Nick Cave / Nicholas Edward “Nick” Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional film actor. He is best known as the frontman of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1983, a group known for its diverse output and ever-evolving line-up. Prior to this, he fronted the Birthday Party, one of the most extreme and confrontational post-punk bands of the early 1980s. In 2006, he formed the garage rock band Grinderman, releasing its debut album the following year. Referred to as rock music’s “Prince of Darkness”, Cave’s music is generally characterised by emotional intensity, a wide variety of influences, and lyrical obsessions with death, religion, love and violence. NME described him as “the grand lord of gothic lushness”.
Cave has also worked as a composer for films, often in collaboration with fellow Australian musician Warren Ellis. Their films together include The Proposition (2005, based on a screenplay by Cave), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), The Road (2009) and Lawless (2012). Cave is the subject and co-writer of the semi-fictional “day in the life” documentary 20,000 Days on Earth (2014). 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.”
Biography