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ARIA is proud to announce that NICK CAVE - prolific songwriter, singer, author, screenwriter and composer - will be inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame at the 2007 ARIA Awards, proudly presented by Motorola, at Acer Arena on Sudnay, October 28. NICK CAVE will become the final ARIA Hall of Fame inductee for 2007 and joins JO JO ZEP AND THE FALCONS, RADIO BIRDMAN, BRIAN CADD, HOODOO GURUS, MARCIA HINES and FRANK IFIELD who were inducted at the ARIA Hall of Fame event in July.
With a history of penning evocative, narrative prose for openhearted souls, NICK CAVE has a unique place in the lexicon of music history. He has been singing his dark tales of lust, religion, madness, murder and revenge for almost 30 years. But what makes Cave a true original is the diversity of his creative output, which is almost unprecedented in the music industry. From music and lyrics to poems and screenwriting, all are attacked with the same level of soul-searching depth and integrity.
In the art department of Caulfield Institute of Technology, (now Monash University in Melbourne) he met Mick Harvey, with whom he founded a high-school band that would become The Boys Next Door. The Boys Next Door dissolved into The Birthday Party in 1980 when the album of the same name was released. Led by Cave, the band moved from Australia to London, and with their incendiary raw and swaggering blues, impacted on the rock scene with a force that still resonates today.
Ed St John, Chairman, ARIA Awards Committee, said "Nick Cave has enjoyed - and continues to enjoy - one of the most extraordinary careers in the annals of popular music. His contribution over the past 30 years was never limited by geography or nationality and nor could it ever be described in terms of hit records, chart positions or radio airplay. He is an Australian artist like Sidney Nolan is an Australian artist - beyond comparison, beyond genre, beyond dispute. As an industry we should be immensely proud and humbled by Nick Cave's achievements; I know I speak for the ARIA Board when I say it's a real pleasure to be inducting this artist into the Hall of Fame."
Following The Birthday Party's break-up in 1983, Cave briefly sojourned in Los Angeles, writing a film script that would later manifest itself as the prison movie Ghosts... Of The Civil Dead, made with directors John Hillcoat and Evan English. He also assembled the first incarnation of The Bad Seeds, the start of a 20 years plus tenure of which he has been at the helm. When the first Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album ("From Her To Eternity") was released in 1984, the fusion of diverse talent that Cave had brought together constructed vivid musical backdrops to Cave's song narratives.
1985's "The Firstborn Is Dead" was quickly followed by 1986's "Your Funeral...My Trial" after which Cave took a two-year hiatus from recording, partially to appear in Wim Wenders' 1987 film "Wings of Desire". He then returned with "Tender Prey", which arguably featured Cave's strongest vocal performance up to that point. Cave's productivity picked up immensely over the next two years he had two books (1988's "King Ink", a collection of lyrics, plays, and prose, and 1989's "And the Ass Saw the Angel", a novel) published; appeared in "Ghosts...of the Civil Dead" as a prisoner; recorded a soundtrack to the film with Harvey and Bargeld; and released 1990's "The Good Son", his most relaxed, quiet album. The visceral walking blues of 1992's "Henry's Dream" came next.
"Let Love In" followed and then, in 1996, he released "Murder Ballads", a collection of songs about murder. Featuring duets with PJ Harvey and Kylie Minogue, Murder Ballads became Cave's most commercially successful album to date and was followed up with the introspective and personal "The Boatman's Call "in early 1997. A spoken word release, "Secret Life of the Love Song" followed in 1999. Two years later, a rejuvenated Cave teamed up with the Bad Seeds once again for the piano-laden "No More Shall We Part". "Nocturama" was released in 2003. And then came the double-album "Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus" (released at the end of 2004), two self contained albums which many fans and critics feel is Cave's musical masterpiece.
NICK CAVE wrote the screenplay for 2005 film "The Proposition" (directed by long time collaborator John Hillcoat) and the accompanying score with friend and fellow Bad Seed, Warren Ellis. And now, Cave's creativity continues to soar with Grinderman, a musical partnership with Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey and Jim Sclavunos. Ellis and Cave have also recently collaborated on the soundtrack for the new Brad Pitt film "The Assassination of Jesse James by the outlaw Robert Ford".
With his continual quest for excellence, he is one of the most singular forces in contemporary music and a national living treasure. NICK CAVE we salute you.
A PDF version of this press release can be found in our Media Centre.
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