On April 17th, 1990 Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds released their sixth studio album The Good Son, which was recorded in Brazil’s Carden Studios by Victor Van Vugt around October of 1989, later being mixed by Flood and Gareth Jones at Hansa Studios in Berlin at year’s end.
The record was strongly influenced Cave’s love affair with Brazilian journalist Viviane Carneiro, and his living in São Paulo after some time spent in rehab, giving the album some contrast in tone to the “amphetamine fueled” compositions written while Cave was living at Dresdenerstrasse 11 in Berlin.
Watch below, a 10 minute interview with Cave in promotion of the album, his role in Ghosts of the Civil Dead, and his 1989 book And the Ass Saw the Angel.
Of the Four of the songs on the album that were left with their working titles, two of these were the album’s singles:
The first being “The Ship Song” with Cave playing piano for a group of young girls (as featured on the album’s cover), while the Bad Seeds look on—stylistically representing the direction Cave would continue on in his career to this day.
The second being “The Weeping” song—the duet featuring Cave and Blixa Bargeld, is probably one of the most popular singles the Bad Seeds ever put out. The video features Nick and Blixa serenading each other while boozing on a pantomime boat, with Cave singing the verses of the son, and Bargeld as the father.
Interestingly enough, though the album took its title from the biblical story of Cain and Abel, 3 years later a horror film would come out called The Good Son that had essentially the same plot involving a psychopathic child as that of the 1956 film The Bad Seed, from which Nick Cave drew inspiration from in naming his band.
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