Nicholas Edward CaveAOFRSL (born 22 September 1957[2]) is an Australian musician, writer and actor. Known for his deep baritone voice and for fronting the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Cave's music is characterised by emotional intensity, a wide variety of influences and lyrical obsessions with death, religion, love, and violence.[3]
Born and raised in rural Victoria, Cave studied art in Melbourne before fronting the Birthday Party, one of the city's leading post-punk bands, in the late 1970s. In 1980, the band moved to London, England. Disillusioned by their stay there, they evolved towards a darker and more challenging sound that helped inspire gothic rock, and they acquired a reputation as "the most violent live band in the world".[4] Cave became recognised for his confrontational performances, his shock of black hair and pale, emaciated look. The band broke up soon after relocating to West Berlin in 1982. The following year, Cave formed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, later described as one of rock's "most redoubtable, enduring" bands.[5] Much of their early material is set in a mythic American Deep South, drawing on spirituals and Delta blues, while Cave's preoccupation with Old Testament notions of good versus evil culminated in what has been called his signature song, "The Mercy Seat" (1988), and in his debut novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel (1989). In 1988, he appeared in Ghosts… of the Civil Dead, an Australian prison film which he both co-wrote and scored.
Nicholas Edward Cave was born on 22 September 1957 in Warracknabeal, a country town in the Australian state of Victoria, to Dawn Cave (née Treadwell) and Colin Frank Cave.[7][8] He has two older brothers, Tim (born 1952) and Peter (born 1954), and a younger sister, Julie (born 1959).[9] As a child, he lived in Warracknabeal and then Wangaratta in rural Victoria.
His father taught English and mathematics at the local technical school; his mother was a librarian at the high school that Cave attended.[10] From an early age, Cave's father read him literary classics, such as Crime and Punishment (1866) and Lolita (1955),[11] and also organised the first symposium on the Australian bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly,[12] with whom Cave was enamoured as a child.[13] Through his older brother, Cave became a fan of British progressive rock bands such as King Crimson, Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull,[14] while a childhood girlfriend introduced him to the Canadian folk artist Leonard Cohen, who he later described as "the greatest songwriter of them all".[15]
Cave attended his first music concert at Melbourne's Festival Hall. The bill consisted of the English rock bands Manfred Mann, Deep Purple and Free. Cave recalled: "I remember sitting there and feeling physically the sound going through me."[16] In early 1977, he saw the Australian punk rock bands Radio Birdman and the Saints live for the first time. Cave was particularly inspired by the show of the latter band, saying that he left the venue "a different person."[18][19]
Cave was 19 when his father was killed in a car collision; his mother told him of his father's death while she was bailing him out of a St Kilda police station where he was being held on a charge of burglary.[20] He would later recall that his father "died at a point in my life when I was most confused" and that "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".[11]
In 1973, Cave founded a band with fellow students at Caulfield Grammar. With Cave as lead vocalist, the band included Mick Harvey (guitar), Phill Calvert (drums), John Cochivera (guitar), Brett Purcell (bass guitar), and Chris Coyne (saxophone). Their repertoire consisted of cover versions of songs by Lou Reed, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Roxy Music and Alex Harvey, among others. Later, the line-up slimmed down to four members including Cave's friend Tracy Pew on bass guitar. In 1977, after leaving school, they adopted the name the Boys Next Door and began playing predominantly original punk rock material. Guitarist, songwriter and ex-Young Charlatans member Rowland S. Howard joined the band in 1978.
The Melbourne post-punk venue the Crystal Ballroom, Cave's "first great stage"
The Boys Next Door emerged as the linchpin of the Melbourne post-punk scene in the late 1970s, securing a residency at St Kilda's Crystal Ballroom venue, where they attracted a cult following.[21] They played hundreds of live shows in Australia and toured interstate before changing their name to the Birthday Party in 1980 and moving to London, England. Cave's girlfriend and muse Anita Lane accompanied the band. They struggled initially with financial instability and limited connections, and grew to detest London and much of its music scene, which Cave later described as "dead, ... we felt really ripped off, robbed". He did however greatly admire the Pop Group,[22] and the Birthday Party shared a mutual affinity with the Fall.
By the end of their first year in London, the Birthday Party had gained notoriety for their aggressive, confrontational live shows and Cave's unhinged stage presence, with him shrieking, bellowing and throwing himself about the stage, backed up by harsh pounding rock music laced with guitar feedback. Drawing on Old Testament imagery, Cave's lyrics frequently revolved around sin, debauchery and damnation.[23] The band found a champion in prominent radio DJ and taste-maker John Peel, and went on to record four Peel Sessions.
Cave's droll sense of humour and penchant for parody is evident in many of the band's songs, including "Nick the Stripper" and "King Ink". "Release the Bats", one of the band's most famous songs and John Peel's single of the year in 1981, was intended as an over-the-top "piss-take" on gothic rock, and a "direct attack" on the "stock gothic associations that less informed critics were wont to make". Ironically, it became highly influential on the genre, giving rise to a new generation of bands in England.[24]
The Birthday Party relocated to West Berlin in 1982. After establishing a cult following in Europe, Australia and the United States, they disbanded in the following year.
The band with Cave as their lead vocalist has released eighteen studio albums. Pitchfork calls the group one of rock's "most enduring, redoubtable" bands, with an accomplished discography.[25] Though their sound tends to change considerably from one album to another, the one constant of the band is an unpolished blending of disparate genres, and song structures which provide a vehicle for Cave's virtuosic, frequent histrionics. Critics Stephen Thomas Erlewine and Steve Huey wrote: "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."[3]
Hamburg, Germany July 2001
Reviewing the band's fourteenth studio album Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (2008), NME used the phrase "gothic psycho-sexual apocalypse" to describe the "menace" present in the lyrics of the title track.[26] Their most recent work, Wild God, was released in August 2024.
In a September 2013 interview, Cave explained that he returned to using a typewriter for songwriting after his experience with their twelfth studio album Nocturama (2003), as he "could walk in on a bad day and hit 'delete' and that was the end of it". Cave believes that he lost valuable work due to a "bad day".[16]
In 2006, Cave formed Grinderman with himself on vocals, guitar, organ and piano, Warren Ellis (tenor guitar, electric mandolin, violin, viola, guitar, backing vocals), Martyn P. Casey (bass, guitar, backing vocals) and Jim Sclavunos (drums, percussion, backing vocals). The alternative rock outfit was formed as "a way to escape the weight of the Bad Seeds".[27] The band's name was inspired by a Memphis Slim song, "Grinder Man Blues", which Cave is noted to have started singing during one of the band's early rehearsal sessions. The band's debut studio album, Grinderman, was released in 2007 to positive reviews and the band's second and final studio album, Grinderman 2, was released in 2010 to a similar reception.[28]
In December 2011, after performing at the Meredith Music Festival, Cave announced that Grinderman was over.[31] Two years later, Grinderman performed both weekends at the 2013 Coachella Festival, as did Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.[32]
Music in film and television drama
Cave's musical work was featured in a scene of the 1986 film, Dogs in Space by Richard Lowenstein.[33] 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 favourites.[34] Cave and the Bad Seeds appear in the 1987 film Wings of Desire performing "The Carny" and "From Her to Eternity".[35] Two original 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, another Cave original, "(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World". Cave and the Bad Seeds later recorded a live in-studio cover track for Wenders' 2003 documentary The Soul of a Man, and his 2008 film Palermo Shooting features two original songs from Cave's side project Grinderman.[36]
Cave's songs have also appeared in a number of Hollywood blockbusters – "There is a Light" appears on the 1995 soundtrack for Batman Forever, and "Red Right Hand" appeared in a number of films including Dumb and Dumber (1994), The X-Files (1998); Scream (1996), its sequels Scream 2 (1997) and 3 (2000), and Hellboy (2004; 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. "People Ain't No Good" was featured in the animated movie Shrek 2 (2004) and the song "O Children" was featured in the 2010 movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1. For the Harry Potter film, music supervisor Matt Biffa chose the song because it was "really uplifting".[37]
During the 1982 recording sessions for the Birthday Party's third studio album Junkyard, Cave, together with band-mates Harvey and Howard, joined members of the Go-Betweens to form Tuff Monks. The short-lived band released one single, "After the Fireworks", and played live only once. Later that year, Cave contributed to the concept album Honeymoon in Red. Intended as a collaboration between the Birthday Party and Lydia Lunch, the album was not released until 1988, by which time Lunch had fallen out with Cave, who she credits on the release as "Anonymous", "Her Dead Twin" and "A Drunk Cowboy Junkie".[39]
During the Birthday Party's Berlin period, Cave collaborated with local post-punk and post-rock band Die Haut on their studio album Burnin' the Ice, released in 1983. In the immediate aftermath of the Birthday Party's break-up, Cave performed several shows in the United States as part of the Immaculate Consumptive, a short-lived "super-group" with Lunch, Marc Almond and Clint Ruin.[39] Cave sang on an Annie Hogan song called "Vixo" which was recorded in October 1983: the track was released in 1985 on the 12" inch vinyl "Annie Hogan – Plays Kickabye".[40]
After covering one another's songs, Cave and Johnny Cash (pictured) recorded duets for what would be Cash's final studio album.
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.
2000—present
In 2004, Cave gave a hand to Marianne Faithfull on her sixteenth studio 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 3" (originally by the Decemberists), on Faithfull's seventeenth studio album, Easy Come, Easy Go (2008).
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 studio album Catch That Train! (2006) by Dan Zanes & Friends, a children's music group.
"When Cave makes a brief appearance in the film's waning minutes—playing a grungy troubadour, of course, strolling the length of a bar as he growls the oft-sung folk tribute to Jesse James—you almost get the feeling that in some ways it's been Cave, by way of his score, telling the story all along."
Cave creates original film scores with fellow Bad Seeds band member Warren Ellis—they first teamed up in 2005 to work on Hillcoat's bushranger film The Proposition, for which Cave also wrote the screenplay.[57]
Cave released his first book, King Ink, in 1988. It is a collection of lyrics and plays, including collaborations with Lydia Lunch. This was followed up with King Ink II in 1997, containing lyrics, poems, and the transcript of a radio essay he wrote 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 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).
In 1993, Cave and Lydia Lunch published an adult comic book they wrote together, with illustrations by Mike Matthews, titled AS-FIX-E-8.[62]
On 21 January 2008, a special edition of Cave's novel And the Ass Saw the Angel was released.[63] Cave's second novel The Death of Bunny Munro was published on 8 September 2009 by HarperCollins.[64][65] Telling the story of a sex-addicted salesman, it was also released as a binaural audio-book produced by British Artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard and an iPhone app.[66] The book originally started as a screenplay Cave was going to write for John Hillcoat.[67]
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 was a contributor to a biography of the alternative rock and pop band the Triffids, Vagabond Holes: David McComb and the Triffids (2009), edited by Australian academics Niall Lucy and Chris Coughran.[69]
Acting
Cave's first film appearance was in Wim Wenders' 1987 film Wings of Desire, in which he and the Bad Seeds are shown performing at a concert in Berlin.
Cave has made occasional appearances as an actor. He appears alongside Blixa Bargeld in the 1988 Peter Sempel film Dandy, playing dice, singing and speaking from his Berlin apartment. He is most prominently featured 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 wrote the screenplay for The Proposition, a film about bushrangers in the Australian outback during the late 19th century. Directed by John Hillcoat and filmed in Queensland in 2004, it premiered in October 2005 and was later released worldwide to critical acclaim.[75] Cave explained his personal background in relation to writing the film's screenplay in a 2013 interview:
I had written long-form before but it is pure story-telling in script writing and that goes back as far as I can remember for me, not just with my father but with myself. I slept in the same bedroom as my sister for many years, until it became indecent to do so and I would tell her stories every night—that is how she would get to sleep. She would say "tell me a story" so I would tell her a story. So that ability, I very much had that from the start and I used to enjoy that at school so actually to write a script—it suddenly felt like I was just making up a big story.[16]
The film critic for British newspaper The Independent called The Proposition "peerless", "a star-studded and uncompromisingly violent outlaw film".[76] The generally ambient soundtrack was recorded by Cave and Warren Ellis.
At the request of his friend Russell Crowe, Cave wrote a script for a proposed sequel to Gladiator which was rejected by the studio.[77]
An announcement in February 2010 stated that Andy Serkis and Cave would collaborate on a motion-capture movie of the Brecht and Weill musical The Threepenny Opera. As of November 2024, the project has not been realised.[78]
Cave wrote a screenplay titled The Wettest County in the World,[79] which was used for the 2012 film Lawless, directed again by John Hillcoat, starring Tom Hardy and Shia LaBeouf.[80]
Blogging
Cave currently maintains a personal blog and an online correspondence page with his fans called The Red Hand Files which is seen as a continuation of In Conversation, a series of live personal talks Cave had held in which the audience were free to ask questions. On the page, Cave discusses various issues ranging from art, religion, current affairs and music, as well as using it as a free platform in which fans are encouraged to ask personal questions on any topic of their choosing.[81][82] Cave's intimate approach to the Question & Answer format on The Red Hand Files was praised by The Guardian as "a shelter from the online storm free of discord and conspiracies, and in harmony with the internet vision of Tim Berners-Lee."[82]
In January 2023, after being sent a song written by ChatGPT "in the style of Nick Cave",[83] he responded on The Red Hand Files (and was later quoted in The Guardian) saying that act of song writing "is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite, it is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past." He went on to say "It's a blood and guts business [that] requires my humanness", concluding that "this song is bullshit, a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human, and, well, I don't much like it."[83][84]
Legacy and influence
In 2010, Cave was ranked the 19th greatest living lyricist in NME.[85]Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers called him the greatest living songwriter in 2011.[86] Rob O'Connor of Yahoo Music listed him as the 23rd best lyricist in rock history.[87]The Art of Nick Cave: New Critical Essays was edited by academic John H. Baker and published in 2013. In an essay on the studio album The Boatman's Call (1997), Peter Billingham praised Cave's love songs as characterised by a "deep, poetic, melancholic introspection".[88] Carl Lavery, another academic featured in the collection, argued that there was a "burgeoning field of Cave studies".[89] Dan Rose argued that Cave "is a master of the disturbing narrative and chronicler of the extreme, though he is also certainly capable of a subtle romantic vision. He does much to the listener who enters his world."[90]
A number of prominent noise rock vocalists have cited Cave's Birthday Party-era work as their primary influence, including the U-Men's John Bigley,[94] and David Yow, frontman of Scratch Acid and the Jesus Lizard. Yow stated: "For a long time, particularly with Scratch Acid, I was so taken with the Birthday Party that I would deny it",[95] and that "it sounded like I was trying to be Birthday Party Nick Cave—which I was."[96] Often compared to Cave in his vocal delivery, Alexis Marshall of Daughters said that he admires the personality and energy within Cave's voice, and that his early studio albums "exposed [him] to lyrical content as literature".[97]
Personal life
Cave left Australia in 1980. After stints living in London, Berlin, and São Paulo, he moved to Brighton, England, in the early 2000s.[98]
The film 20,000 Days on Earth (2014), about Cave's life, is set around Brighton.[99] In 2017, Cave reportedly told GQ magazine that he and his family were considering moving from Brighton to Los Angeles as, after the death of his 15-year-old son, Arthur, they "just find it too difficult to live here."[100]
In November 2021, while answering a question on The Red Hand Files which was referencing the song "Heart That Kills You" (from the compilation album B-Sides & Rarities Part II) Cave stated, "The words of the song go someway toward articulating why Susie and I moved from Brighton to L.A. Brighton had just become too sad. We did, however, return once we realised that, regardless of where we lived, we just took our sadness with us. These days, though, we spend much of our time in London, in a tiny, secret, pink house, where we are mostly happy."[101]
In June 2023, in The Archbishop Interview with Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, on BBC Radio 4, Cave spoke about being a heroin addict for 20 years. Although his life during that time was admittedly "a terrible shambles", his second decade of addiction was much more stable and characterised by regularly taking heroin in the morning and in the evening and being able to work on writing during the day.[20]
On his blog, Cave discussed practicing Transcendental Meditation (TM), saying "from the first time I meditated, I stopped fearing the end of the world."[104]
Cave then moved to São Paulo, Brazil, in 1990, where he met and married his first wife, Brazilian journalist Viviane Carneiro. She gave birth to their son Luke in 1991. Cave and Carneiro were married for six years and divorced in 1996.[108]
Cave's son Jethro was also born in 1991, just ten days before Luke, and grew up with his mother, Beau Lazenby, in Melbourne, Australia. Cave and Jethro did not meet one another until Jethro was about seven or eight.[109] He died in May 2022, aged 31.[110]
Cave briefly dated the English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey during the mid-1990s, with whom he recorded the duet "Henry Lee". Their break-up influenced his studio album The Boatman's Call (1997).[111]
When he was 15 years old, Cave's son Arthur fell from a cliff at Ovingdean, near Brighton, and died from his injuries on 14 July 2015.[117][118][119] An inquest found that Arthur had taken LSD before the fall and the coroner ruled his death was an accident.[120] The effect of Arthur's death on Cave and his family was explored in the documentary film One More Time with Feeling (2016), and the studio album Ghosteen (2019).
Cave is an avid reader of the ChristianBible. In his recorded lectures on music and songwriting, Cave said that any true love song is a song for God, and ascribed the mellowing of his music to a shift in focus from the Old Testament to the New. When asked if he had interest in religions outside of Christianity, Cave quipped that he had a passing, sceptical interest but was a "hammer-and-nails kind of guy".[122] Despite this, Cave has also said he is critical of organised religion. When interviewed by Jarvis Cocker of Pulp on 12September 2010, for his BBC Radio6 show Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Service, Cave said that "I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it."[123]
Cave has always been open about his doubts. When asked in 2009 about whether he believed in a personal god, Cave's reply was "No".[124] The following year, he stated that "I'm not religious, and I'm not a Christian, but I do reserve the right to believe in the possibility of a god. It's kind of defending the indefensible, though; I'm critical of what religions are becoming, the more destructive they're becoming. But I think as an artist, particularly, it's a necessary part of what I do, that there is some divine element going on within my songs."[125]
Cave's religious doubts were once a source of discomfort to him, but he eventually concluded:
Although I've never been an atheist, there are periods when I struggled with the whole thing. As someone who uses words, you need to be able to justify your belief with language, I'd have arguments and the atheist always won because he'd go back to logic. Belief in God is illogical, it's absurd. There's no debate. I feel it intuitively, it comes from the heart, a magical place. But I still I fluctuate from day to day. Sometimes I feel very close to the notion of God, other times I don't. I used to see that as a failure. Now I see it as a strength, especially compared to the more fanatical notions of what God is. I think doubt is an essential part of belief.[126]
In 2019, Cave expressed his personal disagreement with both organised religion and atheism (in particular New Atheism) when questioned about his beliefs by a fan during a question and answer session on his Red Hand Files blog.[81] On the same blog, Cave confirmed he believed in God in June 2021.[127] By 2023, Cave characterised himself as not being a Christian but 'act[ing] like one'[128] and detailed in his 2022 book Faith, Hope, and Carnage that he regularly attends church.
In 2023, Cave wrote on his blog that he had sympathised with feminist author Ayaan Hirsi Ali's conversion from Islam to atheism after reading her book Infidel: My Life (2006), and had also considered himself an atheist. However, he described his growing interest in religion as a "slowly emergent state" and shaped by his upbringing in the Anglican church. He also clarified his view on Christianity was "non-political and fully personal and emotional" and described his religious beliefs as "bound up in the liturgy and the ritual and the poetry that swirls around the restless, tortured figure of Jesus, as presented within the sacred domain of the church itself. My religiousness is softly spoken, both sorrowful and joyful, broadening and deepening, imagined and true. It is worship and prayer. It is resilient yet doubting, and forever wrestles with the forces of rationality." He concluded by describing Hirsi Ali's 2023 article in UnHerd documenting her conversion to Christianity as a "laudable achievement" for its ability to "vex atheists and Christians alike."[129]
Politics
In 2019, Cave wrote in defence of singer Morrissey of the Smiths after the latter expressed a series of controversial political statements during the release of his solo studio album California Son which led to some record stores refusing to stock it. Cave argued that Morrissey should have that right to freedom of speech to state his opinions while everyone should be able to "challenge them when and wherever possible, but allow his music to live on, bearing in mind we are all conflicted individuals." He also added it would be "dangerous" to censor Morrissey from expressing his beliefs.[130][81]
In response to a fan asking about his political beliefs, Cave expressed a disdain for "atheism, organised religion, radical bi-partisan politics and woke culture" on his Red Hand Files blog. He in particular singled out woke politics and culture for criticism, describing it as "finding energy in self-righteous belief and the suppression of contrary systems of thought" and "regardless of the virtuous intentions of many woke issues, it is its lack of humility and the paternalistic and doctrinal sureness of its claims that repel me."[81] In 2020, Cave also expressed opposition to ostracism, particularly cancel culture, and misguided political correctness, describing both as "bad religion run amuck" and their "refusal to engage with uncomfortable ideas has an asphyxiating effect on the creative soul of a society."[131][132]
Cave has previously described himself as a supporter of freedom of speech in both his live In Conversation events and on his blog.[133] He has also argued against boycotting musicians for controversial actions or political opinions while giving a lecture at the Hay Festival in 2023, saying that audiences should not "eradicate the best of these people in order to punish the worst of them."[128]
In October 2022, Cave expressed support for the participants of the Mahsa Amini protests in Iran on his correspondence blog after being asked by a fan on the matter. He responded by stating "I am in awe of their courage and pray for their safety."[134]
In 2023, Cave disputed a characterisation of him as right-wing or conservative by the New Statesman magazine but added "I have these days what I would call a conservative temperament" and described himself as "conservative with a small c." He also clarified he was "not against progress" but "I just see things moving very rapidly and a whole lot of different things worry me a lot, like AI" and expressed criticism of the idea "that everything is systemically fucked". He also stated that his small-c conservative views had formed following the deaths of two of his sons, explaining "I think that I have an understanding of loss and what it is to lose something and how difficult it is to get that back" and argued that the demise of religion and spirituality "which may or may not be a good thing" had led to a "vacuum that we created that we don't really know what to do with".[128] He has also written in support of the rights of trans people, stating on his personal blog that he "[loves] my trans fans fully" and "[wishes] for them to receive every right inherent to them and for them to lead lives of dignity and freedom, devoid of violence and prejudice".[135]
Israel and BDS
In November 2017, Cave was urged by British musicians Brian Eno and Roger Waters to cancel two concerts in Tel Aviv, Israel, but he declined, saying "it suddenly became very important to make a stand against those people who are trying to shut down musicians, to bully musicians, to censor musicians, and to silence musicians."[136] This was after Eno and Waters published a letter asking Cave to avoid performing in Israel while "apartheid remains". Cave went on to describe the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement as "cowardly and shameful", and that calls to boycott the country are "partly the reason I am playing Israel – not as support for any particular political entity but as a principled stand against those who wish to bully, shame and silence musicians." He furthermore responded with an open letter to Eno to defend his position.[137][138][139]
In 2024, when asked by a musician on Cave's The Red Hand Files whether they should boycott The Great Escape Festival in response to the claim by Bands Boycott Barclays that the festival sponsor increased its investment in arms companies trading with Israel, he responded simply with "play".[140][141]
I Want Everything (2020) – short documentary by Paul Szynol about Larry Sloman, who records a tribute to Cave's son Arthur. Cave makes an appearance.[144]
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds European Tour 1992, Arts Centre Melbourne (then known as the Victorian Arts Centre), Melbourne, 4 December 1992 – 26 February 1993. A photographic exhibition by Peter Milne.[145]
Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition, Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen, Denmark, June 2020. The exhibition shows Cave's life and work and was co-curated by him.[150]
We, Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland. September 2022 – January 2023. The exhibition shows 17 of Cave's hand-crafted ceramic figurines depicting Satan.[151]
The ARIA Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony that recognises excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of Australian music. They commenced in 1987.
The Australian Music Prize (the AMP) is an annual award of $30,000 given to an Australian band or solo artist in recognition of the merit of an album released during the year of award. It commenced in 2005.
The Grammy Awards are awarded annually by The Recording Academy to honor outstanding achievements in the music industry, and are considered the music industry's highest honor.[166]
Order of Australia: (2017) Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) "For distinguished service to the performing arts as a musician, songwriter, author and actor, nationally and internationally, and as a major contributor to Australian music culture and heritage."[171]
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.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are a rock band formed in Melbourne in 1983 by lead vocalist Nick Cave, multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey and German guitarist-vocalist Blixa Bargeld. The band has featured international personnel throughout its career and presently consists of Cave, violinist and multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, bassist Martyn P. Casey, guitarist George Vjestica, touring keyboardist/percussionist Larry Mullins, also known as Toby Dammit, and drummers Thomas Wydler (Switzerland) and Jim Sclavunos. Described as "one of the most original and celebrated bands of the post-punk and alternative rock eras in the '80s and onward", they have released eighteen studio albums and completed numerous international tours.
James Sclavunos is an American drummer, multi-instrumentalist musician, record producer, and writer. He is best known as a drummer, having been a member of two seminal no wave groups in the late 1970s. He is also noted for stints in Sonic Youth and the Cramps, and has been a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds since 1994. Sclavunos has led his own group the Vanity Set since 2000.
Murder Ballads is the ninth studio album by the Australian rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, released on 5 February 1996 by Mute Records. As its title suggests, the album consists of new and traditional murder ballads, a genre of songs that relays the details of crimes of passion.
Warren Ellis is an Australian musician and composer. He is a member of the rock groups Dirty Three and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. He performed with the band Grinderman until its disbandment in 2013, and has composed film scores with long-time friend, collaborator and band-mate Nick Cave. Ellis plays the violin, piano, accordion, bouzouki, guitar, flute, mandolin, mandocello and viola. He has been a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds since 1994.
Live Seeds is the first official live album by Australian post-punk band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The album was recorded live from 1992 to 1993 during various concerts throughout Europe and Australia in support of their 1992 studio album Henry's Dream. Frontman Nick Cave wanted to give the songs a raw feeling as originally intended before production problems occurred. Live Seeds includes a not previously studio-recorded track, "Plain Gold Ring", which is a cover of a song performed by Nina Simone.
Nicolas Launay is an English record producer, composer and recording engineer, currently residing in Los Angeles, CA. He is one of the most sought after record producers in the world due to his success with recent albums by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Anna Calvi, IDLES, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Arcade Fire. Noted for his flamboyant style, he is among the most successful producers of the post-punk era, helming records from pivotal acts including Public Image Ltd, Gang of Four, Killing Joke, The Birthday Party, and The Slits.
"Jubilee Street" is a song by the Australian alternative rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It is the fourth track and second single from the band's fifteenth studio album, Push the Sky Away, and was released on 15 January 2013 on Bad Seed Ltd.
Martyn Paul Casey is an English-born Australian rock bass guitarist. He has been a member of the Triffids, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Grinderman. Casey plays either his Fender Precision Bass or Fender Jazz Bass.
Grinderman was an Australian-American rock band that formed in London, England, in 2006. The band included Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey and Jim Sclavunos.
Grinderman is the eponymous debut studio album by alternative rock band Grinderman, a side project of members of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, released on 5 March 2007 on Mute Records in Europe and ANTI- in the United States. Aiming to recreate the more raw, primal sound of all former related projects such as The Birthday Party, Grinderman's lyrical and musical content diverged significantly from Nick Cave's concurrent work with The Bad Seeds, whose last studio album, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (2004), was primarily blues, gospel and alternative-orientated in stark contrast to the raw sound of the early Bad Seeds albums. Incidentally, the musical direction of Grinderman influenced The Bad Seeds' next studio album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (2008).
"No Pussy Blues" is the second single by alternative rock group Grinderman from their debut album of the same name. Released on 19 February 2007, the song - like the previous single "Get It On" - received a positive reception from critics. Unlike the previous Grinderman single, this one charted, peaking at UK #62. "No Pussy Blues" was also the first song available on the band's MySpace page.
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is the fourteenth studio album by Australian rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The album was recorded in June and July 2007 at The State of the Ark Studios in Richmond, London and mixed by Nick Launay at British Grove Studios in Chiswick, and was released on 3 March 2008.
"The Ship Song" is a song written by Nick Cave, originally performed by the Australian rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on their sixth studio album The Good Son (1990). It was released by Mute Records as the first single from the album on 12 March 1990, as a CD single, 7" vinyl and a 12" vinyl release. The song reached #84 on the UK Singles Charts.
Grinderman 2 is the second and final studio album by alternative rock band Grinderman, a side project of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, released on 13 September 2010 on Mute Records in the United Kingdom and ANTI- in the United States.
"Heathen Child" is the fourth single by alternative rock group Grinderman and first from their second studio album, Grinderman 2. Released on 6 September 2010, the song is the first release from Grinderman in three years and is also the band's first limited edition double a-side single.
The discography of Grinderman, a former London-based alternative rock group, consists of two studio albums, one remix album, eight singles, and six music videos.
"Palaces of Montezuma" is a song by the alternative rock band Grinderman. It is the eighth track and third single from the band's second and final studio album, Grinderman 2, and was released on 14 March 2011 on Mute Records. Produced by Nick Launay and written collectively by vocalist Nick Cave, multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, bassist Martyn P. Casey and drummer Jim Sclavunos, the song has been described as an "atypically straightforward love song" and was written for Cave's wife, Susie Bick.
Ghosteen is the seventeenth studio album by the Australian rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It was released on 4 October 2019 on Ghosteen Ltd and on 8 November 2019 on Bad Seed Ltd, both the band's own imprints. Ghosteen is a double album—the band's first since Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus (2004)—and the final part of a trilogy of albums that includes Push the Sky Away (2013) and Skeleton Tree (2016).
This is the discography of Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave. In addition to his career as lead singer of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, he has released 1 studio album, 11 soundtrack albums, 1 extended play, 2 short soundtracks, 3 singles, 3 live albums, and 1 compilation album. Since 2005, the majority of his work has been written & recorded in collaboration with Bad Seeds member and multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis.
1 2 Walker, Clinton (2009). "Planting Seeds". In Dalziell, Tanya; Welberry, Karen (ed.). Cultural Seeds: Essays on the Work of Nick Cave. Taylor & Francis. pp. 31–46. ISBN 9780754663959.
1 2 Bertacchini, Lauren (26 February 2013). "Nick Cave: Fan Factoids". Everguide. Lifelounge Pty Ltd. Archived from the original on 19 October 2013. Retrieved 19 October 2013.
↑ "1996 Winners – APRA Music Awards". Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) | Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS). Archived from the original on 18 September 2009. Retrieved 11 September 2018.
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