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Anita Lane with Blixa Bargeld at the anniversary concert of Die Haut, 1992
Photo: stock & people / imago
Anita Lane was best known as a keyboardist and lyricist for Nick Cave, with whom she was also privately related for years. She released two solo albums and one EP. In addition, other musicians such as Barry Adamson, Die Haut, Mick Harvey or the Einstürzende Neubauten sang on a variety of pieces. Now the musician has died. This was reported by the British music websites Louder Than War and The Quietus, and the Guardian received confirmation from a record company spokesman.
Anita Lane was born in Melbourne - there are various details about the year of birth, it must have been around 1960 - and went to a school class with the later birthday party musician Rowland S. Howard. She studied at the art school, where she met Nick Cave. His first band Boys Next Door was renamed The Birthday Party, Anita Lane moved with Cave and the band to London in 1980 and wrote some birthday party lyrics with Cave.
In 1982 the couple moved to West Berlin and lived together on a factory floor in Kreuzberg. There the band Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds was formed, in whose first lineup Anita Lane played keyboard. She wrote the lyrics for the title track of the first Bad Seeds album "From Her To Eternity". Bad Seeds published the song "Stranger Than Kindness", which she wrote with Blixa Bargeld, in 1986.
Anita Lane remained connected to the circle of friends even after the end of Bad Seeds. She has made several guest appearances as a singer on pieces by the Kreuzberg band Die Haut. With the former Bad Seeds bassist Barry Adamson she recorded a cover version of the Nancy Sinatra classic "These Boots Are Made For Walking". And on a tribute to Serge Gainsbourg recorded by birthday party guitarist Mick Harvey, she took on the role of the female duet partner. She could be heard on "Blume" with the Einstürzende Neubauten.
In 1988 the record company Mute Records released an EP entitled "Dirty Sings". In a later interview with Nick Cave biographer Ian Johnston, Lane said she felt at the time that she was about to die and a desire to leave something behind. Anita Lane subsequently released two solo albums. "The Quietus" recently judged the first, "Dirty Pearl" from 1993, that it anticipates the handling of female fragility and sexuality, which Lana Del Rey recently popularized.
The second solo album "Sex O'Clock" was released in 2001. The cover version of the classic "Bella Ciao" represented on it can be heard in the soundtrack of the novel "Herr Lehmann", which traces the atmosphere in West Berlin shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The scene around the Neubauten, Die Haut and Bad Seeds represented this atmosphere, and Anita Lane played an important role in it.
Susie Cave, Nick Cave's wife, said goodbye on Instagram with the words "We love you so much" from Anita Lane, who is said to have lived in Byron Bay, Australia in her later years.
And Kid Congo Powers, musician at the Gun Club, called her "Anita, my most magical friend".
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