Nick Cave

The Birthday Party combined overdriven, postpunk guitar cacophony with Delta blues influences and the alternately morose and ranting vocals of Nick Cave. After the group imploded in 1983, an entire generation of Australian, English, and American noisemongers began roaming the earth. Since then, the Birthday Party's members, most notably singer/songwriter Nick Cave, have formed an orbit of bands that share both personnel and a dramatically dark sensibility.

The Birthday Party had its beginnings in Melbourne, Australia, where the teenage Cave - a former petty thief and misfit in his hometown - had met Mick Harvey at boarding school. In the mid-'70s the pair formed the Boys Next Door, who released several records in their homeland. Constrained by the provincial Melbourne scene, the band set off for England in 1980, when it changed its name to the Birthday Party. An Australian album from that year was credited to both names. The musicians’ intense, assaultive live act and appearances on early supporter John Peel’s BBC-1 radio program led to a contract with the U.K. indie label 4AD. In 1982 they released their signature album, Junkyard. Around that time, bassist Tracy Pew (who died from epilepsy-related causes in 1986) was arrested on drug charges; former Magazine bassist Barry Adamson and guitarist Rowland S. Howard’s brother, Harry, were among his temporary fill-in replacements. By the end of the year, Pew had returned and drummer Phil Calvert was gone; the latter briefly joined the Psychedelic Furs.

The Birthday Party’s violent, sacrilegious subject matter (“Dead Joe,” “Big-Jesus-Trash-Can,” “The Six Strings That Drew Blood”) and dark, brooding attitude caused the U.K. press to somewhat erroneously associate the group with the gothic-rock scene. In 1982 Cave, Harvey, Rowland Howard, and Pew moved to Berlin and recorded another EP, The Bad Seed. (They also collaborated with Lydia Lunch [see entry] on her Honeymoon in Red album.) The followup EP, Mutiny!, proved to be the Birthday Party’s final release together. The band unraveled after Harvey quit in 1983.

Cave returned to London. He formed the Bad Seeds with Adamson, Harvey, and Einstürzende Neubauten [see entry] frontman Blixa Bargeld. (Numerous guests have drifted in and out of the ensemble ever since.) A more refined, controlled version of the Birthday Party, the Bad Seeds retained the earlier group’s intensity, but Cave added a Leonard Cohen–style romantic gloom. He also unveiled an Elvis obsession, with a cover of “In the Ghetto” on From Her to Eternity; both The Firstborn Is Dead and its initial single “Tupelo” (1985) directly concern Presley. Cave showed his range on 1986’s Kicking Against the Pricks, convincingly covering Leadbelly, gospel, Hendrix, and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” The same year, the Bad Seeds released a double EP of mostly original material, Your Funeral...My Trial. Several lineup changes ensued, and Cramps guitarist Kid Congo Powers filled out the sound on Tender Prey.

In the late ’80s Cave took time off from music to pursue his literary ambitions. King Ink, a collection of song lyrics, plays, and prose pieces, was published in England in 1988 and eventually made its way to the U.S.; a novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel, hit the shelves the next year. The Southern Gothic fable, filled with Cave’s scatologically religious imagery, received generally favorable notices.

The Good Son (1990) was recorded in Brazil with largely acoustic instrumentation; the album has a quiet, mournful intensity. Henry’s Dream and Let Love In focus largely on Cave’s richly narrative compositions. The subdued playing on 1996’s Murder Ballads contrasts its harsh, gruesome theme. This collection of death-obsessed originals and covers boasts duets with Polly Jean Harvey and fluffy pop star Kylie Minogue. The Boatman’s Call eases off on the overbearing grimness of its predecessor. On No More Shall We Part, Cave continues his exploration of death experience and the twists and turns of the human heart.

Once the Birthday Party had split, Rowland S. Howard, Harry Howard, and Harvey joined their old Melbourne friend Simon Bonney, who since the late ’70s had been leading the group Crime and the City Solution. Accompanied by ex–Swell Maps drummer Epic Soundtracks, they played on several of that band’s mid-’80s releases. In 1987 the Howards and Soundtracks left to form the sinister, noirish These Immortal Souls. Rowland Howard, who has also made records with Nikki Sudden, Lydia Lunch, and Einstürzende Neubauten, issued his solo debut in 1999.

Over the years, Cave, Bargeld, and Harvey have dabbled in film scores, crafting the soundtracks to Ghosts...of the Civil Dead (1989) and To Have and to Hold (1996). Cave also acted in 1992’s Johnny Suede (alongside Brad Pitt) and in a number of Wim Wenders movies.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)