Musicians - Nick Cave

Home > Listing Index > Musicians > Nick Cave

	Musicians - Nick Cave

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

History

Cave was born in the small town of Warracknabeal in the state of Victoria, Australia, the son of Dawn and Colin Cave, brother of Tim (b. 1952), Peter (b. 1954) and Julie (b. 1959).

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

In 1973 at Caulfield, Cave met Mick Harvey, Tracy Pew and Phill Calvert, with whom he founded his first band, later to be named the Boys Next Door. Cave's collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Harvey continues to this day. Cave also studied painting at the Caulfield Institute of Technology in 1976, but dropped out in 1977 to pursue music. In late 1978, shortly after Cave's 21st birthday, his father was killed in a car accident.

The band played a role in Melbourne's post-punk music scene of 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 high-energy 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 numerous recordings and 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. Cave and Harvey went on to form the first version of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, whose 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. The Bad Seeds were founded as an international backing group with German guitarist Blixa Bargeld (from Einstürzende Neubauten), British 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.

That year, while he was based in West Berlin, Cave started working on what was to become his debut novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel. The themes of the book greatly influenced (and were influenced by) his first few albums with the Bad Seeds. By now, he had separated from Lane and began a relationship with the Berliner Elisabeth Recker. While there, he released four albums with the Bad Seeds: The Firstborn Is Dead, Kicking Against the Pricks, Your Funeral, My Trial and Tender Prey. In 1988, Cave also released his book King Ink, a collection of lyrics and plays, including some from his collaboration with American enfant terrible Lydia Lunch.

Cave left West Berlin shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall and moved to São Paulo, Brazil, where he met Brazilian Viviane Carneiro. They never married, although some sources suggest they did. The two have a son, Luke, born 1991. Cave has another three children, one of these is a son, Jethro, living in Australia. In 1993, Cave moved back to London. He now lives near Brighton, UK, and is married to British model Susie Bick, with whom he has twin sons, Arthur and Earl.

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. Cave also acted in Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead, a 1989 independent movie written and directed by John Hillcoat, and in the 1991 film, Johnny Suede, with Brad Pitt.

In 1996, Cave and the Bad Seeds released an album, Murder Ballads, which was, as the title suggests, a collection of songs about murder. It included "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, winning three ARIA Awards including "Song of the Year". His next album, The Boatman's Call, was marked by a radical shift away from archetypal and violent narratives to biographical and confessional songs about his relationships with Carneiro and PJ Harvey. After the album's release, Cave took time out to rehabilitate from his heavy heroin and alcohol habits. Rejuvenated, he resurfaced with his complex, moody, and much-acclaimed No More Shall We Part in 2001.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Nick Cave ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Nick Cave; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Musicians - Nick Cave

History

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay