Models and rockers: Jethro Cave and Leah Weller

1/2

Hermione Eyre|Es Magazine. Photographs|Jane McLeish Kelsey. Styled|Nicky Yates

10 April 2012

It's not easy being the child of a rock star. Jethro Cave, son of musician Nick Cave, wants to make that clear. 'I haven't had the easiest life,' he says, his raw Australian voice rising to a passionate falsetto. 'It didn't start off that great, having all this shit with my dad and being in his shadow.'

He grins and readjusts his broken sunglasses, mended with gaffer tape. 'When someone thinks I'm a lucky little rich kid, I want to throttle them.' Then he explodes into a nervous wild-boy laugh: 'Hehehe-he-HAW-HAW-HAW!'

Leah Weller is far too self-contained for such outbursts - with perfect poise, and a ladylike little voice, she isn't one to rant - but despite being the daughter of Paul Weller, she still saved up 'for months' to buy her first guitar. No hand-me-downs for her. 'I just fell in love with this particular white shiny Fender and I wanted to buy it myself. Sure, I could have asked, I suppose, but...'

Both models grew up with globetrotting, guitar-twanging, mega-star fathers who were, shall we say, maritally challenged (neither Nick Cave nor Paul Weller settled down until very recently, and both of them now have young families), and the experience seems to have given them character.

Jethro Lazenby Cave, 19, fills the small ES tour bus with his musky bohemian presence (he hasn't washed his hair for seven months) and is constantly swearing, smoking and giggling. His body is a doodle pad on which he inks his own tattoos. Why is there a coathanger on his forearm? 'Why not!' His crazy creative projects include an array of performing alter egos - he became Joffl e the King of the Troglodytes at a recent festival and he also raps, sometimes under the alias The Pubic Nit.

He's good at getting attention. Posing for our photo shoot at the wheel of a vintage Mustang, he can't resist tooting its horn. Born in Melbourne, he grew up with his mother, the former model Beau Lazenby, and didn't meet his father until he was 'about seven, eight' - although he knew who he was.

There's something touching about the distant, respectful way he describes him as 'a very intelligent, talented man', almost as if he were quoting an album review. To compound the situation, there was another son on the scene: Luke Cave, born ten days after Jethro, in Brazil, to Cave's other girlfriend, the stylist Viviane Carneiro. 'It was a difficult time, but it turned out great in the end,' Nick Cave told a journalist in 2008. 'To my eternal regret, I didn't make much contact with Jethro in the early years, but I now have a great relationship with him.'

Jethro describes his brother, who grew up mainly in Brazil, as 'very different to me --he's in school, high school'. Jethro, on the other hand, dropped out of school to have adventures. At 16, he felt a strong need to 'get outta Collingwood', the Melbourne district he describes as 'like Croydon - inner-city bleurgh'. He set out, on his own, to find his fortune. He rocked up in London, penniless, and went to Stoke Newington to sleep on the couch of his mother's friend, his godmother Lesley McShea. 'She's a punk potter and she's lovely in every way.'

It was a hard time. 'You people aren't so friendly,' he says, meaning the Brits, but he went to parties, met people, got picked up for modelling work. Did he call on his dad? 'Not so much. A little bit more recently. We're both very busy so we don't get to see as much of each other as we probably should.'

Nick Cave now lives in Brighton with his wife Susie Bick and their eight-year-old twins Arthur and Earl. He has recently published his second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, about the unholy longings of an ageing lothario. Jethro is about halfway through. 'It's quite... controversial,' he says. 'I'm pretty hard to shock but even I was taken aback by some of the sentences. I respect anything that can do that.'

Jethro says his favourite book of all time, though, is Lolita, a poignant choice given it's the book Nick once described his own father reading aloud to him when he was 15. Sure, it's hardly The Wind in the Willows, but still, the paternal bond is made of such things.

Has Jethro invited his father along to see him rapping or performing? 'In a dirty warehouse? I don't think he'd go down well with that.' Because he's, well, an idol? 'Exactly. I try to segregate myself from that as much as I can.' By which he means, I think, that he doesn't want to trade off the family name if he can help it.

Under his own steam, operating (at first) as Jethro Lazenby, he won prestigious modelling contracts for Balenciaga and Lou Dalton. Hedi Slimane, ex-creative director of Dior Homme, now turned photographer, took one look at him and arranged a photo shoot.

The results were extraordinary. Pouting in chandelier earrings and eyeshadow, Jethro looked like a wasted choirboy raiding his mother's wardrobe. The shoot made him an instant pin-up for a new generation, a style inspiration for anyone born too late to remember grunge last time round. As a model, he's up for anything - wearing a skirt, having felt-tip drawn all over his face - and in real life, too, he's happy to experiment. While I am interviewing him, he starts pushing a rolled-up dollar bill through the pierced hole in his ear lobe.

It's not an attitude that goes down well with everyone. While he was in Australia there was a mini scandal: booked to model for Myer department store, his 'erratic behaviour' at a rehearsal reportedly ' concerned' the other models so much that he was sacked from the job. It was all over the papers. 'Well,' drawls Jethro, 'Myer is the kind of shop your granny goes to... He-hehehe-he-HAW-HAW-HAW!'

He's living the grungy dream: one modelling job that he did manage to keep won him a lump sum that he blew on cheap plastic sunglasses called Frisk. 'You can buy 12 pairs for $10, so I bought 300 boxes!' They were great for chatting up girls, apparently. 'There's a void in your eyes that needs to be filled with Frisks...' He also flogged them at festivals. 'I made a killing off these Frisks, I'll tell you.' But all good things must come to an end. He brandishes his gaffer-taped eyewear. 'These, my friend, are the last pair.'

What modelling has brought him, however, is something that clearly means more to him than money. His father has attended one or two of his catwalk shows. 'He came to see me in Charles Anastase and Lou Dalton. He was really proud of me. I think he realises how similar we are in a lot of ways now.'

Leah Weller, 18, the antithesis of Jethro, is beautifully poised and has perfectly straightened hair. She has a penchant for hand sanitiser and takes good care of her complexion. 'I wash my face twice a day without fail - I have a bit of a thing about germs.' She and Cave get along fine, although at one point during the shoot she does say in a terrified little voice, 'I don't have to kiss him, do I?'

She has just started modelling but she seems a natural. She's confident and professional, perhaps as a legacy of her training. She learned tap, jazz and contemporary dance at Ravenscourt Theatre School in Hammersmith (alumni include Dennis Waterman and Dean Gaffney) where she studied full-time.

As well as having ambitions to promote cosmetics - several companies in Paris have shown an interest - she is also working quietly on musical projects, learning the piano on her iPhone and jotting down ideas for songs. She has, after all, a double musical genetic inheritance. Her mother is the singer Dee C Lee, who was a backing singer for Wham! before joining The Style Council alongside Paul Weller. 'I've always been around people who love music.'

Her parents split up in 1994, a period Paul Weller described as 'awful... just having to leave home, and leave the kids and all that stuff, even though it was my own fault'. But his music was still played around the house, and he remained in contact.

In 2000 her father wrote the song 'Sweet Pea' for her ('Sweet pea, my sweet pea/You're the one to get my heart a-jumpin'/The future... only exists because you're alive') and she starred in the video, an adorable child racing round a garden full of flowers. Keep watching and things aren't quite so sweet - in a nod to Martin Scorsese, she runs around the corner to discover an old man who might be dead: the Modfather's take on The Godfather.

Leah also appeared in an ad for Marks & Spencer and the proceeds went towards that white Fender. Her heroine was Courtney Love - not with L7 but with Hole and The Distillers. 'She inspired me to pick up the guitar.' She took lessons 'for a week or two but I thought it would be better to learn on my own - and of course my dad has given me a few tips'.

Such as? 'Don't give up, stick at it. That's what everyone tells me.' Leah takes care of herself - 'I don't drink or smoke or shout, so my voice should be all right' - though she's not sure if she has inherited her mother's vocal register or not. 'Is soprano the really high one? I think I'm an alto.' Regarding her appearance, she's much more decided: does she look more like her mother or her father? 'My mother, I hope!'

She's off to Mayfair now to meet her boyfriend, a Japanese musician, for supper. Jethro is heading to Dalston to see his model girlfriend, Sophie Willing. 'She's an identical twin but I can tell them apart... He-he-he-he-HAW-HAW-HAW.' The rock progeny make their way off into the sunset, Jethro trailing a cloud of cigarette smoke, Leah picking her way daintily.

Hair by Oliver de Almeida at Caren using Kiehl's. Make-up by Liz Arimoro using Lancôme. Fashion assistants: Orsolya Szabo and Matilda Goad. Jethro Cave is with Independent models and Leah Weller is with Next models. Vintage Mustang courtesy of Classic Car Club (020 7490 9090; classiccarclub.co.uk)

MORE ABOUT

Melbourne

Nick Cave

Paul Weller

Sunglasses

Models and rockers: Jethro Cave and Leah Weller

Read More