How St. Vincent got her stage name from Nick Cave
St. Vincent (real name Annie Clark) is a devoted subscriber to the church of Nick Cave. The Australian Bad Seeds leader is not only responsible for Clark’s stage name, but he has also made an immeasurable impact on the artist that she has evolved into today.
During a conversation with EW in 2017, Clark revealed that she started to play the guitar in sixth grade after hearing ‘All Along The Watchtower’ by Jimi Hendrix. Although she was already fanatical about music, learning the guitar gave Clark another string to her bow, and her life has never been the same.
She explained: “I was in the sixth grade when Forrest Gump came out, and I remember hearing Jimi Hendrix’s version of ‘All Along the Watchtower’ in it. A friend’s dad showed me his ’60s white Fender Stratocaster, like the one Jimi played, and taught me a couple [riffs] from [the song]. I was totally hooked. I was already obsessed with music at that point, and I just wanted to be Kurt Cobain. But after that brush with the Stratocaster, I begged my parents to buy me an electric guitar.”
It wasn’t until later that Nick Cave came into her consciousness, and he’s never left. St. Vincent is a reference to his track, ‘There Goes My Beautiful World’ from The Bad Seeds’ 2004 album, Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus. On the song, Cave sings: “Karl Marx squeezed his carbuncles, while writing Das Kapital, And Gaugin, he buggered off, man, and went all tropical, While Philip Larkin stuck it out in a library in Hull, And Dylan Thomas died drunk in St. Vincent’s hospital.”
In a conversation with the Sydney Morning Herald in 2018, Clark revealed that she had an opportunity to sit next to Cave at a dinner party, which was a bizarre experience. She recalled: “I was so intimidated that I was really boring. I might as well have talked about the weather. I wanted to be like, ‘I swear I am interesting.'” Clark added: “‘Oh, can you pass the bread? Everything I’ve ever created is a reference to you.'”
On Clark’s fifth album, Masseducation, she sprinkled a subtle reference on the record’s titular track, which signifies Cave’s chokehold on her life. Clark makes a nod to Cave’s tenth album with The Bad Seeds, The Boatman’s Call, and sings, “Smilin’ nihilist met, Angry glass half full, Drinkin’ Manic Panic, Singin’ Boatman’s Call”.
Due to her choice of a stage name, Cave will always be inextricably linked to St. Vincent, even if the impact may be undetectable on the audible surface. However, from a lyrical perspective, the two musicians are cut from the same cloth.
