Nick Cave

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Nick Cave
Nick Cave performing in 2006.
Nick Cave performing in 2006.
Background information
Birth name Nicholas Edward Cave
Born September 22, 1957 (age 49)
Instrument(s) Guitar, Piano
Years active 1973- Current
Associated
acts		 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Birthday Party, Grinderman
Website Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Nicholas Edward Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter and occasional actor, best known for his work in the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and his fascination with American music and its roots. He currently resides in Brighton & Hove, in England.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Youth and education

Cave was born in the small town of Warracknabeal in the state of Victoria, Australia, to Dawn and Colin Cave. He has two brothers: Tim (b. 1952) and Peter (b. 1954), and a sister, Julie (b. 1959).

As a child, Cave lived in Warracknabeal and then Wangaratta in rural Victoria, Australia. His father Colin was an English teacher and administrator, with a love of literature, and his mother was a librarian. Raised as an Anglican, Cave sang in the boys choir at Wangaratta Cathedral. However, he was often in trouble with the local school authorities, so his parents sent him to boarding school at Melbourne's Caulfield Grammar School in 1970. Cave joined the school choir under choirmaster Norman Kaye, and also benefitted from having a piano in his home. The following year he became a "day boy" when his family moved to Caulfield, a suburb of Melbourne.

After his secondary schooling, Cave studied painting (Fine Art) at the Caulfield Institute of Technology (now Monash University, Caulfield Campus) in 1976, but dropped out in 1977 to pursue music. He also began dabbling in heroin use around this time. In late 1978, shortly after Cave's 21st birthday, his father was killed in a car accident. This affected him deeply, as is evident in his lyrics.

[edit] Early career

In 1973, Cave met Mick Harvey (guitar), Tracy Pew (bass) and Phill Calvert (drums); fellow students at Caulfield Grammar. With them he founded his first band, with himself as singer. Their repertoire consisted of proto-punk cover versions of songs by Lou Reed, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Roxy Music and Alex Harvey. In 1977, after leaving school, they adopted the name The Boys Next Door and began playing predominantly original material penned by Cave. Guitarist and songwriter Rowland S. Howard joined the band in 1978.

From 1977 until their dissolution in 1984 the band explored various punk styles, often with rapid development: from Ramones riffing; through Bowie-esque New Wave; on to Post-punk expressionism (informed by Pere Ubu); and then a malevolent mix of Stooges-esque audience provocation, brooding art-rock and noise.

The Boys Next Door were a part of Melbourne's post-punk music scene in the late 1970s, playing hundreds of live shows in Australia before changing their name to the Birthday Party in 1980 and moving to London, then West Berlin. Cave's Australian girlfriend and muse Anita Lane accompanied them to London. The band were notorious for their provocative live performances which featured Cave shrieking, bellowing and throwing himself about the stage, backed up by harsh pounding rock music laced with guitar feedback.

After establishing a cult following in Europe and Australia, The Birthday Party disbanded in 1984. Howard and Cave found it difficult to continue working together and both were somewhat exhausted from alcohol and drug use.

[edit] The Bad Seeds

Cave and Harvey went on to form the first version of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. This name indicates the shift in Cave's role from band-member to band-leader, and coincides with a shift in Cave's songwriting from expressionism towards lyrical and detailed narratives. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were founded as an international backing group with German guitarist Blixa Bargeld (from Einstürzende Neubauten), English bassist Barry Adamson (formerly of Magazine) and Australian guitarist Hugo Race. Lane was also a creative influence and sometime lyricist. This line-up recorded their debut album, released in 1984, From Her to Eternity.

Cave separated from Lane in the mid-1980s and began a relationship with Elisabeth Recker. While in Berlin, he released four albums with the Bad Seeds: The Firstborn Is Dead; Kicking Against the Pricks; Your Funeral, My Trial; and Tender Prey.

While he was based in West Berlin, Cave started working on what was to become his debut novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel (1989). Significant crossover is evident between the themes in the book and the lyrics Cave wrote in the late stages of the Birthday Party and the early stage of his solo career. "Swampland", from Mutiny, in particular, uses the same linguistic stylings ('mah' for 'my', for instance) and some of the same themes (the narrator being haunted by the memory of a girl called Lucy, being hunted like an animal, approaching death and execution).

After completing And the Ass Saw the Angel, Cave left West Berlin shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall and moved to São Paulo, Brazil, where he met Brazilian Viviane Carneiro. The two have a son, Luke (b. 1991), but never married. Cave has another son born in 1991, Jethro (named after one of his favourite bands Jethro Tull), who lives with his mother (Beau Lazenby) in Australia. [1]. In 1993, Cave moved back to London.

In 1996, Cave and the Bad Seeds released Murder Ballads, a collection of songs about murder. It includes "Henry Lee," a duet with British rock singer PJ Harvey (with whom he had a brief relationship), and "Where the Wild Roses Grow," a duet with Australian pop idol Kylie Minogue. The latter was a mainstream hit in Australia, winning three ARIA Awards including "Song of the Year".

His next album, The Boatman's Call (1997), is marked by a radical shift away from archetypal and violent narratives to biographical and confessional songs about his relationships with Carneiro and PJ Harvey. It was also his first full album to be centred around his own piano playing.

Cave then took a break to rehabilitate from his heroin and alcohol abuse over the past twenty years. During this time, he met his current partner, British model Susie Bick. They married in summer 1999, and had twins, Arthur and Earl, shortly after.[2] [3]Rejuvenated, Cave resurfaced with the complex, moody, and much-acclaimed No More Shall We Part with the Bad Seeds in 2001.

After the release of the 2003 album Nocturama, which failed to excite reviewers, Bargeld announced he was leaving the Bad Seeds to devote more time to Einstürzende Neubauten, leaving Mick Harvey as the only original member still in the band, other than Cave himself. Undisturbed, the next year Cave released his first double record - the acclaimed two-disc set Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus.

In 2005, Cave and the Seeds released B-Sides & Rarities, a comprehensive three-disc, 56-track collection of B-sides, rarities and tracks that appeared on film soundtracks.

In February 2007, Cave revealed for Billboard that apart from his album with his other venture Grinderman (nicknamed Mini-Seeds, because it consists of Seeds members - see below), he is readying the next studio album with the Bad Seeds: "I've been working on it for about three weeks," he says of the as-yet-untitled album. "I feel like something's about to happen. What? I'm not really quite sure. There's a certain type of music I'd like to make, and that's just raising its head, so I wouldn't like to talk too much about it."[1]

[edit] "Solo" work and Grinderman

Nick Cave at the solo concert in Mainz, Germany (November 11, 2006).
Nick Cave at the solo concert in Mainz, Germany (November 11, 2006).

In addition to his performances with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Cave has, since the '90s, performed live 'solo' tours with himself on piano/vocals, Warren Ellis on violin/accordion and various others on bass and drums. The current trio are Bad Seeds' Martyn P. Casey, Jim Sclavunos and Ellis (nicknamed the Mini-Seeds). In 2006, this line-up, now including Cave on electric guitar, continued his 'solo' tours performing Bad Seeds material.

In the same year three other Bad Seeds, Mick Harvey, Thomas Wydler and James Johnston, undertook Harvey's first 'solo' tours of Europe and Australia performing material from his own albums. Melbourne double bassist Rosie Westbrook completed the quartet.

In November 2006 it was announced on Cave's website that an album of new material by Cave's 'solo' quartet, now named Grinderman, will be released in March 2007. Their self-description is: "Foul-mouthed, noisy, hairy, and damn well old enough to know better".

Nick Cave and Grinderman are expected to play in the 2007 All Tomorrow's Parties music festival in April.

[edit] Other work

Cave released his first book King Ink, in 1988. It is a collection of lyrics and plays, including collaborations with American enfant terrible Lydia Lunch. His first, and only, novel And the Ass Saw the Angel was released a year later in 1989 and draws heavily on the themes presented in the early Bad Seeds albums.

In 2000, one of Cave's heroes, Johnny Cash, covered Cave's "The Mercy Seat" on the album American III: Solitary Man, seemingly repaying Cave for the compliment he paid by covering Cash's "The Singer" on his Kicking Against the Pricks album. Cave was then invited to be one of many rock and country artists to contribute to the liner notes of the retrospective The Essential Johnny Cash CD, released to coincide with Cash's 70th birthday. Subsequently, Cave cut a duet with Cash on a version of Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" for Cash's American IV: The Man Comes Around album (2002). A similar duet, the American folk song "Cindy", was released posthumously on the "Johnny Cash: Unearthed" boxset.

In 2004, Cave also gave a hand to Marianne Faithfull on the album Before The Poison. He co-wrote and produced three songs ("Crazy Love", "There Is a Ghost" and "Desperanto"), and the Bad Seeds are featured on all of them. PJ Harvey, who once was romantically linked to Cave, is another Faithfull's collaborator on five songs of the album, producing, writing or co-writing, playing guitar, bass, piano, keyboards, synthesizer and doing background vocals.

In 2006, Cave contributed to Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys, a double-disc compilation of pirate songs covered by various artists including Jarvis Cocker, Lou Reed, Bryan Ferry and Bono. The two songs by Cave are "Fire Down Below" and "Pinery Boy".

Cave and Ellis composed scores for a production by the Icelandic theatre company Vesturport of Woyzeck by Georg Büchner, performed at the Barbican Theatre in the Barbican Arts Centre in London in 2005, and a stage adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis at the Lyric Hammersmith in London in 2006.

[edit] Film involvement

Cave's music is featured in several of Wim Wenders' movies, including Wings of Desire (in which Cave also appears, in a live performance), Until the End of the World, Faraway, So Close! and Soul of a Man. Other songs of his appeared in a variety of independent and mainstream films including Shrek,Shrek 2, the Scream trilogy, and others.

Cave has made occasional appearances as an actor, most prominently in Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead (1989) written and directed by John Hillcoat, and in the 1991 film Johnny Suede, with Brad Pitt.

Displaying a continued interest in film, Cave wrote the screenplay for The Proposition, a poetic and savagely violent Western set in the Australian Outback. Directed by John Hillcoat and filmed in Queensland in 2004, it premiered in October 2005 and has since been released worldwide to critical acclaim. The generally ambient soundtrack was recorded by Cave and bandmember Warren Ellis.

Cave and Hillcoat have plans to make a comedy film set in Britain. Its working title is Death of a Ladies Man, and is based around the bawdy exploits of a travelling salesman.

Cave appeared in the 2005 homage to Leonard Cohen, Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man. Cave performed "I'm Your Man" solo and "Suzanne" with Julie Christensen and Perla Batalla.

[edit] Trivia

  • Cave is jokingly reported to be a member of the Sons of Lee Marvin — a "semi-secret society" founded by director Jim Jarmusch and including Tom Waits.
  • Cave collaborated with the band Current 93, most notably on their album All the Pretty Little Horses, where he reads text from the Pensées of Blaise Pascal.
  • The pop singer Kylie Minogue, who recorded a best-selling duet with Cave in 1995, has said that he was a positive influence: "He taught me to never veer too far from who I am, but to go further, try different things, and never lose sight of myself at the core. For me, the hard part was unleashing the core of myself and being totally truthful in my music".
  • The Depeche Mode songwriter/guitarist Martin L. Gore in his covers album Counterfeit2 performs a version of "Loverman", song from Nick Cave's 8th album Let Love In, also covered by Metallica in their album Garage Inc.
  • Appeared as himself, with the Bad Seeds, in the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire.
  • Cave's song "Red Right Hand" has appeared in a number of films and TV shows including: The X-Files; Dumb & Dumber; Scream, its sequels Scream 2 and 3; and Hellboy (performed by Pete Yorn).
  • The song "People Ain't No Good" was featured in the animated movie Shrek 2, as well as in one of the episodes of L Word (TV series).
  • Cave has stated that the visible scar on his left cheek was given to him by then-girlfriend Anita Lane during a knife fight between the two.
  • In 1998, the same year that Cave issued a "Best Of" CD, a compilation surfaced in Australia entitled Original Seeds: Songs That Inspired Nick Cave, featuring Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, and others. Original Seeds Volume 2 was issued in 2004.
  • Cave has performed his 'signature tune' "The Mercy Seat", at nearly every live show since 1988, including band and solo appearances.
  • Cave, a devout though often troubled Christian, wrote the foreword to a Canongate publication of the Gospel according to Mark, published in the UK in 1998. The American publication of the same book contains a foreword by a different author.
  • Following the Boxing Day Tsunami in December 2004, Nick Cave appeared at the Wave Aid fundraising concert in Sydney.
  • Nick Cave has inspired many bands and artists such as Arcade Fire, Smashing Pumpkins, Will Teather's Birthday Letters and PJ Harvey.
  • Nick Cave has been seen smiling.

[edit] Discography

Nick Cave's releases with the Bad Seeds are listed on the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds page.

[edit] Soundtracks/Scores

[edit] Contributions/Appearances

[edit] Other

  • The Secret Life of the Love Song - a spoken word lecture by Cave

[edit] Books by Nick Cave

[edit] Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

See main article under Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for band line-ups and other information.

[edit] Awards

  • 2006 Venice Film Festival: Gucci Award (for the script to The Proposition)
  • 2005 Q magazine: Q Classic Songwriter Award
  • 2005 AFI Awards: Best Original Music Score (The Proposition)
  • 2005 Inside Film Awards: Best Music (The Proposition)
  • 2005 Film Critics Circle Of Australia Awards: Best Musical Score (The Proposition)
  • 2004 Mojo Magazine: Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus elected the best album of 2004
  • 2001 ARIA Awards: Best Male Artist (No more shall we part)
  • 2001 APRA Music Awards: The Ship Song voted in the Top 30 Best Australian Songs of the previous 75 years
  • 1997 APRA Music Awards: Songwriter of the year
  • 1997 ARIA Awards: Best Original Soundtrack (To have and to hold)
  • 1996 ARIA Awards: Song of the Year & Single of the Year & Best Pop Release (Where the wild roses grow)
  • 1996 MTV Europe Music Awards: Nick Cave formally requested that his nomination for "Best Male Artist" be withdrawn as he was not comfortable with the "competitive nature" of such awards.
  • 1990 Time Out Magazine: Book Of The Year (And The Ass Saw The Angel)

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

  • Bad Seed: A biography of Nick Cave, Ian Johnston (1997) ISBN 0316908339
  • The life and music of Nick Cave: An illustrated biography, Maximilian Dax & Johannes Beck (1999) ISBN 3-931126-27-7
  • Kicking Against the Pricks: An Armchair Guide to Nick Cave, Amy Hanson (2005), ISBN 1-900924-96-X
  • Liner notes to the CDs Original Seeds: Songs that inspired Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Kim Beissel (1998 & 2004), Rubber Records

[edit] External links


Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nick Cave | Mick Harvey | Blixa Bargeld | Warren Ellis | Martyn P. Casey | Thomas Wydler
Discography
Albums: From Her to Eternity | The Firstborn Is Dead | Kicking Against the Pricks | Your Funeral... My Trial | Tender Prey | The Good Son | Henry's Dream | Let Love In | Murder Ballads | The Boatman's Call | No More Shall We Part | Nocturama | Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
Live: Live Seeds
Compilations: The Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds | B-Sides & Rarities
Videos: Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - The Videos | Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - God Is In The House | Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Road To God Knows Where / Live At The Paradiso | The Abattoir Blues Tour
Related articles
The Birthday Party | The Dirty Three | Einstürzende Neubauten | Grinderman | The Proposition
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