Nick Cave's Real Name: Nicholas Edward Cave

Quick answer: The musician is known professionally as Nick Cave. Britannica and Encyclopedia.com independently give the fuller form Nicholas Edward Cave and place his birth in Warracknabeal, Australia. Britannica dates the birth to September 22, 1957; Encyclopedia.com gives the year 1957 without a month or day (Britannica; Encyclopedia.com).

Real name and early life

Independent publishers support the documented full name Nicholas Edward Cave. Britannica says he was born in a rural town in Victoria, Australia, the son of an English teacher and a librarian, that the family moved to Wangaratta when he was about two, that he was raised as an Anglican and began singing in the cathedral choir at eight, and that at 12 he was sent to a boarding school in Melbourne, that at 17 he enrolled in an art school to study painting but failed in his second year, and that his father later died in a car crash. Encyclopedia.com independently says Nicholas Edward Cave was born in 1957 in the small town of Warracknabeal, Australia, to a teacher father and librarian mother, and that they sent him to boarding school in Melbourne. This page records Britannica's September 22, 1957, date and Encyclopedia.com's year-only wording rather than treating the exact day as confirmed by both.

Career highlights

Britannica says he played a prominent role in the post-punk movement as front man for the bands the Birthday Party and the Bad Seeds, and is best known for haunting ballads about life, love, betrayal, and death. Encyclopedia.com independently says that in the mid-1970s he formed Boys Next Door with schoolmate and future Bad Seed Mick Harvey, and that in 1980 the group moved to England and changed its name to the Birthday Party. Encyclopedia.com says the Birthday Party broke up in 1983 in West Berlin. Britannica independently names both the Birthday Party and the Bad Seeds as the groups through which he came to prominence.

Encyclopedia.com describes the Birthday Party's live reputation and later traces Cave's work after that breakup, including the Bad Seeds. Britannica also records later work as an actor, novelist, and screenwriter, and notes a 2023 interview with the BBC podcast This Cultural Life.

Name notes for searchers

People looking up Nick Cave or Nicholas Edward Cave are looking for the same Australian musician. Independent sources support the fuller form used in the title.