Anita Lane: the artist Nick Cave called “the brains behind The Birthday Party”
For decades, listeners have been captivated by the enigmatic, voracious Australian musician Nick Cave, who has transformed from a frenetic, chaos-inducing icon of gothic post-punk to a refined suit-wearing vampire of wise wisdom. This metamorphosis has taken years, with Cave first emerging on the scene in The Boys Next Door during the late 1970s, which evolved into The Birthday Party.
The band were one of Australia’s leading post-punk outfits, incorporating free jazz, blues and rock and roll into a unique sound, even paving the way for gothic rock. Although the band were over by 1983, their legacy remains strong, and without them, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds would have never come to fruition.
The Birthday Party were defined by Cave’s lyricism, which drew on violent, sexual, blasphemous and dark themes, which he often sang with a terror that few have mastered since. However, the band would not have achieved such legendary status if not for the presence of Anita Lane, a close collaborator of Cave’s who contributed lyrics to some of their greatest songs.
The pair met in 1977 while they were both attending art school and soon began a romantic relationship. Recalling his memories of Lane, Cave writes, “Standing on the street in a baby-doll dress, surrounded by sunshine, laughing and radiating a piercing beauty of such force you stop breathing. I could not believe my eyes.”
Lane was “the brains behind The Birthday Party”, according to Cave, writing the lyrics for ‘A Dead Song’ from Prayers on Fire and ‘Dead Joe’ and ‘Kiss Me Black’ from Junkyard. A talented artist and writer, Lane’s ideas helped shape the trajectory of the band, as well as inspiring many of Cave’s lyrics. He explained that she “despised the concept of the muse but was everybody’s”.
Lane was “the smartest and most talented of all of us, by far,” Cave highlights, adding: “How could something so luminous carry so much darkness?” When The Birthday Party broke up, several members reconvened to form The Bad Seeds, and Lane briefly joined as a lyricist and keys player, occasionally contributing vocals.
With The Bad Seeds, Lane and Cave penned one of their greatest early works, ‘From Her to Eternity’, which became the name of the band’s debut album. Beginning with jolting organs and an explosion of unsettling guitars, the track welcomes Cave’s voice: “Ah wanna tell ya ’bout a girl…” The song marked the beginning of a life-changing new leaf for the members, who have since become one of the most fascinating bands of the past few decades. Lane also wrote ‘Stranger Than Kindness’, which Cave called his “favourite Bad Seeds song”. The song appeared on Your Funeral… My Trial, and has since been used as the name for Cave’s 2020 book.
After parting ways with Cave, Lane went on to release two albums of her own, Dirty Pearl and Sex O’Clock, as well as lending her voice to a few albums, such as Mick Harvey’s Intoxicated Man, a tribute to Serge Gainsbourg. She passed away in 2021, with Cave writing: “It was both easy and terrifying to love her. Leaves a big, crying space.”
