Nick Cave — Notting Hill and London Years

Nick Cave lived in Notting Hill in west London during significant periods of the Bad Seeds' career, and the neighbourhood appears in his biography as the London base he returned to between stints in Berlin, São Paulo, and Brighton. London was the city where the Birthday Party first arrived from Melbourne in 1980, initially living in squats and cheap rentals around Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill before relocating to Berlin. The area's Caribbean community, its markets, its particular mix of wealth and poverty, and the Rough Trade Records scene centred nearby in Ladbroke Grove were all part of Cave's early London world.

The Birthday Party's London years were chaotic — drug addiction, confrontational performances, a brief residency in the music press as the most frightening band in the world. Rough Trade's distribution and the NME's coverage gave them a British audience; the move to Berlin in 1981 radicalised the music further, but London remained a point of return. Cave has spoken about specific Notting Hill addresses in interviews but the details vary, and the neighbourhood has changed so dramatically since the early 1980s that the geography of his time there is difficult to reconstruct.

Notting Hill is now one of London's most expensive neighbourhoods, its bohemian character largely displaced by wealth. Portobello Road market still runs on Saturdays and retains something of the atmosphere Cave would have known. The area around Ladbroke Grove — the Rough Trade/reggae nexus — is accessible on the Central and Circle lines at Ladbroke Grove station.