What happened to Nick Cave's sons? Musician opens up about tragic death of 2 of his children over the past 10 years

In an interview on ABC's Australian Story on August 12, 2024, Australian musician Nick Cave opened up about the loss of his two sons, who died within eight years of each other. In a preview clip posted on journalist Leigh Sales' Instagram page on August 6, 2024, Cave elaborated on his loss, saying:

“Rather than making me bitter, it did the opposite in some way. It made me much more connected to people in general. There is the initial cataclysmic event we eventually rearrange ourselves so that we become creatures of loss as we get older, this is part of our fundamental fabric of what we are as human beings.

"We are things of loss. This is not a tragic element to our lives but rather a deepening that brings incredible meaning.”

Cave's son Arthur, aged 15, died after he fell off a cliff after his first LSD trip in July 2015 in England. Cave's other son, Jethro, was found dead in a motel in Melbourne in May 2022, two days after he was released from prison for assaulting his mother.

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Nick Cave's sons' deaths explored

Nick Cave, the frontman of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, lost his teenage son in an accident in 2015. 15-year-old Arther, who was found in Brighton at 6 pm on July 14, had injuries "consistent with falling from a great height." He was taken to the Royal Sussex County Hospital, where he died due to his injuries.

According to The Daily Mail, an inquest into Arthur's death showed he had cannabis and LSD in his system. The inquest found Arther was "completely disoriented" as he fell off a cliff into the Ovingdean Gap.

In a March 2024 interview with The Guardian, Nick Cave, aged 66, recalled being forced to grieve publicly after Arthur's death.

“I was forced to grieve publicly – and that was helpful, weirdly enough. It stopped me completely shutting the windows and bolting the doors and just living in this dark world,” he said.

Nick Cave and his family endured a second loss after his son Jethro, a former runway model, died in 2022. On May 5, Jethro, aged 31, was released from the Melbourne Remand Centre, where he was imprisoned for assaulting his mother in April.

However, his lawyer argued that Jethro was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which clouded his judgment during his fight with his mother. Following his release, Jethro was ordered to undergo substance abuse treatment. He was also ordered to avoid contact with his mother for two years.

The former model was found dead in a motel room in Melbourne on May 9, 2022. His cause of death was not revealed at the time of this article.

In the snippet for his interview for ABC's Australian Story, Nick Cave explained he had lost the mindset that being an artist was his sole purpose in life after the death of his sons.

"For most of my life, I was just sort of in awe of my own genius. That idea that art trounces everything, it just doesn't apply to me any more. There was this kind of rushing in of meaning that came into that void," he said.

Nick Cave's interview with Leigh Sales was telecast at 8 pm AEDT on Australia's ABC channel on August 12, 2024.