Nicholas Edward Cave (born 22 September 1957 in Warracknabeal, Victoria, Australia) is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, painter, and occasional actor. He is best known for his work in the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, who have become critically acclaimed for their fascination with American roots music.
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 intensity and a wide variety of influences. Nick Cave currently lives in Brighton & Hove, England. 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."
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) & 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, 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.
Personal life
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 P. J. Harvey during the mid 1990s. The love affair and their break-up inspired him to write the album The Boatman's Call. Cave met his current partner, British model Susie Bick and they married in summer 1999. They have twin sons, Arthur and Earl (born in 2000). 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.
Nick Cave is a devout Christian. In his recorded religious lectures, 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 complained about how God has been "hijacked" by politicians.
Current career with The Bad Seeds (1984-onwards)
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". Cave & the band curated an edition of the famous All Tomorrow's Parties music festival, the first in Australia, throughout the country in January 2009.
Discography
Soundtracks/scores
* 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 Road, soundtrack (2009) – composed with Ellis
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 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 of The Beatles' "Let It Be", which was later issued as a single with a cover 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.
* Rogue's Gallery: 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 of Pulp's song "Disco 2000".
* "Helpless" single by Neil Young. He did this in 1989 for the Neil Young tribute album The Bridge.
* American IV: 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 Leonard Cohen: 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 Scorcese series The Blues singing J. B. Lenoir's "I Feel So Good"
Books by Nick 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.
Awards and honours
* 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).
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