Laura Harker & Paul Sullivan on Nick Cave and the 80S East

Behaviour 11 Extr me LaurA HArKer & PAul SullIvAn On Nick CAve AnD THe 80S East KreuzBerg SCene Photography by Peter gruchot 10 ecords), 24 April 1986 Studio session for the single ‘The Singer’ (Mute r Cutting a discreet diagonal between Kottbusser Tor and Oranienplatz, Dresdener Straße is one of the streets that provides blissful respite from east Kreuzberg’s constant hustle and bustle. Here, the noise of the traffic recedes and the street’s charms surge subtly into focus: fashion boutiques and indie cafés tucked into the ground floors of 19th Century Altbauten, the elegantly run-down Kino Babylon and the dark and seductive cocktail bar Würgeengel, the “exterminating angel”, a name borrowed from a surrealist film by luis Buñuel. It all looked very different in the 80s of course, when the Berlin Wall stood just under a kilometre away and the façades of these houses – now expensively renovated and worth a pretty penny – were still pockmarked by World War Two bulletholes. Mostly devoid of baths, the interiors heated by coal, their inhabitants – mostly Turkish immigrants – shivered and shuffled their way through the Berlin winter. 12 13 It was during this pre-Wende milieu that a tall, skinny and largely unknown Australian musician named Nicholas Edward Cave moved into no. 11. Aside from brief spells in apartments on naumannstraße (Schöneberg), yorckstraße, and nearby Oranienstraße, Cave spent the bulk of his seven on-and-off years in Berlin living in a tiny apartment alongside filmmaker and musician Christoph Dreher, founder of local outfit Die Haut. It was in this house that Cave wrote the lyrics and music for several Birthday Party and Bad Seeds albums, penned his debut novel (And The Ass Saw The Angel) and wielded a sizeable influence over Kreuzberg’s burgeoning post-punk scene. And yet there’s no plaque outside, no mentions of the address in any guidebooks, nor – unlike a certain Thin White Duke’s former residence in Schöneberg – curious knots of tourists taking snaps of the doorway. Just an anonymous façade and a strange, bourgeois silence. live show at Ballhaus Tiergarten, 25 June, 1982 THe BIrthday PArTy creativity there more inspiring than Bargeld, who sometimes did turns entourage over – dealers included. the ‘pretentious’ scene in the UK. “I there as a barman. Cave had already During the 25-minutes of screen time, Cave arrived in Berlin in 1982 with his knew very little about Berlin at all,” seen Bargeld and his band during a hardly any of the band members speak then band, The Birthday Party, which at Cave told Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard live TV performance in 1982. “He to one another, and their excessive drug that time consisted of himself, Rowland for a documentary they made about was the most beautiful man in the use is visible, with Cave seen drifting S. Howard, Mick Harvey, Tracy Pew the singer’s time in the city. “So it world,” Cave once said of that first off to sleep for minutes at a time. and Phill Calvert. Like David Bowie a wasn’t really that Berlin attracted me, sighting. “He stood there in a black Shortly after, Howard left the group few years before, Cave was looking for more the need to get out of London. leotard and black rubber pants, black and the Birthday Party split, leaving a place where he could kick the drug We were suddenly welcomed into this rubber boots. Around his neck hung Cave free to form a new band; one that habit that was exerting an ever-increasing incredible kind of nocturnal world that a thoroughly fucked guitar. His skin would eventually become known by the grip over his life and work. He was also seemed to be populated by people who cleared to his bones, his skull was an name of the final Birthday Party EP: seeking to escape what he described were alienated in the same way that utter disaster, scabbed and hacked…” The Bad Seed. as the unwelcoming atmosphere and we were. You were allowed to venture ‘shoegazing bullshit’ of London, where he into your own madness. Everything For someone like Cave, whose own had relocated from his native Melbourne was acceptable. Extreme behaviour was performances and music videos were THe BAD SeeDS in 1980. When Dreher, with whose band encouraged. It was a madhouse, that highly theatrical, it was difficult not to the Birthday Party had toured, invited thing where the inmates had taken over be impressed with a band who had used Between 1983 and 1985, Cave moved the band to join him in Berlin, they all the madhouse.” anything from half a pig to mechanical back and forth between packed up immediately. pistons as percussion instruments (after Berlin From his Dresdener Straße base, Cave breaking or having to sell their The problem, of course, was that Berlin explored the city around him. At the own), and who at that time was far from a drug-free weekend flea markets he would pick zone. In fact, West Berlin was pushing up vintage pornography and locks of 14 Europe’s purest form of heroin during strangers’ hair for inspiration, and “We were suddenly welcomed into this 15 those years, and the drug was rife at bars and clubs like SO36 – which amongst the creative scene. At the same had been taken over by renegade incredible kind of nocturnal world that seemed time, Kreuzberg was in the middle of a artist Martin Kippenberger in 1979 – politically-infused post-punk explosion Ex’n’Pop, Dschungel and Risiko mingled to be populated by people who were alienatedand that The Birthday Party – suitably with members of other post-punk in the same way that weLondon, were.” also returning to exotic and anti-establishment – not bands such as Sprung Aus Den Wolken, Melbourne for a while. He gathered only fitted into perfectly, but were soon Malaria! and Einstürzende Neubaten. In deliberately drilled musicians where he could – Harvey, instrumental in shaping. Pollard and Forsyth’s documentary, Cave into the wall at SO36. It wasn’t Barry Adamson and (briefly) Pew explains how “…there was no money long before Cave invited Bargeld to included – to play shows and tour. “Their appearance changed everything,” so there was a level of existence that we join his own merry entourage – much But it was only upon returning to Die Haut singer Oliver Schütz told weren’t used to, a quality of existence to the chagrin of Roland S. Howard, London in 1984 that Bargeld was the Red Bull Music Academy in 2013. actually. I worked all day and drank with whom Cave had already been annointed as a permanent member “Clothes, how to behave, talk, walk… all night, and I would sit in my office experiencing creative differences. and the Bad Seeds name and line-up Everyone had spiky hair all of a sudden… space typing away at And The Ass Saw was finalised. and pointy shoes”. In the same article, The Angel, and at night, or during the The difficult, frayed mood of these early filmmaker Wim Wenders – who would early hours of morning, we would go to Berlin years was captured in Heiner Cave and Bargeld’s mutual passion for invite the band to play and star in his Risiko, which stayed open ’til daylight. Mühlenbrock’s 1983 short film, Die Stadt, dark, twisted lyrics, abrasive sounds 1987 classic Wings of Desire – described We would just sit there and wage this which records one of the final Birthday and gothic performance spilled directly them as a “bunch of Australians who war against sleep…” Party sessions at Kreuzberg’s famous into the Bad Seed’s 1984 debut From landed from a different planet”. Hansa Studios (where Bowie recorded Her To Eternity. The record’s sparse but It was in Risiko, a shabby dive bar most of his Berlin trilogy). The band had visceral aura made it an instant classic The band were largely welcomed on Yorckstraße, that Cave met his been practically living at Hansa, grabbing in the post-punk world, with Wenders into the East Kreuzberg scene, and future collaborator, Einstürzende naps under the mixing desk between using the title-track for the band’s live in turn found the anarchic spirit and Neubaten’s saturnine frontman Blixa sessions, and inviting their friends and performance in Wings of Desire. 16 17 nick Cave backstage at the gIFT Farewell Party with Anita lane, 23 June, 1987 Though From Her To Eternity was increasing unpredictability. Mick Harvey But that wasn’t the end of Cave’s Berlin in Cave’s life, that Cave and Bargeld recorded in London, with the legendary has described 1987 as an “utterly chaotic years. He would return once more to the discuss the decision — which, it turned Flood on production duties, the band year”, a claim backed up by incidents city before the 80s were through, for the out, was due to a somewhat prosaic mix returned to Hansa for at least parts such as Cave allegedly punching engineer final mixing sessions of the 1990 Bad of management issues and the difficulty of all of their subsequent 80s albums: Tony Cohen over some unwanted Seeds album The Good Son — just in of juggling a marriage with two bands. 1985’s The Firstborn is Dead; 1986’s feedback. Some have attributed this time, in fact, to witness the historic fall Kicking Against The Pricks and Your behaviour not only to drugs, but to his of the Wall. “I remember we came out Though reluctant to discuss the Funeral…My Trial; and 1988’s Tender being creatively stretched. Einstürzende at six in the morning or something and details of his time in Berlin (he Prey.

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