Canberra, Australia ( Associated Press) – Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave has confirmed the death of his son, Jethro Lazenby, at the age of 31.
“With great sadness, I can confirm that my son, Jethro, has passed away,” the frontman of rock band Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds said in a statement on Tuesday.
“We would be grateful for the family privacy at this time,” Cave said.
Lazenby, a fashion model, rapper, actor and photographer, was Cave’s son with model Beau Lazenby and was born in Melbourne in 1991.
He was the eldest of the cave’s four children, all boys.
One of Kew’s twin sons with his current wife Susie Kew died in 2015 after accidentally falling off a cliff near Brighton, England. Arthur Cave took the psychedelic drug LSD before falling at age 15.
Jethro Lazenby, who used the name Jethro Cave to aid his modeling career, was found dead last week, a day after being released from prison.
A police statement said Lazenby’s body was found at a Melbourne motel on Friday afternoon.
A coroner will determine the cause of his death. Police said there was no indication that he was the victim of the crime.
Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper reported that he had been in custody after assaulting and bleeding his mother during an argument at their Melbourne home on March 7.
He pleaded guilty to charges of unlawful assault and violating court orders. On Thursday, he was released from the remand jail on strict bail conditions, the newspaper reported.
A magistrate ordered him to undergo substance abuse treatment and avoid contact with his mother for two years. He was to return to court in June to be sentenced for assault and burglary from a convenience store.
Lazenby was jailed in 2018 for assaulting a girlfriend.
His lawyer told a magistrate last month that his client had long been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Lazenby told the London-based Evening Standard newspaper in 2012 that he was 7 or 8 when he first met his famous father. Cave told Britain’s The Guardian newspaper in 2008 that he would always regret his lack of contact with his son as a child.
“But now I have a great relationship with him,” Kev said. “It was difficult at the time, but it turned out great in the end.”
Lazenby is survived by a younger half-brother, Luke Cave, who was also born in 1991. The musician’s second child, who was only a few days younger than his first, was born in Brazil to his then-wife Vivian Carneiro, a Brazilian fashion designer and journalist. , Lazenby is also survived by half-brother Earl Cave, Arthur’s twin. The twins were born in 2000.