The Cure Past, Present & Future w/ Author Simon Price [Episode 168]

Simon Price is the author of the brand-new book Curepedia: An A-Z of The Cure. This is the complete biography of Robert Smith and The Cure. It chronicles the band’s 40-plus year history with hundreds of entries in A to Z fashion. Acclaimed journalist Simon Price has crafted a first-of-its-kind history of this band so let’s get into the book and a great discussion of Cure past, present and future with Simon Price!

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Just this idea that being an adultdidn't have to mean obeying the conventional rules
of society, and that you couldbe anything and let your imagination run free.
That aspect of Roberts kind of personagot me before the music did,
in a lot of ways as muchas the music itself. That's what speaks
to successive generations of Cure fans,just his way of being in the world,

(00:22):
and that he symbolizes difference. We'retotally bombed in rock and roll.
I mean, I'll leave you.You're reading Little Hands as it's time to
rock and roll. I totally booked. Welcome to book down Rock, the
podcast for those about to read inrock online a book down rock dot com.

(00:46):
Find every episode there, along withlinks to listening platforms, exclusive videos,
blogs, and the latest rockbook releases. Simon Price is this episode's guest.
He's the author of the brand newbook Curpedia and a to Z of
the Cure. This is the completebiography of Robert Smith and the Cure.
It chronicles the band's forty plus yearhistory with hundreds of entries in a to

(01:07):
z fashion. So let's get intothe book and a great discussion of Cure
past present, and Future with SimonPrice. A playlist of The Cure can
be found on the show notes page. Simon, Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for having me In theforward you write quote, I've fallen in
love with many, many bands andartists in my life as a music fan,

(01:29):
but my love for The Cure,unlike some of them, has never
wavered. Now. I still rememberthe moment I became a fan of The
Cure. My college roommate had Disintegrationand it was on CD, and it
was like an out of body experience. I mean, I never heard anything
like it before, and I washooked ever since. For you, When
and how did you get hooked onthe Cure? You know, the first

(01:49):
time I heard them, I didn'treally get it. I mean I was
maybe too young. I was twelveyears old, and I remember listening to
the official UK Top forty countdown innineteen eighty on the school playing fields on
a portable radio cassette recorder, anda forest was in the charts, this
strange, kind of ominous, sinistershuffling thing, and I didn't really know

(02:12):
what it was about where it wascoming from, but it was kind of
lying in wait for me and themoment I really got it was a few
years later when I was about fifteenand they appeared on Top of the Pops,
which is, you know, themain was the main UK TV music
program, performing the Walk, andjust something about his persona, his way

(02:32):
of being, just the way helooked, the hair and well he actually
had dark glasses. I was goingto say the eye liner, but yeah,
a pair of ray bands welded tohis face at that point that that
track being a fantastic kind of darkelectro dance tune, which is kind of
not typical of what the Cura about. I think I'd sort of brought into

(02:53):
the idea of the cure before themusic got me. Because there's something I
mentioned in the book. There's ashort lived UK magazine called Flexi Pop which
used to have flexi discs on thefront cover, and it was quite a
sort of rogue publication. It wouldhave lots of kind of references to things
that maybe shouldn't be aimed at youngteenagers, and it was eventually closed down

(03:16):
for that reason. But they usedto run a feature every month where a
pop star would just write their diaryof a week in the life of what
they've been up to, and RobertSmith's was so gently odd that it really
grabbed me. He was doing thingslike planning a ballet with his partner Mary

(03:39):
in the garden at one in themorning, or dressing up as his own
mother to cook the dinner, orgoing for a walk in a thunderstorm in
the dark because he wanted to bescared, and things like that, and
just all these little details really fascinatedme. I tore the pages out of
the magazine, folded them up,put them in my school blazer, and

(04:01):
carried them around with me, andI used to read them to feel inspired.
Just this idea that being an adultdidn't have to mean obeying the conventional
rules of society, and that youcould be anything and let your imagination run
free. And that aspect of Robert'skind of persona got me before the music

(04:21):
did, to be honest, andI think that's kind of stayed with me.
And I think in a lot ofways, as much as the music
itself, that's what speaks to successivegenerations of Cure fans, just his way
of being in the world, andthat he symbolizes difference. The promo for
the book causes quarter first of itskind of history of the Cure chronicles of

(04:42):
the band's forty plus year history,organized in easy fashion. Talk about how
this book has laid out and howdid this idea come about. Yeah,
the idea wasn't mine. The publisherscame to me and said, why don't
we just do a big ater zof the Cure. And first of all,
I was slightly skeptical. I thought, is that a gimmick? Is
that just almost a novelty way oftackling their career. But the more I
thought about it, the more Ithought it kind of it freed me up.

(05:05):
It was liberating because I didn't haveto approach it from the point of
view doing a linear timeline. Therehave been numerous cure biographies before that have
done that, but this allowed meto cut across different eras and draw together
little snippets of things that were thematic. So, for example, all the

(05:26):
different times that the Cure have beeninfluenced by literature, I've drawn that together
into one entry, or their relationwith things like religion or sex, or
alcohol, drugs, even sort ofseemingly trivial things like hair, makeup,
shoes, football as in soccer,And some of these things turn out not

(05:47):
to be so trivial after all,seem to have sort of deep meaning to
people. As well as having essayson every single every album they ever made,
every member of the band. I'vealso got those things, those essays
that allowed me to kind of reallythink about the band and what they mean
across the whole breadth of their careerrather than just you know, moment by
moment. Well, you said ittook you down some rabbit holes. What

(06:11):
are some of the more interesting rabbitholes that you disappeared down? Oh?
Just things like you know, theywrote a song about an asteroid crashing into
Jupiter in the nineties, and Ihad to know, well, you know
what about that asteroid? What wasthe significance of that. They recorded a
video for the Caterpillar in the homeof the Duke of Northumberland, so well,
who's he? What's his deal?They named an instrumental track after an

(06:34):
obscure beach on the Shetland Islands northof Scotland, and I had to find
out, well, what's that placelike? And to some extent I found
myself thinking does this have to goin the book? Is that getting too
far fetched? But I also hadthis weird feeling that the further I got
out from the center of the coretopic, which is the cure and their

(06:57):
music, the more interesting it gotin a way, and it seemed to
unlock things, just because they aresuch a culturally rich band that almost they
hand you this box with a key, you open it and all this stuff
comes pouring out. They're one ofthose bands that are a kind of education.
They're an alternative education. It's notnecessarily the stuff you're going to learn
at school, but so much sortof poetry and cult films feed into it,

(07:20):
and other music of course, youknow his influences like Jimi Hendrix,
David Bowie, Sensational Alex Harvey Bandand stuff like that. It's all in
there, and the more you look, the more you see. That's why
the book is ridiculously long. It'stwo hundred and thirty thousand words. It's

(07:40):
half the length of the Bible,one third the length of the works of
Shakespeare, longer than James Joyce's Ulyssesand Game of Thrones. I found out
about the same length as Middle March, The fountain Head and Gravity's Rainbow.
So I'm not saying I'm not sayingsize is everything. Size isn't everything,
you know, but yeah, youknow it just just in case anybody thinks

(08:01):
this is a sort of superficial atsed skim through the q's career. It's
not. I've gone deep. I'vegone yeah. Yeah, it's called too
though is you can go to justif you have a song in mind,
or a topic in mind, orsomething anything that you're related, you can
flip to that page you don't haveYou don't necessarily have to go from page
one right until the very end.But it's got a nice little ribbon here

(08:22):
it does. Maybe that's the UKedition. I'm not sure if that's in
the American edition. But yeah,I didn't expect people to read it consequence
so sequentially from start to finish,I expect people to sort of leap around,
and topics which are referenced elsewhere inthe book are highlighted in bold,
so they almost act as kind ofhyperlinks to make people jump back and forth
between different sections of the book.That's that was the hope. Anyway.

(08:45):
Robert Smith is fascinating to me becausethere's mystery surrounding him. There's which I
love that. I don't know ifwe have these kind of rock stars anymore
where it seems like we know everythingabout these musicians nowadays. But there's a
little bit of a mystery there tohim. He's from Blackpooling and what I
didn't realize is that he has neverreturned. Actually, let's start with what

(09:05):
type of place is Blackpool? Andwhy does Rama say he never return Why
doesn't he want to go back?Blackpool is in US terms, something between
Coney Island and Las Vegas, Ithink, but a very sort of And
I don't want to criticize Blackpool becauseI come from a similar place myself called
Barry in Wales. But it's quitea sort of trashy seaside resorts. It's

(09:28):
considered sort of tacky but fun,and it's where people go for stag and
Hen parties or Bucks parties as Iguess you'd say, and that sort of
thing. And it's yeah, it'sa seaside resort in the north of England.
But because it's in the North ofEngland, it's quite often very cold.
You know, it's got a lovelysandy beach, but you wouldn't necessarily
want to spend too much time looksuriracing there. But yeah, his family

(09:50):
moved south to Crawley, which isa suburban commuter town really to the south
of London. When he was aboutfive years old, when he first went
to school, he was mocked forhaving a Northern accent, and in UK
terms, northern for northern reeds,southern all the kind of associations that come
with that. It's considered more workingclass, more blue collar than the South

(10:11):
and so on. So immediately frombeing a very small child, he felt
he didn't fit in where he was. I don't know why he's never gone
back that, he's never taken thecure there, they never played a gig
there. In Blackpool. He hassaid that he has these sort of Halcian
memories, these idyllic memories of hisearliest moments sitting on the beach in Blackpool,

(10:31):
And maybe that's too perfect to ruinby going back and seeing what it's
really like. But yeah, Ithink the kind of place that he did
actually eventually grow up, which isCrawley, is quite significant because it's quite
a dull, suburban place, andI think most developed nations in the world
have places like that. Just thatfeeling of boredom but also of kind of

(10:56):
alienation and not fitting in is somethingthat can resonate with people whether they're in
Mexico or Japan or the US,and I think that that's one reason why
they're such a universal band. Theydon't write about specifically British topics. Oh
yeah, and boy he started inthe eighties. He started a fashion trend

(11:16):
here in the States. In highschool you started to see a lot of
kids dressing like Robert. Yeah,Edward scissar hands was the whole look was
inspired by Robert, absolutely. Yeah, That's That's something I go into in
the book, is the references tothe cure in film, and yeah,
Edwards's Hands is the big one.But there's also a film with Sean Penn

(11:37):
called This Must Be the Place,in which Sean pen plays a sort of
retired rock star who turns Nazi warcriminal hunter. The character basically is Robert
Smith, you know. And thatthey're being films called Boys Don't Cry,
They've been films called Just Like Heavenand so on. So yeah, they've
had their influence in so many places, and I think it's because they mean

(11:58):
something. They still and for something. Even just the look of him,
just his classic look from the eightieswith the white face and the red lipstick
and the heavy eye liner in thebig backcombed, messy hair. It says
something. And he is an iconic. I know the word iconic is done
to death, but just his appearanceit makes a statement. It says I

(12:22):
don't fit in, and he's theresaying to other people in the world who
feel that, well, I'm therefor you. You mentioned afore us.
The book starts with this song,of course, starts the letter A.
So that is a forest, thelead single from the band's second album,
nineteen eighty seventeen Seconds. And yousay that in many ways this is the
definitive cure song. It's been performedlive over a thousand times, making it

(12:45):
the most played song in the repertoire. There's a certain something about this song.
Why do you feel it maybe thedefinitive cure song. It's probably the
first Cure single that had that senseof mystery and foreboding to it. And
it brings in all the kind ofcultural associations that we have with with forests,

(13:07):
you know. And I've gone intothis in the book, talking about
everything from brothers grim folk tales toShakespeare's Macbeth. And you've mentioned that the
sopranos at one point, and horrorthings like the Evil Dead and so on.
Forests just just the word unlocks somany associations, and a lot of
them are to do with fear andrunning towards your fears, as he does

(13:31):
in the song. So I think, I think, yeah, it's a
really really important song. And Idid cheat slightly by having it at the
start of the book because a lotof people say it should be under f
the Forest, but I decided formy purposes that the indefinite article counts because
I wanted to start with that song. So yeah, well played. Yeah,

(13:52):
the Cure sound, it's so unique, that extended atmospheric instrumental opening,
the hypnotic bass lines, the guitarchors that just ride gently over the beat,
not necessarily what we're hearing on thatfirst album Boys Don't Cry. How
does that cure sound develop? Wasit Robert's doing, because an old Lowell
Tallhurst probably plays a role in it. I don't know about. Was it

(14:13):
a collaborative, organic thing or wasthat Robert's vision. So the album that
you're referring to, Boys Don't Cry. In the UK, they had an
album called Three Imaginary Boys, andthat put together with some other tracks formed
their first American release, Boys Don'tCry, and in that era they were
still very much inspired by the tailend of punk, so they sounded like

(14:35):
the Buzzcocks quite a lot, andtheir songs were sort of quite terse abrupt,
three minute or even less than threeminute songs with sort of you know
that kind of I don't know snottyteenage spitefulness that people had in those days.
But they seem to have a rethinkthey they don't like that first album.
That's something I found out is thatalmost consistently throughout their career when they

(15:00):
asked about their first first album oralbums, they're quite disparaging about it.
They think it's kind of a falsestart. When it came to seventeen Seconds,
which was their second UK album thathas a forest on it, they
started thinking about influences like David Bowie'sBerlin period, particularly the album Low and

(15:22):
I think you can hear quite alot of that in there, and you
can hear the influence of the drummingon that Bowie album on Loal Tolhurst and
also what tends to be called ascroud rock bands like Can and Noilly,
German bands on the rhythms of iton Loal Tolhurst. So I think that's
when the cure really start, iswith a forest and with seventeen seconds,

(15:43):
and then onwards, you know,the next album Faith, which is very
morose and very downbeat but weirdly soothing, and then there's the album Pornography,
which is just completely hostile, nihilisticand I don't know if I'm to swear
on this podcast beleap me out,but they've just described it as the ultimate

(16:03):
fuck off record or fuck you record. You know. It's an album that
starts with the words it doesn't matterif we all die on the song one
hundred years, and has lines aboutsharing the world with slaughtered pigs and all.
Its really sort of grotesque imagery.So they've gone from sort of little,
sort of jangly pop songs like BoysDon't Cry to that in quite a

(16:25):
short space of time, and thatsort of set the tone. But maybe
they they'd taken that as far asthey could and then I mean they drove
themselves to breaking point. The bandessentially broke up after that album, and
their manager Chris Parry said to themlast roll of the Dice, why don't
you write some pop songs, properpop songs, so they did, and

(16:47):
they tried with Let's Go to Bed, which nearly made the UK Top forty,
and I believe it was quite abig sort of dance tune, particularly
on the West coast in the States. Then the Walk would the song that
grabbed me, and then love Cats, which was a top ten hit here,
and suddenly they became of interest topop magazines like Smash Hits, you

(17:10):
know, the Cousin magazine, toStar Hits in the States, and they
were on top of the pops,and they were reaching out to people like
myself when I was fifteen year old, and I needed that. And that's
why I think that they're so valuable. That they weren't one of these precious
bands who tries to sort of ringfence themselves and keep it very elite.

(17:30):
They were quite happy to play thepop game to some extent if that's what
it took to reach the listeners,and I really respect that about them.
I do want to get into alittle bit more of that pop side of
the cure, but I want tobuild to faith nineteen eighty one. It
didn't take long for me to realizethere was more than the hits with the

(17:52):
Cure. There's a serious depth totheir catalog, and to see All Cats
Are Gray in your book, Iwas so happy. It's one of my
old time favorite Cure of songs.Maybe my favorite deep track with Tuish Impossible
Things maybe a close second. Yeah, But I've always wondered if there was
a story behind All Cats Are Gray. Please tell us what it's about.
How this song also plays into drugculture, which I didn't know. Look,

(18:17):
yeah, I'll start with that bit. The first British people supposedly to
take ecstasy were Soft Cell, MarkAlmond, Dave Ball. They were in
New York. I think they wererecording a version of their song Memorabilia with
a friend of theirs who sort ofdoes vocals on that track called Cindy Ecstasy

(18:37):
the Clues in her name. Really. They were in her apartment and the
Faith album was on, and theytook ecstasy for the first time, and
they started coming up to the soundof All Cats Are Gray, which,
on the one hand, you'd thinkthat's not the sort of record, that's
not sort of music you'd most closelyassociate with ecstasy, because usually it's quite

(18:59):
sort of you know, euphoric music. You think of dance music. You
think of DM and stuff like that. But this album and this this track
in particular is quite funereal. It'sit's quite It was very very downbeat.
Robert explained the song as being justa nightmare of being lost or trapped in
caves, echoes, of the graveand of prison cells and again of growing

(19:21):
old, and the lyrics are sortof about drifting towards death. Loal Tolhurst,
who has said that he had someinput into the lyrics, has said
that it was to some extent informedby his mother's death. So yeah,
the idea that that was the kindof year zero moment for ecstasy culture in
the UK is really really interesting.But yeah, I single that track out

(19:45):
because I think there are some curesongs which, even though they're just album
tracks, they have a status that'sabove and beyond that. There's a couple
of other examples in the book ANight Like This and one hundred Years that
I thought deserved their own chapters.So it's my book. I gave it
to them. Maybe I'm offine ofbut I remember listening to U Two's All

(20:07):
that You Can't Leave Behind is asong called New York in there and I
feel like the core structure of thesynthce on that song is very similar to
All Cats Are Gray. I highlydoubted there. Maybe they are fans.
Well, actually you too, youdo mention in the book. I think
I think Bono has always wanted tobe one of those bands. He's always
even though you two were arguably arethe biggest rock band in the world.

(20:32):
I don't know how you measure thesethings these days, but they certainly were
at one point. I think maybeunder something there, Yeah, yeah,
I think Bono's always secretly wanted tobe more of a kind of joy division
or echo on the bunny Men kindof cult act, or indeed the cure,
so that that would that would makesense. Okay. Robert has addressed

(20:56):
death in his lyrics more than onceas we know, which leads me to
nineteen eighty two's Pornography and You're writein the book quote Smith did everything within
his power to fulfill the prophecy ofan early death. The excessive consumption of
alcohol and drugs during the Pornography sessionsis the stuff of legend. How bad
did things get for Robert in theband, and do you feel that Robert

(21:18):
was was he suicidal? At thatpoint. I don't know if i'd if
I'd seriously say that he was suicidalin that I don't think there was any
sort of intention behind it, butthere was certainly just a drive towards oblivion,
which is something that a lot ofyoung men experienced, but it all
seemed a bit heightened in the Q'scase. So Simon Gallup as well and

(21:40):
Loal Tolhurst, all three of themdrink drugs and just sort of extreme behavior.
There are a lot of fights,a lot of arguments between band members,
particularly on the subsequent tour, soit was as if they sensed that
this cannot go on, and therewas almost a sort of bloody mindedness of
just thinking, what the hell,let's just push ourselves to the extreme of

(22:03):
kind of sleeplessness and intoxication. Andyou can hear all that in the album.
It's an interesting thing that LSD wasa drug of choice for them and
particularly for Robert at that time,because in terms of acid and its effect
on rock culture, one initially thinksof the sixties and sort of summer of

(22:26):
love, flower power and all thatkind of blissful utopianism, but the eighties
were a very different time. Therewas the shadow of the atomic bomb hanging
over us all. It really feltas if it wasn't just a question of
if we were all going to diein a nuclear armageddon, it was when
it was definitely going to happen asfar as we were concerned. When you

(22:48):
add that mindset to LSD, Well, you end up with an album like
Pornography. To be honest, youend up with a much darker, more
twisted alternate reality to the one thatthe sixties generation conjured. You do point
out the Pornography it was to becomethe band's most revered tatismanic release, but

(23:10):
it took a while. And thatwas the same for me. It took
me years to really connect with thealbum, kind of fell flat for a
while, and then all of asudden years later, I go back to
it, and now I can listento it from beginning to end, and
I'm fascinated by it. But whatis it about this album It makes it
such a slow burn? We knowthere are no pop songs on it,
but that aside, what is itthat you think has caught on with people

(23:33):
over the years. Well, you'reright that it was a slow burn.
For one thing, it didn't haveuniversally good reviews at the time, that's
for sure. I think even fictionthe record company and Polydor thought it was
commercial suicide. I can imagine yeah, yeah, yeah, where is the
single? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean the one single is the

(23:55):
Hanging Garden. But that's not exactlypoptastic, is it. You know,
it's not very radio friendly. Yeah, I mean I can remember when the
Cure really broke through and the GreatHits album standing on a Beach as it's
known in the UK and staring atthe sea. I think in the US
came out, you do that thingof Okay, the Hits are on here,
it's got in between days, it'sgot close to me, it's got

(24:18):
boys Don't Cry. But then thereare these other songs that from earlier on
in their career, like the HangingGarden, and it's quite impenetrable, quite
difficult to break into, and youknow, it sounds dense and claustrophobic and
aggressive, and you think, what'sgoing on with them at that point,
and then you go back and youinvestigate. So I would imagine that a

(24:40):
lot of people in my generation weren'thearing the Pornography album until about eighty six
when you sort of go back andcheck out the earlier stuff. So that's
one reason why it took a whileto catch on, and I think one
reason it is so revered is becauseit has that kind of consistency of mood
all the way through. It's it'svery much a mood record. You put

(25:03):
that on and it just relentlessly andremorselessly delivers that desperation and hostility and hate.
Really in a way, it's similarto Disintegration, which of course was
that the big album. But evenDisintegration has got Lullaby on it, which
is kind of a quirky little popsong, so love song. Yeah,

(25:26):
yeah, yeah, indeed, ButPornography didn't have anything like that. It's
unremitting that there is no light inthat album, but sometimes that's what you
want. Simon Price is the authorof Curpedia and a to Z of the
Cure, which is out now now. For me, the magical period is
from eighty five's The Head on theDoor right through ninety two's Wish, So
you have nineteen eighty five The Headon the Door, in nineteen eighty seven

(25:47):
kiss Me, kiss Me, kissMe, and then eighty nine's Disintegration followed
by ninety two's Wish, a balanceof pop brilliance with the elegant doom and
gloom in between days. Just likeKevin Friday, I'm in Love. They
have that magic to them and justlike Kevin, to me is perfection.
I mean, there's nothing that youcan change with that song. And even
Robert says the same. It's aquote that you have in your book.

(26:10):
Could you talk about the inspiration behindjust like Kevin, Robert, here's a
song on the radio, right,and then he makes some chord changes.
Yeah, he has been honest enoughto admit that a song by the English
new wave band The Only Ones calledAnother Girl, Another Planet. I'm not
sure how well that how well knownthat song is to us listeners, but

(26:33):
it's very well loved over here,and it has that same kind of gizzy,
romantic swirl to it, the samekind of propulsion to it that just
like Heaven has. And I alwaysthought that those songs were kind of similar,
and it was quite pleasing for Robertto acknowledge that. And you're right,
it's just a wonderful song. Ithink it's certainly their best single,

(26:56):
the q's best single, and maybetheir best song overall. Maybe equal with
one hundred years so for very differentreasons. But yeah, the cover version
by Dinosaur Junior. Have you heardthat. No, I've never heard the
card. I don't think so.No, that was what early nineties they
did that. It was eighty nine, so it was very soon after.
In fact, it was goodness me. It was the same year that Oh

(27:19):
No Sorry, Disintegration was eighty nine, so it was two years after the
single came out. Do they staytrue to the Cure version or yes and
no they It's got the same kindof lovely, wayward kind of I don't
know, This giddiness to it isthe word I keep coming back to.
But j Mascis has added these kindof death metal vocal growls into it.

(27:45):
So you know the bit in theCure's version Rare sings you with Jay Mascus's
yeah and love it. And italso the song ends really abruptly, so
if you're a DJ and you're playingit, you look like an idiot it.
But Robert has said that that's hisfavorite cover of a Cure song ever.
You know, never mind Adele singinglove song and probably making more money

(28:07):
for the Cure than any of theirown recordings made yeah, well three eleven
also did what a three eleven coverlove song? Oh well, that's probably
love song, cha, but thatthat is one of their most covered songs
because because love song is maybe theclosest they get to a traditional love song,
they don't often write standards the cure, if you know what I mean.

(28:30):
They don't write songs that could besung by anyone. Even though I
was saying this is kind of universeuniversality to the cure. The lyrics are
often quite cryptic and quite twisted ina way that not anyone can interpret them.
You almost you almost have to beRobert or somebody of Robert's mindset to
put it over convincingly. But yeah, love love song is much more that

(28:52):
the sort of thing that pretty muchany anyone could could take on. The
book done. Rock podcasts will beback after this. What interests me about
Robbertes I don't know if any artistwho's been able to pull off what he
does, to be able to goback and forth from the upbeat, happy
pop to the dark gothic and makeit work so well. Doesn't the pop
stuff doesn't sound contrived, that doesn'tsound out of character? Has he talked

(29:17):
a lot about his songwriting process.Does he collaborate at all or is it
primarily him that comes in with themusic and the band follows. It's interesting
how that changes from album to albums, so that there are some albums where
it's very much him recording the demosand working up the tracks until they're pretty
much done and then bringing the bandin at the last minute. There are
other albums, and I believe Disintegrationis one of these where they all meet

(29:41):
up. In this case, itwas in Boris Williams, the drummer's house
in the Devon countryside, and theyall bring songs with them. They all
bring demos and bring ideas in andwork it up from that, so that
varies over time. But obviously heis the only consistent member of the Cure.
It's very much his band, butit wouldn't be the Cure without the

(30:04):
other contributors. And the sort ofshifting lineups are very much, you know,
sort of moving parallel with the shiftingsound of the band. And some
of those things are to do withpeople quitting. Sometimes they're to do with
people being kicked out, and that'skind of happenstance and that that can kind
of affect the way the next recordwill sound. But I think Robert's always

(30:26):
had this idea of who to workwith to get to get the sound that
he wants at any given time.And I think that that period you're talking
about eighty five to ninety two ninetythree, I suppose is when they were
strongest as a musical unit. Andit's no coincidence that their biggest record sales
are that that time. It's yeah, it's the head on the Door,

(30:48):
It's kiss Me, kissing Me,kiss Me is disintegration. I think the
middle one of those, particularly kissMe, kiss Me, kiss Me,
is the album I would recommend toanybody as a kind of way in to
the cure because it has all thedifferent extremes of their music. It has
just like Heaven and you know,other big, bright, catchy pop songs

(31:08):
like why Can't I Be You?And Hot Hot Hot, and catch but
it's also got these sort of mangled, frazzled psychedelic excursions like the Kiss or
the Snake Pit and things like that, and it's got sort of dark,
mysterious moments like if only tonight wecould sleep and so on. So yeah,

(31:29):
that's the album that and it's adouble as well, so it really
encompasses the kind of sprawl, ifyou like, of what the Cure are
about. Did you know the connectionof Rocky two with ketch Have you ever
heard this? Oh my goodness,you're gonna tell me something. I'm going
to regret that if you could haveput it in the book under r for
Racky. There's a scene in Rockytwo where stallone is Adrian is in the

(31:53):
hospital. She almost loses her lifebecause after trying to have a child,
there's complications. So he's waiting forher to come out of the coma and
he's he's reading a poem to her. He's reading what would become the lyrics
to Catch. Robert saw the sceneand that's what inspired the lyrics I am

(32:14):
completely broken and crestfall. I'm throwingthis out of the window. Here we
go there, But the revised editionis already in the words seriously, thank
you, and I will create Iwill I will credit you for pointing this
out to me when, if,and when there's a revised edition. Yeah,
but this is what you've just done. There is a perfect example of
the sort of thing I've done inthe book. I've I've tried to follow

(32:37):
these threads and you know, seewhere things come from. And I thought
I'd done it, but no,no, I didn't know about Tell me
about Robert's obsession with age. Imean, what are your thoughts on this?
Because turning thirty really shuck him up. You say that the prospect of
aging troubled them deeply, and that'sthat leads to disintegration and the themes of
the songs. But even back asfar as in between days he's talking about

(33:00):
getting old. He was like,what twenty five years old? I mean,
as you look back at laugh Butyou know, in doing your research
for the book, did you findRobert talked about it a lot in interviews?
Did he try to explain like whyaging trouble him so deeply? Yeah?
He did seem to have this morebid fascination with these All they are
is numerical landmarks. Really, eventurning twenty, like leaving their teens.

(33:22):
I think there was a sense thenon what it's all over really certainly,
Yeah, turning thirty it was somethingthat was overshadowing his thinking when when it
came to writing disintegration, And yeah, it seems absolutely ridiculous, doesn't it
When when you look back and think, I mean, I don't know how
old you are, but I'm significantlyolder than thirty let me tell you that.

(33:45):
Yeah, same here, and youthink thirty is like you're a kid
still, you know, during thatMTV era, of course, I mean
he still looks young. He lookslong enough to be on these videos.
It wasn't like there was any concernthere. It just a lot of it
was in his mind. Although Ido remember turning thirty and that was kind
of a freaky time, like,oh boy, wow, the time has
flown. But there's something with himthough, because it's it's in his lyrics

(34:07):
quite often. But I suppose ina way that fits with the rest of
his personality in that he over Idon't know if overthinks is the right word,
but he feels things too deeply.And most of us might just sort
of be slightly sad about leading ourtwenties and sort of shrug it off.
But for Robert, it's this giantexistential crisis and he had it again ten

(34:31):
years later, and the album BloodFlowers comes out of that. Really,
so thirty nine. There's a songcalled thirty nine on them. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. It is strangebecause of all the professions you could go
into, being a rock star doesallow you this kind of if not immortality,
then a certain sort of Peter Panquality that you stay young or young

(34:54):
presenting for as long as long asyou feel that you want to. Yeah,
there was an interesting point in thebook, and I can't remember which
song it was, but there wasone song where for the first time he
refers to himself as a man,not a boy, because he did sort
of sing about himself as as aboy quite late on, you know,

(35:14):
into his thirties. So there wasthat thing of wanting to remain youthful and
to be this kind of young,youthful creature in the world. So the
harsh reality of the calendar telling youthat you're not that maybe hurt, maybe
stung a little bit. So manysongs from Disintegration I could ask you about.
I'll just pick one Pictures of youyou do right quote, as is

(35:36):
soul Off in the case with theCure. There are a competing narrators regarding
this song's origin, some candid,some mischievous, made up by Robert because
he gets bored in interviews. Whatare the stories he's told? Then?
Do we know what it's really now, well, I'm gonna find that entry.
But I would say that, yeah, if you've interviewed rock band's over

(36:00):
the years, as I have,you often become aware of this that,
particularly if they're on some kind ofjunket where they're sat in a hotel room
for eight hours and journalists get shovedin the room and shoved out again.
It just gets so boring answering thesame questions and they end up telling lies.
And also, I think a lotof bands like to maintain a certain

(36:22):
amount of mystery about themselves, andthey like to be playful with it,
and there can even be a casewhere the older artist misremembers what the younger
artist meant by something. First ofall, Robert believes it's an overlooked song.
He says, it's one of thevery best songs that we've ever done.

(36:42):
It's very understated, which I wouldagree with. From the album,
it is overshadowed by love Song andby Lullaby, maybe even Fascination Street really,
which was a single in the US, But it seems that it had
a sort of personal significance for him. He set and this is in in
Cure News. Cure News was asort of official fanzine that was sent out

(37:04):
to fans in nineteen ninety eight.He claimed that it was loosely based on
an essay by Myra Polio entitled TheDark Power of Ritual Pictures, and that
he read this essay and he destroyedall his old personal photos and most of
his home sinny and video collection totry and wipe away the past, but

(37:27):
then felt this huge regret of havingdone so. I am very skeptical about
this story because, first of all, there is no essay of that name
that I could find anywhere. Andalso, Myra Polio is an anagram of
Mary Pool, his wife. Ohwow, yes, his high school sweetheart.
Yeah yeah, So there we go. And there was a version he

(37:49):
told Rolling Stone as well, andthis is a bit more well documented.
So there does seem to be sometruth in this. That during the disintegration
sessions in the studios of residential studioin an old sort of manor house in
England, there was a fire inRobert's room and it destroyed supposedly a lot
of his possessions, including photos,And when he sifted through the wreckage,

(38:13):
he found a wallet which had photosof Mary in it, and this sent
his mind spinning into this nostalgic reveriewhich you hear in the lyrics, so
you know, who knows what's true? But I think, yeah, maybe
of those two stories, I buythe fire story a little bit more.
The nineties is an interesting period forThe Cure because I remember hearing Mint Car

(38:35):
in eighteen eighty six on the radio. I thought, yeah, here we
go again, another hit song,another hit album from The Cure. But
it was the lowest selling album intwelve years. Why do you think that
was? Because there are some greatsongs on there. You mentioned Jupiter Crash,
you alluded to that. I lovethat song. This is a lie
strange attraction mint Car. I havemy thoughts on it because I think the
first single was the thirteenth from WildMood Swings. The first single, well,

(39:00):
at least Wikipedia, if we canbelieve it, the thirteenth was the
first single, which is an oddchoice for it did that because the thirteenth
didn't do so well. That wasI don't know, how would you describe
that song, But it's not tome a pop single. But then they
followed with Mint Carr, which Ithought they should have led with, but
maybe it was too late by thattime people lost interest. What are your

(39:22):
thoughts on on that idea of Idon't want to say the failure of the
album. It still did well,but obviously the lowest selling album twelve years
not good. Why do you thinkthat was? I think you're right that
Mint Carr is a more obvious popsong, but I think there are a
number of factors at play here.The band was starting to fall apart somewhat,

(39:44):
and the album was recorded with severaldifferent drummers. This was one of
the albums where it often was justRobert and the producer and whoever they could
get in to play the parts onthe day, so it's not a cohesive
piece. We could say that,but I think the world had changed as
well. I think, okay,this is sometimes a little bit overstated,

(40:07):
but in the UK there was theeffect of britpop, that alternative rock had
moved on from the last time TheCure were relevant, which I guess we'd
say was ninety two ninety three,that the Wish campaign. Three years in
pop is a long time, andyeah, they they've been away, they've
been absent, and in the meantime, bands like Blur and Oasis and Swayed

(40:30):
and Pulp were the ones taking everyone'sattention, and the Cure hadn't yet reached
their sort of status as legends.They were just seen as kind of yesterday's
thing. And in the US,I suppose grunge would have been the equivalent
of that that, Yeah, alternativerock meant something different. Now, yeah,

(40:54):
they were in that period, maybethat waiting period to become legends.
Did you get to that point too, Yeah, well you become now called
the Legacy Act. But I rememberthat late nineties, early two thousand,
Suddenly all these young artists were justsaluting the Cure and even MTV I think
had the word icons. They hadwhat was the show called icons or something,
and they are a tribute to Robertwho was at the show, and

(41:16):
yeah, I see what you said. Alan Manson presented that, didn't they
And there were all sorts of peoplelike I think Nine Inch Nails Trent Resner
acknowledging the Cure's influence, and Roberthad spoken about this that there was this
period in the early two thousands wherehe started to realize that there were bands
coming through who didn't care that TheCure had been uncool for a while because

(41:42):
they had maybe grown up on kissMe, Kiss Me, Kiss Me disintegration.
So you get bands like Interpol andthe Yaya Yeahs, and probably emo
bands as well my Chemical Romance fallOut Boy, who are really obviously to
me and sometimes openly acknowledged being Cureinfluenced. So yeah, I think a

(42:05):
lot of bands find that you justgot to wait your time, and your
time will come back round again.Yeah. The thirteenth. By the way,
I'm looking here at a quote fromRobert that said fans have a love
hate relationship with that song, whichhas that Latin feel to it. I
have to say I'm on the hateside of it, and I don't like
I don't enjoy saying that. Ijust it's felt flat for me. Did
you like that song? Do youlike that song? I like the fact

(42:30):
that they were brave enough to experimentwith Latin music, but it probably wasn't
the right thing at the right time. If they've done that in don't know
eighty seven, they might have gotaway with it. It might have been
a big hit. Well. Ialways say, like, whether I like
a song or not, even ifI hate it, I always say every

(42:51):
artist should just do what they feelthey want to do. Yeah, I
always respect that. And the thingis, I think every artist feels that
their new album is the best thingthey've ever done. You very rarely will
get anyone saying, well, it'snot quite up to our earlier standards,
but it's all right. You won'tget that. Robert has often spoken about

(43:12):
this and said, well, wecould bring out the best Cure album in
just almost objective musical terms that therehas ever been, but it cannot have
the same power because the Cure,that moment of being culturally central has kind
of gone and it's never coming back. They're always there that they're sort of

(43:35):
there on the edge of things.It's almost a kind of a sun sending
light or darkness towards new generations ofmusicians and fans. But they can never
be at the middle of things anymore. And he knows that. And it
must be frustrating for musicians to bringout what they think is a good piece
of work and for the world justto sort of shrug its shoulders. I

(43:59):
don't think that would happen. Andthis time, though, I think their
legendary status is now such that ifand when they do bring out a new
album, it will be well receivedand it will be much listened to,
but there were definitely two or threealbums where people are like the Cure or
whatever, the book down Rock Podcastwill be back after this. Blood Flowers

(44:23):
did very well, I know incollege radio, and it did well with
the hardcore fans, but there alot of people didn't even know it was
out. But it's such a brilliantalbum. Two thousands Blood Flowers. This
is interesting because you do talk aboutthe inspiration coming from short stories and poems
and art exposition, talk about thatBlood Flowers coming from First World War poetry,

(44:46):
and I delved into this a littlebit to try and ascertain which First
World War poem it was, butit is a kind of long running trope
of war poetry, the idea offlowers with blood dripping from them, this,
you know, something beautiful and somethinghorrific and juxtaposed like that on a

(45:06):
battlefield. So that plays into it. And yeah, just more broadly,
the influence of poets like Dylan Thomason Robert Smith is immense, and that's
something that I really cherish about them, that you do end up thinking,
Okay, well, Robert Smith isinterested in this, I'm going to go
and find out about it. It'sthe same way that bands like the Smiths

(45:31):
operated. So if I knew atthe time that Morrissey was a fan of
Oscar Wilde, I would read theentire works of Oscar wild I found out
he's a fan of James Dean,I'd watched well the three films that James
Dean made and find out about hislife. And even if they they had
Truman Capoti on a record cover,well who's he? And I think that

(45:52):
that's a really valuable thing that bandscan do. So yeah, Blood Flowers
was one of those It's one ofthose records where Robert was drawing on pre
existing art but also stuff that wasgoing on in the world at the time,
terrorism and the backlash to terrorism,and just kind of religious extremism in

(46:13):
general. You know that that thereare lyrics about that on there, and
he was really really proud of thatrecord. And because of that factor that
I was talking about that bands ofa certain vintage will never have their new
record listen to much, he hadto resort to tactics like touring it in

(46:37):
a trilogy format with two earlier andmaybe better regarded albums, So, you
know, pornography and disintegration to makethe point that Blood Flowers is of that
caliber and in that kind of tradition. Now, the other thing I should
mention too before we wind down,they join the darts. Bark set is

(46:58):
one of the best Bark seats everforgotten that came out in two thousand and
four. There's some gems on there. It does have. It includes Burn
from the Crow soundtrack, which Ican't leave out. That's such a great
song. But it maybe realize howmuch more there was to the Wish sessions,
which Robert said he wanted it tobe a double album. One side
all the happy upbeat, the otherside all the downbeat, but the record

(47:22):
label said no to it. Andif you listen to the songs from those
sessions, she's like, wow,this could have been easily put on the
record in a single. Yeah,that was a greater. But then we
had four the self titled album fourthirteen Dream two thousand and eight. Before
I ask you about the Cure today, the new album that's due out.
But as we know, with Robert, will believe it when we see it

(47:45):
because he always promises it. He'spromised a solo album for many years.
I want to ask you the manylineup changes in the Cure, which you
did mention quickly. Simon Gallup hasbeen with Robert the most. My fellow
Gemini, the bassist Simon Gallup wrappedout for a few years in the early
eighties, but he's been there prettymuch throughout. A quick search on lines

(48:05):
as a total of thirteen members includingRobert over the years close to twenty five
different lineups. But interesting to seesome of these members end up coming back.
So is he hard to work with? Has anything ever been talked about
regarding that? Is? Is itsomething that I don't know? Is it
off limits? As far as ininterviews, Lol Tolhurst says he's good friends
with Robert these days. I guessthey had. They had a falling out

(48:29):
right that was more substance abuse issueswhen he was out of the band in
eighty nine. Yeah, I thinkRobert has reached a stage in his life
where he feels that it's not worthholding grudges. And I've heard stories from
people who would definitely know that hehas built bridges with people with whom he

(48:51):
may have had foolings out and Lolis one of those. But Yeah,
certainly, I think I think Lollby his own amission was difficult to be
around eighty seven to eighty nine,and that's why he ends up getting edged
out of the band. And SimonGallup has said that in eighty two he
was pretty nasty to be around,and so were all of them. They
were all goading and antagonizing each other, and there was to some extent a

(49:15):
culture of bullying in the band inthe late eighties, with Loll being the
main victim of that. And I'vetalked about that in the book, so
that there were some kind of unpleasantperiods where you think maybe being in the
Cure wasn't a lot of fun forcertain people. But yeah, I actually
counted I think it was fifteen andmembers of the band fifteen, I think

(49:37):
so, And now we can adda sixteenth because Mike Lord is standing in
on keyboards for Roger O'Donnell, who'snot well at the moment. Best wishes
to Roger. Yeah, I've justbeen there for a while. Here's one
that was that left and came back. I believe he is, Yeah,
a couple of times, and heis the third longest serving member when you

(49:58):
piece it all together, so veryimport member of the band. I became
very interested in Paul Thompson, nowknown as Pearl Thompson, Imagine mentioned him.
Yeah, he's a guitarist during thosethose big years there, phenomenal guitarist
who was actually too good for TheCure to begin with, and that's why
he wasn't in the initial lineup ofThe Cure. He'd been with them in

(50:22):
a sort of pre Cure band,Easy Cure, but they found his style
at that time to be too ornateand too florid, and they wanted something
more pared down and minimal and postpunk. So he went off to art
school. But then around the timeof the Top album, which is quite
sort of psychedelic and it had moremore room for the music to spread out,

(50:46):
they lude him back in. Theyhe'd already started doing the artwork.
In fact, the single Primary waswas the first which has some Paul Thompson
artwork on it. They got himinto play a bit of sax because he's
a multi instrumentalist, and then luredhim in to actually join the band on
the live tour and then the nextalbum, the Head on Door, he's

(51:07):
a full member again. And yeah, I think few people would argue that
he is their most talented guitarist,and he left and rejoined a couple of
times. He's now well, he'squit the band. He said, he'll
never say never, because by hisown admission, he's left and rejoined the

(51:29):
Cure enough times, but he's moreor less left music behind. And to
draw a line under that, he'schanged his name to Pearl Thompson and concentrated
on art. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, just one of
the most fascinating members of the bandbecause he had just even visually, a
very different look to the rest ofthem. You know that there was a
certain Cure look that they all hadin the late eighties, with a kind

(51:52):
of backcomed spiky hair and all that. But he had this sort of tumbling
pre Raphaelite curls, and he lookedmore like a s of eighteenth century romantic
figure rather than a post punk musician. And I just remember finding something really
strange about him in a very appealingway at the time. And I just
remember thinking that, and I've saidthis in the book, that if you're

(52:14):
in a band where the lead singerand frontman is Robert Smith and yet you
somehow quietly look like the strange one, you're doing something very right. You
know, so yeah, yeah,I became very engrossed in finding out about
him and what makes him tick.And he did work with another famous Robert

(52:36):
Plant and Jimmy Page. He's onthat Page and Plant tour or album or
both. I can't recac it's thelive album not it was in no quarter
the live album by Page and Plant. So yeah, to be drafted into
what is essentially led Zeppelin, you'vegot to be pretty good. And they
had such respect for him that theystarted performing Lullaby by the Cure in their

(52:57):
life set. So did they really? Yeah, Oh that's all. That's
I'm hoping that's on YouTube. Igot a check from that. Yeah,
go and find that. Yeah.Well, in speaking of YouTube, I
did catch the new songs that Robertand the band has performed and very much
looking forward to the next album.If it's from what we've heard so far,
the songs are very very Cure like, with the big grand opening and

(53:21):
Robert contemplating his place in the worldand lyrically, who makes up the current
lineup and what's the latest with thisnew Cure album. I mean we've been
promised Halloween of twenty twenty three,right, that's we've come in and went,
yeah, yeah. He did saybefore this tour was announced that he

(53:42):
would not tour unless there was anew album. Well he did, he
toured, and there's no new album, but there kind of is. From
what I'm hearing, it's pretty muchfinished, and it's been in an almost
finished state since about twenty nineteen,and there's just sort of endless kind of
tinkering with it and alterations since then. And that is something that that's happened

(54:07):
historically, certainly in this century withthe Cure. And I've got a whole
chapter about the fourteenth album because there'sthis whole saga of what is that album?
That there are whole albums that wereabandoned without ever being released, and
fans are hoping that that won't happento this one, that this one will

(54:29):
finally see the light of day.They've got a very strong line up at
the moment. They started the LostWorld tour with a six piece lineup of
Jason Cooper, Simon Gallup, RobertSmith, Reeves Gaberel's, Perry Beamonte drawn
back in and I've forgotten someone RogerO'Donnell of course. Yeah, so yeah,

(54:49):
so a six piece band and amoment. Roger's absent, but he'll
be back. Mike Lord's stepping in. So the fact that they needed to
bring Perry back into the band tellsyou something. I think that this isn't
going to be a minimal record.It's going to be big, expansive music.
I think maybe in the style ofthings like playing song from Disintegration that

(55:10):
kind of big, grandiose, magnificentmusic, and from the live versions that
we've all seen on YouTube, thatwould seem to be the case. And
I should say to it wasn't Halloweenof twenty twenty three, because going back
to twenty nineteen when they got intothe Ragnar Hall of Fame, Robert said,
coming up in Halloween Halloween, I'vebeen a fair long enough to say,

(55:32):
Okay, Rabrol, when we seeit, i'll believe it, but
I'll hear it. Yeah, butyeah, it's I'm really looking for.
Have you had a chance to seethem on this tour. No. Actually,
I was so up against the deadlineto finish the book that I had
to just sit at home and notgo up to London to see them.
But I've been keeping a close eyeon the set lists and on live footage

(55:55):
of it, definitely, and Ithink they'll be more shows next year.
The fact that Roger said I'll beback next year tells you that there are
going to be some more dates.Yeah, i'd like to go see them
too. I think last time Isaw them's two thousand and four, which
for me, yeah, it's preCOVID. Yeah, I've not seen them
since since you know, Lockdown.I first saw them in the late eighties

(56:21):
and I've seen them many times invarious incarnations since then. But yeah,
I've got the hunger to see themagain. So yeah, it's hoping.
Kurpedia and adz of the curates outnow through d Street Books and you can
find it wherever books are sold andwhere can people find you online? So
I am Simon Underscore price zero oneon Instagram, Twitter, most other social

(56:43):
media, So yeah, follow me. Why not put the links in the
show notes page. Simon, thankyou very much. Always loved talking the
Cure, really enjoyed it. Thanksfor having me. That's it. It's
in the books.