An unlikely keepsake taken from Simone’s last
London concert has become the basis of an unusual memoir by the longtime Nick Cave collaborator
On the evening of 1 July 1999, the
Australian musician and longtime Nick Cave collaborator Warren Ellis watched from the stalls as Nina Simone walked on to the stage of the Royal Festival Hall. It was the penultimate concert of that year’s Meltdown festival. As the audience rose to its feet as one, cheering and applauding, she stood for a few moments at the front of the stage, one clenched fist raised, and glared out into the sea of adoring faces as if ready to do battle with them.
“I guess a lot of people must have noticed that she was chewing gum, because it was just the coolest thing,” says Ellis, “a small act of defiance that said so much about her whole fuck-you attitude.”