| Red Right Hand | |
| Cover: | RedRightHand.jpg |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds |
| Album: | Let Love In |
| B-Side: |
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| Recorded: | September – December 1993 |
| Genre: |
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| Length: | 6:10 (album version) 4:46 (single edit) |
| Label: | Mute |
| Producer: | Tony Cohen |
| Prev Title: | Loverman |
| Prev Year: | 1994 |
| Next Title: | Where the Wild Roses Grow |
| Next Year: | 1995 |
"Red Right Hand" is a song by the Australian rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It was released as a single from their eighth studio album, Let Love In (1994), on 24 October 1994 by Mute Records. A condensed version was included in the single, while the longer version was included with the album. The title comes from John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), in which it refers to the vengeful hand of God.
The song has become one of Nick Cave's signature songs, being performed at most of his concerts; only "The Mercy Seat" has appeared in more of his live sets since 1984.[5] It has since become best known for its use in the Scream film series and later as the theme song to the British period crime drama TV series Peaky Blinders, which resulted in the song receiving a re-release single in 2014. It has been covered by ex-partner PJ Harvey, Arctic Monkeys, Iggy Pop, Jarvis Cocker and Snoop Dogg, among others.
In 2005, Cave was a guest performer on his former girlfriend Anita Lane's cover of the song.
The liner notes for Murder Ballads state that the phrase "red right hand" is from a line in John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost that refers to divine vengeance. The opening song on the album, "Song of Joy," states of a murderer: "It seems he has done many, many more, / quotes John Milton on the walls in the victim's blood. / The police are investigating at tremendous cost. / In my house he wrote 'his red right hand'. / That, I'm told, is from Paradise Lost."
The aforementioned appearance in Paradise Lost (Book II, 170-174) is: "What if the breath that kindled those grim fires, / Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage, / And plunge us in the flames; or from above / Should intermitted vengeance arm again / His red right hand to plague us?" The term itself appears to be Milton's translation of the term "rubente dextera" in Horace's Ode I.2,2-3.
Co-writer Mick Harvey recalled that the song originated during the songwriting process for the band's 1994 album Let Love In. The lyrics describe "a shadowy, alluring, and manipulative figure, stalking the land and striking a combination of fear and awe everywhere he goes" who is "seemingly part deity, part demon".[6] While writing the lyrics, Cave "filled an entire notebook" with descriptions of the town the song is set in, "including maps and sketches of prominent buildings, virtually none of which made it into the lyrics."[7] Cave later said that the town and landscape depicted in the song is a "reconstructed" version of Wangaratta, his hometown. Biographer Mark Mordue notes that it is "still somewhere real enough for those lyrics to serve as a map that could guide you from one point to another with an eerie familiarity."[8]
In 2004, researcher Kim Beissel claimed that "Red Right Hand" was loosely based on the 1987 Tom Waits song "Way Down in the Hole".[9]
"Red Right Hand" is widely regarded as one of Cave's best songs. In 2020, Far Out ranked the song number five on their list of the 20 greatest Nick Cave songs,[10] and in 2023, Mojo ranked the song number six on their list of the 30 greatest Nick Cave songs.[11]
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
| Peak position | ||
| UK Indie (OCC)[17] | 16 |
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