From Louder Than War: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: From Her to Eternity - A Retrospective
Retrospective Anniversary Review
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: From Her To Eternity Mute Records
LP | CD | DL | CS 18th June 1984
40 years ago, on 18th June 1984, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds unleashed their debut album, From Her To Eternity, on an unsuspecting gaggle of goths, punks, weirdos and musos. Four decades later, it is still a soaring pillar of originality with no point of reference – past, present or future.
It’s the sound of Berlin, infatuation, smack, speed, stimulation and liberation. The sound of creative freedom. A sound that’s as remarkable now as it was 40 years ago.
In a desperate bid to remain unbiased, Sean Millard pays tribute and attempts to view the record in the context of the times – both 1984 and 2024.
Writing a retrospective on For Her to Eternity is an intimidating task. It’s an album fundamental to my own personal growth as well as being a cornerstone moment that heralded one of the most awe-inspiring and consistent careers in music. Although I was a few years late to the party – I got my copy of the LP around 1990 on the back of hearing The Good Son – its influence is undeniable; it’s a life-changer.
Berlin, 1984
For context, in 1984, The Birthday Party had been disbanded for a year. Nick Cave was now firmly ensconced in Berlin, complete with its chaotic lifestyle of speedballs, all-night bars and an artistic community that was exciting, inventive and a honey-trap for all the creative ne’er-do-wells in the European vicinity.
Or so legend would have us believe.
After a few wilderness months he, and former Birthday Partner Mick Harvey, continued their journey together. This time in a more “lyrical” way. A new band – less born of physical confrontation, more of swampy intellect and atmosphere.
They played a short proto-tour as Nick Cave and the Cavemen, before becoming The Bad Seeds. Named after the final single they released as the Birthday Party.
This new lyrical direction was ensured and emphasised once Blixa Bargeld joined the Bad Seed ranks from Einstürzende Neubauten. His abstract way of viewing song structure, melody and guitar playing was responsible, in many ways, for the new band’s unconventional style.
The early 80s were a particularly creative period for originality in music. Nick said himself in an (almost) contemporary interview: “… there is an unusually large amount of creative people from my generation, for some reason. I think that’s probably because the ‘60s produced so many morons, but these people, though they didn’t really do anything, had quite a bit of personality.”
Implying that their strength of personality armed them with the boldness to dare to be different, presumably. A willingness to embrace non-conformity rather than toe-the-line and stay in their box.
We tend to see Nick Cave these days as the bat-winged Gothfather – but by the time he was entering the studio to record From Her To Eternity, Bauhaus had already split up. The Bat Cave had been established for a couple of years. The Cure had moved on to pop. The Sisters had released all their best singles.
That fleeting moment of original doom-laden post-punk was already fading to black.
Despite being an open door for fans of The Birthday Party, this is not a goth record.
No Predictable Pentatonics
To call From Her To Eternity a goth album feels a lazy and inaccurate. It’s got a gothic tone to the lyrics, of course; it’s hard to call-out lines like “The same God that abandoned her has, in turn, abandoned me…” or “Insects suicide against the window and my heart goes out to those li’l flies…” as anything less than literate gothic genius.
But there’s more lyrical substance and mood in a single verse here than there is in the entire Goth genre’s output up to that point. For the first time, Cave really lays down poetry, and it elevates the Bad Seeds to an incomparable place. As much as I have a soft spot for a devil in a black dress or a spunk-stained sheet and odorous whim, that intellect and articulation just doesn’t compare to what Nick was writing.
And then there’s the instrumentation. Where has it come from?
I’ll die on this hill, FYI – nothing sounds like it – before or since.
Yes, there’s an undertow of blues – but more in its dark, damp tone than anything approaching predictable pentatonics. Of course, there’s the residual cacophonies of The Birthday Party but I’d hardly use them as strong referential anchor points.
They are but minor seasonings to a deeper, more bloody, clotted gravy.
Establish a timeline from our arbitrary Ground Zero – seven years before the album’s release – the Sex Pistols, jubilee year and the boat trip on the Thames to celebrate the release of God Save the Queen – 7th June 1977.
Just think how far “punk” moved in that short time; From Barre Chord Brawling to Eternity in less time than it’s been since Brexit, Me Too and Trump’s stomach-turning inauguration.
No time at all.
Equally, if we look back seven years from now, musically, there is nothing that has been even moderately as seismic as what occurred between 1977 and 1984. Of course, new and thrilling bands release original, exciting tunes every day, but I haven’t seen the scale of revolution that occurred in the post-punk years, culminating in From Her To Eternity, happening since.
A Masterwork in Sequencing
We open, famously, on a cover of Avalanche. Listen to it on headphones for maximum impact. Become, oh slavering wretch, lulled by Blixa’s thrumming, sliding guitar, low and brooding. Be snapped awake, my child, by the crack of Mick Harvey’s drums, which function as far from a conventional “beat” as it’s possible to be.
What a bold move – lest we forget – Leonard Cohen was hardly “cool” in 1984. In fact, he’d only released two albums; Death Of A Ladies’ Man and Recent Songs – both insubstantial – in the previous ten years. His return to greatness wouldn’t begin until the end of the year, with Various Positions.
I can’t help thinking that the Bad Seeds were fundamental to introducing Lennie’s wry misery to an entirely new generation. Avalanche is a stunning cover. Cohen said “… Nick Cave butchered my song Avalanche, and if that’s the case, let there be more butchers like that”. Is there a better songwriting compliment to be had?
Structurally, the album works brilliantly. You could be forgiven, on first listen of Avalanche, for thinking that Cave had mellowed. But you are sorely mistaken, Dear Heart. Witness the face-slap of Cabin Fever! crashing in, in the wake of Avalanche’s dissolving reverb.
The monotonic repetition of Barry Adamson’s bass thumps before Harvey’s lumbering, oafish drums create a tub-thumping cacophony over the top. It’s migraine-inducing until you’ve gone through it enough times to recognise that the sickening swells and dips form a coherent shape that Nick is rambling and squalling over.
“Our Captain takes time to crush some bluebottles, glowin’ in his gruel…” shrieks our skeletal hero – Cabin Fever! is unsanitary, queasy and by far the most difficult song on the album. But once you get it, it becomes a bucking and swaying highlight as it lunges to fade.
A masterwork in sequencing, the slightly waltzing bassline of Well Of Misery grows up from the sinking wreck of Cabin Fever!, in what is the most accessible and clearly blues-influenced track on the album.
It’s important to note, however – that we’re not listening to SRV’s blues here. It’s barely recognisable. Just comparatively, the off-kilter weirdness to the song is less than it is elsewhere, and the vocal line imbeds itself in a relatively conventional manner. It’s the most coherent and “trad” song on the LP.
And it’s certainly not trad. But it might be my favourite track of all seven.
And I have no fondness for the blues, so what does that tell you?
Well of Misery’s slave-ship whip-cracking and chanted call-and-response vocals create an atmosphere that’s magnetically engaging and one that I fear might run the tragic gamut of censorship if it was released in 2024. What a waste, if that was so.
Next, timeless and still-in-the-set-forty-years-later centrepiece, From Her To Eternity stabs itself in on those iconic staccato piano jabs. Where does this come from? I keep asking myself the same question. Like. Nothing. Else. It’s Cave’s first Bad Seeds masterpiece.
Blixa’s guitar, again, takes discordant centre stage, bringing an unpredictability to the instrumentation that is never repeated throughout its five-and-a-half-minute runtime.
Nick stated that “(Blixa) … doesn’t use pedals or effects or anything like that… he just plugs into any amp and uses any guitar… half the time he doesn’t own a guitar… he can make the guitar sound like nothing you’ve heard before. He’s brilliant. He’s my hero”.
The creative relationship, respect and bromance between the two must form the foundations of what the Bad Seeds were at this time. Often po-faced and hilarious (watch The Weeping Song promo below) and always challenging, the two sparred, reflected and understood each other in a way that puts them on an undiminished pedestal of songwriting partnerships that hasn’t been beaten since.
As much as I love Warren Ellis (and I really do), the post-Blixa Bad Seeds feel flat. Less exciting. Mature.
Fair enough, I guess. Nick’s 67 this year. It would be weird if his sound hadn’t matured. It’s not as much fun though.
There was something magical occurring, particularly in those formative years. The clash of an assertive, Teutonic head with a flailing, Antipodean heart, somehow birthed a grotesque and stumbling carny creation that was capable of true originality.
Only Death Resides
Saint Huck follows, and it’s here that we start seeing the juicy, character-driven lyrics -Nick’s niche – really take shape. It’s an ear-watering joy to hear: “…you trade in the mighty Ol’ Man River for the Dirty Ol’ Man Latrine…” and follow Huck on his riverside journey through muggings, shootings, luckless whores and deluge drenched, muddy alleyways where only death resides.
We hear Huck’s blood rolling away from him like the crying Mississippi, from his shot-out eye.
Beautiful.
Wings Off Flies might be the weakest track on the album, but that’s not to say it’s no good. The competition is just pretty stiff. It seems to stand apart, slightly away from the others. Perhaps because it’s a co-write with Foetus – Jim Thirlwell – it doesn’t quite have the same staying power that the other tracks have, despite its wonderful imagery and title. It’s also the shortest track on the album.
Maybe that’s why you don’t feel like you’ve gone on the same journey that you have with the other songs.
We finish with the epic A Box For Black Paul. Perhaps the song that most exemplifies the direction the Bad Seeds will go in the next ten or twenty years. Beyond Blixa’s background scrapes and guitar whinnies, it’s a piano ballad that pre-calls 1991’s Christina the Astonishing. It’s also the track that really digs down on the Old Testament inspiration that will become an ongoing theme for Nick’s lyrics in the future.
A Box for Black Paul never gets tired. It stands out as particularly timeless – in a lineup of tracks that all exist outside time and space.
Progressive and Avantgarde
It’s easy to forget what a creative time the early ‘80s was. So many of the bands from that period were/are unique and only sound like themselves… The Birthday Party, Adam and the Ants, The Cure, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Gang of Four, Siouxsie, PiL… the list goes on. All bands that are impossible to cover because the songs are so intrinsically linked to their own unique style. It was a real time for innovation – and the Bad Seeds exemplify this like no other.
Chronologically, they are a post-punk band. That punk rock spirit of freedom and experimentation seethes through all their songs with aplomb. Yet they don’t sound like any other post punk band I can think of.
Possibly, the closest reference point could be Neubauten. It’s no surprise that the kindred spirits or Bargeld and Cave created something so progressive and avantgarde.
I don’t want to be the old man shouting at clouds, telling the world that the old ones are the best. That’s not my (colostomy) bag. But if there has been anything released in the last – say – decade that sounds as incomparable and genreless as From Her To Eternity, I’ll eat my wide-brimmed, flour-covered hat.
It’s a genuine artistic bombshell with no discernible past or future. A bombshell that leveled the metropolis of underground artistic ambition and changed our expectations of it forever, girding our loins for the majesty of what was to come.