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-"All the songs, are they autobiographic?"
-"Umm lyrically yeah most of it is from direct experience."
"Some of it is. Some of it isn't."
"Obviously the ones where I drowned aren't from direct experience."
The Cure are weird.
In fact that's part of their appeal.
They are outsiders, the forgotten and the lost
and so invite that subsection of society.
But what makes the band especially weird
is that there's many different shades of Cure:
the muted greys of Seventeen Seconds, the candyfloss pinks of Japanese Whispers
through to the deep pained purples of Disintegration.
To quote The Cure's frontman Robert Smith:
They are the only band Smith also notes that are routinely perceived as both suicidal and whimsical.
All through the 80s clad in black, smudged with crimson lipstick,
they unleashed super-sweet pop, dour goth and everything in-between.
Loved by both a cult-like fanbase
and the music listening public at large, they played by their own rules.
But how did the Cure morph from suicidal oddities to whimsical new wavers and back again
within a decade?
The Cure entered the 80s not the darkness peddlers of legend
but as a band in love with the pop infected punk of Buzzcocks or Elvis Costello.
The early singles and first album Three Imaginary Boys gained them buzz but little else.
Released in 1980 their second album Seventeen Seconds and specifically single "A Forest"
would be where the Cure moved towards a darker direction.
From a position of hindsight the album's inspiration seems to be the sparser more atmospheric
side of post-punk of Wire and Joy Division
but Smith spent the composition of the album listening and shaping through the additional influence
of Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left,
Jimi Hendrix live's album Isle of White
Astral Weeks by Van Morrison
and most of all, David Bowie's Low.
As a song "A Forest" is not built around a hook or a chorus but an overarching mood
that of isolation and loneliness.
The instrumentation of the track consists of an ample use of flange guitar
with relay added for a minimalist yet expansive sound.
Synth washes sit on the track like rising mist.
Lol Tolhurst's drums sound hauntingly flat and breathless.
Simon Gallup's ominous bass line stalks the track.
Smith noted in 2004:
Of the band's limited seven days in the studio a whole day was spent mixing "A Forest"
such was Smith's devotion to the track.
His faith was rewarded as the song was their debut entry in the UK Singles Chart reaching number 31
and allowing them to appear on Top of the Pops.
The studio version of the track is now somewhat overpowered by denser more epic live versions
such as the one present on Concert The Cure Live
or their overextended 11 minute rendition at Rock Werchter
known by most as the Fuck Robert Palmer Mix:
Despite their hatred for critical labeling, "A Forest" was the first moment The Cure could be called goth,
and the band would get darker with their next two releases.
In 1982 The Cure released Pornography.
If The Cure's more goth music is considered "suicidal"
then Pornography is inches from the endless abyss of oblivion,
both sonically and literally for the band themselves.
Its cacophonous drumming and icy synthwork combined
to create some of the most viscerally unsettling music of their career.
NME dubbed it "Phil Spector in Hell."
They had cemented their reputation for being a doomy, gloomy dismal kinda band
and it had drained Smith:
After taking too many drugs in the assumed last Cure tour
bassist Gallup departed
and Smith returned to a month-long detox and wrote the pop-leaning "Let's Go To Bed."
Depending on which interview with Smith you want to believe
the song was either a musical experiment, a label enforced hit attempt
or based on more recent interviews
a conscious decision to go against the all-consuming goth rock of Pornography.
The original demo dubbed "Temptation 2"
doesn't sound too dissimilar to what the band had made on Pornography:
thickly rhythmic with a synth topping,
the bassline and percussion seeming like a faster "She's Lost Control" by Joy Division.
In its fully realized form "Let's Go To Bed"'s funky synthpop
and all too blunt satirical lyrics seemed aimed at sending up Duran Duran.
When asked about his greatest musical nemesis, in 2017 Smith stated:
Musically "Let's Go to Bed" may not be The Cure's best work
and chart wise it only reach number 44 in the UK
but it's video featuring the band, now a two-piece, dancing about like a drunken Tears For Fears
and their willingness to experiment with the poppier new wave side of music
would serve them well for the rest of the decade.
Two other pop focused tracks followed in 1983:
the New Order indebted "The Walk"
and the Aristocats jazz of "The Love Cats,"
all later released as the Japanese Whispers compilation.
This new wave direction will make them progressively bigger worldwide
each new single would be paired with a Tim Pope directed promotional clip
which in turn would be broadcast on MTV and increase the band's profile
especially in the States.
The next few years would produce an enviable collection of singles:
"In Between Days," "Close to Me," a re-release of "Boys Don't Cry,"
"Why Can't I Be You," and finally their biggest hit thus far "Just Like Heaven."
By 1989 Smith had grown bored with the pop centric new wave that his band had been producing
and had retched up some more dark feelings to put to music.
His main concern was that he had yet to make his masterpiece
and that all the bands he loved, respected and was influenced by
had created theirs before they turned 30,
before their inevitable decline took hold.
In Smith's opinion Bowie's work fizzled out after Low released in its 30th year.
Buzzcocks' Pete Shelley was 23 when he released "Ever Fallen In Love?"
while Joy Division's Ian Curtis would be dead by then
leaving behind both Unknown Pleasures and Closer.
It was definite fear for Smith and this milestone was quickly approaching
so in 1988 on his 29th birthday he began writing what would become
the Cure's defining statement, Disintegration.
Quizzed about its meaning Smith stated about the album's title:
By 1989 the band's lineup bore only one similarity
to the band that released Three Imaginary Boys a decade previous, Smith himself.
The years since "Let's Go to Bed" had expanded the band from duo to five piece
but the making of Disintegration forced Smith
to finally give up on the one remaining link from their debut lineup,
former drummer now keyboardist Lol Tolhurst.
His alcoholism and apparent disinterest in learning and improving at his instrument
had made the rest of the band hostile towards him
and his place was filled with touring keyboardist Roger O'Donnell.
After six years of preferring the sunnier side of the pop music spectrum,
Robert Smith decided to go back to where he was at the beginning of the decade.
Disintegration is soaked in towering slabs of keyboards and monumental percussion.
The chord progressions are affecting in how gradual they are.
The whole album is a mood of its own:
of dread, despair, hopelessness and nightmarish panic.
Bringing together all the emotions present on Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography
and fusing them into something new and interesting.
While the four singles all did very well,
with Lovesong and Lullaby showing that darkly-infused pop songs can still be big hits,
the album's title track is the most essential moment.
The lyrics for "Disintegration" were the first written for the album,
around the time of Smith's 29th birthday.
In line with the Cure's tradition for thesis expanding epic titular tracks
it is eight minutes plus of slow-burning alienation mixed with references to addiction, fame and infidelity.
If there was a song that could be interpreted as a kiss off to his fans, this was it.
Some of the final lyrics are:
Graeme Thomson in 2018 described it thusly:
Critically and commercially, Disintegration is the Cure's greatest achievement.
It sold three million records worldwide
and the resulting tour saw them selling out stadia internationally.
With the 80s ending the Cure again morphed.
Now that all the darkness had been excised from Smith,
he was free to write songs they expressed happiness again.
1992's Wish features one of their biggest hits and their most lacking in irony or edge,
"Friday I'm In Love."
The cycle repeated: Wild Mood Swings was akin to Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me's genre mashup
before 2000's Bloodflowers finished the gothic trilogy alongside Pornography and Disintegration.
This chameleon-like tendency, this constant state of musical flux
is what makes them the iconic band that they are.
One thing that always stays the same:
with every album Smith foretells the end of the Cure.
Always conscious that all things must at some point end.
Pornography was supposed to be the end,
then on Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me's promotion he knew that the Cure would be winding down soon:
The Disintegration tour again was supposed to be the end of the group
but this has never come to pass.
The Cure are still touring, still killing it.
They have festivals booked for this summer and if you miss them
they'll probably be there for many summers to come.
They are not dead.
Love and great music are supposed to be fleeting
and Smith has constantly gone against that.
He's been madly in love with his wife since the age of 14
and the Cure, despite what Robert Smith, will say will last forever.
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