Nick Cave's "Murder Ballads"

Cafe Society
1

I’ve heard that most or all of the songs on this album are based on actual crimes. But I’m specifically interested in any info on “The Curse of Millhaven”. At first, I thought this song might have been inspired by the English killer Mary Bell, an 11 year old who killed two other children in the late-60s. Cave’s Lottie is similar to Bell: the same innocent attitude toward killing, the precociously morbid sense of humor and vanity (“my hair’s yellow and I’m always a-combing…”). But Cave’s character claims to have killed at least a dozen or more people: creating an ice-skating “accident”, etc. Also, she describes the trouble created by her burning part of the town as “the biggest shit-fight this country’s ever seen…all 'cause of a wee little girl and a can of gasoline”. I’ve never heard of anything like this, but then I’m not really a true-crime buff.

I did find a site in which Cave claims to have got the
name “Millhaven” from a Peter Straub novel. The site didn’t mention whether the song’s based on true events or not.

So, question: is there a real “Lottie”, as described in the song?

2

I can’t help you, sorry, but I was struck by your description (I haven’t heard the song myself) because it sounded very similar to the little girl Rhoda in the movie The Bad Seed. She killed early and often, even setting the creepy caretaker Leroy on fire when he wouldn’t give her back the tap shoes she used to kill a kid who won the spelling medal she thought she deserved (she tried to throw away the shoes but Leroy heard them clanging down the chute to the incinerator and fished them out).

Maybe the movie was inspired by the legend of Mary Bell/Lottie, if either is based in reality.

I love that movie! I wish it were on DVD.

“You give me those shoes!!”

3

Ooops, I should have said that I know the film The Bad Seed was adapted from a stage play.

4

The Bad Seed predated Mary Bell by atleast a decade if memory serves.

I had never heard that about Murder Ballads (re: based on real incidents) Stagger Lee is a variation of a old folk song which is loosely based on a real character. Other than that all the songs are I am sure fictional or apocryphal.

BTW Curse of Milhaven is my favorite song on the albulm. “Aw, fuck it! I’m a monster I admit it.”