ellis to become part of the Bad Seeds. Cave wasn\u2019t a total stranger. In the 1980s, Ellis flatted with a Melbourne heroin dealer to the stars. \u201cNick turned up, he had this kind of mystique around him,\u201d Ellis told Spanish newspaper El Pa\u00eds last year. \u201cHe sat in a chair and then, when he left, nobody was allowed to sit in the chair.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s interesting that of all of Cave\u2019s Bad Seeds collaborators during the years \u2013 who\u2019ve been drawn from Australia, the UK, the US and Germany \u2013 the most productive and creative partnership is with a man of similar beginnings. Cave and Ellis were born eight years and 200km apart in Victoria country towns before heading to Melbourne for tertiary studies. Both led confrontational bands \u2013 Cave\u2019s The Birthday Party, Ellis\u2019s Dirty Three \u2013 that took on the world in their respective early days. Both have based most of their careers overseas \u2013 Ellis lived in Paris, where he raised a family, for 27 years. But for both, as the saying goes, you can take the boy out of Australia, but \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something that I kind of understand about the way he is, that, even though he\u2019s a very sophisticated human being, and he\u2019s kind of cultivated this thing, when I first met Nick and we went on a road trip, the first time we stopped the car, he just sort of whipped his clothes off and jumped into the river,\u201d says Ellis. \u201cThat was the response of when you\u2019ve grown up in the country. It\u2019s like an Australian thing. So there are things within him that are beautifully Australian.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ellis agrees they had complementary sensibilities \u2013 Cave\u2019s words and melodies; his sound and arrangements \u2013 which have kept their collaboration rolling.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as it\u2019s transforming and evolving in some way, then that\u2019s fantastic. The day it doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s going somewhere that\u2019s exciting or we\u2019re not curious about it \u2026 I thought that day would have come a long time ago, and it hasn\u2019t yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
But no, unsurprisingly perhaps, he has never offered feedback on Cave\u2019s lyrics.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo way. I mean, it doesn\u2019t work like that. I don\u2019t know enough about words. I\u2019m a terrible reader. I\u2019ve written a book but that just sort of happened. It\u2019s a totally foreign kind of world for me. I\u2019ve always loved Nick\u2019s lyrics and stuff from before I joined the band, but I also respect that that\u2019s his thing. It\u2019s a big part of his thing. I\u2019ve been in the studio 30 years with him. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever heard anybody suggest something, because he doesn\u2019t need it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warren is essentially an ideas machine … When he is in full flight, he is unstoppable, and he is rarely not in full flight.<\/p>\n
Nick Cave<\/p>\n
A bit like this conversation, Ellis\u2019s Nina Simone\u2019s Gum started with his act of souveniring the discarded confectionery of the legendary singer and ended up somewhere else, looping back to his Ballarat childhood then forward to his strenuous efforts to make the gum an art piece to be exhibited and a jewellery mould. Where\u2019s the gum now?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s downstairs on a shelf in a box, and it\u2019s going into an exhibition at Somerset House next year. And then beyond that, I want to find a home for it, because I just don\u2019t want it to end up in the garbage.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2024, there was another Ellis memoir of sorts \u2013 Ellis Park, a documentary by prominent Australian director Justin Kurzel about Ellis\u2019s life and the place that now bears his name. The man who once had a monkey on his back now has primates and other creatures in his park. <\/p>\n
Ellis Park is an animal sanctuary in Sumatra, Indonesia, that provides a home for animals, many rescued from illegal pet traffickers, which due to injuries or captivity thwarting their natural development aren\u2019t releasable back into the wild. After meeting Indonesia-based Dutch animal welfare advocate Femke den Haas, Ellis bought the land next to her Sumatra Wildlife Centre to give the needy animals a permanent home.<\/p>\n
![\"Warren]()
Warren Ellis and the staff of Ellis Park, the wildlife sanctuary he helped establish in Indonesia. Supplied<\/p>\n
All of which might sound like an act of rock star largesse. But Ellis sees it as another sign that neither thinking things through nor common sense have been strong elements in his career. And perhaps he\u2019s the better for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI opened an animal sanctuary. Now when I did that, I didn\u2019t think much more about it than wanting to do something. Once I\u2019d done it, I had no idea we had to build the fucking thing. I had no idea what was involved. If I had, it might have made me think twice about it, but I just jumped into it with my heart open.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so easy to like something on social media and think you\u2019re doing something or raising your voice, but to actually get down and do something \u2013 taking action is the only thing that works. You can sit and shriek and complain but that does nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cave effectively runs his own complaints department with his Red Hand Files blog and newsletter, where he\u2019s kind of a bemused agony uncle answering fans\u2019 correspondence, whether it\u2019s challenging him on his religious faith or asking for career advice.<\/p>\n
Someone asked about Ellis back in 2018, and so, as Ellis heads off on another tangent, we\u2019ll leave the last words to the senior partner in his firm.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the years, I have developed a relationship with Warren that goes way beyond a professional collaboration and we are the best of friends \u2026 There is a certain sanctity in this friendship in that it has traversed all manner of troubles over the last 20 or so years, yet remains as resilient as ever … Warren is essentially an ideas machine (anyone who has worked in the studio with him will tell you the same) and it is an extraordinary privilege to be around him, both on stage and in the studio \u2013 and anywhere else, actually. When he is in full flight, he is unstoppable, and he is rarely not in full flight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cinematic Seeds<\/p>\n
![\"Blonde]()
Blonde ambition: Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in Blonde, scored by Ellis and Nick Cave. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
How Ellis and Cave became go-to soundtrack composers.<\/p>\n
The Warren Ellis\/Nick Cave soundtrack business started with films by Australian directors in their circle. John Hillcoat made his feature debut with prison movie Ghosts… of the Civil Dead, which starred Cave. His next movie, To Have & to Hold, had music by Cave with Bad Seeds Blixa Bargeld and Mick Harvey. Ellis joined Cave for Hillcoat\u2019s third, The Proposition. <\/p>\n
When Hillcoat went to the US, he called on the pair again for his film of Cormac McCarthy\u2019s post-apocalyptic story The Road, and then bootlegging drama Lawless. Meanwhile, another Australian director, NZ-born Andrew Dominik, tapped the duo for his Brad Pitt-starring art-western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and gave them a musical cameo. Dominik went on to document Cave himself in One More Time with Feeling (2016) and This Much I Know to Be True (2022), before Ellis and Cave scored his polarising Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde.<\/p>\n
Ellis and Cave\u2019s soundtracks have also included the Taylor Sheridan films Hell or High Water and Wind River, the Netflix television series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, and the Amy Winehouse movie Back to Black. Their most recent was The Death of Bunny Munro, the television adaptation of Cave\u2019s 2009 novel. Their joint scores get descriptions that suggest a tougher seven dwarfs: earthy, folky, ghostly, gritty, portentous, poignant and idiosyncratic.<\/p>\n
Ellis, solo, wrote the score for I\u2019m Still Here, the 2024 Walter Salles film that was nominated for a best picture Oscar. Asked what he thinks film-makers see in their music, Ellis says: \u201cI don\u2019t know what that is, but I don\u2019t really want to know either, because I don\u2019t want to destroy his idea of what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts, TSB Arena, Wellington, February 5 & 6.<\/p>\n
Watch Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds perform Joy from their Live God show in Paris. <\/p>\n
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