Lol Tolhurst

Lol Tolhurst, drummer and co-founder of The Cure, first met lead singer Robert Smith when they were just five years-old. Together with their other Catholic school friend Michael Dempsey, they would go on to make dark, brooding music that reflected the isolation they felt as the only punks living in their small English town. As The Cure’s sound developed in the 1980s, they released a string of three albums that Lol now defines as the band’s “goth period.” Today we’ll hear Lol talk in detail about making those albums.

Last month Lol released the book “Goth: A History,” which explores the architects of the post-punk genre—bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, and Bauhaus. In addition to his book “Goth,” Lol is also releasing a new album with his old friend Budgie, the drummer from the Banshees. The album’s called Los Angeles and it features an all-star guest list including U2's The Edge and LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy.

On today’s episode Leah Rose talks to Lol Tolhurst about growing up an outcast in post-WWII England and how he and Robert Smith first bonded over a Hendrix record. Lol also talks through the creation of The Cure’s goth albums—Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography. 

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Lol Tolhurst songs HERE.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Lowll Tolhurst is the drummer and co founder of
The Cure. He first met lead singer Robert Smith when
they were just five years old. Together with their other
Catholic school friend, Michael Dempsey, they went on to make dark,
brooding music that reflected the isolation they felt as the

(00:36):
only punks living in their small English town. As the
Cures sound developed in the eighties, they released a string
of three albums that Loll now defines as the band's
quote unquote goth period. Today, we'll hear Loll talk in
detail about the making of those records. He'll also discuss
the book he just released last month called goth a History,

(00:57):
which explores the architects of the post punk genre bands
like Susie, The Banshees, Joy Division, and Bauhaus. In addition
to the book, Lol is also releasing a new album
with his old friend Budget, the drummer from the Banchees.
The album's called Los Angeles and it features an all
star list of guests including You Two's The Edge and
LCD Sound Systems James Murphy. On today's episode, Lea Rose

(01:21):
talks to Little Tollhurst about growing up an outcast in
post World War two England and how he and Robert
Smith first bonded over a Hendrix record. Lowe also gives
a window into the creation of the Cures three goth albums.
That's seventeen seconds, Faith and Pornography. This is broken record

(01:42):
liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Ritchman. Here's
Lea Rose's interview with Lowell Tollhurst.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Let's start talking a little bit about the books. So
you've written two books. The first is a memoir called Cured,
the Tale of Two Imaginary Boys. The newest book goth
a History. And I found the writing. I've been listening
to the audio book of Cured, which you read, and

(02:10):
it's just excellent. And it's been my walking partner now.
I go on long walks and listen and the writing
is so simple and straightforward and feels very uncluttered, and
there's not a lot of ornamentation, and it struck me
that it's sort of similar to your style as a drummer.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah, well, yes, thank you. You're the first person that's
noticed that. And it's and that's why you're right. It's
like i'd like to be. I wouldn't say minimalistic, but
I but I don't have. I don't have a desire
to make things heavily, you know, ornamented. I suppose it
is the word, you know, and that's true in writing.

(02:50):
I mean, you know, if I think of the writers
that I really admire, they pay great attention to the sentence.
And that's that's how I do. I don't you know.
It's funny. I love notebooks, you know. I obsessively collect
notebooks because I think they're beautiful. And I write stuff

(03:11):
in it, and then you know, two weeks later, I
look at it and I can't one of my right well,
I can't read my own writing. So I type everything
straight away. But what I do do is as I
type it out, and I do it like music, I
just let it flow, get the idea out, and then
maybe two weeks later, I come back and I have
a look at it and go, oh, okay, take that out,

(03:33):
put this in, and I edit it. In drumming, you know,
I loved Jackie Libbitts from Can because he would say,
you have to play monotonous. And I understand that because
it's like the mantra, and that's what I wanted to get.
That's what I wanted to do with the drums. I
wanted to make you feel that you're part of the
whole thing, and that required it to be precise and minimalistic.

(03:56):
The same thing with the writing. So writers that I
really liked were like for this current book, goth it
was hard for me to find my initial voice because
I'm writing about the people. I'm not just writing my
own experiences. I mean, there's a lot of my own
stuff in there, but I'm writing about other people. I
wanted to project the other people's stories in a way

(04:20):
that wasn't just purely journalistic. I didn't want to do
that because I'm not a journalist, And the way I
personalized it was I'd been reading a lot of California
writers Joan Didion from the sixties and seventies, and I
love the way that all of her sentences are crafted
very precisely, you know. So I thought, Okay, there's my template,

(04:42):
you know. So that's very cool. But I'm glad that
you actually you're the first person I know that said
that to me.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
So yeah, I've really been enjoying it, and I highly
recommend the audio book. A lot of times with audiobooks,
you get sort of like a narrator who has no
connection to the story, and they can put on voices
when they're reading dialogue and it can be very distracting.
So I really enjoyed hearing your voice because your story.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah, it's funny because at the beginning when I did Cured,
and I actually recorded both Curd and the current book
Goth in the same studio because I loved the place
that I recorded in and also it's very near my house.
But I remember the recording engineer at the end of
one day said to me, Oh, I said that, you know,

(05:31):
normally I'm not really involved with what's going on, you know,
just like listening for you know, pops and clicks and stuff.
He said. But he said, is there lights at the
end of the tunnel with this? I said, yes, don't worry.
The next couple of days you'll hear that, you know. Okay,
it was funny.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, that's awesome. Okay. So I wanted to start off
by talking about the Cures Goth period as you outline
it in the book goth A History. So the Cures
Goth period, as you lay it out, consists of three
consecutive albums. The first is seventeen Seconds, released in nineteen eight,

(06:09):
Faith released in nineteen eighty one, and Pornography in nineteen
eighty two. And these are all albums that you said
you were deeply involved with making. Right, So let's start
with seventeen Seconds. It's a cure second album. Do you
remember any of the conversations within the band that led
up to developing the sound for that album, because it

(06:32):
was quite different than the sound from the first album.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
Well, I don't want to make up a story, because
I don't. I don't think, you know, It's like when
you when you write conversations in a book. A lot
of the time, you know, I challenge anybody in the
world to remember conversations for Betam, even from like yesterday.
You can't. It's impossible. You know. Most of the time
I would know, okay, I know how these people speak

(06:57):
about things. I know what we talked about roughly. So
I'm going to you know, I'm going to construct a
conversation from that which will be in their voice and
will be correct. I think with seventeen Seconds, we had
our first album was really a live set that we
had played for you know, a couple of years, and

(07:17):
so that seemed the most obvious thing we go and
record that we can do it quickly, we know what
we're playing, and it happened. But for the second album,
we finally realized that we had you know, we weren't
just going to record one album and that was it.
We had a chance to another record. You know, most
people will tell you in bands that they sort of

(07:38):
put everything into the first album and then suddenly think
what are we going to do next? Because we you know,
and usually it's like, you know, you have your whole
life to make your first album, like they say, and
six to do your second album. And we were kind
of not really in that position, but we thought, okay,
we better do what we really want to get out

(07:59):
now what we were feeling at that time, because you know,
maybe number two is it and that's all, well, we'll
have the chance to do you know. We felt lucky
with the first one and people liked it enough to say, well,
let's start thinking about the second one. And that was
really a great idea that Robert had because he said
to you know, our manager Chris Parry would come in

(08:21):
the studio for the first album. And for the first album,
you know, we were fairly young, we didn't really know
what we were doing. We would look at things and
you know, sort of let them get on with it.
Him and Mike Hedge as the engineer. So for the
second album we said, well, you know what, we've seen
enough of what goes on and how to do it.
We'd like to do it ourselves. And Robert was very
insistent about that, we'd like to do it ourselves. And

(08:42):
you know, it's a credit to Parry that he went, yeah, okay,
that's fine. You know, his offices were in the same
complex as the studio, so you know, once a week
he would come down and just have a little listen,
you know, so he left us to our own devices,
and as I say in goth you know, to me
it was a very creative time because we were allowed

(09:05):
to do it ourselves. You know, we were given the
key to the kingdom and like we can go in
and do it. So that leaves you to be a
lot more experimental. In fact, I was. I was telling
somebody the other week that a lot of bands, when
they start making you know, the second, third, fourth albums,
they get this idea in their head that they have

(09:26):
they will have separate roles and they have you know,
I do this, you do that, and you know, that's
how we make it work because.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Sort of like the roles in a household or in
a marriage or yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
It's any kind of partnership, because you know, and not unreasonably,
the theory goes, well, if it worked once, this is
this is a formula, this is how we do it.
And I think that's kind of misguided for two reasons.
Because one, music's really modern. Music is really the only
sort of art form where people are required to reproduce

(10:00):
what they did before in the same way but slightly different.
You know, they're like, you know, it's like a painter.
You wouldn't say to a painter, well, paint me that
portraits again, but from this different angle, that's what I
want to see. You know, you let them do whatever
they want to do. So for seventeen seconds. There was
one session where we said, hey, let's just swap instruments.

(10:21):
So you know, I played guitar and Robert played drums,
and we recorded a couple of things. Most of them
were terrible, so we decided that we go back to
what we will do, but we kept some little snippets
of it, and they're actually on the album in a way,
you know, you don't really know where they are, but
they're there. So that's also freeing in your mind. You

(10:41):
don't have this thought process that, oh, you know, I
have to just do this. You can put input into
different areas and that's you know, if you trust each other,
that's a good good way to do it, because then
you've not just got, you know, one mind on one thing,
You've got everybody's mind on everything, and that works, you know.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
And then Garthie wrote that over the years, there have
been a lot of assumptions that have been made about
The Cure's creative process, and I took that to mean
that people just assumed that a lot of the songwriting
came from Robert. But now you're saying that, inspired in
part by your sobriety, that that wasn't always the case.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
No, I mean, you know, as things got further on
in the Cure, you know, and to the point where
I wasn't well enough to contribute like I was used to,
you know, at the beginning, especially for those first, the second, third,
and fourth album, they were much more democratic in their approach.
And it's funny. I was talking to Paul Thompson a

(11:46):
little while back, and I said, Oh, it tells you
how far it was back because I just finished could
and I said, he said, well, you know, I've always
known you were a writer. You were a writer when
we were fifteen or sixteen. And so I thought about
it and I thought, well, yeah, you know a lot
of the times, well Rober's going to sing the words, right,
so you know, he has the final say on what

(12:06):
he's going to sing, because you can't sing stuff that
you don't believe. But there was a lot more collaboration
and just you know, general molding of things back then,
and that you know, I would put some words in,
Simon put some words in now and again it's really
guarantees to make things stronger now as things progress and

(12:28):
people start, you know, it also happens, you know, for
people that manage bands and stuff. It's a lot easier
if you don't have to deal with everybody in the band.
You just have to deal with one person. So you know,
things things become that way, and you know, all credit
to Robert is a great songwriter, and he's got a
lot of good ideas. Personally, I think for the Cure,

(12:49):
the best version of the three piece band was for
those those albums, I mean, the first one was a
four piece, but it's like the most pure and condensed
of that band, and that was much more collaborative, you know.
So you know that's the thing. It's like, I don't
want to turn around and oh no, he never wrote anything,

(13:11):
because that's not true. He's obviously the songwriter, but that
doesn't mean that anybody else didn't do it. I mean,
and it went on. We tried different formats of that.
You know, when we did kiss Me, we had so
many songs because we'd all by this time. We didn't
do stuff together. We did it separately, you know, so
we will have little studios at home and go, okay,

(13:33):
six months and then we'll come back together and we'll
see what we've got. And that's the reason that you know,
Kissed Me was like a double album. I mean, it
could have been a triple album. We had one hundred
bits of songs to start with, and then we whittled
that down to like thirty five and then finally to
seventeen or nineteen something like that. You know, So everybody

(13:56):
had some creativity, you know, and that was what was
pretty good about the curt because when you put that
all together, it's unstoppable, you know.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, I was curious about the song play for today. Yeah,
so that's the second song on seventeen seconds, and it's
a pretty substantial mood shift from the intro. Do you
remember how that song came together?

Speaker 3 (14:18):
And I seem to remember that we had a sort
of rough version of that when Michael Dempsey was around.
But anyway, but I know for the lyric, it was
the first time that I'd felt like I could write
a lyric that was accessible to my feelings, you know,
because the previous things like Three Emery Boys and Fire

(14:41):
in Cairo and Another Day, they were they were far
more impressionistic, you know, in the way that I presented things.
So that's it. That's why there's a difference, because it's
much more to the point and less flowery, I suppose
is the world And.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
That's a breakthrough I imagine as a writer.

Speaker 3 (15:03):
Well, yeah, I mean I don't think that at however
old I was then twenty that I even thought about that.
I didn't. I just sort of instinctively felt, oh, well,
this this is a better kind of thing, This is
a better this is more what I want to say.
It's just the only way I knew how to deal
with it, you know, write it down so Robert liked it,

(15:28):
and so off if it went you know.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
So is that like you, you wrote the entire lyrics,
gave it to him and then he interpreted it.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
As gave him sort of like the basis for it all,
and probably chopped and changed a few things around, because
you know, people forget, you know, like songs are not
it's not poetry writing and it's not pros it's this
weird hybrid in between lyrics and lyrics A lot of

(15:57):
the time work better if they're on a matter pig
and some lyrics work better sometimes if they're not quite
grammatically correct or or you know, certain words, certain words
you just can't sing or you could try. But you know,
so that decision was always left, you know, obviously to
the singer. So that's how that worked.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
Really, I imagine you must find it interesting to see
what songs resonate with a really wide audience after you
release album. And do you have these theories why a
forest caught on the way it did.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, it's like audiences don't buy and large. I mean,
obviously there are exceptions to the rule. Audiences are not
looking at you thinking or listening to you thinking, oh,
that was good the way they played that, or that
was good, the way that's put together. That it's much

(16:52):
more visceral than that, you know. They it's like it's
like it's like drums, right, Most people other than drummers
don't really notice what's going on with the drummer. But
if something's wrong, if something goes bad, they might not
even know what it is. But oh no, something's not right,
something's off. It doesn't feel right, and they don't know

(17:14):
what it is. So the point where it works for
an audience is when they understand completely that it's you
and your expression. Right. It's not to do with how
well you play or how bad you play. No, it's
it's a terribly overused word lately, but it's authenticity, you know,

(17:39):
and that's what they feel.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
Do you remember why you decided to bring the drums
in when you did? In a forest?

Speaker 3 (17:46):
You know, we'd we had liked to a lot of
like the early sort of crowd rock bands, you know,
Can and NOI, And like what I always liked about
them was was things feel like they're going forward with
that motoric beat, but they also seem to stay in
the same place as well. You know, it's like it's
static but it's but it's moving, you know, and act

(18:09):
seemed like the thing that we really wanted to express
with the drums. So Mike Hedges was instrumental in getting
that sound. You know. He used a lot of different
techniques which we'd never seen before, and I don't think
a lot of people used him at the time even so,
and he was young like us as well, you know,
so we had open minds about what you do. You know,

(18:29):
he wasn't stuck with like, oh no, this is how
you recall drums, you can't do anything anything else. We
we were open to doing it a different way. I
think also, like somebody said to me the other night,
it's you know, the lyric. I thought the title, Robert
did the lyric, but the actual lyric, if you think
about it, is the sort of encapsulation of everything goth

(18:50):
and romantic. If you think about it, it's like there's
this sense of mystery, there's this sense of you know,
loss at the same time, and it's all there in
one very succinct lyric. So I think that's what we
respond to. You know.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, you described your drumming style on album. Is you
play monotonous half Man, half Machine?

Speaker 3 (19:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's Jackie Levi from Can that's his quote.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Yeah, okay, yeah, I thought that it was a drum
machine to Yeah, that seems sort of like it would
be hard to keep up, especially playing live.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yes, very hard, But you know the thing is, it's
it's like practicing. People think sometimes they watch drummers who
are very flammby and they think, oh, that must be
very hard, and sometimes it is, but most of the
time that's a bit like a sort of a sideshow trick.
You know. It's like I once sort of thing with
Ginger Baker and he said, you know, people think I'm

(19:53):
playing things really fast, but what I'm doing is I'm
playing lots of quite simple things but on different limbs,
slightly shifted from each other, and it gives the impression
of going really fast. And you know, I know that's
very difficult to do because you you've got to think
about everything all at the same time. But in terms

(20:14):
of physicality, you know, it sounds faster than your body
is actually kind of doing. It's hard to explain, but
it kind of it sounds like that in drumming. I
always tell people. If you're doing it right, you could
play for hours and you'll just feel elevated. You know,
you can walk off stage three or four hours and

(20:35):
you'll feel fine. If you're doing it wrong, it's like
running the worst marathon. If you're like and you know
at the end you're like, you can't sit up. It's
really like dancing. You know, you just have to remember, okay,
well that wasn't right, but it has to move to
here now that has been there, and as long as
you can get in that, yeah, you'll be fine. You know.

(20:58):
But that's the trick. The trick is to learn how
to do that. It's like, you know, I watched guitarists
a lot, and I think to myself, how do they
know just instinctively their fingers are going, They're not looking,
and it's but it's just that, you know, you have to.
It's like Malcolm Gladwell in his book out Outlet as
he said, you know, some people think it's a bit dismissive,

(21:20):
but I don't think it is said, like, you know,
the difference between being good and being great is like
ten thousand hours of practice. He's got a point, you know,
because if I think about it, at the beginning when
we started to kill. We spent the first three years
at Robert's house just playing like three times a week.
It was more of a social thing. We just meet
their you know, play, go down the park, come back,
play a bit more. But that's where we got a

(21:42):
ten thousand hours.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
You know, before we move on from seventeen seconds. Is
there any other stories you want to share anything from
that period overall? That's important to know.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
I don't know. I think I think more than anything,
like saying in goth it was for me, but I think,
you know, I think I can say it for everybody else.
It was it was a discovery of our own ethos. Really,
you know, it was a discovery of who we really
were and that we could be who we really were
and do something with it, you know, whereas before we

(22:15):
felt a bit more constrained. That's really why when I
talked about it, when Robert, you know, it's a bit
dismissive of the first album, it's because you know, it
wasn't wholly our involvement. It was like, yes, it was us,
but it was us put through this filter of you know,
a different different things, mainly through the manager. So yeah,

(22:37):
and he had just signed like the Jam, you know,
to PolyGram, so he was like that was in his mind,
I'm going to do another version of this three piece
band and it's going to be a pop band. And
yeah it's kind of different. But you know, I think
the other good thing is it was a time where
there was you know, I don't discount the fact of

(22:59):
being in the right place at the right time either.
You know, there there was much more of an openness
to to letting things it evolved, rather than like, Okay,
we've got to do that this year and then work
then we have to try something completely different. You know,
there was there was more time to do things. I
feel we.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
Have to pause for a quick break and then we'll
come back with more from Lea Rose than Lowl Tallhurst.
We're back with more from Lea Rose and low Tollhurst.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Speaking of evolution, when you were going into Faith the
next album, Yeah, what was the thought on how the
sound would build or change?

Speaker 3 (23:42):
I think for Faith, we wanted it to be you know,
at first, it just we wanted it to sound a
bit more well like. It ended up sounding a bit
a bit more not dramatic, but a bit more glacial.
I suppose really, And it didn't really do that at first.
You know, we'd have some sessions and it was like,

(24:03):
you know, we've been on the road a lot. And
that was the problem for a lot of bands, you know,
like you have a successful album and then you have
a successful second album. Then you're on the road ever
and ever, and then you're committed to do another album, like, okay,
we're better do another album. Now, well, how are we
going to you know, where are we going to find
the time to do it? I don't know. People say, oh,
they write on the road. I never found the time

(24:26):
to write on the road.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
You know, you're probably exhausted.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
Well, you know, road time is a whole different world, right,
you know, like people would say to me, oh, I'll
call you next Wednesday, and I'd say, yeah, I'm going
to be on the road then. So it may happen
or it may not. You can't really organize that that
kind of thing. So, if you know, for Faith, Faith
started off being a bit rushed, and then some things happened.

(24:51):
You know, my mother got very sick and it was
she was going to pass away. Robert's grandmother as well,
and so that focused on our mind a bit more on
what ended up to be the main sort of topic
about it, you know, and you have to think that
me and Robert and my I don't see but you know,
by that time he wasn't there. Me and Robert grew

(25:12):
up Catholic, you know, which is kind of a different
proposition in England because you have to remember that Henry
D eighth dissolved all the churches because you know, the
Pope wouldn't let him get divorced for his sixth wife
or whatever. So he decided, well, I'll come out, I'll
just form my own church, you know, which sounds kind
of familiar about things that are happening, you know, in

(25:32):
the world now. But anyway, that's what he did. So consequently,
all the Catholic churches in England was sort of taken
over at that point, and it was it was sidelined,
really Catholicism in England. So one of the reasons that
the cure even started was, you know, I met Robert
at school, but I didn't go to school in the

(25:54):
town I grew up in because I had to go
to the next town because I wasn't a Catholic school
in the town I grew up in. So, you know,
I kind of knew Robert because he used to live
next door to my grandmother at first, but then him
and his dad and his family moved like one town on,
so I went to the same school, and that's how,
you know, we started everything. But you know, I think,

(26:17):
like I'm saying, God, not only did I feel an
outsider because of the things I was thinking about and
the way, you know, I think most teens feel a
little outside of stuff, it was exacerbated by the fact
that I was already an outside and to most English people,
you know, because I didn't go to Church of England
in the town. You know, So in summer vacation from school,

(26:42):
you know, when I was fourteen, I didn't know any
of the kids in my town because I didn't go
to school with them, and I wasn't old enough to drive,
and I wasn't old enough to really take you know,
the public transport myself and get around and stuff, and
it was too far to ride on my bicycle. So
I'm stuck in my town for the whole summer with nobody.

(27:02):
The library was my friend because in England back then,
you had you got one ticket for the and you
could take three things out on that ticket. Well, I
had somehow I for enabled three tickets, so I I
got nine items every week, you know, and I would
get like a bunch of books. And they also did
records records, so I got records and I listened to

(27:25):
every I didn't care what record it was. I just
take an X three records and ex three records. I
just listened to everything that summer while reading. So summer
vacation in English schools at the time was nearly three months.
You know. It was like, you know, that's really what
started me on the whole road to everything because I
had this intensive self imposed course because I had nothing

(27:48):
else to do.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
You know, I remember you talking about and cured that
early on you and Robert bonded over Jimmy Hendricks record
I both heard. So was he the first person that
you were really able to talk about music too?

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Absolutely? I mean, you know, the good thing like a
middle school, which I think in England was like from
eleven till thirteen, right, so it was a little experimental
instead of instead of keeping like you know, go to
one class and then the bell rings and you go
to the next class, they had to thing. Okay, well,
you know certain guys, certain pupils. If you were at

(28:22):
the top end of the class or whatever, you could
go and do your own project in the library, which
would be you know, sort of compilation of history, geography, English,
and of course religion because it's a Catholic school so
draw all those things together. We did the project, so
me and Robert were in that and a few other people.

(28:45):
I think Michael Dempsey was in it as well, and
you know, we'd sit in the library and we'd do
our work, but we'd also talk about stuff. And he
was the first person I knew other than myself that
had heard that record. So so I'm like, oh, you
like Hendrix, right, So yeah, so we we sort of
bonded over that, you know, and then then I was like, yeah,

(29:06):
go back with some forward swapping records, back with some forwards,
and just ideas from that. So that's really how that's
how most bands start. I mean, I talked to a
friend of mine, James Murphy from LCD sound System, and
he said to me, when you start playing music, you'd
try to make songs like the people you like. You know,
like you like them. You're trying to make a song

(29:27):
like that. And the way you get it wrong, because
you'll always get it wrong because you don't have the
same technique or the same influences or even the same
understanding of how to play it. The way you get
it wrong is what becomes your sound. You know. That's
kind of how the Cure started. We would do songs
that were like in the beginning, we did these like

(29:48):
triptich songs, which were like ten minutes long, three different
sort of intervals of stuff, and they were like really
bad versions of stuff that we listened to. There was
some like psychedelic stuff in there, and then bands like
the Buzzcocks came along. There was some stuff that was
a bit more, a bit simpler and things, but there

(30:10):
was all kinds of things that we sort of threw
in and that's really what influenced us. And we would
write these songs. And then I think the change came
when we thought about doing something like Boys Don't Cry.
We're like, well, we can't do these minute epics anymore.
We're going to do like try and write a three
minute pop song, you know, And that's where it all
came from. But obviously the basis of that is informed

(30:33):
from the earlier stuff, and I think some of that
stuff made it onto. I think we did a compilation
Joined the Dots and something. I think some of that's
on there, like like in rough form, you know, and
they're quite embarrassing really listening to them. Now. Yeah, it's
sort of like I think Winter, I think that's on there.
That we did a whole seasons sections as well. You know,

(30:54):
here's an interesting story. At one point. You know, it's
a small town on the outskirts of the big.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
City, Crawley.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
Yeah, so you know, it's like being in Los Angeles
and living in the valley. There was only one other
band in town, which was fronted by Neil Gaiman, the writer, right,
and I remember, you know, he would have costume changes,
like we're playing in the pub, but he would have
costume changes and things. It was very exotic for the time.
I read something recently where he said, you know, I

(31:24):
decided to become a writer instead because you know, the
only other band in our town was The Cure, you know,
so we just stopped, you know. But he obviously went
on to do something really really good, you know, but yeah, wonderful,
you know, and he found his own creative force. But
the whole thing about it was was that, you know,

(31:45):
you take that stuff and it becomes your own right,
your own sound, you know, and then you for us,
especially because we weren't in London, we were able to
sort of, you know, mature on our own without too
many outside things coming in. You know.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Yeah. I was watching when The Cure was inducted into
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Trent Reznor
said that you're your style is instantly recognizable and it's
very sonically distinct. And I just wonder, like you're saying that,
you try other things and then you settle on a
sound and it just sort of comes to be. But
it's really incredible if you think about it.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
Yeah, I have two ideas about that. You know, when
we were doing asked to do the Hall of Fame.
At first, you know, Robert wasn't too keen about it.
It was like, wow, you know, what is it? What
is it? You know, how does it work? Is it
some kind of you know, it doesn't seem like it
would be appropriate. And I said, no, you're wrong. I said,

(32:45):
because I've lived here by that time, i'd lived here
a culture of a century. And I said, you know
all the you know, the goth kids that lived in
a little town in the middle of nowhere. I said,
they would love it for us to be on there,
I said, because it would be vacation for them. You know.
They would go, Okay, look see I was, I was,
I was right about them. They did something good and

(33:07):
eventually I sort of won him over and we did
it and it worked. But the best thing for me was,
you know, they said, well, who would you like to
induct you? And we were thinking about what do ask Trent,
because you know, he comes from that line in the
way and understand it, and so he said yeah. And
when he got up there, he said. The first thing
he said was, you know, I grew up in small

(33:28):
town USA, you know, Mercer, Pennsylvania, looking out over cornfields,
you know, and this music coming through college radio was
the way I escaped, you know. And I looked to Robert,
I was like, yet, see, look that's what I'm talking about,
you know. And so that's why when I got up
on stage, gave a big hug, you know, because it's like,

(33:49):
that's that's the truth. You know. Even today, you know,
I spent forty years going around America. I can walk
into any small town in the States and I can
spot the five or six kids who are going to
be goth straight away, you know, like if I walk
into the cafe or something, I go, yeah, then what.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Do you see? What do you what do you see
in you say, it's.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
A way of being, And you know they're usually reading
a book or something, so they're not looking at their
bones all the time. You know, I can see them.
They don't have to, you know, they don't look goth.
And that's why it pains to explain that in the book.
Goth's not just you know, the way you look and
the way your hair is and stuff. And it always
amuses me as well if I'm passing through those places

(34:33):
something and I do see some real goths, you know
that look have got like now they've got the whole,
you know, kids and kaboodle, as they say, they put everything,
and they've got the uniform. And if I walk past
them and they don't recognize me, that always gives me
a little chuckle, you know, because you don't know, but
you know, here's where it came from. And so, you know,

(34:56):
which is a nice thing for me. But the thing
for the cures sound like a few years ago, I
was looking at like when Google Earth came out and
you could go and walk around down the streets. I'm
sure I did what a lot of people did. I
went and walked around where I grew up, you know,
and that amazed me as well. Yeah, I called her
up and said or wrote to him or something. I said,

(35:16):
you know, it is no surprise to me at all
now on forty years later, looking at this stuff. The
reason we sounded the way we did because it's all
there in the in the dark, dank countryside, in the
streets of the town we grew up, and it's.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, you described the sleek, gray skies, and I was
going to ask you what environmental factors, How does that
seep into the music or what influence does that have
on a sound, on a band sound.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
But that always makes things very soft focus. I had
on my recent trip to London for goth I got
off the plane and they had a card to pick
me up, take me into town, which is about an
hour's drive, and we're driving through the streets and it's
like it's really gray. It's about five in the afternoon,

(36:09):
really gray, and it starts to rain, and it's that
sort of London rain that goes sideways and stuff, you know,
and I was like, oh, okay, yeah, this is where
it comes from.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
In both of the books, you talked about how you
and Robert's home lives were so very different, and he
came up in a happy, well to do home with
very supportive parents who let the band practice early on,
and your house was completely different. It was more disjointed,
it was glum, Your dad was emotionally vacant. And you

(36:45):
said that a lot of Robert's writing you thought was
a combination of everyone in the band's, the early band's experiences.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
I think at that point in time, because we weren't cosmopolitan,
we hadn't been around the world, we hadn't seen different places,
you know, things become very focused. I always think it's
like looking through the other end of the telescope, you know,
instead of look like what everything gets out there, you
become micro focused on what's in front of you, which

(37:15):
is good and bad. Obviously, you know, if if that's
your whole life, that becomes kind of sad, you know,
because you don't you don't have any experience outside of it,
you know. But I think, you know, initially we wanted
to consider all kinds of things but when you're younger,
you don't really know what that is until things happened

(37:36):
to you like that. You know, so that's great. Until
something like that had happened to us, it is such
an abstract concept, you know, like, oh, well, what's it
going to be like if this person is never there again?
You know?

Speaker 2 (37:48):
They so during faith you had actually experienced death, when
before it was more of a romantic idea.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yeah. Yeah, and it's completely different. And I mean, you know,
as you get older, obviously more of that stuff happens
to you, and so it becomes I think that's why.
Also a lot of people have met recently who are
probably my age and that and still would label themselves,
you know, goth or whatever. They would say to me

(38:16):
that for them it was a comfort to know that
they understand, you know, more about those things, because a
lot of people's first reaction to having somebody, you know,
that they know close to them who's has somebody that's
passed away is in a sort of embarrassment. They don't
want to talk about it, you know, if they don't

(38:39):
know them that well, they're like, oh well, I'll just
mention this once and then let's carry on, you know.
With life, which I suppose is kind of natural, you know,
because hey, you know, I died tomorrow. The world goes on,
you know, and it's always go on, but you kind
of don't know what to say. And I think we
were just looking for ways to say things a lot

(39:01):
of the time, and now much more relevant and poignant.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
I think you also said that a lot of songs
people it's sort of a misinterpretation that the Cure's music
can be destructive or depressing. Yeah, but that's a false notion,
and a lot of times, you know, people find solace
in the songs and they find them comforting. And you wrote,
we're not the problem or the cure, right, right.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
And I thought, you know, that's that's the obvious thing
to say, but you know, which you know is a
little hokey, but it's kind of fun to say. Yeah.
That would always upset me, well, not upset me, but
I was irritated by the fact people would go, you know,
if your music's dark and depressing, then it's going to
make people dark and depressed, and then they go, you know,

(39:50):
maybe something bad will happen. You should write something that's
uplifting and happy and jolly and kind of like, no,
that's you've missed the point entirely. People that listen to us,
a lot of them would come to say to me,
you know, hey, this happened. It was bad, and I
had a friend with your music, you know, I had

(40:11):
somebody I felt there was understanding, so it made it less.
It was like, you know, problem shared is a problem hard.
So that was really the basis for it. And to
me especially, I don't I can't speak for anybody else,
but for me especially, that was that was my greatest
reward in lots of ways that it would help somebody,

(40:32):
you know, because I know how I felt doing those things,
and it was good to be able to put that
into music so that people could associate it and use it.
Somebody told me recently, you know, the job of a
musician is discovery, but it's also I think I could
go further that it's not just discovery. It to bring

(40:53):
back whatever you find for people. Because I don't know
about you, but that's why I listened to music and
like certain things. That's why I read certain things because
I get I get a confirmation of my own. Yeah,
a language really is an imperfect construct, you know, Like

(41:13):
we're talking now, and I hope that what I construct
in front of you gives you the ideas of what
I'm thinking about and vice versa. But we're never quite sure,
you know. And sometimes it amazes me that people, like
I was saying with the Cures lyrics, you know, people
get completely the opposite feeling. You know. Sometimes I will

(41:36):
go into you know, they have those sites as websites online,
you know, like Genius Lyrics or something, and I read
people's interpretations of our lyrics and some are good, some
some are off, and some are kind of frightening. But
but you know, everybody has somewhere, you know.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
We have to take another quick break and then we'll
be back with more from Leo Rose's interview with Lowell Tollhurst.
We're back with the rest of Leah's conversation with Lowel Tollhurst.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
With Pornography, which is the fourth album. Yeah, so on
this one, you said the band really started to fully
embrace bleaker themes in the songs. Yea, What was going
on in the band interpersonally when that album was recorded.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
You know, my good friend Julia and Reagan from All
About Eve said it very well. You know, we were
talking about it and she said. You know, it's it's
really unnatural idea of a band, you know, because you
spend like, you put young people together for a lot
of time, like twenty four to seven for months on end,

(42:53):
you know, traveling around all the time, working together, and
then spending all their off time together because you're you know,
you're halfway across the world and you've got no other choice,
and you know, you mix alcohol and any other things
in with that, and it's a recipe for disaster, you know.
And yeah, the cure were no different. You know, we

(43:14):
had spent a lot of time together. By the time
we got to Pornography, you know that the usual suspects
were there floating around. And to me, I said this
to budget the other week. The thing that's amazing to
me is that as people making that record, I don't

(43:35):
think we were very sane. I think there was a
lot of insanity. You know if I look back at
the events, and it's interesting. You know, we recorded mostly
at night. Then by that time, you know, we'd been
on this sort of nocturnal clock. Yeah that suits Robert
Roberts always been a nocturnal kind of person. You know.

(43:57):
We would finish a lot of sessions at Rack Studios,
which had several studios and different people recording in there,
and we would finish sessions at you know, the early
hours and them all or a bit later. And some days,
you know, we'd be leaving the studio as the day
staff and people were coming in.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
You know that's a weird feeling.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
Oh yes, oh yeah, very weird. You know, like we
weren't staying far away so we didn't have to get
too much in the sunlight and watch everybody around with freshness.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
It really makes you feel like an outsider when you're
not part of that early morning hustle and bustle people
are going to work.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
Yeah, we just we just wanted to get get home
and go to bed. And you know, I remember meet
meeting Kim Wild. She was recording in the other studio
and she came in one morning, you know, and I
stopped her to talk to her. She must have thought,
you know, it's like, how can I get away from
this mad person, you know, as as possible. And actually,

(44:58):
if I meet her again ever, I'm going to tell
her that I'm going to say I'm sorry. You know,
it was, it was It must have been very scary,
you know, because I'm sure I was talking nonsense and
you know, completely insane. But what surprises me for for
us is like as far as we were like that,

(45:19):
the music became ultra precise and played like with a
with an intensity and a precision that we had never
got before, you know, And that surprises me because like
also I tell people, you know, if you're in a
three piece band, you've got nowhere to hide, you know,
because if one of you's a mistake, everybody notices that.

(45:42):
You've got to be very sharp. And that was probably
the sharpest as musicians we ever were. We were we
were very very good at it, but you know, the
rest of the stuff that went along with it was
too intense. And so then we went on the tour.
Something was going to break, you know, and I did.
In Strasburg, you know, there was we went out to

(46:05):
some club and Robert and Simon had this big fight
and they both got on a plane that night and
went home. I woke up and there's just me and
the and the opening band in the in the hotel,
and I knew in my heart of hearts at that
point that was going to stop for a while. Then,
in fact, I thought it was probably going to be

(46:26):
the end of everything. And Robert came back and Simon
came back, and we finished the sort of finished our
obligations and went home, and I thought, well that's that,
you know, And it wasn't. But it was a time
for a very big change, you know. Yeah, you know,
Simon left and it became just me and Robert for
a while, and we made rather different music, very.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Very different music. Yeah, that's right. There was another period.
I was watching a Cure documentary and I believe it
was your first major tour when you were opening up
for Susie and the Bandshees, and then Robert eventually joined
the band as a guitarist. And was that another point
where it's seemed like maybe the band would break up?

Speaker 3 (47:11):
You know? I always knew, because I think I said
in Kurd, I always knew in my heart of hearts,
that Robert wasn't going to stay with the Banshees forever
because just being you know, the side guy, the guitarist
was never going to be enough for him. You know,
he had his own ideas, his own stuff he wanted
to do. But I also think that at that point,

(47:33):
you know, him and Michael weren't getting on so well.
So it was a nice It was a relief for
him to go there and spend some time with them,
do that in a different way, and I was open
to that. I didn't have that in my head that said,
oh no, you have to stay. I didn't feel that
it would hurt things. I thought it would add to stuff.

(47:53):
I thought, well, you know, if you'll go there, he'll
find out a different way of doing things and he
could bring that back to us. So that was what
I always saw, well, he'll bring that back to us,
which he did. But I think, you know, in retrospect,
there's always that little bit of stuff like, well, you
know this is this is what we're doing. You know
that isn't air band, so you know you have to
consider that. But it worked out.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Are there any tracks on pornography that really stand out
to you or have an especially interesting story about how
the song was created?

Speaker 3 (48:25):
Well, I mean, you know, the first song was for
one hundred Years was the first time that we did
actually use, you know, a drum machine, because there's a
drum machine on there, and I played keyboards and that
was the first time I played keyboards on a Cure record.
So that was something different to start off with, you know,
and we had this tiny little boss drum machine, and

(48:48):
we had to figure out how to sort of separate
things because you can't really separate the sounds from it,
so we put things for different amps and so that,
you know. But for live we used to take a
real to real tape recorder with the drum machine on
for some reason. But it worked, so I like that.

(49:09):
And then Cold is probably my favorite start to any
cure song because you know, I had set the kit
up in this huge room so that gives it this
big sound. And I had bought this big Chinese symbols
from a store in London, ray Man's, which is like
all sort of exotic instruments. And you have to remember

(49:31):
the symbols when they were first made, like you know,
four hundred years ago, and were instruments of war. They
were what they used to march across the top of
the hills and frighten the hell out of their enemies, right. So,
but some of the original ones are so loud, you know,
I'm sure it's part of my hearing loss, you know,
because every time I've hit this thing and I have
to turn my head sideways. So I love the beginning

(49:54):
of Cold for that reason, and also at the end
the last the title track Pornography. We we did some
interesting manipulations. I mean, it was a fun album to
do in that respect, I say fun, you know, the
sessions were a little strange, but it was fun. Also.
You know, Phil Thornley, who produced it with us, was

(50:17):
younger than us. I think it was like twenty one,
which blows my mind. I talked to him occasionally now
and I say, you know, do you realize how young
we were when you did that record? You know, I
don't know how, you know, how that happened? You know,
it was. It was very, very strange. So, you know,
it's like a lot of things, a lot of things
in the qure's existence are happy accidents.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
You know, at what point during your time with a
Cure did you start to see the audiences grow?

Speaker 3 (50:45):
Well, they were sort of increasing as we got up
to Pornography. But with Pornography we went out on tour
and that was probably another thing that contributed to it
to it because we got put into a lot bigger
rooms to play, but the album wasn't out. Yeah, and
most of our set that we played for that too,

(51:06):
was the new album, so people, you know, And so
it was the first time that since we'd started that
audiences hadn't got exponentially bigger every year we played, you know,
and when you do it the first time, you don't

(51:27):
even understand how that works or it doesn't work. You
just accept it. It's not being nonchalant or egotistical. I
just sort of accepted, oh, well, you know, this is
what happens. Now there's bigger audience. Yeah. And then with
Pornography it started to be half full. I think that's weird.
Why is that happening? You know, And so it added

(51:48):
to thing. But then after that period where we'd finished
the sort of singles, you know, with love Cats and
the Walk and everything, it started to pick up again
and it started to get bigger again from there and
it's just sort of continued pretty much ever since, with
a little dip in the middle, I think for Rip Hoop,
which was like, you know, the end of everything for

(52:11):
a lot of people. But then you know, yeah, he
came around again, so we're fine.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Do you ever think like if you had a different
upbringing that you would have ended up in a different band,
like being Duran Duran or something.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
You know that's impossible. How do we know? You know,
I have no looking glass or I can't tell you.
I mean, yeah, I mean I nearly ended up in
Adam and the Ants. But you know because Adam. I
met Adam one night in London and he was just
starting a new version of the band, you know, with
the two drummers and Terry Lee, and so I'm like,

(52:50):
he said, you know, I'm starting this new band, do
you you know, new version of the Ants. Do you
want to come along and try out? And I'm like, yeah,
it's okay. I got this band, the Cure, so I'm
going to carry on, you know, which I'm glad I did.
But you know, so I could have ended up with
the makeup and the hair.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Right right, right right? Yeah, speaking of makeup and the
funny hair, I heard that Robert's image changed drastically, started
teasing his hair, putting on lipstick after he joined the
Banshees and saw Suzie Sue. Is that accurate?

Speaker 3 (53:24):
You know, it's easy to connect the dots when you
look from afar, But I don't remember happening like that
because there were a lot of people, you know, like
we would go out, we'd always go out on the
Thursday night to the Canada Palace in London, and you know,
people always said the Batcave, but I remember the Palace
has been pretty much sort of the center of the
universe at that time, and there was lots of different

(53:46):
people there.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
With that look.

Speaker 3 (53:48):
Yeah, with that look. You know, obviously we all adapt
everything you see around, you know, because this was our people.
So this is like, okay, we want to show we're
parts of this. And so it went from there. Obviously,
Sue was a very pivotable person in that scene. I
think six and one and half a dozen of the
other you know, I never never really not exactly where

(54:10):
it came from, you know.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
So it wasn't like one day it was, you know,
one way, and then the next day it's like a
whole new Well.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
No, he went through several permutations, including I said the
word permutation. He had a poem at one point, sort
of funny poem that was jagged. You know, it looks okay,
but then you know, we changed, we did something else.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
I'm so glad perms are gone.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
Yeah, me too.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
How did it feel when you eventually left the band?
How did it feel seeing this band go on without you?
A band that you created when you were so young,
and you were in for so long and had so
many formative experiences in How did it feel to see
it go on without you?

Speaker 3 (54:51):
Well, you know, I can't lie. It was painful in
lots of ways in the in the beginning. Over the years,
I've realized that there's two things. You know, the day
I die my obituary, I know what it's going to say.
You know, if I get one, it'll say, you know, like, yeah,
co founder, and that's what it's going to say. That's
going to be the headline. I can't escape that. So

(55:12):
rather than trying to escape it, I'll acknowledge it and
embrace it. So I'm very pleased with what we did.
I'm very happy about what we did, and I'm very
proud of what we did. You know, I still have
a relationship with most of the people in the band,
and there are people I've known most of my life,
you know, so you can't not have a relationship. You know,

(55:36):
it's like family, you know, at some point, Yeah, you've
got to circle back. In fact, that's thet way to
describe it. Family. I mean, a few weeks ago, the
Cure were here in Los Angeles and I went to
see everybody, and there's a couple of funny things. I
took my niece, who's just in her last year at university,

(55:58):
and you know, so she's like twenty one, and she'd
never seen them play live before. Well she has, but
she doesn't remember and because she's a little girl, and
so I took her there and we were sort of
all hanging out afterwards down in the dress room in
the Hollywood Bowl, and it was for me, it was
like being back in the pub in nineteen seventy seven,

(56:18):
you know, because it was kind of strange because, like
you know, I'm saying talking to Simon, we're talking about things,
talking to Robert. Robert's wife was there. You know, she's
very rarely on the road, so you know, I know
her very well. So we're talking. And for me it
was good as well, because they a lot of band members,
you know, have children, and some of them I know
and seen, and some of them I've never met, you know,

(56:40):
so I got a chance to meet them and stuff,
and it was very emotional, but it was also very
healing in a good way, you know, because I get
to realize, Okay, this is this is my family, and
it's never going to change really, you know, things go
up and down like most families, but it's always going
to be there, you know. And it was a very

(57:03):
bonding time and I think a lot of that's to
do with the fact that we're all getting older and
you know, yeah, there's not so many of us around anymore.
Even so it's like, you know, people in the band
have passed away, Andy passed away and stuff, so it's like, okay,
we could we still have a lot in common. In fact,
Roberts said that to me, he said, you know, we
have a lot to talk about backstage the Hollywood Bols.

(57:25):
Probably not the place too, but we do. We have
a lot to talk about. And so you know, I'm
sure things will carry on in some fashion or another,
and that's fine by me. And I'm very happy with
what I'm doing myself now.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
So yeah, I was going to say, it's a testament
to you and to your personality or outlook that you're
not just stewing in bitterness. You're moving forward. You've written
these incredible books, you're making music, you have this wonderful
relationship working relationship with Budgie, so you.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Know, and that really is the only way that you're
you're going to live through this life, you know. I
mean that's one of the reasons I got on a
plane and came to California because at the point where
I came to California, my life had fallen apart. You know,
my dad are gone, my first marriage was dissolving. You know,

(58:14):
I had a lot of money to the court for
a court sastress court case. So you know, I arrived here.
You know, I wasn't really a stranger in a strange land.
I kind of was, and I kind of wanted to
be that. But I knew California a bit from you know,
working here a lot, and I liked the place and
what was really good for me, and I tell people

(58:36):
this all the time, was you know a lot of
people think of California, you know, and this is true
in England. People think this as well, you know, like
you come here to be discovered or destroyed or both.
You know, both things can happen, you know, and sometimes
they do it. And that wasn't my experience. My experience
was I found love, I found acceptance, and I found

(58:57):
my tribe. You know, I found people that I've been
able to connect with and work with and do things
over the years, and it's been much more healing experience,
so I was ever expecting, you know, And so therefore
it's become home and I feel a great affection for
the place, and it's been great. And if I think

(59:20):
about it, it's been like over thirty years now, so
you know, it's like it's like I've lived two lives,
two complete lives, you know, and you know, it's beyond
my my, my sort of wildest expectations.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
It's incredible. Yeah, well, thank you so much, Thol for
talking today. I really appreciate it. I loved your books.
I highly recommend them to everybody listening, and best of
luck with the new album.

Speaker 3 (59:48):
Thank you, Thank you so much, and we'll talk again.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
Thanks to Lord Tallhurst for sharing his experience with the Cure.
He's written two excellent books that are out now, and
you can hear our favorite songs from his days with
the Cure and just solo work. I'm a playlist a
Broken Record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel
and you dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you
can find all of our new episodes. You can follow

(01:00:14):
us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced
with help from Lea Rose and Eric Sandler. Our show
is engineered by Echo Mountain. Broken Record is a production
of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others
from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin and Plus. Pushkin Plus
is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and adfree

(01:00:35):
listening for four to ninety nine a month. To look
for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions. And if you
like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review
us on your podcast app. A theme musics by Kenny Beats.
I'm justin Rischmand