Nick Cave and Lydia Lunch

Photo from 30/3/83, Los Angeles, The Roxy, taken from Ian Johnston's "Bad Seed".

• Lydia Lunch joined The Birthday Party on stage in November 1981 for a version of Jackson, and on the 1982 summer tour, she opened for them, and regularly appeared on stage during The Birthday Party set for e.g. Dead In The Head and 99 Ways.
• Nick lived with Lydia for two weeks when they wrote their 50 one act plays, some of which have appeared in King Ink, and some of which have later appeared in the comic AS-FIX-E-8.
• Lydia Lunch has an intimate story called One Dreary Night in her book Incriminating Evidence, published on Last Gasp, which is "Dedicated in loving memory to the ghost of Nick Cave-past".
• The Birthday Party and Lydia Lunch have released a split album Drunk On The Pope's Blood/The Agony Is The Extacy.
• Nick sings on Lydia Lunch's Honeymoon In Red album.
• Nick and Lydia were both in The Immaculate Consumptive.
• Lydia Lunch appears in The Road To God Knows Where.
• At a dinner conversation on 7/9/1989 in London, Nick mischievously asked Lydia when she was going to have children. She replied: "Honey, the day I have kids is the day I see you shit a watermelon." (This anecdote is from Ian Johnston's "Bad Seed", page 263. You will find some more on Lydia in this book.)
• Both Nick and Lydia have toured with Die Haut on their 1992 and 1993 fall tours.
• There are, of course, numerous people that have worked with both Lydia and Nick:
  Jim Sclavunos, Jim Thirlwell, Terry Edwards, Sonic Youth, etc.
• Nick Cave and Lydia Lunch's books are published by Henry Rollins' label 2.13.61.
• From The Wire, July 1998, David Keenan scripting:
  However, 1982 was a bad time to be around the Birthday Party. Completely strung out, they were primed to self-destruct. Rowland and Lydia swiftly found themselves ostracised by the others. "Basically, they did too many drugs and I didn't," Lydia deadpans. "Nick Cave, who I completely respect as one of the finest lyricists rock music has ever known, never understood me at all -- either as a woman, as an artist or as an individual. He never got me. It's simple: you either get me, you accept me; or you do not get me, and he never got me. I don't know if the dividing line was the pleasure principle. I was really into gluttony and pleasure but not artificial stimulants; I was busy exploring adrenal over-stimulation." Like what? I interject. "I mean sex," she apologises, "excuse me, let me be more specific. Just natural endorphin highs and rushes, really getting, at that point, into exploring other altered states. It has to do with energy transfers, be it sexual or otherwise, be it just a deep conversation that transports you to another place -- it's vampirism." Is it a mutual exchange? What does she give in return? "Enough to make you sick. I gave them encourgement, energy, power, healing, light, love, what more do you want?" (Thanks Pete Ferreira for sending this.)