"I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things." -- Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.
He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and musical styles. Before that, he had fronted the group The Birthday Party in the early 1980s, a band renowned for its highly dark, challenging lyrics and violent sound influenced by free jazz, blues, and post-punk. In 2006, he formed the garage rock band Grinderman that released its debut the following year. Cave's music is generally characterised by emotional intensity, a wide variety of influences, and lyrical obsessions with "religion, death, love, America, and violence."
Upon Cave's induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame, ARIA Awards committee chairman Ed St John said “Nick Cave has enjoyed...and continues to enjoy...one of the most extraordinary careers in the annals of popular music. He is an Australian artist like Sidney Nolan is an Australian artist...beyond comparison, beyond genre, beyond dispute."
Nick Cave currently lives in Brighton and Hove, England.
"An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.""At some point you start seeing the difference between what you really want, and what is your priority order. I feel that today I know what I want. That's the problem with perspective, as well as focus and concentration.""Getting married, for me, was the best thing I ever did. I was suddenly beset with an immense sense of release, that we have something more important than our separate selves, and that is the marriage. There's immense happiness that can come from working towards that.""I love rock-n-roll. I think it's an exciting art form. It's revolutionary. Still revolutionary and it changed people. It changed their hearts. But yeah, even rock-n-roll has a lot of rubbish, really bad music.""I'm a believer. I don't go to church. I don't belong to any particular religion, but I do believe in God. I couldn't write what I write about and be creative without a certain form of belief.""I'm very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It's the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange.""I've always had an obligation to creation, above all.""People think I'm a miserable sod but it's only because I get asked such bloody miserable questions."
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, he lived in Warracknabeal and then Wangaratta in rural Victoria. His father was an English teacher and administrator, with a love of literature, and his mother was a librarian. His grandfather, Frank J. Cave, was a prominent radio broadcaster and documentary film producer
Raised as an Anglican, Cave sang in the boys choir at Wangaratta Cathedral. However, Cave grew to detest the attitudes of small-town Australia, and 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 benefited from having a piano in his home. The following year he became a "day boy" when his family moved to Murrumbeena, a suburb of Melbourne. Cave was 19 when his father was killed in a car accident; at the moment he was informed of this, his mother Dawn Cave was bailing him out of a St Kilda police station for a charge of burglary. Cave would later recall that his father "died at a point in my life when I was most confused", and "the loss of my father created in my life a vacuum, a space in which my words began to float and collect and find their purpose".
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 using heroin around this time.On March 28, 2008 he received an honorary Doctor of Laws from this university.
In 1973, Cave met Mick Harvey (guitar), Tracy Pew (bass) and Phill Calvert (drums); fellow students at Caulfield Grammar. They founded a band with Cave as singer. Their repertoire consisted of proto-punk cover versions of songs by Lou Reed, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Roxy Music and Alex Harvey, among others. In 1977, after leaving school, they adopted the name The Boys Next Door and began playing predominantly original material. Guitarist and songwriter Rowland S. Howard joined the band in 1978.
From 1977 until their dissolution in 1984 (by which time they were known as The Birthday Party) the band explored various styles. They 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. At that time, Cave became a regular member of a gothic club in London called The Batcave.
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 rather worn down from alcohol and drug use.
Current career with The Bad Seeds (since 1984)
The band with Cave as their leader and frontman has released fourteen studio albums. Their most recent album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! was released on 8 April 2008.
Critics Stephen Thomas Erlewine and Steve Huey write, "With the Bad Seeds, Cave continued to explore his obsessions with religion, death, love, America, and violence with a bizarre, sometimes self-consciously eclectic hybrid of blues, gospel, rock, and arty post-punk, although in a more subdued fashion than his work with the Birthday Party". Pitchfork Media calls the group one of rock's "most enduring, redoubtable" bands, with an accomplished discography.
Cave and the band curated an edition of the famous All Tomorrow's Parties music festival, the first in Australia, throughout the country in January 2009.
Solo work and Grinderman
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.
An album of new material by Cave's 'solo' quartet, now named Grinderman, was released in March 2007.
Nick Cave 'solo' and Grinderman both played at the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival in April 2007. This was Grinderman's first public performance. Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream accompanied Grinderman on backing vocals and percussion.
Soundtrack involvement
Many of Nick Cave's songs have found their way into movie soundtracks. One of the earliest to feature Cave's distinctive style by incorporating him as part of the movie's music scene...circa 1979...was Dogs in Space, a film by Richard Lowenstein. Cave performed parts of the Boys Next Door song "Shivers" twice during the film, once on video and once live.
Another early fan of Cave's was German director Wim Wenders, who lists Cave, along with Lou Reed and Portishead as among his favorites. Two of Cave's songs were featured in his 1987 film Wings of Desire. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds also make a cameo appearance in this film. Two more songs were included in Wenders' 1993 sequel Faraway, So Close!, including the title track. The soundtrack for Wenders' 1991 film Until the End of the World features Cave's "(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World." His most recent production, Palermo Shooting, also contains a Nick Cave song, as does his 2003 documentary The Soul of a Man.
Cave's songs have also appeared in a number of Hollywood blockbusters and major TV shows. For instance, his "There is a Light" appears on the 1995 soundtrack for Batman Forever, and "Red Right Hand" 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). In Scream 3, the song was given a reworking with Cave writing new lyrics and adding an orchestra to the arrangement of the track. This version appears on The Bad Seeds B-Sides and Rarities album. The song "People Ain't No Good" was featured in the animated movie Shrek 2, as well as in one of the episodes of the television series The L Word. Cave also sang a cover of The Beatles' "Let It Be," for the 2001 film I Am Sam.
Original material written for movie productions includes the song "To Be By Your Side," for the soundtrack of the 2001 French documentary Le Peuple Migrateur (called Winged Migration in the US). Cave composed the soundtrack for the 2005 film The Proposition with fellow Australian and Bad Seed Warren Ellis. Cave and Ellis once again collaborated on the music for the 2007 film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Also in 2007, Cave and Ellis wrote the soundtrack for the feature documentary The English Surgeon. The duo also provided original music for The Road in 2009 and the soundtrack for the audiobook of Cave's novel The Death of Bunny Munro.
Work with other artists
Nick Cave has also played with Shane MacGowan, in a cover version of Bob Dylan's "Death is Not the End", and Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World". Cave has also performed "What a Wonderful World" live with The Flaming Lips. Cave recorded a cover version of the Pogues song "Rainy Night in Soho", written by MacGowan.MacGowan also sings a version of "Lucy", released on B-Sides and Rarities. On 3 May 2008, during the Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! tour Shane MacGowan joined Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds on stage to perform "Lucy" at Dublin Castle in Ireland. Pulp's single "Bad Cover Version" includes on its B-side a cover version by Cave of that band's song "Disco 2000". On the Deluxe Edition of Pulp's Different Class another take of this cover can be found.
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" (originally "The Folk 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 The Man Comes Around album (2002). A similar duet, the American folk song "Cindy", was released posthumously on the "Johnny Cash: Unearthed" boxset. Cave's song "Let the Bells Ring" is a posthumous tribute to Cash. Cave has also covered the song "Wanted Man" which is best known as performed by Johnny Cash but is in fact a Bob Dylan composition.
In 2004, Cave 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. He is also featured on "The Crane Wife" (originally by The Decemberists), on Faithfull's 2008 album, Easy Come, Easy Go.
Cave collaborated with the band Current 93 on their album All the Pretty Little Horses, where he sings the title track, a lullaby. For his 1996 album Murder Ballads, Cave recorded "Where The Wild Roses Grow" with Kylie Minogue, and "Henry Lee" with P.J. Harvey.
Cave also took part in the "X-Files" compilation CD with some other artists, where he reads parts from the Bible combined with own texts, like "Time Jesum...", he outed himself as a fan of the series some years ago, but since he does not watch much TV, it was one of the only things he watched. He collaborated on the 2003 single "Bring It On", with Chris Bailey, formerly of the Australian punk group, The Saints. Cave contributed vocals to the song "Sweet Rosyanne", on the 2006 album "Catch That Train!" from Dan Zanes & Friends, a children's music group.
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. In 1997, he followed up with King Ink II, containing lyrics, poems, and the transcript of a radio essay he did for the BBC in July 1996, "The Flesh Made Word," discussing in biographical format his relationship with Christianity.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 theme 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). On 21 January 2008 a special edition of Cave's novel And the Ass Saw the Angel was released. Cave's second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro was published on the 8th of September 2009 and was published by Harper Collins books. The Death of Bunny Munro, which tells the story of a sex-addicted salesman, was also released as an audio-book and an iPhone app. The book originally started as a screenplay Cave was going to write for John Hillcoat.
As proof of his interest in scripture, so evident in his lyrics and his prose writing, Cave wrote the foreword to a Canongate publication of the Gospel according to Mark, published in the UK in 1998. The American edition of the same book (published by Grove Press) contains a foreword by the noted American writer Barry Hannah.
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.
Cave has made occasional appearances as an actor, most prominently in the 1989 film Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead, written and directed by John Hillcoat, and in the 1991 film Johnny Suede, with Brad Pitt.
Cave appeared in the 2005 homage to Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man, in which he performed "I'm Your Man" solo, and "Suzanne" with Julie Christensen and Perla Batalla. He also appeared in the 2007 film adaptation of Ron Hansen's novel The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, where he sings a song about Jesse James. Cave and Warren Ellis are credited for the film's soundtrack.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds also featured in Wim Wenders' 1987 film Wings of Desire.
Displaying a keen interest in other aspects of film, Cave wrote the screenplay for The Proposition, a film set in the colonial 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 movie reviewer for British newspaper The Independent called it "peerless," "a star-studded and uncompromisingly violent outlaw film." It even features on a website promoting tourism to the area. The generally ambient soundtrack was recorded by Cave and Warren Ellis.
At the request of friend Russell Crowe, Cave wrote a script for a proposed sequel to Gladiator which was rejected by the studio.
Cave has also lent his voice in narrating an award winning animated film called The Cat Piano. It was Directed by Eddie White and Ari Gibson (of The People’s Republic Of Animation), Produced by Jessica Brentnall and has music by Benjamin Speed.
Cave has also completed the script for a new film titled "The Death of a Ladies Man"
Cave is also going to rewrite the script of The Crow remake.
Cave dated Anita Lane from the late '70s to mid '80s. She had an undeniably strong influence upon Cave and his work, often cited as his "muse". Despite this, Cave and Lane recorded together on only a few occasions. Their most notable collaborations include Lane's 'cameo' verse on Cave's Bob Dylan cover "Death Is Not The End" from the album Murder Ballads, and a cover of the Serge Gainsbourg/Jane Birkin song "Je t`aime/ I love you nor do I". Lane co-wrote the lyrics to the title track for Cave's 1984 LP, From Her to Eternity, as well as the lyrics of the song "Stranger Than Kindness" from Your Funeral, My Trial. Cave, Lydia Lunch and Lane wrote a comic book together, entitled AS-FIX-E-8, in the style of the old "Pussy Galore"/Russ Meyer movies.
After completing his debut novel 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 journalist Viviane Carneiro. The two have a son, Luke (b. 10 May 1991), but never married. Cave's son Jethro (born in 1991) lives with his mother, Beau Lazenby, in Australia and has a career in modelling.
Cave briefly dated PJ Harvey during the mid 1990s. The love affair and their break-up inspired him to write the album The Boatman's Call.
In summer 1999 Cave married his current wife, British model Susie Bick (cover star of the Damned's 1985 album Phantasmagoria). They have twin sons, Arthur and Earl (born in 2000). Nick Cave Online Cave and Bick lived for some time on a houseboat near Hove. He now lives with his family in Hove.
Cave performed "Into My Arms" at the televised funeral of Michael Hutchence, but refused to play in front of the cameras. Cave is godfather of Hutchence's only child, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily.
In the past, Cave identified as a Christian. In his recorded lectures on music and songwriting, he has claimed that any true love song is a song for God and has ascribed the mellowing of his music to a shift in focus from the Old to the New Testaments. He does not belong to a particular denomination and has distanced himself from "religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked". However, in an interview in the Guardian in 2009, he said: "Do I personally believe in a personal God? No."
Nick Cave is known for wearing sharp suits both on and off stage. In an interview with his Tailor, Chris Kerr of Soho, London, the tailor's assistant described Nick as ‘terrifying, but always polite and courteous’.
Ghosts... of the Civil Dead, soundtrack (1988) — composed with Mick Harvey & Blixa Bargeld
And the Ass Saw the Angel, readings of the novel (1988), plus theatre score (1993) — text by Cave, music composed by Harvey and Ed Clayton-Jones
To Have and to Hold, soundtrack (1996) — composed with Harvey & Bargeld
Woyzeck, theatre score (2005) - composed with Warren Ellis
The Proposition, soundtrack (2005) — composed with Ellis
Metamorphosis, theatre score (2006) - composed with Ellis
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, soundtrack (2007) — composed with Ellis
The English Surgeon, soundtrack (2007) - composed with Ellis
The Death of Bunny Munro, soundtrack (2009) — composed with Ellis
The Road, soundtrack (2009) — composed with Ellis Row Three » Nick Cave and Warren Ellis to Score The Road — Where Cinema is more than just $100 Million productions
Contributions/appearances
Die Haut and Nick Cave: Burnin' the Ice (1982), features Nick Cave's vocals on 4 songs.
September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill produced by Hal Willner. Cave contributes a cover version of "Mack the Knife".
Nick Cave i Przyjaciele (Nick Cave and Friends) (2001). A tribute album by Polish musicians. Cave appears on tracks 1 & 10.
I Am Sam (2002). Cave contributes a cover version of The Beatles' "Let It Be", which was later issued as a single with a cover version of "Here Comes the Sun" as the B-side.
"Kiss of Love" (duet with Sam Brown) from Jools Holland's 2003 album Small World Big Band Friends 3 - Jack O The Green.
Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys (2006). Cave contributes the tracks "Fire Down Below" and "Pinery Boy".
"Bad Cover Version" single by Pulp. Cave contributes a cover version of Pulp's "Disco 2000".
"Helpless" single by Neil Young. He did this in 1989 for the Neil Young tribute album The Bridge.
The Man Comes Around (2003) Duet with Johnny Cash on "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry".
Batman Forever soundtrack ... contributes the track "There is a Light"
Ute Lemper's Punishing Kiss. Cave co-wrote (with Bruno Pisek) "Little Water Song".
"To Be By Your Side" - from the OST for French documentary film Le Peuple Migrateur (2001).
Cave performs "I'm Your Man" and "Suzanne" in the documentary/concert film I'm Your Man (2005).
Seasick Steve's song "Just Like A King" includes Cave's vocals
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds appear on the Martin Scorsese series The Blues singing J. B. Lenoir's "I Feel So Good"
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song "Up Jumped The Devil" was featured in the video game Alan Wake. (2010)
Other
The Secret Life of the Love Song - a spoken word lecture by Cave.
King Ink. Los Angeles: 2.13.61, 1988. ISBN 1-880985-08-X.
And the Ass Saw the Angel Los Angeles: 2.13.61, 1989. ISBN 1-880985-72-1.
King Ink II. Los Angeles: 2.13.61, 1997. ISBN 2-84261-053-9.
Introduction to The Pocket Canons Bible Series: Authorised King James Version: The Gospel According to Mark. Edinburgh: Canongate, 1998. ISBN 0-86241-796-1.
Complete Lyrics. London: Penguin, 2001. ISBN 0-14-100515-7.
2010 Awarded an Honorary degree as Doctor of Laws, by University of Dundee.
2008 ARIA Awards Male Artist of the Year (Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!).
2008 MOJO Awards: Best Album of 2008 (Dig, Lazarus Dig!!!).
2008 Awarded an Honorary degree as Doctor of Laws, by Monash University.
2007 ARIA Awards ARIA Hall of Fame inductee.
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 with Warren Ellis (The Proposition).
2005 Inside Film Awards: Best Music (The Proposition).
2005 Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards: Best Musical Score (The Proposition).
2004 MOJO Awards: Best Album of 2004 (Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus).
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).
