Nick Cave is one of the celebrities that will be attending King Charles III’s coronation later this week. Over the weekend, it was reported that Cave would appear at the ceremony as part of a delegation representing Australia, alongside Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese, soccer player Sam Kerr, comedian Adam Hills, and artist Jasmine Coe. Cave addressed some incredulous fans in the most recent edition of his The Red Hand Files newsletter, one of whom asked bluntly: “Why the fuck are you going to the King’s coronation?”

“I’ll make this a quick one because I’ve got to work out what I am going to wear to the Coronation,” Cave jested before defending his decision: “I am not a monarchist, nor am I a royalist, nor am I an ardent republican for that matter; what I am also not is so spectacularly incurious about the world and the way it works, so ideologically captured, so damn grouchy, as to refuse an invitation to what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age. Not just the most important, but the strangest, the weirdest.”

He went on to recount the time he met the late Queen Elizabeth II and talked about what a young Nick Cave might have thought about his decision to attend:

I once met the late Queen at an event at Buckingham Palace for ‘Aspirational Australians living in the UK’ (or something like that). It was a mostly awkward affair, but the Queen herself, dressed in a salmon coloured twin-set, seemed almost extraterrestrial and was the most charismatic woman I have ever met. Maybe it was the lighting, but she actually glowed. As I told my mother – who was the same age as the Queen and, like the Queen, died in her nineties – about that day, her old eyes filled with tears. When I watched the Queen’s funeral on the television last year I found, to my bafflement, that I was weeping myself as the coffin was stripped of the crown, orb and sceptre and lowered through the floor of St. George’s Chapel. I guess what I am trying to say is that, beyond the interminable but necessary debates about the abolition of the monarchy, I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals – the strangeness of them, the deeply eccentric nature of the whole affair that so perfectly reflects the unique weirdness of Britain itself. I’m just drawn to that kind of thing – the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefyingly spectacular, the awe-inspiring.

And as for what the young Nick Cave would have thought – well, the young Nick Cave was, in all due respect to the young Nick Cave, young, and like many young people, mostly demented, so I’m a little cautious around using him as a benchmark for what I should or should not do. He was cute though, I’ll give him that. Deranged, but cute.

So, with all that in mind, I am looking forward to going the Coronation. I think I’ll wear a suit.

Love, Nick

King Charles’ coronation concert will include performances by Katy Perry, Lionel Richie, and Andrea Bocelli, and it’ll take place on the grounds of Windsor Castle the day after the proper coronation ceremony. And to no one’s surprise, Ticketmaster has managed to bungle ticket deliveries for the concert.

UPDATE: Nick Cave (and Katy Perry) found their seats).

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRw3Hy75/