How are you feeling following the extraordinary Brighton show? I am back home in Northumberland now, I had my swim in the beautiful cold north sea. I’m feeling very emotional.

Dear Claire,

I’m sitting on a bench on the promenade, writing this the morning after the Preston Park gig. I had a very late night, little sleep, and, like you, a dawn swim in the sea. It’s Pride weekend here in Brighton. Some of the floats are already parked along the seafront, and there’s an amazing, anticipatory energy on the near-empty, early-morning streets. A jogger with a big white dog stops and hugs me. He was at the show. A man is setting up a stall selling pink plastic cowboy hats with ‘cunt’ and ‘slut’ written on them. A young girl dressed as a slice of watermelon sits on the lawns, making a sign that reads, ‘HOMOPHOBIA IS COLONIAL LEGACY’. Someone has written in chalk on the pavement, ‘NO COPS AT PRIDE’, which leaves me wondering whether they mean no actual cops at Pride, or that people shouldn’t dress up as cops at Pride.

My manager just texted with good news and bad news. The good news is that last night’s show was the largest ticketed event in Brighton’s history, and the bad news is that it is pissing down in Dresden, where I am heading later today. Yesterday was a big day for The Bad Seeds; we did well, we played well, and this morning it is difficult to overstate the pride I feel in performing with a band that can play the rooftop of a record store in the morning, and then perform to nearly 50,000 people in the evening with the same ferocious intention. There is simply no other group that can summon pure chaos and the most acute intimacy almost simultaneously, and that is both tight and anarchic within the same song. They are a force to behold, and it is a sheer privilege to share a stage with them.

The Bad Seeds have been around for over forty years, with an ever-shifting cast, upon whose shoulders the present formation rests. Indeed, it is impossible to experience the current Bad Seeds without also feeling the familial spirits of those who have gone before. Whatever the iteration, past or present, The Bad Seeds are the greatest band a singer could hope to work with. Kylie Minogue joined us on stage last night, dressed in a white lace gown made by Susie. She arrived as a vision, an apparition, emerging from the past to touch us all, a performer who only gives, gives and gives, then retreats, as ghosts and great performers do.

I want to thank everyone who came to the concert – so many faces I recognised from years gone by. It was a homecoming in many different ways, and although part of me is relieved the Preston Park show is behind me – sometimes my job is so completely and emotionally overwhelming – I’m happy we could, for a delirious moment in time, create a place where the absent and the present could dance together. Again, thank you.

The streets are starting to fill with revellers now, and I feel nothing but love for Brighton, with its defiant, lunatic, almost melancholic energy. Or maybe that’s just me, happy under the heavens but sad to leave my wife, who sits on the bench beside me, shimmering in that particular creamy light this wonderful town gives off on a sunny summer morning.

God bless you all.

Love, Nick

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