by Mark Mordue
55Janet Austin, interview with the author, phone, 7 September 2011.
56Autoluminescent: Rowland S Howard, directed by Lynne-Maree Milburn and Richard Lowenstein, Ghost Pictures, 2011.
57‘Interview with Rowland S Howard 24/11/94’, Prehistoric Sounds, Aussie Indie Music 1976–1999, Vol.1, Issue 2, 1995, p. 27.
58Bruce Milne, interview with the author, Melbourne, 26 February 2010.
59Mick Harvey, interview with the author, Sydney, 17 January 2012.
60‘Interview with Rowland S Howard 24/11/94’, Prehistoric Sounds, Aussie Indie Music 1976–1999, Vol. 1, Issue 2, 1995, p. 28.
61Jenny Valentish, ‘Rowland S Howard: Storm Und Twang – The Prophet of St Kilda’, Australian Guitar, May 2006; republished at Rowland S Howard – Outta the Black: https://rowland-s-howard.com/articles/2006-australian-guitar.php
62Phill Calvert, interview with the author, 26 July 2012.
63Mick Harvey, interview with the author, Sydney, 17 January 2012
64Robert Brokenmouth, Nick Cave: The Birthday Party and Other Epic Adventures, Omnibus Press, London, 1996, p. 33.
65Pierre Voltaire, interview with the author, Melbourne, 25 March 2010.
66ibid.
67Peter Milne, interview with the author, Brisbane, 17 March 2010.
68Robert Brokenmouth, Nick Cave: The Birthday Party and Other Epic Adventures, Omnibus Press, London, 1996, p. 36.
69Miranda Brown, ‘Oz Punk Suicides’, RAM, 6 October 1978, p. 32.
70ibid.
71Clinton Walker, interview with the author, Sydney, 13 May 2011.
72Stephen Cummings, Will It Be Funny Tomorrow, Billy?: A Kind of Music Memoir, Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne, 2009.
73Nick Cave, cited by Stephen Cummings in ‘Good Bones’, Love Town; see http://lovetown.net/discog/goodbones.html, accessed 21 September 2020.
74Pierre Voltaire, interview with the author, Melbourne, 25 March 2010.
PART IV: GOD’S HOTEL
Shivers
1Phill Calvert, interview with the author, Sydney, 19 February 2014.
2Robert Brokenmouth, Nick Cave: The Birthday Party and Other Epic Adventures, Omnibus Press, London, 1996, p. 57.
3Greg Perano, interview with the author, Sydney, 6 March 2012.
4Robert Brokenmouth, Nick Cave: The Birthday Party and Other Epic Adventures, Omnibus Press, London, 1996, p. 57.
5Pierre Voltaire, interview with the author, Melbourne, 25 March 2010.
6Gillian Upton, ‘Sinking’, The George: St Kilda Life and Times, Venus Bay Books, Melbourne, 2001, p. 93.
7Dolores San Miguel, interview with the author, Melbourne, 22 March 2010.
8ibid.
9Mick Harvey, interview with the author, phone, 27 July 2020.
10ibid.
11Jenny Watson, interview with the author, Brisbane, 17 March 2010.
12Bannister was the inspiration for the title character in Luke Davies’ thinly veiled autobiographical novel Candy (1997). The junkie love story – based on Bannister’s relationship with Davies in Sydney in 1984 – was made into a 2006 film starring Abbie Cornish and Heath Ledger; see www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-22/real-life-candy-megan-bannister-tells-her-story/8528798?nw=0.
13Hank Cherry, ‘Shivers’, The Nervous Breakdown, 29 June 2011, http://thenervousbreakdown.com/hcherry/2011/06/shivers, accessed 28 August 2020.
14Peter Milne, interview with the author, Brisbane, 17 March 2010.
15Genevieve McGuckin, interview with the author, Sydney, 26 October 2011.
16ibid.
17Mick Harvey and Katy Beale began dating each other at age sixteen. They are together to this day.
18Bronwyn Bonney (née Adams), interview with the author, Sydney, 28 March 2011.
19Pierre Voltaire, interview with the author, Melbourne, 25 March 2010.
20Dawn Cave, interview with the author, Melbourne, 21 October 2010.
21St Kilda would become known through a series of coronial enquiries as the most brutal and corrupt police station in the state. Streetwise locals knew it as an evil place, to be avoided at all costs.
22Phill Calvert, interview with the author, Sydney, 19 February 2014.
23Dolores San Miguel, The Ballroom: The Melbourne Punk and Post-Punk Scene – A Tell-All Memoir, Melbourne Books, Melbourne, 2011, pp. 56-57. In her retelling in the book, Dolores gets her dates wrong for Colin Cave’s death and the encounter with Nick, but she reiterated her story in an interview with me in Melbourne, 22 March 2010.
24Mick Harvey, interview with the author, 11 February 2010.
25Robert Brokenmouth, Nick Cave: The Birthday Party and Other Epic Adventures, Omnibus Press, London, 1996, pp. 33–34.
26Autoluminescent: Rowland S Howard, directed by Lynne-Maree Milburn and Richard Lowenstein, Ghost Pictures, 2011.
27The Boys Next Door, Storey Hall, 3RRR Xmas Party, RMIT Live to Air, 21 December 1978. A live recording of this show captures this young band at their best.
28Tony Cohen, interview with the author, Sydney, 30 September 2010.
29ibid.
30Mick Harvey, interview with the author, 11 February 2010.
31Tony Cohen, interview with the author, Sydney, 30 September 2010.
32Phill Calvert, interview with the author, Sydney, 18 November 2010.
33Harry Howard, interview with the author, Melbourne, 19 November 2010.
34Clinton Walker, interview with the author, Sydney, 13 May 2011.
35The British adult comic magazine Viz adopted a defiantly adolescent satirical style, including mock-tabloid news, toilet humour, stupid misunderstandings and an absurd helping of sex and violence. Long-running strips like ‘Johnny Fartpants’ and ‘Buster Gonad’ suggest the tone. Available from newsagents in Australia, its risqué and ridiculous material made it a schoolboy favourite.
36Phill Calvert, interview with the author, Sydney, 19 February 2014.
37Autoluminescent: Rowland S Howard, directed by Lynne-Maree Milburn and Richard Lowenstein, Ghost Pictures, 2011.
38We’re Livin’ on Dog Food, directed by Richard Lowenstein, Ghost Pictures, 2009.
39Nick’s vocals on side two of Door, Door mark a real change in emotional delivery. His disgust with his singing on the album reflects his reaction to the initial influence of producer Les Karski on side one, but the shift to working with Tony Cohen and the trauma of Colin Cave’s death undoubtedly influenced his delivery of songs like ‘Shivers’.
40We’re Livin’ on Dog Food, directed by Richard Lowenstein, Ghost Pictures, 2009.
41Pierre Voltaire, interview with the author, Melbourne, 25 March 2010.
42Jeffrey Wegener, interview with the author, Sydney, 10 March 2010.
43Bruce Milne, interview with the author Melbourne, 26 February 2010.
44Mick Harvey, interview with the author, Wombarra, 5 April 2013.
45Clinton Walker, interview with the author, Sydney, 8 April 2011. Rowland S Howard would take years to find himself again after leaving The Birthday Party, but his output would be lean and spasmodic beside Nick’s downpour of albums and ideas. Even so, a mysterious power and sadness radiates from his swaggering band, These Immortal Souls, and his only two solo albums, Teenage Snuff Film and Pop Crimes. On the set of the ABC music program Studio 22, some three decades after he first wrote ‘Shivers’, he was asked by host Clinton Walker if the song was ‘an albatross or a Victoria Cross’. It was a brilliant question. Howard almost recoiled before recovering his typically amused poise and saying it was nearer an albatross because he wished people would ask him about a song he’d written in the last fifteen years. Rowland said something else that was even more telling: that playing ‘Shivers’ felt like playing a song that someone else had written – ‘like a cover’.
46Autoluminescent: Rowland S Howard, directed by Lynne-Maree Milburn and Richard Lowenstein, Ghost Pictures, 2011.
47Mick Harvey says that none of the band wanted to thank Barrie Earl. It was Tracy Pew who insisted, also demanding they describe
Earl as their mentor. ‘We argued with Tracy but he just liked the idea of telling people we had a mentor.’ (Mick Harvey, interview with the author, 27 August 2020.)
48Mick Harvey, interview with the author, Wombarra, 5 April 2013.
49Keith Glass, interview with the author, Sydney, 13 May 2010.
50ibid.
51Mick Harvey, interview with the author, Wombarra, 5 April 2013.
52Keith Glass, interview with the author, Sydney, 13 May 2010.
53Mick Harvey, interview with the author, Sydney, 17 January 2012.
54Nick Cave on The Pop Group (1999), www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUC2GmzJpGY, accessed 7 September 2020.
55Jillian Burt, ‘Suicide Survivors’, Roadrunner, March 1979, p. 79.
56Clinton Walker, Stranded: The Secret History of Australian Independent Music 1977–1991, Pan Macmillan Australia, Sydney, 1996, p. 52.
57David Pestorius, curator, notes for exhibition Brisbane: Punk, Art and After, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, 24 February – 15 May 2010.
58Clinton Walker, interview with the author, Sydney, 13 May 2011.
59We’re Livin’ on Dog Food, directed by Richard Lowenstein, Ghost Pictures, 2009.
60Pierre Voltaire, interview with the author, Melbourne, 25 March 2010.
61Robert Brokenmouth, Nick Cave: The Birthday Party and Other Epic Adventures, Omnibus Press, London, 1996, p. 51.
62Jim Thirlwell, interview with the author, phone, 16 July 2011.
63Ian McFarlane, ‘Interview with Rowland S Howard 24/11/94’, Prehistoric Sounds, Aussie Indie Music 1976–1999, Vol. 1, Issue 2, 1995, p. 29.
64Andrea Jones, ‘Birthday Party Celebrate’, Rolling Stone Australia, Sydney, February 1982, p. 17.
65The Offense was a 1980s post-punk fanzine from Colombus, Ohio put together by Tim Anstaett. A history can be found here: https://blurtonline.com/news/80s-ohio-fanzine-the-offense-gets-bookd-in-fine-style. The quote from Nick Cave is in The Offense, April 1983 edition, republished here: https://rowland-s-howard.com/articles/1983-offense.php, accessed 22 September 2020.
66Tony Cohen, interview with the author, Sydney, 30 September 2010.
67Barney Hoskyns, ‘A Manhattan Melodrama Starring The Birthday Party’, New Musical Express, 17 October 1981.
68Andrew McMillan, RAM, December 1979, n.p.
69Ian Johnston, Bad Seed: The Biography of Nick Cave, Abacus, London, p. 57.
Flight from Death
1Mick Harvey, interview with the author, Wombarra, 5 April 2013.
2Jenny Watson, interview with the author, 17 March 2010.
3Bronwyn Bonney (née Adams), interview with the author, Sydney, 28 March 2011.
4ibid.
5Ashley Crawford, ‘Ballroom Mayhem (18.07.08)’, The Funeral Party, City of Port Phillip’s Urban Art Strategy, 2009.
6Bruce Milne, interview with the author, Melbourne, 26 February 2010.
7Pierre Voltaire, interview with the author, Melbourne, 25 March 2010.
8Robert Brokenmouth, Nick Cave: The Birthday Party and Other Epic Adventures, Omnibus Press, London, 1996, p. 46.
9ibid.
10Anne Tsoulis, interview with the author, iMessage, 12 June 2012: ‘I have a theory that our generation were raised by traumatised parents – postwar freakout.’
11Bruce Milne, interview with the author, Melbourne, 26 February 2010.
12Ashley Crawford, ‘Ballroom Mayhem (18.07.08)’, The Funeral Party, City of Port Phillip’s Urban Art Strategy, 2009. Crawford’s recreation is supported by filmmaker Evan English’s memories of the Crystal Ballroom as ‘a wonderful venue, both very grand and deeply seedy. Its red floral carpet (from memory) was stained with beautiful excess and deep human misery’ (https://nickcavefixes.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/boys-next-door-melbourne-punk-pics, accessed 22 September 2020).
13Conrad Knickerbocker, ‘The Art of Fiction – William Burroughs Interview’, The Paris Review, Issue 35, Fall 1965, www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4424/the-art-of-fiction-no-36-william-s-burroughs, accessed 11 September 2020.
14Greg Perano, interview with the author, Sydney, 6 March 2012.
15Bronwyn Bonney (née Adams), correspondence with the author, iMessage, 16 August 2020.
16Greg Perano, interview with the author, Sydney, 6 March 2012.
17Genevieve McGuckin, interview with the author, Sydney, 26 October 2011.
18Pierre Voltaire, interview with the author, Melbourne, 25 March 2010.
19Greg Perano, interview with the author, Sydney, 6 March 2012.
20Lisa Craswell died from a heroin overdose in 1985 – one year prior to the death of Tracy Pew – after an argument between the couple over Tracy’s involvement with another woman.
21Paul Goldman, interview with the author, Melbourne, 9 February 2010.
22Bronwyn Bonney (née Adams), interview with the author, Sydney, 28 March 2011.
23Robert Brokenmouth, Nick Cave: The Birthday Party and Other Epic Adventures, Omnibus Press, London, 1996, p. 32.
24This wounded energy would be strangely repeated in the alienating struggle to complete the final Birthday Party record, which would see Rowland pushed out of the band entirely. In Heiner Mühlenbrock’s documentary Mutiny! The Last Birthday Party, you can see Nick becoming intolerant of Rowland’s efforts to please as Blixa Bargeld emerges as Nick’s new compatriot and guitar hero.
25Paul Goldman, interview with the author, Melbourne, 9 February 2010.
26Egon Schiele on his 1911 painting Revelation (Composition with Figures). Schiele’s painting has a very particular power balance: ‘One half is supposed to represent the vision of a personality so great that the one who has just been influenced is overwhelmed, kneeling before the Great One, who observes him through closed eyelids’ (http://egonschieleonline.org/works/paintings/work/p203, accessed 22 September 2020).
27Laknath Jayasinghe, ‘Nick Cave, Dance Performance and the Production and Consumption of Masculinity’ in Karen Welbery and Tanya Dalziel (eds), Cultural Seeds: Essays on the Work of Nick Cave, Ashgate Publishing, London, 2009.
28Bronwyn Bonney (née Adams), correspondence with the author, iMessage, 16 August 2020.
29Jillian Burt, ‘Suicide Survivors’, Roadrunner, March 1979, p. 9.
30John Stapleton, ‘The Boys Next Door’, Roadrunner, December 1979, n.p.
31Pierre Voltaire, interview with the author, Melbourne, 25 March 2010.
32Phill Calvert, interview with the author, phone, 2 September 2020.
33‘Boys Next Door; Melbourne Punk; Pics’, https://nickcavefixes.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/boys-next-door-melbourne-punk-pics, accessed 11 September 2020.
34Phill Calvert, interview with the author, Melbourne, 20 February 2010.
35Article, Sunday Mail, Adelaide, 14 May 1979, from Nick Cave: The Exhibition, Newspaper Clippings 1978-79 H0000582.
36Pierre Voltaire, interview with the author, Melbourne, 25 March 2010. It was on this same night that Julie Cave recalls a young male friend arriving, glancing at both Nick and Rowland and saying, ‘I’m sorry, I did not know this was a fancy dress party.’ ‘He was being quite sincere and apologetic about it,’ Julie says. ‘Nick and Rowland were really pissed off.’ (Dawn and Julie Cave, interview with the author, Melbourne, 21 November 2010.)
37Pierre Voltaire, interview with the author, Melbourne, 25 March 2010.
38Greg Perano, interview with the author, Melbourne, 6 March 2012.
39Keith Glass, interview with the author, Sydney, 13 May 2010.
40ibid.
41Mick Harvey, interview with the author, Wombarra, 5 April 2013.
42Ron Rude, email correspondence with the author, 19 June 2012.
43In the United States, hog calling, or pig calling, is a competitive event at country fairs. Use of the actual word ‘suey’ may be derived from ‘sow’ but the origins are vague. No-one knows why pigs respond to such a call, but some people have a knack for it.
44Ron Rude, email correspondence with the author, 19 June 2012.
45Launched in 1979 as Australia’s first commercial FM radio station, Eon FM changed its name to Triple M in 1980. Initially it had no playlist and an open agenda for the music it might play. It developed a tighter strategy, rejecting the album-oriented approach of other FM stations to focus on becoming a Top 40 station. The first song played on Eon was the Eagles’ ‘New Kids in Town’.
46Phill Calvert, correspondence with the author, 15 June 2020.
47Ron Rude continues to perform with his group Ron Rude’s Renaissance, and is working on a novel: ‘People have suggested that I write a memoir, but it involves too much reliving of the past to be palatable to me. My book is a novel about world government, and the plot serves as a framework to present a suite of ideas about political ideology and personal practices for growth and practicality. It’s done as a conversation between two men, and so follows the paradigm of the Bhagavad Gita. It’s a Bhagavad Gita for the Covid-19 era.’ (Ron Rude, correspondence with the author, 12 August 2020.)
48Phill Calvert, interview with the author, Melbourne, 20 February 2010.
49Mick Harvey is equally adamant about this side of Pew: ‘So many write-ups and people who never knew Tracy get him all wrong. He gets depicted as this looming, dark presence. His image on stage maybe adds to that idea, [as well as] some of the things Rowland said in interviews, but that’s just Rowland. When I think of Tracy I always remember how funny he was. He was more naughty than dark. I’d have to say he is still to this day the funniest person I have ever known in my life. And I think anyone who really knew him will tell you the same thing.’ (Mick Harvey, interview with the author, phone, 27 July 2020.)
50Fred Negro, conversation with the author, phone, 14 September 2020. Fred’s cartoon originally appeared, with the title ‘One Nite After the Ballroom’, on the inside cover of Dolores San Miguel, The Ballroom: The Melbourne Punk and Post-Punk Scene – A Tell-All Memoir, Melbourne Books, Melbourne, 2011.
51Michel Faber, ‘Conversation with Boys Next Door’, Farrago – The Rock Edition, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1979, pp. 20-21.
52John Stapleton, ‘The Boys Next Door’, Roadrunner, December 1979, n.p.
53Autoluminescent: Rowland S Howard, directed by Lynne-Maree Milburn and Richard Lowenstein, Ghost Pictures, 2011.
