Nicholas Edward Cave was born in
Warracknabeal, Victoria, Australia on September 22, 1957. He is the
third of four children (three boys and a girl) of
Anglican parents.
He went to school to Melbourne where his first band, The Boys Next Door, was formed
with Mick Harvey, Tracey Pew and Phil Calvert in 1977.
Rowland S. Howard joined the band later on. The band moved to
London in 1979 and changed its name to "The Birthday Party".
After a couple of albums
The Birthday Party split up for good in 1983. The next year
Nick recorded and released
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds'
first album, From Her to Eternity.
He has two kids: a son in Australia named Jethro and a son named Luke, whom he had with Brazillian model(?)
Viviane Carneiro. The two broke up and in 1999 Nick married
Susie Bick. In between Viviane and Susie, Nick was said to be
seeing PJ Harvey.
Nick Cave had well-documented heroin addiction.
In addition to his musical exploits,
Nick Cave is also the author of two books of poetry (well, lyrics mostly),
King Ink (1988) and King Ink II (1997), and
the novel And the Ass Saw the Angel (1989).
The definitive biography of Nick Cave is probably
Ian Johnston's book, Bad Seed (1997).
Unfortunately it's not published in the US.
A couple of years ago, I had tickets to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at the Warfield in
San Francisco, but the day of the show I dislocated my toe playing soccer so I missed it.
I'm still very sad about that.
My two favorite Nick Cave albums are The Good Son (1990) and The Boatman's Call (1997).