Nick Cave has spoken about recruiting Carly Paradis to perform in The Bad Seeds after discovering that she wrote the theme track to Line of Duty.
The singer spoke about this while responding on The Red Hand Files, his Q&A website, after Paradis joined the band in 2022.
Paradis, a Canadian-born British composer, songwriter and pianist, is renowned for her work composing the theme song for the BBC hit police drama, Line Of Duty, starring Martin Compston, Adrian Dunbar and Vicky McClure.
Cave was asked by a fan about the “astonishingly talented woman”, where he recalled how his bandmate from the Bad Seeds, Barry Adamson had called him “to say he’d had enough and didn’t want to carry on in the band”.
The musician had contacted keys player Larry Mullins, who was recommended by Thomas Wydler, who ultimately “fell ill and couldn’t tour with us”.
Cave continued: "But it turned out that Larry was actually a phenomenal drummer too (he plays with Iggy Pop and Swans, amongst others), so we moved him to drums, but this left us without a keyboard player again".
“I was getting tired of playing whack-a-mole with band members, so I asked my manager to look around, and a week later he sent a list of potential candidates, together with their photos, but you only needed to take one look at most of these guys to realise they wouldn’t last two minutes in The Bad Seeds".
“At the end of the list was a woman named Carly Paradis, but her résumé said she basically worked on TV scores".
He also said that this was "not very promising", before he “noticed she had written the theme music for the English cop show, Line of Duty, which is awesome”, before adding: “I rang her straight away and asked if she wanted to join The Bad Seeds. She did, and that was that".
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Elsewhere, Nick Cave hailed Carly Paradis as "astonishingly talented", saying: “She walked into The Bad Seeds, this grizzled snake pit of unreconstructed masculinity, and blew everyone away, changing the very weather of the band almost overnight. She brought with her not just her immense ability, but also a kind of joy, a loveliness of manner, all laughter and delight, along with a long-overdue dose of female energy. We love her".
He also revealed Paradis: “three other talents you might not be aware of”, saying: “Firstly, she is a world-class whistler – she has won trophies, cups, medals, all sorts of stuff – and can imitate any North American bird perfectly. Secondly, she can perform a trick with a piece of fruit, tossing it in the air, bouncing it off her bicep, and catching it again. And thirdly, she has another trick where she cups her hands together in the swimming pool and makes water shoot straight up into the air".
“When we have competitions, she beats everyone in the band by a mile, even Jim Sclavunos, and his hands are twice as big as hers".
The singer signed off by saying that Paradis was "no ordinary woman”, joking about the fan admitting that he’d “developed a massive crush on” her.
“I showed her your question, and she asked if you could please send a recent photograph. Love, Nick".
Last year, Nick Cave opened up about the tragic death of his son, Arthur, ten years on from his death. More on this from Nova here.
