1983-Nick CaveLead vocals, various instruments
Mick HarveyVarious instruments1983-2009
Blixa BargeldGuitar1983-2003
Barry AdamsonBass, keyboards1983-1987
Thomas WydlerDrums1985-
Kid Congo PowersGuitar1986-1990
Roland WolfKeyboards1986-1989
Martyn P. CaseyBass1990-
Conway SavageKeyboards1990–2017
Jim SclavunosDrums, keyboards1994-
Warren EllisVarious instruments1997-
James JohnstonGuitar2003-2008
George VjesticaGuitar, piano2013-
Larry Mullins (aka Toby Dammit)Drums, piano2015-
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are an Australian experimental rock band formed in 1983 in Melbourne, Australia. The founders were vocalist/songwriter Nick Cave, multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey, German guitarist Blixa Bargeld, and bassist Barry Adamson (previously with Magazine). The band has had at least 27 different members during its long tenure, with Cave being the lone presence throughout. Known for inventiveness, mutability, and originality, The Seeds have an impressive discography spanning a wide range of creative styles.
In September 2018, Cave started a website called
The Red Hand Files as a way to respond to fan mail. He did so with such sincerity and depth that the site turned into an art project all its own. Cave continues to publish on it regularly, using fan questions as springboards to philosophize, reflect, and share an authentic relationship that has rarely (if ever) been seen from a music star of his stature.
The band has been described many ways, but Nick Cave calls The Seeds "a kind of Victorian horror show."
Blixa Bargeld stuck with the band until 2003, leaving without complaint or drama to focus on other creative projects. He's been the lead singer of Einstürzende Neubauten since their formation in 1980.
Before the Bad Seeds, Cave and Mick Harvey founded a band named The Boys Next Door with Tracy Pew, Phill Calvert, and Rowland S. Howard. They soon changed its name to The Birthday Party. Generally categorized as "post-punk," the group operated from 1977 to 1983. They had limited commercial success but proved to be influential, particularly to Gothic rock. Their song "
Release The Bats" has had staying power.
The Birthday Party broke up largely because Cave's songwriting clashed with that of Howard (who went on to have a notable Australian independent career). Harvey was the first to cut the chord and leave the project. Cave said the band likely would have lasted longer if Harvey hadn't left, but he credited his friend with having better wisdom and foresight than he did. The Birthday Party's last performance was on June 9, 1983, at the Crystal Ballroom in a Melbourne suburb named St. Kilda. The Ballroom remained in business until 1987 and remains a cultural landmark because of all the influential bands it hosted and because of its reputation as a party place (or drug den, as detractors say).
Following the breakup of The Birthday Party, the Bad Seeds formed when Harvey signed on to be in the backing band for Man or Myth?, a solo project that Mute Records signed Cave for (and one that fell apart before completion). By September 1983 they were working on new material together and brought in Flood, aka Mark Ellis, the renowned music producer that has worked with heavies such as U2, Nine Inch Nails, and Depeche Mode. Sessions were cut short by Cave's touring obligations, and there were some fits and starts before the band coalesced. For about six months, they called themselves Nick Cave and the Cavemen. In May 1984, they changed to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, after the final Birthday Party EP, Mutiny/The Bad Seed, and began recording their debut album, From Her to Eternity.
The 1983 sessions were the start of a longtime collaboration with Flood. He produced the band's first five studio albums (ranging from 1984 to 1988) and returned for The Boatman's Call in 1997.
Tony Cohen co-produced albums three to five (Kicking Against the Pricks; Your Funeral... My Trial; Tender Prey) with Flood. Cohen had worked with The Birthday Party and continued to periodically work with The Seeds up to 2001. He died in 2017 at age 60.
Cave's relationship with Bad Seed Warren Ellis stands out. Ellis had been in the Dirty Three and started working with The Seeds in 1993 during the making of Let Love In, on which he played violin for "Ain't Gonna Rain Anymore" and "Do You Love Me? (Part 2)." He became a full time Seed in 1997 after the release of Murder Ballads. He co-produced Skeleton Tree (2016), Distant Sky: Live in Copenhagen (2018), Ghosteen (2019), and Wild God (2024) with Cave.
Nick Cave was born on September 22, 1957, in Warracknabeal, Victoria, Australia. Later in his childhood he moved to a country town named Wangaratta in the outskirts of Victoria and, later still, to Melbourne. His mother, Dawn Cave (maiden name Treadwell), was a librarian at the high school Cave attended. His father, Colin Frank Cave, taught English and math at a technical school. Cave has two older brothers (Tim and Peter) and a younger sister (Julie).
Colin read heavy literary material such as Lolita and Crime and Punishment to his son. He also took him to a symposium on an Australian outlaw (part of a historical subculture that Aussies call "bushrangers") named Ned Kelly. Cave's subsequent fascination with the killer would feed into creative output related to such characters - most notably and obviously in the 1996 Murder Ballads album and in The Proposition, a 2005 film written by Cave (discussed in more depth below). Colin died in a car crash when Cave was 19 and incarcerated at a police station for burglary. Cave cited the loss of his father as a formative period in his life when creative energies began to coalesce and drive him on his musical path.
Cave's girlfriend Anita Lane co-wrote the lyrics for the title track of the Seeds' debut album, From Her to Eternity. She also wrote some lyrics for The Birthday Party.
Cave sang in the church choir at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Wangaratta.
In 1987 Cave and the Bad Seeds were living in Germany and right on the cusp of their breakthrough into commercial viability. Film director Wim Wenders admired the group and invited them to appear in his film Der Himmel über Berlin (titled Wings of Desire in English cuts). The band performs in a bar in one of the scenes.
In 1988, solo Cave starred in an Australian suspense film titled Ghosts...of the Civil Dead. He and Hugo Race, then a Bad Seed, were two of five people who wrote the script for the film.
As a kid, Cave frequently got into trouble with authorities and was expelled from Wangaratta High School when he was 13 years old. In 1976, after completing high school, he went to the Caulfield Institute of Technology to study painting. He only lasted a year before dropping out to focus on music. This was also around the time that he started doing heroin, a drug that would have a grip on him for 20 years of his life.
He successfully completed rehab after wrapping up the tour for
Tender Prey, the Seeds' fifth studio album (and the one that included their signature song, "
The Mercy Seat" Out of his recovery emerged
The Good Son(1990), which was markedly lighter and more optimistic than his previous albums. He was living in Brazil at the time and had just fallen in love with a Brazilian journalist named Viviane Carneiro, whom he married in the same year. They divorced in 1996.
In the mid-1990s, Cave dated English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. They recorded a duet titled "
Henry Lee" for
Murder Ballads, the Seeds' ninth studio album. The Seeds' 10th studio album,
The Boatman's Call, deals with the aftermath of the relationship.
Cave wrote the screenplay for the 2005 film The Proposition, which is about a gang of outlaws in 1880s Australia. Cave and Ellis did the music for the movie.
Cave was transformed upon seeing a 1977 show by Australian punk band The Saints. He'd previously been moved by performances by Free, Deep Purple, and Manfred Mann, but The Saints (who shared billing with Radio Birdman) were the ones that really captured Cave's imagination and showed him the musical path forward.
Cave cites Leonard Cohen as the greatest songwriter of all time.
When a fan asked Cave what his favorite film of all time was, he answered Blonde, the 2022 biopic of Marilyn Monroe. Cave and Ellis composed the score for the film. Cave has previously pointed to Monroe as one of his inspirations.
Cave practices Transcendental Meditation and credits it with taming his neurotic fears about "the end of the world."
Cave has had four children, all sons. His oldest, Jethro, was born to model Beau Lazenby in 1991. The second oldest, Luke, came just 10 days later to Cave's first wife, Viviane Carneiro. Cave then had twins Arthur and Earl with Susie Bick, his second wife (and still his wife as of 2025). Bick is an actress and model who co-founded a fashion label named The Vampire's Wife.
In 2015, Arthur died after falling off a cliff at 15 years old. Arthur's death profoundly changed Cave's life. He became a churchgoing Christian and started to view his obsessive devotion to art as something flawed. The content of his music changed significantly, starting in 2019 with the Seeds' 17th studio album, Ghosteen, and moving to their 18th, Wild God, which is unambiguously and optimistically spiritual, in 2024.
Jethro was a successful model until erratic behavior and drug problems ruined his career. He died in 2022 at age 31. The cause of death was not released.
Wanting a heavier rock sound for their seventh studio album, Henry's Dream (1992), The Seeds hired producer David Briggs, who frequently worked with Neil Young and who was known for creating a raw sound that relied more on live in-studio performance than on editing. The relationship didn't go as planned. Cave didn't like Briggs' approach or the resulting songs. Stressing that he didn't like bashing a dead guy (Briggs died from lung cancer in 1995), Cave later called Briggs a "fucking nightmare." He felt Briggs' approach detracted from the songs he'd envisioned. Cave and Mick Harvey ended up remixing the album. Still hoping to catch the raw feeling they'd imagined, the band recorded several performances from their Henry's Dream tour and released them the next year on Live Seeds.
After
Henry's Dream, The Seeds released
Let Love In, which showed a jump in sales and popularity. From that album came "
Red Right Hand," a signature Seeds song and one that has appeared in many films and television shows. Following that was
Murder Ballads, featuring a chart-topping (in Australia, the UK, and several European nations) duet with Kylie Minogue titled "
Where The Wild Roses Grow." The album sold better than any previous Seed album. It was certified Gold in the UK and won Song of the Year along with two other prizes from the Australian Recording Industry Association Awards.
On March 6, 2024, The Seeds announced the impending release of their 18th studio album,
Wild God, and released the
title track as a single on the same day. It was followed by "
Frogs" and "
Long Dark Night." They published the album on August 30.
Cave's girlfriend Anita Lane co-wrote the lyrics for the title track of the Seeds' debut album, From Her to Eternity. She also co-wrote (with Bargeld, not Cave) the lyrics for "Stranger Than Kindness" from the band's fourth album, Your Funeral...My Trial, and some songs for The Birthday Party. She and Cave sing "Death Is Not The End," a Bob Dylan cover on Murder Ballads.
Lane made a couple solo albums, Dirty Pearl and Sex O'Clock, in the '90s. She died in 2021 at age 61.
