With less than two weeks until their first show in Ballarat, it’s time to take a look at the career of Nick Cave and the bands he’s played with over the years, and some of the lesser-known facts about the “Dark Prince” of Australian rock.
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Cave and his fellow Bad Seed member Warren Ellis are both products of country Victoria. Cave was born in Warracknabeal, while Ellis is an export of Ballarat. Warren Ellis is an alumni of Ballarat Grammar, and while at that school developed his ability to play classical instruments.
While at school in Melbourne, Cave formed the band that would later become The Boys Next Door and then evolve into The Birthday Party. At its core were bassist Tracey Pew, multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey and drummer Phil Calvert. By 1978 Rowland S. Howard joined the group, delivering the classic song ‘Shivers’.
Though their shows gave the impression of anarchy and a barely repressed (and sometimes openly expressed) violence, The Birthday Party were in fact extremely tightly rehearsed and their songs quite complex. But the intensity of the relationships within the band, and a fractured working partnership between Howard and Cave along with spiralling drug use meant the inevitable implosion of The Birthday Party.
Cave has based himself in several cities during his career, including London, Rio de Janeiro and Berlin. He has written two novels: And The Ass Saw The Angel in 1989 and The Death of Bunny Munro in 2009. He wrote the screenplay for the violent outback-set film The Proposition starring Guy Pearce.
The Bad Seeds were formed out of what remained of The Birthday Party and for more than 30 years have released a series of critically acclaimed records featuring Cave’s often darkly humorous lyrics. Its members have included Blixa Bargeld, Barry Adamson and Mick Harvey. A side project, a band called Grinderman, gave the band’s members and other musicians a chance to explore different threads in their music until they broke up in 2012.
Nick Cave has been married twice.
His first marriage to Brazilian journalist Viviane Carneiro ended in 1996; he’s currently married to English model and fashion designer Susie Bick with whom he has two sons; he had two previously with other partners. His son Arthur died in 2015 after falling from a cliff near Brighton, England.
