‘IT’S JUST A PIECE OF GUM ’
On the evening of 1 July 1999, the Australian musician and longtime Nick Cave collaborator Warren Ellis watched from the stalls as Nina Simone walked on to the stage of London’s Royal Festival Hall. It was the penultimate concert of that year’s Meltdown festival. As the audience rose to its feet as one, cheering and applauding, she stood for a few moments at the front of the stage, one clenched fist raised, and glared out into the sea of adoring faces as if ready to do battle with them.
“I guess a lot of people must have noticed that she was chewing gum, because it was just the coolest thing,” says Ellis, “a small act of defiance that said so much about her whole fuck-you attitude.”
The 66-year-old star slowly made her way to the piano, sat down, took the gum from her mouth and stuck it on a towel atop the Steinway. She then began a performance that Ellis describes as “transformative” – both for her and the audience. “As she played, you could see she was becoming energised by the music,” he says. “It was one of those rare events after which nobody was going to leave the same as they walked in.”
After what turned out to be her final
