Nick Cave Advises Musician Considering Great Escape Boycott to 'Play'

Nick Cave has advised a musician considering boycotting the Great Escape due to the Brighton-based festival's partnership with Barclays, a British bank that has reportedly invested over £1 billion in companies supplying weapons and military technology to Israel, to go ahead and play anyway.

"I am a musician who has been booked to play the Great Escape festival, which, as you may have heard, a number of artists are boycotting due to the sponsorship of Barclays. Who, in a non-linear fashion, are profiting from the horror that is occurring in Palestine," the anonymous artist wrote to Cave in a letter published on the Bad Seeds leader's Red Hand Files newsletter.

"I do not support the genocide, I would hope the rest of the world feels the same," they continued. "But as an artist already existing in a very toxic industry, the best many of us can hope for is a few scraps – the glimmer of an opportunity, a gig, anything to help us get our music out into the world, and in turn make it a better place with the love we promote in our art. The music industry is a place of being told you need to follow TikTok trends and that labels only look at ‘metrics’. Individuality doesn’t feel celebrated."

"I feel as if I am to be judged by my peers and by fans if we don’t cancel our performance, yet my heart tells me that this is ill-advised. I don’t want to be bullied into following a trend, yet I worry my silence makes me look complicit. Integrity is all we have, so how are we expected to navigate through this world when all commercialism and corporate sponsorship comes from darkness? Latitude, Isle of White, Reading & Leeds are all sponsored by Barclays – it’s a huge expectation on struggling musicians who will be replaced by one of a thousand other hungry musicians if they decide to boycott. What would you do?"

Cave had a brief, unequivocal response: "Play. Love, Nick."

Cave is no stranger to controversy due to his positions surrounding the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

In 2017, the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds played in Tel Aviv, Israel despite Brian Eno, Roger Waters, Thurston Moore, TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe, and other proponents of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement urging him to cancel the concerts.

At the time, Cave said that the boycott movement was "cowardly and shameful" and described his decision to perform in Israel as a "principled stand against those who wish to bully, shame and silence musicians."

"So really you could say in a way that the BDS made me play Israel," he added, suggesting that "engaging with Israelis, who vote, may be more helpful than scaring off artists or shutting down means of engagement."

“I do not support the current government in Israel yet do not accept that my decision to play in the country is any kind of tacit support for that government’s policies," he explained.

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Dozens of artists have pulled out of the Great Escape due to the festival's ties to Barclays, and many more have signed an online petition calling on the festival to drop the bank as an official partner.

We saw something similar happen with SXSW in Austin, Texas earlier this year. Dozens of artists pulled out of SXSW due to the festival's ties to defense contractors who have supplied arms to Israel and the U.S. Army, which served as a main sponsor for the event.

While Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott slammed the protesting musicians, the festival itself issued a statement saying that they "fully respect" the decision to boycott.