7 facts about Nick Cave

Nicholas Edward Cave AO (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian singer, songwriter, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional actor. Known for his baritone voice and for fronting the stone band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Cave’s music is generally characterised by emotional intensity, a broad variety of influences and lyrical obsessions gone death, religion, love and violence.

Born and raised in rural Victoria, Cave studied art in Melbourne previously fronting The Birthday Party, one of the city’s leading post-punk bands, in the late 1970s. They relocated to London in 1980, but, disillusioned by life there, evolved towards a darker, more challenging sound that helped inspire gothic rock, and acquired a reputation as “the most violent liven up band in the world”. Cave became recognised for his confrontational performances, his wonder of black hair and pale, emaciated look. The band broke stirring soon after upsetting to Berlin in 1982, and Cave formed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds the year after, later described as one of rock’s “most redoubtable, enduring” bands. Much of their to the lead material is set in a mythic American Deep South, drawing upon spirituals and Delta blues, while Cave’s preoccupation taking into account Old Testament notions of great 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). Also in 1988, he starred in Ghosts… of the Civil Dead, an Australian prison film which he co-wrote and scored.

The 1990s maxim Cave have an effect on between São Paulo and England, and find inspiration in the New Testament. He went on to reach mainstream realization with quieter, piano-driven ballads, notably the Kylie Minogue duet “Where the Wild Roses Grow” (1996), and “Into My Arms” (1997). Turning increasingly to film in the 2000s, Cave wrote the Australian Western The Proposition (2005), composing its soundtrack subsequently frequent co-conspirator Warren Ellis. The pair’s film score credits include The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), The Road (2009) and Lawless (2012), and their garage rock side project Grinderman has released two LPs back 2006. In 2009, he released his second novel The Death of Bunny Munro, and starred in the semi-fictional “day in the life” film 20,000 Days upon Earth (2014). His more recent musical deed features ambient and electronic elements, as skillfully as increasingly abstract lyrics, informed in portion by grief more than his son Arthur’s 2015 death, which is explored in the documentary One More Time considering Feeling (2016) and the Bad Seeds’ 17th and latest LP, Ghosteen (2019).

Cave maintains The Red Hand Files, a newsletter he uses to reply to questions from fans. His piece of legislation is the subject of academic study, and his songs have been covered by a broad range of artists, including Johnny Cash (“The Mercy Seat”), Metallica (“Loverman”) and Snoop Dogg (“Red Right Hand”). He was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2007, and named an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2017.