Film review: ‘MUTINY IN HEAVEN: THE BIRTHDAY PARTY’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’

Music doco, Mutiny in Heaven, which is directed by Ian White (Before the Fall) traces the tumultuous life of groundbreaking Melbourne band The Birthday Party, the film’s title coming from one of their songs. The iconic band featured Nick Cave at his most musically and visually punk and experimental and his most self-destructive; multi-instrumentalist and song writer Mick Harvey; bassist Tracey Pew in his alarming cowboy hat and mesh muscle top ensemble; drummer Phil Calvert and guitarist and songwriter, the late Rowland S. Howard.

The film traces the band’s beginnings from its early incarnation The Boys Next Door, which Cave and Harvey formed at Caulfield Grammar in the late 70’s. Having co-opted innovative guitarist and prolific songwriter Rowland S. Howard from another band, The Young Charlatans, the Boys Next Door eventually transformed into The Birthday Party and disgorged something special and unique within Australian music, a cacophonous collision of punk, free jazz, art rock and primeval sounds all infused with the band members’ personal and literary obsessions.

The film incorporates present day interviews, archival photos and video footage, home movies and comic book animation to conjure a swirling storm of images from across band’s life. It’s fascinating to hear Cave, Harvey and Howard describe the early days of punk and the surrounding artistic counter-culture in Melbourne and especially in the St Kilda of the late 70’s.

The film tends to focus on Cave and Howard and their wildly contrasting personalities. Even as a schoolboy, the film suggests, Nick Cave was a pretty reckless individual, drinking tequila and pulling dangerous stunts on Melbourne’s suburban trains.  His manic, howling, cathartic onstage antics and volatile crowd baiting are seen as simply an extension of his everyday personality, at least at that time.  Nick Cave also talks about his relationship with God, which was born from his father reciting great works of literature to him rather than through church.  Howard on the other hand was more the introverted muso with a remarkable inventive mind although he also struggled with the same substance abuse issues that afflicted most of the band.  The film doesn’t ignore the other members, describing bassist Tracey Pew, who allegedly acquired his first bass amp through a shop’s broken window and achieved an A+ in English lit without attending a class, as a very smart person and a very naughty boy.  Pew sadly died in 1986 after an apparent epileptic fit.  Drummer Phil Calvert and Mick Harvey are seen as more conservative characters but forthright in how they wanted the band to sound. Harvey is described as the brains behind the early recordings because he was the ‘sober one’.

Particularly refreshing is the fact that the band members are so candid and articulate and able to bring intelligent insights into their situation and the music scene at the time.

Early on in the film we’re also introduced to another very unwelcome player in the band’s story, heroin.  Addiction apparently took hold on their nightmarish first trip to London where band members also became malnourished due to having no money.  They’re adamant that the transformation in sound from the Boys Next Door’s more accessible punk to The Birthday Party’s grinding, psychotic chaos was a contemptuous reaction to that experience and the lifelessness they found in the London music scene in the aftermath of punk.  After a calamitous tour of the US in which promoters occasionally pulled the plug on them after only a few songs, chaos and violence between band and crowd became regular features of their shows.

The doco features plenty of the band’s music and a plethora of live performances.  One of the best parts of the documentary, though, is filmmaker Paul Goldman taking about the crazed circumstances surrounding the making of the video for ‘Nick the Stripper’ in 1981 – still one of the greatest music videos ever – which was apparently inspired by the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and features Cave capering around like Gollum in a nappy amidst all sorts of pagan anarchy.

The Birthday Party was one of those unique convulsions in the world of art and their repertoire is an acquired taste but this doco is a must-see for anyone even vaguely interested in the remarkable history of the Australian music scene.

Nick’s rating: ****

Genre: Music documentary.

Classification: MA15+.

Director(s): Ian White.

Release date: 26th Oct 2023.

Running time: 99 mins.

Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.

 

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