Why Nick Cave will never reunite The Birthday Party: “It’s young man’s stuff”
As we wrap up 2025, I think we can safely conclude that the word to summarise this year in music is reunion.
While the last few years have scratched our nostalgic itch with several big-name bands hitting the road together, it was 2025 that brought the big one, the one that music fans all over thought was damn-near impossible. Yes, with a rumoured $50million to be cashed in, the Gallagher brothers reunited and got Oasis’ name back in the bright lights of a global stadium tour.
The overwhelming success of it has got people hungry for more, and it seems as though the continued obsession with reuniting bands of yesteryear hasn’t subsided. For those artists not so keen on the idea of reuniting, they’ve got the brothers to blame, because what previously seemed impossible has now happened, and done so in triumphant fashion.
Nevertheless, there are certain bands who would quite simply never reunite, no matter how much praise, adulation and cold hard cash the Gallagher brothers have proved can be made.
Take their idol Johnny Marr, for example. This year, he revealed that he’s recently turned down an eye-watering sum of money for a prospective Smiths reunion on the simple basis that “the vibe’s not right”. It’s a rare showing of artistic principle in the age of dopamine hits, proving that no matter how much we all crave nostalgia, the actual music has to come first.
A stance Nick Cave has similarly adopted when he was asked if The Birthday Party would ever reunite. Formed in Australia in the mid-1970s, The Birthday Party were Cave’s first real musical outfit, which captured his and his bandmates’ multi-genred approach to rock and roll. A chaotic blend of noise rock, punk-blues, gothic rock, and art punk, it was a necessary beginning to Cave’s career, allowing a career based around intense storytelling to flourish thereafter.
The band garnered a cult following and made an impact on the 1970s music scene, but never did they defined the careers of each individual artist. Cave’s subsequent solo career is different to many of the other artists subjected to reunion calls, and so, he’s luckily eluded the pressure.
“Nobody has mentioned it, and we would never do that,” he simply answered when asked about the possibility of a reunion. “I mean, (bassist) Tracy Pew is dead, and he was the engine. As far as I’m concerned, he was what The Birthday Party was all about. I’d never have any interest in doing that. Something like Crowded House, you could be 158 and play a concert, and it would still be much the same. But The Birthday Party came out of a particular time. We were young. It’s young man’s stuff.”
Cowering to the demands of the gallery feels inherently contradictory to Cave’s attitude as a musician. He sees art as a way of engaging with and observing the world that exists around him, as opposed to a commodity designed to represent some form of cultural junk food. It’s just a shame more of us don’t see it the same way.
