Robert Smith recounts his
band's many wild mood swings
By BILL CRANDALL
Before the release of Bloodflowers,
fresh off a photo shoot and all made up in his trademark
teased hair and lipstick, Robert Smith sat in a New York
City hotel bar in front of a stack of Cure CDs. He picked
up each one and recounted the story of its recording . .
. sometimes with a laugh, sometimes with a grimace.
Smith was convinced -- as
he's often been -- that his band's latest opus would be
its last. As always, he was wrong, and we've updated the
piece with Rolling Stone's recent interview about The Cure,
Smith and his band's new -- and certainly not final -- album.
Three Imaginary Boys/Boys
Don't Cry
1979/1980
After nearly every major
label rejected their demo tape, three schoolmates from the
London suburb of Crawley signed with Polydor imprint Fiction
Records. Under the tutelage of label owner and producer
Chris Parry, who landed the Jam and Siouxsie and the Banshees
for Polydor, the Cure recorded their debut album, Three
Imaginary Boys, at London's Morgan Studios in just three
nights. The next year, Fiction repackaged most of the album
with some early singles as the Boys Don't Cry album.
I was writing songs for the
first album for a period of about two or three years. I
wrote "10:15 Saturday Night" and "Killing
an Arab" when I was about sixteen, and we recorded
the album when I was eighteen, so I wasn't really still
convinced by some of the songs. The pop songs like "Boys
Don't Cry" are naive to the point of insanity [laughs].
But considering the age I was and the fact that I had done
nothing apart from go to school -- no real life experience,
everything was taken from books -- some of them are pretty
good.
The Jam were recording their
album during the day and we used to sneak in at night and
use their equipment -- we knew the bloke who was looking
after it -- to record our album. We just borrowed tape and
stuff.
The first one is my least
favorite Cure album. Obviously, they are my songs, and I
was singing, but I had no control over any other aspect
of it: the production, the choices of the songs, the running
order, the artwork. It was all kind of done by Parry without
my blessing. And even at that young age I was very pissed
off. I had dreamed of making an album, and suddenly we were
making it and my input was being disregarded. I decided
from that day on we would always pay for ourselves and therefore
retain total control.
Seventeen Seconds
1980
On the Cure's U.K. tour
opening for Siouxsie and the Banshees, Smith began playing
in both bands after the headlining band's guitarist defected.
Smith wore the same drab clothing on stage for each set,
prompting an NME scribe to write that the Cure had "no
image, no style." When it was time to return to Morgan
Studios, bassist Michael Dempsey voiced distaste for Smith's
new atmospheric songs, and Smith replaced him with Simon
Gallup. Enthralled with the new synthesizers coming out
at the time, Smith also added keyboardist Matthieu Hartley.
With the money we got from
Three Imaginary Boys I bought ten days of studio time. We
only used eight, so I got my money back for the last two,
which was lucky 'cause we spent far more than I thought
we would on beer. We did all the photos the day we finished
recording at about eight o'clock in the morning. I said
to the bloke, "Could you do some that are out of focus."
And they're the ones we used, because the ones in focus
looked so hideous.
During Seventeen Seconds,
we honestly felt that we were creating something no one
else had done. From this point on, I thought that every
album was going to be the last Cure album, so I always tried
to make it something that would be kind of a milestone.
I feel Seventeen Seconds is one of few albums that genuinely
achieved that.
With "A Forest"
I wanted to do something that was really atmospheric, and
it has a fantastic sound. Chris Parry said, "If you
make this sound radio friendly, you've got a big hit on
your hands." I said, "But this is how it sounds.
It's the sound I've got in my head. It doesn't matter about
whether it's radio friendly." He sometimes thinks that
I'm willfully kind of stopping this from having more success,
but I'm not. One of the reasons people like the band is
because they're never quite sure what's gonna happen next.
If we were predictable, we wouldn't have really lasted this
long.
Faith
1981
By Smith's own admission,
Faith is the Cure's "difficult third album." Recorded
over a month in a handful of different studios, the somber
Faith was born of death, isolation drugs and alcohol.
The whole band had a family
member die, and that really colored Faith. The initial demos
that we did in my mom and dad's dining room are really quite
upbeat. Then, within about two weeks, the whole mood of
the band had completely changed. I wrote "The Funeral
Party" and "All Cats Are Grey" in one night,
and that really set the tone for the album.
When we toured on the back
of this album, the mood was so somber. It wasn't a particularly
healthy thing to do because we were reliving a really bad
time, night after night, and it got incredibly depressing.
And so I kind of have mixed feelings about Faith.
A lot of people around the
band began reacting badly to the fact that we were becoming
successful, on a very limited scale. There was a lot of
jealousy and sour grapes and people saying, "You've
changed!" We had changed because we weren't going to
the same pubs all the time, because we were touring Europe.
So we lost a lot friends, and we became much more insular.
We would just drink ourselves into oblivion, and play these
songs.
Pornography
1982
The Cure's fourth album,
beginning with the lyric, "It doesn't matter if we
all die," was even darker, prompting British rag Rip
It Up to write, "Ian Curtis, by comparison, was a bundle
of laughs." Smith began spraying his hair in all directions
and wearing lipstick, and lack of an image would never again
be a problem for the Cure.
During Pornography, the band
was falling apart, because of the drinking and drugs. I
was pretty seriously strung out a lot of the time, so I'm
not sure if my recollection is right.
I know for a fact that we
recorded some of the songs in the toilets to get a really
horrible feeling, because the toilets were dirty and grim.
Simon doesn't remember any of that, but I have a photo of
me sitting on a toilet, in my clothes, trying to patch up
of some of the lyrics. It's a tragic photo.
We immersed ourselves in
the more sordid side of life, and it did have a very detrimental
effect on everyone in the group. We got ahold of some very
disturbing films and imagery to kind of put us in the mood.
Afterwards, I thought, "Was it really worth it?"
We were only in our really early twenties, and it shocked
us more than I realized -- how base people could be, how
evil people could be.
There is a certain type of
Cure fan who would hold Pornography in greater esteem than
anything else we've ever done, but, at the time, most people
hated it. They're the only songs we've ever played where
people would walk out or throw things. But then we probably
were not that good on stage [laughs].
I don't have particularly
fond memories of Pornography, but I think it's one of the
best things we've ever done, and it would have never got
made if we hadn't taken things to excess. People have often
said, "Nothing you've done has had the same kind of
intensity or passion." But I don't think you can make
too many albums like that, because you wouldn't be alive.
Japanese Whispers
1983
Looking to shed his "gloomy
cult figure image" and leave behind the squalid world
of Pornography, Smith abandoned his dismal London flat and
returned home to live with his parents. The Cure, now Smith,
Tolhurst and a revolving cast of characters, put together
an EP full of downright chipper singles.
It took me a few weeks to
recuperate in the bedroom I had grown up in, because I was
like totally gone. And I decided to be a pop star [laughs].
When I took "Lets Go
to Bed" to Fiction and played it to them, it was like
silence. They looked at me, like, "This is it. He's
really lost it." They said, "You can't be serious.
Your fans are gonna hate it." I understood that, but
I wanted to get rid of all that. I didn't want that side
of life anymore; I wanted to do something that's really
kind of cheerful. I thought, "This isn't going to work.
No one's ever gonna buy into this. It's so ludicrous that
I'm gonna go from goth idol to pop star in three easy lessons."
Suddenly, "Let's Go
to Bed" was turning into a big hit, on the West Coast
particularly, and we had a young, predominately female,
teenage audience. It went from intense, menacing, psychotic
goths to people with perfect white teeth. It was a very
weird transition, but I enjoyed it. I thought it was really
funny.
We followed it up with "The
Walk" and "Love Cats," and I just felt totally
liberated. With "Love Cats," I suggested that
we were going to do something that's kind of like a Disney
take on jazz, based around the Aristocats. And suddenly
everything we did started to sell.
The Top
1984
From '82 to '84, Smith
sporadically reprised his role in the Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Playing guitar in someone else's band gave Smith a live
outlet without all the responsibility. Smith also formed
the British Invasion-inspired side project the Glove with
Banshees bassist Steve Severin, and they released their
lone album, Blue Sunshine, in 1983. In 1984, when Smith
returned to the studio to work on The Top, he was without
a band, and almost out of ideas.
I was kind of cajoled back
into making a Cure album by Fiction, who had me under contract
and could have stopped me from playing with the Banshees.
The Top was the closest I've
ever come to making a solo album. I didn't really have a
very coherent idea of what the album was, and I think it
shows. It's probably the patchiest Cure album.
I suppose the Banshees and
the Glove worked to my disadvantage, because rather than
putting the best ideas into a Cure album I was spread a
bit thin. There are a couple of Glove songs, "Sex Eye
Makeup" and "Blues in Drag," that I wanted
on The Top. "Dressing Up" was actually done as
a Glove song, and then I didn't play it to [Severin] because
I thought, "I like this one too much" [laughs].
I played all the instruments,
except drums. When I listen back to the album, I have a
strange image of me sitting in the middle of the studio
floor surrounded by little bongos and spoons and things.
I would just sit there and make things up with an acoustic
guitar. [Producer] Dave Allen and I would play, and I edited
it down a couple weeks later. I don't think any of the songs
were actually played as songs; they were kind of created
later.
It was a bit sad, because
it was very badly reviewed and it dented my confidence in
that way of working, and I put a stop to it.
The Head on the Door
1985
Craving the power of
a real band again, Smith expanded the Cure to a five-piece.
A 180 from The Top, The Head on the Door was recorded as
live takes. The MTV hit "Close to Me" cemented
Smith's hair and lipstick image, which prompted him to get
a crewcut on the ensuing U.S. tour.
During the demos of The Head
on the Door, I knew that this was the band. The album's
got a real fantastic freshness to it, and it was a really
pleasant environment. All the girlfriends got on well, and
the band became much more like a family. That old gang mentality
was growing a little bit stale. By this time I was twenty-five
and realized I should grow up a bit.
I bought a good metal six-string
acoustic, and as soon as I picked it up I started playing
the chords to "In Between Days." I'd never really
bothered playing one, because I'd never owned a good one.
Porl [Thompson] has always
been a great guitarist, and Boris [Williams] is an extraordinary
drummer. We could never have attempted "Six Different
Ways" before, because we never had a drummer who could
play 6/8 time. It was a great feeling to be in a band that
played well. I thought, "God, we could jam -- should
we so desire."
A lot of the lyrics came
out of really weird conversations that we were having in
the studio. We had this fatuous argument about how many
ways there were to skin a cat. The inanity was staggering
[laughs]. And someone said, "There are definitely six
different ways." And it just seemed like a nice title
because of the 6/8 time.
MTV was running hourly news
bulletins, like, "Yes, it's true; he's cut his hair
off." I said, "Are they serious, or are they being
funny?" Although I don't like what I look like at the
best of times, I think I look particularly hideous with
cropped hair. I did it on that tour because I was getting
so fed with [press about] "hair and lipstick, hair
and lipstick."
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
1987
For the recording of
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, the Cure retreated to a vineyard
in the South of France. Songwriting-wise, the album was
the band's first group effort, and, according to Smith,
it became a double album simply because they were having
so much fun that they didn't want to stop. "Just Like
Heaven" would crack the U.S. Top Forty, a Cure first.
The dinners were really pleasant
occasions. Again, the girls were there, so the conversation
was kind of elevated above what it usually is when it's
just a bunch of blokes.
After we'd finish recording
for the day, I would go and sit down in the woods and write
another song. And they were done so fast. We didn't fuck
about with production; there's a quite touchingly naive
sound on some of the songs.
We use to have this thing
called "the panel," and all the girls would sit
on the sofa in the back of the control room and give the
songs marks out of ten -- so there was a really big female
input. They wouldn't like "Fight," which was really
not a girly song. But the more male members of the band
were like, "This is rock! This is what we should be
doing, not this other wussy stuff." "Shiver and
Shake" was my male kind of song. "The Perfect
Girl" was a very female song. I think that's probably
why the album had such a huge appeal, and why it did so
well.
I remember on the Kiss Me
tour we were in Los Angeles, and there were girls taking
their clothes off and lying down in front of the bus to
stop us from driving away. And I remember thinking, "This
isn't really what I imagined I would be doing with this
band."
Disintegration
1989
Bliss turned to anguish
in 1989, when Smith turned thirty and began taking stock
of his life. He wanted to again make an "important"
album, and talked of disbanding the Cure upon its completion.
It sounds really big-headed,
but everyone wanted a piece of me. I was fighting against
being a pop star, being expected to be larger than life
all the time, and it really did my head in.
I got really depressed, and
I started doing drugs again -- hallucinogenic drugs. When
we were gonna make the album I decided I would be monk-like
and not talk to anyone. It was a bit pretentious really,
looking back, but I actually wanted an environment that
was slightly unpleasant.
Everyone expected me to be
writing songs that were gonna follow-up "Just Like
Heaven." They thought that we were gonna keep things
light and bouncy with an occasional bit of gloom, but we
did the opposite.
I wrote "Love Song"
for Mary, my wife, as a wedding present, and I put it on
the album to be kind of romantic. I thought it was the weakest
song on there, and suddenly it went to Number Two in America.
It was kept off the top by, like, Janet Jackson. I thought,
"Of all the songs I'd written, this is the one that
kind that cracks through." It was quite disappointing.
I realized at this time that,
despite my best efforts, we had actually become everything
that I didn't want us to become: a stadium rock band [laughs].
Most of the relationships within the band and outside of
the band fell apart. Calling it Disintegration was kind
of tempting fate, and fate retaliated. The family idea of
the group really fell apart too after Disintegration. It
was the end of the golden period.
Wish
1992
During the three years
since Disintegration's release, "alternative"
music had become mainstream, and the Cure returned to an
ever-expanding new audience. On the strength of singles
"Friday I'm in Love" and "High," the
Cure continued playing stadiums, culminating in the concert
film Show and accompanying live albums Show and Paris.
On the Wish album I felt
much more isolated, like I was making the album on my own,
and the others were just playing. Some days it would be
really, really great, and other days it would be really,
really horrible.
After Bloodflowers, Wish
is actually my favorite Cure album, but I felt we weren't
really doing anything different with it; I just felt we
were making an album. I suppose that's what was wrong with
it. It was almost like consolidating where we were. We were
gonna go back out and we were gonna get more fans and we
were gonna play bigger places, and somehow I lost my enthusiasm.
There were elements lyrically and the way I was singing
that I was almost going through the motions.
The Show concert in Detroit
was the band at the peak of its powers. We had been together
at that point for eight years, and it was so tight, but
I set up the film because I knew that after the Wish tour
the band would fall apart.
Porl left and then Boris
left soon after. And then Simon left. Perry [Bamonte, guitar]
and I were sitting in a room talking about doing demos for
a new album, and we just both burst out laughing because
we realized that we didn't have a band anymore.
Wild Mood Swings
1996
Drained from maintaining
the business entity the Cure had become, and the extensive
touring, Smith took his time reforming the band. Although,
by his own admission, Smith constructed many of the songs
with radio play in mind, the Cure's extended break cost
the band dearly in public profile, setting up Wild Mood
Swings for commercial failure.
When we came back to do Wild
Mood Swings, I got that sense of fun back. And it shows
in the album; there are some pretty demented songs on there.
But it was a shame, because it got slagged when it came
out. Fans hated it as well. It's the only time I've been
hugely disappointed.
I suppose it was because
"The 13th" -- with this sort of crackpot salsa
feel -- was the first thing that they'd heard from the band
in years, and I don't think they gave it a chance after
that. Every album up to that point had sold more than the
last one, and suddenly the record company was confronted
with this horrifying drop in sales, and they didn't have
a fuckin' clue as to why we'd ever sold records in the first
place. That sort of stymied any attempts at a promotion
campaign, because they didn't really know what they were
promoting or who to.
The album suffers from being
too long. And it's disjointed. I was trying to write in
different styles, and wanted us to sound like different
bands, almost going after the Kiss Me idea. But, because
we'd lost Boris, and before Jason [Cooper] settled in, we
had a different drummer every week. I would often forget
the name of the person who was drumming.
Bloodflowers
2000
Finished in May of 1999,
but delayed because, according to Smith, the record company
wanted to release it "post millennial fever,"
Bloodflowers is a clear departure from Wild Mood Swings.
In fact, like Faith, Pornography and most of Disintegration,
the album is one epic mood piece, wherein the atmospheric
collective whole reigns over the individual songs.
Before we did Blooflowers
I actually wanted it to be short album, because I find that
seventy minutes of one artist is, almost without exception,
too much. So I set a target of forty-five minutes, but,
even cutting it down to nine songs, we we're still over
an hour. I realize, in hindsight, that it's the songs themselves
that probably need trimming back, but I think that they
benefit from their length. I've done an edit of "Watching
Me Fall" at home, and I got it down to under six minutes
[from eleven minutes, thirteen seconds], but it's just not
the same song.
I edited the first track,
"Out of This World," down from 6:30 to 4:45, but
I was told that the introduction was still too long for
radio. But I like that slow development, and I didn't want
to impose the three-and-a-half-minute structure on anything
I was writing, because it just felt stupid. We did a couple
of what we'd consider to be pop songs at the demo stage
and they just sounded so shallow.
But recording Bloodflowers
was the best experience I've had since doing the Kiss Me
album. I achieved my goals, which were to make an album,
enjoy making it, and end up with something that has real
intense, emotional content. And I didn't kill myself in
the process.
The Cure
2004
This past winter, the
Cure -- enjoying a renaissance thanks to the rise of disciples
like Interpol, the Rapture and Thursday, who will all open
for the Cure on this summer's Curiosa tour -- headed into
a London studio with aggressive-minded producer Ross Robinson
(Korn, Slipknot) to record The Cure. The result, not surprisingly,
is heavy.
I was on the point of making
the album I had been waiting to make for about fifteen years.
We [Robinson and Smith] met at the end of Coachella. I knew
after the first day of sitting and talking to him that I
wanted to work with him.
I started writing really
heavy songs, because, when you're working with Ross, he's
bound to want dark and moody. What became very apparent
is that he liked all kinds of things we did. He's really
into the melodic side of the band and the pop side of the
band. We ended up with thirty-seven demos and we all sat
down and gave everything marks up to twenty. We didn't really
leave the studio for the last couple of months. We had no
visitors. No one was allowed in. It was quite a surreal
experience.
It was treated as almost
a long live event. Everyday it was a different song. We'd
be facing the control booth so we could see Ross and we
would figure out the technical stuff. He put us in a very
confined space, right on top of each other, with eye-to-eye
contact. At night, we'd face the other way, light the candles
and suddenly it became very real. I would stand up and away
we would go.
Everything we'd done
before was going to culminate on this record -- that was
the mind set that we had when we were in the studio. And
I would say that more passion went into the making of this
record than all the others combined.
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