Blog Posts by Mat Snow (NME, 23 August 1986)

To tie in with the release of the new Cave/Bad Seeds album Dig!!! Lazurus Dig!!! , we hereby present excerpts from a legendary 1986 interview the junkie icon did with the NME's Mat Snow--one of the inspirations for Cave's charming ditty "Scum." Read on… Barney Hoskyns, RBP Editorial Director

AMONG NICK Cave's most prized possessions is a hardcover green book stuffed with press cuttings and private observations written in his painstakingly spidery hand.

"There was an academic painter at the turn of the century, whose name escapes me at the moment, who did portraits of rich people and aristocrats, like a poet laureate. When he died they found a trunk full of other paintings he did. And they all were obsessed with one theme: the reflection of a woman breaching the pinking surface of a puddle with her stride.

"They were not particularly obscene, but it was obvious he was using his artistic prowess for other reasons than to portray the rich who gave him money to do it. And this is my