Cave was born in the small town of in the state of , , to Dawn and Colin Cave. He has two brothers: Tim (b. 1952) and Peter (b.
1954), and a sister, Julie (b. 1959).
As a child, Cave lived in and then in rural , .
His father Colin was an teacher and administrator, with a love of literature, and his mother was a librarian. Raised as an , Cave sang in the boys at Wangaratta Cathedral. However, he was often in trouble with the local school authorities, so his parents sent him to at 's in 1970.
Cave joined the school choir under choirmaster , and also benefitted from having a piano in his home. The following year he became a "day boy" when his family moved to , a of Melbourne.
After his secondary schooling, Cave studied painting (Fine Art) at the Caulfield Institute of Technology (now Monash University, Caulfield Campus) in 1976, but dropped out in 1977 to pursue music.
He also began dabbling in use around this time. In late 1978, shortly after Cave's 21st birthday, his father was killed in a car accident. This affected him deeply, as is evident in his lyrics.
In 1973, Cave met (guitar), (bass) and (drums); fellow students at Caulfield Grammar. With them he founded his first band, with himself as singer. Their repertoire consisted of proto-punk of songs by , , , and .
In 1977, after leaving school, they adopted the name and began playing predominantly original material penned by Cave. Guitarist and songwriter joined the band in 1978.
From 1977 until their dissolution in 1984 the band explored various punk styles, often with rapid development: from riffing; through -esque ; on to Post-punk expressionism (informed by ); and then a malevolent mix of -esque audience provocation, brooding and noise.
The Boys Next Door were a part of in the late 1970s, playing hundreds of live shows in Australia before changing their name to in 1980 and moving to , then . Cave's Australian girlfriend and accompanied them to London. The band were notorious for their provocative live performances which featured Cave shrieking, bellowing and throwing himself about the stage, backed up by harsh pounding rock music laced with guitar .
After establishing a cult following in Europe and Australia, The Birthday Party disbanded in 1984. Howard and Cave found it difficult to continue working together and both were somewhat exhausted from alcohol and drug use.
Cave and Harvey went on to form the first version of .
This name indicates the shift in Cave's role from band-member to band-leader, and coincides with a shift in Cave's songwriting from towards lyrical and detailed narratives. were founded as an international backing group with guitarist (from ), bassist (formerly of ) and guitarist . Lane was also a creative influence and sometime .
This line-up recorded their debut album, released in 1984, .
Cave from Lane in the mid-1980s and began a relationship with Elisabeth Recker. While in Berlin, he released four albums with the Bad Seeds: ; ; ; and .
While he was based in , Cave started working on what was to become his debut novel, (1989). Significant crossover is evident between the in the book and the lyrics Cave wrote in the late stages of the Birthday Party and the early stage of his solo career. "Swampland", from Mutiny, in particular, uses the same linguistic stylings ('mah' for 'my', for instance) and some of the same themes (the narrator being haunted by the memory of a girl called Lucy, being hunted like an animal, approaching death and execution).
After completing , Cave left West Berlin shortly before the fall of the and moved to , , where he met Brazilian Viviane Carneiro. The two have a son, Luke (b. 1991), but never married.
Cave has another son born in 1991, Jethro (named after one of his favourite bands ), who lives with his mother (Beau Lazenby) in Australia. . In 1993, Cave moved back to London.
In 1996, Cave and the Bad Seeds released , a collection of songs about . It includes "Henry Lee," a duet with British rock singer (with whom he had a brief relationship), and "Where the Wild Roses Grow," a duet with Australian pop idol . The latter was a mainstream hit in Australia, winning three including "Song of the Year".
His next album, (1997), is marked by a radical shift away from and violent narratives to biographical and confessional songs about his relationships with Carneiro and PJ Harvey. It was also his first full album to be centred around his own piano playing.
Cave then took a break to rehabilitate from his and abuse over the past twenty years.
During this time, he met his current partner, British Susie Bick. They married in summer 1999, and had twins, Arthur and Earl, shortly after. Rejuvenated, Cave resurfaced with the complex, moody, and much-acclaimed with the Bad Seeds in 2001.
After the release of the 2003 album , which failed to excite reviewers, Bargeld announced he was leaving the Bad Seeds to devote more time to , leaving Mick Harvey as the only original member still in the band, other than Cave himself. Undisturbed, the next year Cave released his first double record - the acclaimed two-disc set .
In 2005, Cave and the Seeds released B-Sides Rarities, a comprehensive three-disc, 56-track collection of , rarities and tracks that appeared on film soundtracks.
In February 2007, Cave revealed for that apart from his album with his other venture Grinderman (nicknamed Mini-Seeds, because it consists of Seeds members - see ), he is readying the next studio album with the Bad Seeds: "I've been working on it for about three weeks," he says of the as-yet-untitled album. "I feel like something's about to happen. What?
I'm not really quite sure. There's a certain type of music I'd like to make, and that's just raising its head, so I wouldn't like to talk too much about it."
Nick Cave at the solo concert in , (November 11, 2006).
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