The ultimate beginner’s guide to Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are a band with a hectic history. Starting as one of the wildest punk outfits on the planet with a violent reputation, they’ve evolved into a whole other beast and gained the world’s respect along the way.
From their early days, even before the Bad Seeds came together, Nick Cave and his band have ruled over a certain section of music. Travelling from Australia to Berlin before settling in the UK, they’ve traversed genres, forms, and many different lineups.
It’s almost impossible to succinctly sum up the history of the band as their existence is inseparably tied to the personal history of their leader, Nick Cave. As he navigated addiction, heartbreak and intense personal grief, the project has evolved with him. Coming to exist as a deeply respected figure that seems to sit in the lineage of Patti Smith or Leonard Cohen and all the other artists who are beloved as a writer just as much as a musician, Cave stands as one of the supreme talents of our time.
Currently working on their 18th studio album, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds still tour the world as an active band. Despite the huge changes in their sound and personal lives, the quality has remained just as high. Intrigue towards the band remains sky-high, too, as Cave appeals to a multi-generational fanbase.
If you’re new to Nick Cave and his band, here is a beginner’s guide to the chaos and carnage of the Bad Seeds as we answer your most searched questions…
Where are Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds from?
While their spiritual home may be found amidst the bustling streets of London, their origins trace back to the sun-baked landscapes of Australia.
The band was formed in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, but is now an international group of rag-tag musicians. It was formed mostly from the core of the former band The Birthday Party after Nick Cave and Mick Harvey met at a boarding school in Melbourne. Once that band split, they came together again with Berlin-born guitarist Blixa Bargeld, whom they met while living in the city.
While their roots may lie in the sun-drenched landscapes of Australia, their musical journey has taken them to the farthest reaches of artistic expression, cementing their status as true pioneers of the modern musical era.
How many records have Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds sold?
The Bad Seeds achieved significant commercial success over the decades, particularly with albums like Let Love In, Murder Ballads, and Henry’s Dream receiving critical acclaim and commercial attention in their earlier years.
It is estimated that the band have sold well over five million records. They’ve enjoyed several gold-certified releases, including the 1995 track ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’ with Kylie Minogue, which sold over 50,000 copies in Australia alone. Similarly, the band’s 1997 album The Boatman’s Call is gold-certified in the UK.
Achieving major and enduring success, Nick Cave has become one of the most respected names in music, thanks to not only his sales success but also his vision.
Who is in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds?
As the name suggests, the band’s key member is Nick Cave, the group’s lead singer and principal songwriter. As well as performing in this band, Cave takes on solo projects, writes books and has starred in films as a true multi-talented artist.
When the band formed, the other members were Mick Harvey, who left in 2009, and Bliza Balgeld, who departed in 2003. Both Balgeld and Harvey played several instruments as the band was made up of multi-talented players.
Other initial members included Barry Adamson (1983-1996, 2013-2015), Hugo Race (1983-1984), Kid Congo Powers (1986-1990), Roland Wolf (1986-1989), Conway Savage (1990-2017) and James Johnson (2003-2008).
However, one of the most vital and influential members of the current lineup is Warren Ellis. After joining the band in 1997, Ellis has become Cave’s closest collaborator as the pair write together and have even released albums as a duo away from the band, like 2021’s Carnage. Ellis’ violin playing and synthesisers undeniably changed the face of the group.
Current members include Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Thomas Wydler, Martyn P. Casey, Jim Sclavunos and George Vjestica, along with a team of touring musicians and backing singers.
History and era of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds:
To understand Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, you must understand what came before. The Birthday Party are an essential puzzle piece.
From being a bored kid at boarding school, Nick Cave and his original group essentially set out with the singular aim of causing as much chaos as possible. The Birthday Party quickly gained a reputation as perhaps the wildest band in the new post-punk scene, putting on live shows that were crazy and often violent. Musically, they merged punk, blues and art rock but with an overwhelming energy of dread and darkness that would continue to colour a lot of Cave’s work as they sang about murder, violence and other taboo topics.
The band took them around the world, from Australia to Berlin to London, where Cave especially gained attention as a key figure in the new music wave. Word of his performance style and writing spread quickly, with one journalist declaring that he “doesn’t so much sing his vocals as expel them from his gut”. By the time the band split in 1983, the stage was set for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, taking part of their name from The Birthday Party’s final EP title as a nod to their origins.
It took a while for The Bads Seeds to find their feet as Cave moved between London and Melbourne and tried to figure out whether he wanted a new band or to go solo. But by 1984, the group had immediately gained attention again after their first gig and went into the studio to work on their debut album, From Her To Eternity.
When looking solely at the music, it would be easy to say that the rest was history. From that debut album onwards, the band have released regularly and remained an evolving beast of talent. That debut record is packed with all the potential they would explore. The title track is a raging beast of punk power, while ‘A Box For Black Paul’ and their cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Avalanche’ feel like clues towards the more ballad sound they’d find later.
But the history of the band has never been smooth. As its leader, Cave’s life has coloured the group at every turn. Their early releases are infinitely informed by Cave’s days spent as a junkie, travelling around Berlin with his partner Anita Lane, both being fans of the gothic and grotesque.
Almost as if by accident, the group suddenly became famous in the late 1980s despite being in no place to handle that in terms of their major drug dependencies. Cave headed to rehab for the first time and came back with The Good Son, an album that heralded in a new era of major commercial success for the band, in part thanks to the strange collaboration with Australia’s pop princess Kylie Minogue. This started a run of standout albums from the band, including Let Love In and Murder Ballad, during which time Warren Ellis joined the band, becoming Cave’s closest collaborator and co-writer.
But then along came PJ Harvey. In the mid-1990s, the pair dated after recording ‘Henry Lee’ together, becoming a celebrity couple for goths everywhere. After their split, Cave wrote The Boatman’s Call to get through the breakup, marking a major shift for the band as they moved away from raging tales of violence and into something slightly softer and more universal.
After that record, things changed for the Bad Seeds. Blixa Bargeld bid farewell, signalling a shift in sound. But rather than shrinking, they grew. They seemed to gain a new sense of confidence, maturing into a vaster sonic landscape that ranged between the violent punk tracks of their early days and more delicate choral pieces. Their 2000s albums were coloured by these expansions.
Then tragedy hit. The death of Nick Cave’s son, Arthur, in 2015 undoubtedly changed the band forever. As the musician turned to his work as a coping mechanism, the 2016 album Skeleton Tree is a delicate and gut-wrenching take on the early stages of grief. The 2019 follow-up, Ghosteen, deals with the wider aftermath of living with loss.
While the band still perform with the same roaring energy that caught the world’s attention back in the 1980s, they were a very different group. Not only have they been through several lineup changes, but the happenings of Nick Cave’s life have reshaped his artistic ethos exponentially. Though his aura remains the same, capturing an energy of real, intimidating power and true respect, his pen is gentler than the knife it was back in the early days. But through it all, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have become one of the most respected and influential groups of our time.
Nick Cave’s defining albums:
From Her To Eternity (1984)
There is no better way to introduce yourself to the very beginning of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds than with their debut album. Recorded so soon after the breakup of The Birthday Party, the LP still captures the wild energy of Cave’s origins but contains clues for everything that would follow. The decision to open up the new band’s existence with a Leonard Cohen cover feels especially prophetic as the frontman would grow to have a very Cohen-esque career of major respect and a multi-talented approach as he writes books too.
The impact of Cave’s partner Anita Lane is also a key puzzle piece to the band’s early days. According to Cave, Lane was “the brains behind The Birthday Party” and continued to play an important role in the Bad Seeds as she co-wrote the title track to their debut along with the 1986 track ‘Stranger Than Kindness’.
For fans of pure punk looking to dive deep into the band at their wildest, start here.
The Boatman’s Call (1997)
Heartbreak will really change a man, and on The Boatman’s Call, Cave’s aching heart changed the entire path for his band. The record captured a majorly transformative period for the musician as he split from PJ Harvey, met his future wife Susie Bick, and went to rehab to get clean. The output includes ‘Into My Arms’, one of the band’s most famous and enduring tracks, as they moved towards a more mature and less chaotic sound.
Perhaps more than any other album, The Boatman’s Call stood as a statement that the Bad Seeds would not be trapped in what was expected of them. It was a clear sign that Cave, especially, was a powerfully evolving performer who wouldn’t be tied into the sinking punk scene. The band were always going to go onto new things and prioritise art over expectation.
Skeleton Tree (2016)
After the death of his son, Arthur, in 2015, Nick Cave and, therefore, his band, changed. Captured in the powerful documentary One More Time With Feeling, Skeleton Tree provided a necessary anchor to Cave as he navigated the early days of grief. While several of the songs were written beforehand, the musician found them to be almost devastatingly prophetic of what he was about to endure, writing, “I was existing in a kind of fugue-state, numbly sitting in the studio listening to the songs, trying to make sense of the material we had been working on over the last year.”
Skeleton Tree marks the clearest shift in Cave’s lyricism especially. He seems to turn away from storytelling and towards imagery or allegory. It’s the introduction of the clear spiritual streak that has coloured not only his music but all of his work and writing since. It would be wrong to deny that grief doesn’t utterly impact or even reshape a person, so along with Cave, the Bad Seeds found a new and beautiful sound to suit.
Nick Cave’s defining songs:
‘The Mercy Seat’
No song encapsulates the early energy of The Bad Seeds quite like ‘The Mercy Seat’. A storytelling triumph, the track follows a death row prisoner on the walk to the electric chair, spiralling as he approaches death. It’s an utterly unrelenting track, full of all the rage and violence that defined the band in the 1980s.
But the track also summarises the intellect in Nick Cave’s writing. While his style has evolved massively from here, it’s the nuances in this track that keep ‘The Mercy Seat’ as a mainstay in his live seats. As the lyrics spiral, the question of whether this prisoner is guilty or innocent is thrown into the mix, turning the track into a moral debate paired with a roaring punk soundtrack. Good enough to even win over Johnny Cash, the track is a triumph.
‘Into My Arms’
When The Boatman’s Call was released, things shifted for Nick Cave. As he navigated heartbreak and new love, all while trying to get fully and properly clean – there was a lot of personal upheaval. It seemed he had no choice but to start introspecting. Marking the start of Cave writing about his own life, the band haven’t been the same since.
‘Into My Arms’ is arguably the most beautiful track Cave has ever written, if not considered one of the most moving love songs ever penned. Written while he was in rehab, it’s a desperate and devoted take on total and utter adoration. Akin to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, it reads more like a prayer than a song and stands as just as timeless of a track.
‘Ghosteen Speaks’
“I am beside you, I am beside you / Look for me, look for me,” Cave sings on ‘Ghosteen Speaks’. Standing as a defining motto for everything he’s created since the death of his son Arthur in 2015, this will forever be the ethos of his work from now on. The 2019 record Ghosteen is not only an opus on grief but also marks the total and utter transformation of Cave. The violent punk is gone; the life-worn poet is here.
As the central piece to the record, ‘Ghosteen Speaks’ adopts his late son’s voice, spiralling around a message that is sent to Cave over and over. In his Red Hand Files, Cave wrote of grief, “Some years have now passed since the loss of my own sons, and though gone from this world, I have come to understand that they still travel with me – they are with me now – but more than that, they have become the active participants in a slow but certain awakening of the spirit.” Whether it’s in his music, writing, films or art work – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds will forever be presided over by the memory of his sons and the never-ending hold of grief and memory.
