“Deanna” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

"Deanna" was the second single from Tender Prey, the 1988 album Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds made for Mute, and it nearly didn't make the record. It began at Vielklang Studios, near the Berlin Wall, as a loose sketch, Cave noodling on a Hammond organ while Mick Harvey thumped a floor tom; Tony Cohen, who recorded and mixed it, remembered it wasn't meant for the album until drums went down on top and it kept growing.

It grew into garage rock at a gallop, Blixa Bargeld and Kid Congo Powers on guitars, Harvey on acoustic guitar, bass and drums, Cave hollering the lead. The tune was built on the Edwin Hawkins Singers' "Oh Happy Day". Biographer Ian Johnston claimed Deanna was a real woman Cave had been passionately involved with, and Cave later admitted the song was taken as a brutal betrayal that, thirty years on, still hadn't been fully forgiven.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.