Birthday Party, The

The Birthday Party hailed from Melbourne, Australia. They had originally been The Boys Next Door but they switched names in 1980 and relocated to London.

They were disgusted by the anti-rock “New Pop”, to which their debut album, Prayers On Fire (1981), was a chaotic corrective – its doomy squalls sounding like rock’s furthest, most testing extreme.

In Britain, they gleefully wrought havoc with blood-spilling live shows and biblically angry record releases. Their records came with swastikas on the sleeves and titles like Drunk On The Pope’s Blood. Violence was routine, as was heroin.

Their second album, Junkyard (1982), was a record that sounded at once lobotomised and freakishly smart. Circumstances surrounding the recording of the album were chaotic, to say the least: Bassist Tracy Pew was jailed in Australia for three months for theft and drunk driving, and drummer Phil Calvert was slowly being ousted (he ended up in the Psychedelic Furs).

The chaos was mirrored in the raw and powerful music, which often sounds as though each member is playing a different song to the others.

By 1982, the group’s thirst for heroin and confrontation had seen them alternately at war with their audience, the music press, and each other.  The kamikaze logic peaked on Dead Joe – a madly ecstatic depiction of a car smash.

The Birthday Party disbanded in Autumn 1983. Rowland Howard formed Crime & The City Solution while Nick Cave went solo, forming The Bad Seeds, taking long-time collaborator Mick Harvey with him.

Tracy Pew joined The Saints but was to die in 1986 of an epileptic fit at the age of 28. Rowland Howard died of hepatocellular carcinoma secondary to liver cirrhosis on 30 December 2009. He was 50 years old.

Nick Cave
Vocals
Rowland S Howard
Guitar
Mick Harvey
Guitar, drums
Tracy Pew
Bass
Phil Calvert
Drums
Jeffrey Wegener
Drums
Blixa Bargeld
Guitar