Status: 22/09/2022 06:00
Nick Cave has suffered many blows of fate in his life. He used a lot of it in his music. The Australian turns 65 today.
Dark jacket, white shirt, unbuttoned top buttons and chin-length black hair and always a wistful look: Nick Cave is the master of dark ballads and that’s how he performs. His habitus is that of a preacher. A singer whose art is not revealed on first listen, whose songs are morbid, emotional, moving and full of pain.
From Australia to Europe
Born under the Australian sun, Nick Cave grew up in a sheltered setting in the countryside. At first he wants to be a painter, but first he takes the music. Punk band The Birthday Party first went to London and then to Berlin in the 1980s. Nick Cave is making a name for himself as a punk and provocateur. His life is marked by drug and alcohol excesses. “I stopped taking drugs because they stopped working. It makes you sick and sad, and I basically had to give up or just go on until I died,” he says of the time.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – 40 years on tour
–
Nick Cave is a man who loves the big show, whose concerts are reminiscent of religious services.
–
With the following band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, he has been on stages around the world for almost 40 years – it was founded in 1983. Become an independent rock star.
With the Australian pop queen Kylie Minogue she sings one of the most beautiful love duets in the history of music, but it’s not about a loving couple: “Where The Wild Roses Grow”. “I sent her the song and she was happy to sing it,” recalls Cave. “We had this success. It was fantastic.”
Nick Cave – a versatile artist
Nick Cave is best known as a singer. But he writes and writes poetry, recites, writes screenplays and novels. He recently published a children’s book and provided the soundtrack for the hit “Peaky Blinders” series. In the Sara Hildén Art Museum in the Finnish city of Tampere, the ceramic figures he designed are currently on display in an exhibition by visual artist Thomas Houseago.
Music helps Cave process his tragedies
In addition to professional success, Nick Cave has to endure private tragedies again and again. He lost his father in a car accident when he was 19. Two of his four children are already dead, son Arthur died after falling off a cliff on an LSD trip. Son Jethro just died this year. Nick Cave processes pain in his music and in his lyrics.
Further information
