It is 26 years since “Red Right Hand”’s mysterious protagonist sauntered on to the stage and put listeners in peril. That “tall handsome man” may be a god, a ghost and a guru, but he has also been presumed by many listeners to be the devil, a drug dealer, a politician and a TV host. He is bad news whoever he is.
The portentous song emerged from a jam session held by Nick Cave, his long-term collaborator Mick Harvey and drummer Thomas Wydler in 1994 and was not initially expected to become the singer’s most successful calling card when the album Let Love In was released. Yet it has seeped into the mainstream consciousness more than any other Cave song. It was quickly used in an early episode of The X Files and introduced many American listeners to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It was then picked up and used for the teen slasher movies Scream, with different versions appearing in the first three instalments, and more recently has become a staple of the BBC’s period drama Peaky Blinders. An identikit cover by Pete Yorn was also used in the first Hellboy movie, which was predictable given that the main character has a giant “red right hand of doom”.
The original recording kicks off with a tubular bell that invites the listener to the edge of town, across the tracks to encounter the evil man with the ruddy fist. A creeping bass line and brushed drums provide a backdrop for Cave’s mumbled introduction that slowly builds in a 12-bar blues to a climax that seems to take a lifetime to arrive. Blixa Bargeld’s guitar picks around the rhythm as if it is cleaning a bone while an organ introduces a descending riff midway through the song that became its most recognisable motif. Cave’s intensity grows throughout the song until he snarls that the listener is only “one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan designed and directed by his red right hand”.
The phrase was inspired by John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” where the “red right hand” represents divine vengeance. The violence of the song carried over into Cave’s next album Murder Ballads, which references both Milton and “Red Right Hand” in its opening track “Song of Joy”. Cave again revisited “Red Right Hand” in 2000 when the protagonist returned in a lascivious sequel. It also lent its name to Cave’s blog, The Red Hand Files.
The song has taken on a life outside the world of the Bad Seeds including as an unlikely soundtrack to a tourism campaign promoting the Barossa Valley region in South Australia. Other artists also latched on to the potential of the narrative. Alt-country pioneers Giant Sand recorded an off-kilter version in 2002 that replaced the seedy shuffle of the original with a looser feel that collapses into a distorted squall. Arctic Monkeys took a different tack with a high-tempo bass-driven version in 2009 that gallops along, though it lacks the sense of unease of the original. Ella Flame and the Nighthawks gave the song a satisfying rockabilly ballad makeover in 2018 that sounds as if it could close a David Lynch movie.
The BBC gangster drama Peaky Blinders has created a cottage industry of covers of the song since adopting it as its theme tune. Most notable among those versions recorded specially for the show was the one by PJ Harvey, Cave’s partner when the original song was recorded, who produced a memorably ethereal and unsettling version backed by a simple piano. The unlikely pairing of Iggy Pop and Jarvis Cocker turned in a sludgy rock version that, unlike Cave’s original, leaves no air for the listener to breathe. Folk singer Laura Marling’s sleepy version abruptly stops after the first verse, clocking in at a fraction of the original’s six-minute length. Snoop Dogg released a playful g-funk take for the show. Cave told an audience on his Conversations speaking tour that he enjoyed Snoop’s cover because the rapper had shown little reverence for his version.
Cave said on the same tour that over the years the song had “followed him around like a junkyard dog”, but it remains a fulcrum of his live set, most notably during his stadium tours when the peak of the crescendo played by the modern-day Bad Seeds sounds like the end of the world. The lyrics have also been updated so that the listener now reads the protagonist’s “little tweets”, casting light perhaps on the protagonist’s new identity. “Red Right Hand” still packs a mean punch.
What are your memories of ‘Red Right Hand’? Let us know in the comments section below.
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Mute, a BMG Company; Columbia; Fire Records; Domino Recording Co; Vacilando '68 Recordings; UMC (Universal Music Catalogue); Rough Trade; Very Clever Records
Picture credit: Steve Eichner/Getty Images