Mick Harvey

Few musicians have shaped the darker end of Australian rock from behind the kit and the mixing desk as quietly as Mick Harvey. Born in Rochester, Victoria, he grew up in Melbourne's suburbs, the son of a Church of England vicar, and sang in a church choir from an early age. At Caulfield Grammar in the early 1970s he met Nick Cave and Phill Calvert, and that friendship became the band that ran through much of his working life. A multi-instrumentalist, he is also a songwriter, arranger and record producer.

The school group became the Boys Next Door, then The Birthday Party, which moved to London in 1980 and West Berlin in 1982, where Harvey switched from guitar to drums. Harvey and Cave formed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in 1983, co-writing many of its songs and handling much of its production. He left in January 2009 after a last show in Perth, citing professional and personal reasons. His solo work includes Intoxicated Man (1995) and Pink Elephants (1997), two albums of Serge Gainsbourg songs translated into English.