Anyone who has watched Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds live knows something unmissable happens when the lights drop and the musician steps from the shadows, guitar in hand, violin tucked under his chin. A friend once asked if meeting Warren Ellis at a quiet Finestres bookstore in Barcelona on a misty May morning could be intimidating. The answer was no. Ellis seems almost supernatural on stage, but off it he is warm, curious, and deeply connected to the living world and the stories that inhabit it. He did not appear to promote upcoming Primavera Sound dates or the film Nick Cave: I Know It’s So True (Andrew Dominik, 2022), which would be shown as a special event that year. The moment is not about the next concert; it is about a shared, human conversation, and a peculiar object’s journey that becomes meaningful for some and ordinary for others: Nina Simone’s gum.
Ellis, an Australian musician, had the chance to participate in one of Nina Simone’s final performances in 1999. He found himself in London at Meltdown, a festival curated by Cave, his collaborator. Simone requested to be addressed by a different name just before taking the stage, and four years later she passed away. The memory stuck with Ellis as he described the moment: the room’s energy, the sense of something almost tangible in the air, and the sensation of listening to a forceful, undeniable voice. During that show, Ellis recalls Simone chewing gum and smoking; he remembers the gum wrapped in a towel and the impulse to keep it. That object stayed with him for two decades, a reminder that art can leave an imprint that feels almost sacred.
When Cave later suggested including songs like Into My Arms or Red Right Hand in the Stranger Than Good exhibition, Ellis felt the tug of something larger than a simple relic. The gum appeared not as a personal trophy but as a conduit to tell a larger story about art’s reach and memory. The experience felt mystical to Ellis, who believed the object was never truly his to own. It belonged to a broader narrative, something that could invite the public to see and feel the significance of a seemingly small thing within a creator’s life.
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That anecdote—rich with legend and memory—centers on an object Ellis captured in a book titled El chicle de Nina Simone, published this year by Alpha Decay. Some readers might expect a standard biography of Ellis, but the book offers something else: a fascination with what appears insignificant and the discovery of beauty where others might see mere clutter. It also chronicles a love story and a breakup, revealing how Ellis had to redefine his path by letting go of the gum, even as he carried its symbolism forward into his work. He has spoken of the gum as a spiritual totem, a sign that his artistic journey might be blessed by Nina Simone’s enduring spirit.
Before passing the gum to others, Ellis bought twenty pieces of silver that could be worn as a pendant. As the exhibition was shaped, the gum changed hands again, and Ellis was repeatedly surprised by how audiences reacted to the object. People formed attachments to something so ordinary, guided by care and affection. Christina, the exhibition’s curator, confided that she sometimes woke in the night with worries that the gum might vanish and would rush to the museum to check on it. Yet the deeper message she offered was simple: what is protected is not a tangible thing but the story itself—the power of Nina Simone’s presence and the meaning that people bring to it.
Curious about the gum’s future, Ellis suggested that its public revelation could unfold over five to ten years, possibly around the world. He has not agreed to sell the original piece or any of the twenty silver copies, even when offer after offer arrives. A future charitable auction, organized to support Ellis Park and a shelter for animals with special needs on Sumatra, might make it possible to part with one of the silver copies. The dialogue around the gum remains alive, its flavor unknown, yet the hope persists that Ellis’ journey, and the gum’s legend, are anything but hellish. The conversation leaves readers with a sense that the story behind the object is where the real energy lives, and that the personal and the universal can intersect in the most unlikely places.