“Goodbye Conway, there isn’t a dry eye in the house”.
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ pianist and organ player Conway Savage has died, it has been announced. He was 58.
The Victoria, Australia born musician was a member of a number of bands before joining The Bad Seeds in 1990 for their album The Good Son.
He has also played on Cave’s Henry’s Dream (1992), Let Love In (1994), Murder Ballads (1996), The Boatman’s Call (1997), No More Shall We Part (2001), Abbattor Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (2004) and Dig Lazarus Dig (2008).
In 2017, Savage was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2017. He died on 2 September, the band confirmed in a statement. No cause of death has been given.
“Our beloved Conway passed away on Sunday evening,’ the statement reads. “A member of Bad Seeds for nearly thirty years, Conway was the anarchic thread that ran through the band’s live performances. He was much loved by everyone, band members and fans alike. Irascible, funny, terrifying, sentimental, warm-hearted, gentle, acerbic, honest, genuine – he was all of these things and quite literally “had the gift of a golden voice,” high and sweet and drenched in soul.
“On a drunken night, at four in the morning, in a hotel bar in Cologne, Conway sat at the piano and sang Streets of Laredo to us, in his sweet, melancholy style and stopped the world for a moment. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Goodbye Conway, there isn’t a dry eye in the house. Love, Nick and the Bad Seeds.”
