Nick Cave’s son Jethro Lazenby has died, aged 31.
The news was confirmed in a statement to NME from the Bad Seeds frontman that read: “With much sadness, I can confirm that my son, Jethro, has passed away.
“We would be grateful for family privacy at this time.”
Cave lost another son, Arthur, in 2015 after he fell to death from a cliff in Brighton. He was 15-years-old.
Jethro was born in Melbourne in 1991 and only learned that Cave was his father aged eight.
He became a model after being scouted out while in the city, but had also tried his hand at acting, with roles in 2007’s Corroboree and 2011’s My Little Princess. He’d also worked more recently as a photographer.
Last month, Jethro was jailed following an assault on his mother, Beau Lazenby, in Melbourne, Australia.
According to reports in local media, Beau found Jethro at her front door before convincing her to let him stay over at the house. Reports add that the following morning, the pair had an argument, during which Jethro attacked his mother.
Representatives for Jethro at the trial argued that he had recently been diagnosed with schizophrenia and that affected his judgement.
He was released on bail from Melbourne Remand Centre last Thursday (May 5) after a magistrate instructed that he must undergo substance abuse treatment and avoid contact with his mother for the next two years. Lazenby appeared at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court via a video link in custody.
Magistrate Donna Bakos told Jethro: “I do say to you that it’s entirely in your best interests to participate with all support services that I’ve set up for you. It’s very very important that your path to rehabilitation will be a much more positive one and therefore you will be less of a risk to the community at large and in particular to your mother.”
In 2018, he had previously committed a series of assaults on his girlfriend which saw him spend time in jail.
Following news of Jethro’s passing, Nick’s wife Susie shared a picture of Jethro on Instagram with the caption “Darling Jethro”.
Savages drummer and Music Declares Emergency co-founder also paid tribute, telling followers on Instagram: “I’m in shock hearing about the news of Jethro dying. (He would have puked at the phrase ‘passing away’) He was a brilliant soul, funny as fuck and like nobody I’ve ever met. We were really close friends for a couple of years, maybe even less, but it was a deep dive into each other’s crazy energy.”
She continued: “Fuck. Jethro, you burned brightly. I still have a suitcase of your clothes, you still have my synth, I always thought we would meet again someday, i hope you visit in my dreams. Sending love to all who knew him.”
See more tributes below.
my heart goes out to Nick Cave and his family 💜
— simone marie (@simonemarie4) May 9, 2022
Sending our deepest condolences to Nick Cave and his family.
— All Points East (@allpointseastuk) May 9, 2022
My heart aches for Nick Cave – life is Fucking hard. https://t.co/Xm4pNcYplw
— Dom Joly (@domjoly) May 9, 2022
Jethro Lazenby, one of Nick Cave’s sons, has passed away aged 30.
"With much sadness, I can confirm that my son, Jethro, has passed away," the musician said in a statement.
"We would be grateful for family privacy at this time."
Our thoughts are with him and his family. pic.twitter.com/PmdWvkvnkM
— BBC Radio 6 Music (@BBC6Music) May 9, 2022
Like many of us, I know grief. So my heart aches for Nick Cave who has just lost another son. He once described his first loss so eloquently & movingly in the letter below. I truly hope him & his family have the strength to endure again 😞 pic.twitter.com/R5EedSMxde
— Bianca Westwood (@beewestwood) May 9, 2022
Nick Cave has spoken previously about how he coped with loss in the years following his son’s Arthur’s death.
In an edition of his his regular question-and-answer fan interaction site The Red Hand Files, Cave responded to two fans who both contacted the singer after recently suffering the loss of a child.
“Susie [Cave’s wife] and I have learned much about the nature of grief over recent years. We have come to see that grief is not something you pass through, as there is no other side,” he wrote in 2020.
“For us, grief became a way of life, an approach to living, where we learned to yield to the uncertainty of the world, whilst maintaining a stance of defiance to its indifference. We surrendered to something over which we had no control, but which we refused to take lying down.
“Grief became both an act of submission and of resistance — a place of acute vulnerability where, over time, we developed a heightened sense of the brittleness of existence. Eventually, this awareness of life’s fragility led us back to the world, transformed.”
He continued: “We found grief contained many things — happiness, empathy, commonality, sorrow, fury, joy, forgiveness, combativeness, gratitude, awe, and even a certain peace. For us, grief became an attitude, a belief system, a doctrine — a conscious inhabiting of our vulnerable selves, protected and enriched by the absence of the one we loved and that we lost.”
He also explored the loss of Arthur through his album ‘Ghosteen’ and via the film One More Time With Feeling, a documentary about how he and wife Susie dealt with the loss of Arthur while the Bad Seeds were completing their 16th album ‘Skeleton Tree’.
Another Cave documentary – This Much I Know To Be True – is released this week and explores in part how ‘Ghosteen’ and his collaborative album ‘CARNAGE’ with Bad Seeds bandmate Warren Ellis were made, along with new personal interviews with Cave and Ellis.
The Bad Seeds are currently set for a long string of tour dates throughout the summer.
Faith, Hope & Carnage, a new book from Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan, follows on September 20.
This is a breaking news story – more to follow