Leigh Sales has issued an awkward apology to Nick Cave during an emotional interview after the Australian music icon spoke out about his eldest son on the anniversary of his death.
The awkward situation unfolded when the veteran ABC presenter was interviewing the 66-year-old rock legend for an episode of Australian Story, which aired on Monday night.
Cave was speaking about the pain of losing his eldest son, Jethro, 31, in May 2022, when he revealed the episode was being filmed on the second anniversary of his death.
Jethro, who suffered from schizophrenia and battled drug addiction, died in Melbourne two days after being released from jail.
He died seven years after the Australian-born Bad Seeds frontman lost his youngest son, 15-year-old Arthur.
“Today is the anniversary of Jethro’s death,” Cave explained.
Sales immediately apologized for the unfortunate timing.
“I regret that this interview coincides with the anniversary of your son’s death,” he said.
Rock legend Nick Cave (pictured) was speaking about the grief of losing his eldest son Jethro, 31, when he revealed the episode was being filmed on the anniversary of his son’s death.
Cave said the difficulty with doing face-to-face interviews was that the conversation quickly turned to his children.
—It’s weird that we’re jumping right into this and I’m just… it’s not your fault, Cave replied.
Cave spoke about the pain of losing Arthur as the father of four discussed how he was able to overcome his grief.
Arthur first took LSD before jumping 60 feet from a cliff near his home in Brighton, England, in 2015.
“I understood the process because I had been through it,” Cave said.
“There is an initial cataclysmic event that we eventually absorb or reorganize into creatures of loss,” he said.
Despite personal tragedies, he was able to find a different perspective on life that has allowed him to see the world differently.
“I mean it’s quite a complicated thing, but the kind of void that was left, there was a kind of avalanche of meaning that came into that void in all kinds of different ways,” Cave said.
‘It allowed me to see the world in a different way and be much more compassionate towards the human situation.’
Cave said it was a “counterfactual response” that made him feel less bitter.
Veteran ABC presenter Leigh Sales (pictured), who interviewed Cave as part of an episode of ABC’s Australian Story, immediately apologised for the unfortunate timing.
“It did the opposite… it made me connect a lot more with people in general,” he said.
Cave also revealed how he turned to his Christian faith, which he had cultivated during his younger years after becoming consumed by his “own genius.”
“I always had a religious temperament, even as a child, but I didn’t need it… I was kind of a drug addict for a couple of decades,” he said.
“I think after Arthur died, rather than feeling angry at that kind of thing or rejecting it, I felt a slow movement toward a religious life.”
“I have found that what has happened in my life is extremely useful and in some ways enriching.”
Jethro (pictured right), who battled drug addiction, died in Melbourne in 2022 two days after being released from jail (pictured left, Nick Cave)
Cave went on to reveal that although he “lives in a rock and roll world,” he no longer has problems with drugs and alcohol.
“I’m not tempted to go back to that lifestyle,” he said.
Cave said the idea that “art trumps all” no longer applied to him after the deaths of Arthur and Jethro.
“I just realized how absurd it was and how shameful the whole thing was, and my priorities changed,” he said.
“I’m a father, I’m a husband and I’m a kind of worldly person, these things are much more important to me than the concept of being an ‘artist’.”
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