The Hove-based legendary musician and writer will receive the award this month.
15 Aug 2013
The Australian musician and writer, Nick Cave, is to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Brighton.
The Hove-based counter-culture icon is internationally renowned for his intense lyrics, language and music that have also come together in successful film scores, screen writing and novels, the most recent, The Death of Bunny Munro, published in 2009 and set in and around Brighton.
He will receive a Doctor of Letters (DLitt) in recognition of his international standing in the arts and his patronage of Cine-City, the annual Brighton Film Festival, co-presented by the Faculty of Arts at the University of Brighton.
Anne Boddington, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, said: “We are fortunate that Nick Cave is not only resident in the city, but has chosen to contribute to its creative life as a performer, musician and singer, as a writer and as a patron of Cine-City.”
Nick was born in Australia where he spent time studying painting at what is now Monash University. He formed his first band while still at school, which evolved into the Birthday Party and became internationally acclaimed and influential for its post punk, dark, gothic-inspired lyrics and his own art features on the back cover of the Birthday Party’s Prayers on Fire Album.
Following the group’s break-up in 1983 he began writing for screen and acting in the prison film Ghosts...of the Civil Dead. His next music project, The Bad Seeds, was formed in 1984 and subsequently released 14 studio albums with an extraordinary range of influences from the avant-garde to many traditional forms of music. Nick has also collaborated with other artists and had two mainstream hit singles, “Where the Wild Roses Grow“, with Kylie Minogue and” “Henry Lee” with PJ Harvey. In 2006, he formed the garage rock band Grinderman that released its debut the following year. Grinderman too came to an end in December 2011.
Nick Cave’s songs have been used on the soundtrack of several films including Batman Forever, The X Files, Shrek 2, Dumb & Dumber, Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3 and Hellboy and he has been inducted in the Australian Recording Industry Association’s ARIA Hall of Fame.
Nick, who has lived in London, Berlin, Sao Paolo and Los Angeles, has written two novels, including The Death Of Bunny Munro. He will be presented with his honorary doctorate on Thursday 9 February during the Faculty of Arts graduation ceremony at the Dome, Brighton.
