Radiohead’s Fall 2025 tour came to a close in Berlin on Dec. 12. This included a run of shows at the O2 Arena in London. One famous fan who was in attendance, Nick Cave, recalled the “intense” performance, leaving him “deeply moved and humbled.”
The Bad Seeds frontman wrote about the experience on his Red Hand Files blog. He was asked by a fan if he ever goes to see other artists live. “When I’m on tour, the last thing I want to do is go to someone else’s concert,” Cave replied. “I feel sonically and emotionally overloaded, and the live experience is simply too intense.”
“However, I’ve had a couple of months’ break from touring, life has settled down, and, to my surprise, Jordan, I’ve had the urge to go and see live music,” Cave continued. He then shared some of the acts he’s caught this year. “Over the past couple of months, I’ve attended many gigs – incredible evenings, all of them – including Bob Dylan, Swans, Radiohead, Cameron Winter, and Dirty Three,” Cave recalled.
The legendary singer also noted that he believes concerts have “the capacity to repair the world with its goodness.” Next, Cave went on to praise Radiohead specifically.
“At the Radiohead concert at the O2, I was sitting among twenty thousand people,” he reflected. “Bizarrely, it was the first time I had ever been in the audience at such a large show, and I was stunned by the depth of love in the room – people dancing, screaming, crying, hugging each other, throwing themselves around.”
Radiohead’s 2025 Fall Tour included four nights of shows in five cities each
“I was struck by the realisation of just how powerful live music is – that a group of individuals can come together and concoct a sound unique to them, and that people can connect with that distinctive vision as if it were their own experience,” Cave continued. “I could feel its moral quality – how this singular force has the capacity to repair the world with its goodness.”
Finally, Cave offered a comparison of the live concert experience to “various spiritual activities” he also regularly participates in. “I swim in a lake, go to church, walk in nature, meditate,” he said. However, “none offer the transcendent opportunity of a live concert. It is a form of human activity that radiates goodness, working its way through the crowd and into the world as a reparative, cosmic force, improving matters, keeping the devil at bay.”
“I believe Radiohead’s audience was responding not only to the music, which was astonishing, but also to the courage of the performers – the sheer nerve to stand before a crowd and offer up their souls,” Cave concluded. “Like everyone else there, I was deeply moved and humbled.”
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