The latest concerts I’ve seen have been so intense. What do you do to prepare for your performances?

Dear Melody,

Phill Calvert, the original drummer of The Birthday Party, contacted me last week to tell me that an old school friend of ours had passed away. His name was David Green, but we knew him as ‘Dud’. Dud was a very sweet, affable guy with a mischievous sense of humour. Although we were very close in those days, I lost contact with him after I left Australia and hadn’t really thought about him for a long time. According to reports, he died alone and isolated in his Melbourne flat. I felt strangely affected by the news, unable to reconcile the bright, lovable young man with his seemingly despairing and lonely demise.

To answer your question, I arrive at the venue about thirty minutes before the show begins. I usually have a room of my own where I change into my stage clothes, put on a little make-up, and do some vocal exercises. Then I sit in silence, with my eyes closed, for about fifteen minutes. During this time I bring to mind those dear to me who have passed away, focusing on each person individually, and silently solicit their presence. For someone of my age this is a fairly substantial task. I assign specific qualities or powers to them that reflect their personalities, and I call upon those qualities. I call on Arthur, for example, for his joyfulness; Jethro for his anarchic spirit; my mother for her courage; and my father for his dynamism. I also look to my old friend Mick Geyer for his diligence; Tracy Pew, Shane, and Conway for their subversiveness, disorder and wicked humour. I call upon Anita for her pure creativity and Roland for his extraordinary inventiveness, and so forth. I appeal to these individuals, and many more, much like a devout person might petition the saints for assistance. I remember all these people and I feel a deep spiritual empowerment, so that when I take to the stage, I am carried along by this unearthly fraternity and their special powers. For me, this is an immense strength – an energy that illuminates what is truly meaningful and what is not. Communing with the dead is, in that respect, as clarifying an exercise as anything can be. We are quickly reminded of what matters and what does not. And what matters at that moment to me, as I step onto the stage, is to give my best and not waste the opportunity I have been given. We musicians are in the business of transcendence, after all.

So, Melody, that is how I prepare for a concert, and that’s what I will do before I go on stage with Colin Greenwood tomorrow night in Rochefort. Although tomorrow night I will be welcoming another person to this otherworldly assembly, Dud Green. I will assign to Dud the quality of vigilance or attentiveness, perhaps as a reminder to remain alert to the passing of time and to make contact, now and then – an email, a text, a phone call, a letter – with those who have slipped from my mind, those loved but unremembered, the forgotten living, while they are still with us.

Love, Nick

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