In 1981, at a garbage dump on the outskirts of Melbourne, a band is making a video. The idea is to recreate a vision of hell. A cartoon death’s head with six limbs flashes on the screen. We see a young and scrawny Nick Cave – “a fat little insect” – pole-dancing in the middle of a circus tent. The song is an ode to self-loathing called Nick the Stripper.
Behind him, the Birthday Party swings and stumbles. After a year in London, the band – originally dubbed the Boys Next Door – have returned to their home town as a very different and much more menacing beast to cut their first full album, Prayers on Fire. The tune, if you can call it that, hangs on a ghostly three-note refrain by the guitarist Rowland S Howard.
