Nick Cave Speaks at SXSW 2013, Talks of Using Music to Score ‘Girls and Booze’

Addressing a packed house Tuesday at the Austin Convention Center, where he participated in an 'In Conversation' session for SXSW, Nick Cave revealed that he was an "anti-magnet" to the opposite sex during his school days, and that he first got into music to get "girls and booze." Using rock music for such vices "actually works," he explained, setting a positive, as always, for the youth.

"They saw me and they were repulsed," Cave said said of his female classmates, adding that once he formed his early band the Boys Next Door -- which later became the Birthday Party -- "things immediately changed in terms of my attractiveness."

Still, despite those early victories and decades of success in the music business, he considers himself an outsider. "I still feel very much an imposter in the whole music scene -- which I'm quite happy about to be honest," he said.

The mysterious Cave discussed numerous aspects of his career, from his love of Johnny Cash and his collaboration with Kyle Minogue to his future with the side project Grinderman and his book writing. He even delved into his history with heroin in the '70s and the time his song 'Red Right Hand' was sought by a sanitary-napkin manufacturer for an ad campaign. "The mind boggles," laughed Cave.

Check out NME's full coverage of Cave's chat with New York-based author Larry Ratso here.