“There was no malice intended; it was just the sort of obnoxious thing I would say back then.” Nick Cave once famously dismissed Red Hot Chili Peppers' music as “garbage”, now he's working with Flea on a song with “arguably the greatest lyric ever”

On some unspecified date in the 2004, during a music magazine interview, Nick Cave was asked for his thoughts on the music scene of the time.

"I'm forever near a stereo saying, What the fuck is this garbage?", Cave replied. "And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers."

Cave's savage dismissal of the Los Angeles band spread worldwide, and subsequently became a much-shared meme. Perhaps inevitably, his critique also reached the subject of his ire.

"For a second that hurt my feelings because I love Nick Cave," Chili Peppers bassist Flea told another music writer. "I have all of his records. I don’t care if Nick Cave hates my band because his music means everything to me and he is one of my favorite songwriters and singers and musicians of all time. I love all the incarnations of the Bad Seeds. But it only hurt my feelings for a second because my love for his music is bigger than all that shit and if he thinks my band is lame then that’s OK.”

Now, 21 years on, Cave has addressed the topic on a recent update on his The Red Hand Files website, following a query from a fan named Brendan, in Washington DC.

He asked: "We have all heard the famous quote attributed to you regarding the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Could you enlighten us on the truthfulness of that quote?"

In response, Cave describes his comment as an "offhand and somewhat uncharitable remark".

"There was no malice intended," he insists, "it was just the sort of obnoxious thing I would say back then to piss people off. I was a troublemaker, a shit-stirrer, feeling most at ease in the role of a societal irritant. Perhaps it’s an Australian trait among people of my generation, I don’t know, but that comment has followed me around for the last quarter-century.

"But the most interesting aspect of all this is not what I said about the Chili Peppers, but rather the response from Flea, their bass player," Cave continues. "On Facebook, Flea expressed how hurt he felt by my remark, but went on to say, in great detail, that he loved my music regardless. He wrote a profoundly generous and open-hearted love letter to Nick Cave. I remember being genuinely moved by his words and thinking what a classy guy Flea was, and feeling on some subterranean level that I was unable to fully grasp at that point in my life, that Flea was a human being of an entirely different calibre, indeed, of a higher order."

"Over the years, I would run into Flea at music festivals where both our bands were performing and see him backstage when we played in Los Angeles. Although we didn’t become close friends, my encounters with him were always pleasant – there was a presence to Flea that felt genuine and oddly affecting.

"On the Push the Sky Away tour," he continues, "we asked Flea if he could assemble a children’s choir, from the Silverlake Conservatory of Music he founded, to accompany the Bad Seeds at the Coachella Festival. When Warren and I were on the Carnage tour, we asked Flea to join us and play the song We No Who U R. Watching Warren and Flea perform together with such heart and mutual regard was a glorious sight."

Cave then goes on to reveal that he and Flea are now collaborating on a cover song.

"Last week, Flea sent me a song and asked if I’d like to add some vocals," he states. "It was for a 'trumpet record' that he is making. It is not for me to divulge what the song was, only that it is a song I cherish more than most, with arguably the greatest lyric ever written, a song of such esteem that I would never have dared to sing it had Flea not asked me to.

"I went into the studio on Wednesday and recorded my vocals. The track emerged as a beautiful conversation between Flea’s trumpet and my voice, filled with yearning and love, the song transcending its individual parts and becoming a slowly evolving cosmic dance, in the form of a reconciliation and an apology."

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds will be touring the US next month, perhaps giving Cave the opportunity o repeat his apology of sorts to other members of the LA quartet, should he be so inclined.