Robert Smith thinks that the band’s over “every time we make an album”. He
grins his tiny, wicked, scarlet-swathed grin, looking for all the world like
a cuddlier version of Heath Ledger’s Joker. “Seriously, I do. With The
Cure [in 2004], I called it that knowing that that was it.”
Despite their 30 years as alternative rock legends; despite as many millions
of albums sold; despite the 13 studio albums and stadium gigs across the
globe; despite being about to be declared a Godlike Genius at the NME
Shockwaves Awards on Wednesday and playing the huge Big Gig at the O2
Arena the following day, the Cure are the most unstable band in rock. Bar
the Fall, obviously.
They’re a rocking recession of a band: their future hangs constantly in the
balance, each release may be their last, no member’s job is entirely safe.
And as the sole remaining original member, Smith, a man recognisable from
three miles away in the thickest of blizzards, is the Cure’s icon, helmsman
and executioner.
His axe has swung many times over the ever-shifting Cure line-up since 1980,
and as their celebrated Curiosa Festival tour of America wound to a close in
2004 he sharpened his blade once again for the necks of the band’s long-term
guitarists Roger O’Donnell and Perry Bamonte. “I knew that was it for Roger
and Perry,” he says. “I didn’t spend more than five minutes with either of
them on that tour apart from when we were onstage. When it’s gone, it’s
gone. I told them both that I wanted to try something with Simon [Gallup,
bassist] and Jason [Cooper, drums] and I’d let them know how it went. I felt
that was the fairest way of doing it because I thought if it doesn’t work
with Simon and Jason then the group will be over. The thing drifts apart.
The bigger the group gets the harder it is to hold it together.”
It was a less acrimonious split than that in 1989 with the Cure’s former
drummer, founding member and chronic booze-hound Lol Tolhurst, who
unsuccessfully sued Smith for unpaid royalties five years later.
Smith giggles ruefully. “The funniest thing about him taking us to court, or
taking me to court in particular, was that he couldn’t actually remember all
the things that would’ve won him the case at a f***ing stroke. I almost felt
obliged morally to stand up and say: ‘Lol, don’t you remember the time that
. . .’
“The worst thing we did to Lol was when me and Simon stripped him on the bus.
We were pulling up to a hotel in Chicago, it was about five in the morning,
we’re saying: ‘We’re going to a health club, Lol, we’re all gonna get a
rub-down’. ‘Awloveeelovegreat.’ ‘We’re going to strip now and it’s straight
out of the bus door, straight into a hot tub.’ He’s like:
‘Riiightoootherewaaghh’. So we pretend to take our trousers off and he
actually takes his trousers off and his pants and at the bottom of the hotel
steps there’s a porter with one of those luggage things with wheels. So we
put Lol on it and go: ‘Into the hot tub!’ and we push him through reception
of the Chicago Hilton. Simon rolls Lol into the lift and goes, ‘You f***ing
idiot’ and the lift doors close.”
For 18 months between 2004 and 2006 the Cure teetered on the brink of
extinction. Smith, unsure if he ever wanted to make music with a band again,
stripped the line-up to a three-piece. Then, finding his muse revived, he
re-recruited the early Cure guitarist (and his brother-in-law) Porl Thompson
and holed up in Olympic Studios in London for the summer of 2006 to demo a
song a day. It was a seemingly impossible task for a band whose moodier
songs have been known to take several weeks, but they emerged with 33 songs
completed, 13 of which made up, last October, the upbeat and experimental
return to form, 4:13 Dream. Most of the rest will form the second,
“dark”, half to that record’s lightness. Smith hopes to release it this
year.
“It’s the companion piece, the nightmare piece to the dream thing,” he
explains. “4:13 Dream ends on a dark minor chord and I feel
like there’s an intermission and everyone goes out and goes: ‘Ooh, I wonder
what’s going to happen next.’ The next one picks up where the last one
ended.”
Smith is a sharp musical observer, constantly questioning his own motives and
those of the society around him. He didn’t watch Barack Obama’s inauguration
because “it was almost an attempt, because of the current climate, to gee
people up. There’s so much manipulation that I feel slightly wary. I just
hope he comes through with even half of what he promises.”
He’s intensely critical of his own label’s reluctance to let him put out the
Olympic songs as a double set and plain livid when it comes to the download
revolution. “It’s staggering the percentage of illegal downloads,” he says.
“It’s almost silly in a tragic way. There’s a strange reluctance on the part
of the majors [to tackle the issue]. Their artists suffer hugely from
illegal downloading: they don’t sell legal units so the label doesn’t really
have to pay them. But the label is owned by a parent company some way down
the chain that owns the internet service provider. That side of it is very
murky.
“The Radiohead experiment of paying what you want — I disagreed violently with
that. You can’t allow other people to put a price on what you do, otherwise
you don’t consider what you do to have any value at all, and that’s
nonsense. If I put a value on my music and no one’s prepared to pay that,
then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is
an idiot plan, it can’t work.”
Though softly spoken and giggly, Smith displays signs of being the oldest
Angry Young Man in music (he will be 50 in April). And who can blame him:
he’s credited with inventing a goth scene that he constantly disowns (“Most
goth kids look really cool; I think those people would be horrified by the
idea of us representing them”), is criticised for retaining his spider hair
and make-up well into middle age (“The idea of growing old gracefully is
immaterial. I look at myself and I’m kind of on the cusp at the moment. But
I’m hanging in there”) and has been the focus of blame for some of his fans’
most violent extremes.
“I’ve been in the unfortunate position of having someone kill themselves
onstage just prior to us going on,” he recalls with a shudder. “It was
hugely disturbing. We were playing the Kiss Me set [1987-88] and it
was an upbeat kind of night, but there was an emotional depth to the stage
show that was put in perspective when that happened.
“It’s happened to us a few times. A policeman blew his brains out at the show
in Czechoslovakia on that tour and on the Bloodflowers tour
[200-2001] someone killed himself. It’s the ultimate theatre I suppose. It’s
very difficult to sit on your own thinking about it, let alone get into the
kind of mentality to do that public a thing.”
One suicide note sent to him by a fan was made into the lyrics of 4:13 Dream’s
deceptively poppy The Reasons Why, including the line: “I won’t try
to bring you down about my suicide/ If you promise not to sing about the
reasons why.”
With weights like these on his shoulders, it’s no wonder he envisions a
brighter retirement. “I have this golden age ahead of me,” he says with a
grin. “I imagine I’m at some point going to be lighting a barbecue and
kicking back in a deck chair. It will come. My goal when I turned 40 was to
get to 50, when the 30th anniversary of the band would happen. That’s my
year zero if you like, passing through to the other side.
“We’re doing this DVD History of . . ., going through
everything I’ve taped and photographed during the 30 years. It’s like being
a drowning man at times, watching this stuff. It’s terrifying how fast life
goes.”
And with Smith’s current contract complete with his next album, might it
be the Cure’s last? He ponders. “I may have another go at completing my solo
album this year. It’s been about ten years since I last tried to finish it.
Every time I turn a big-number birthday I look to my solo album, dust off
the box, lift out the old cassette tapes. It’s more of an autobiographical
growing-up thing.”
He sniggers, still racked with the instability of a teenager. He considers his
solo album, his legendary band, his darkly glittering life.
“Maybe I’m scared to finish it.”
30 years of hairspray: the Cure story
1976-77
The first incarnation of the band, the Obelisk, is formed by students of Notre
Dame Middle School in Crawley, Sussex, with Robert Smith on piano. They
change their name to the equally ominous Malice and, the following year, to
the slightly sunnier Easy Cure, with Smith providing strangulated lead
vocals for the first time.
1978-79
Losing the Easy, the Cure release their debut single, Killing an Arab. They
deny accusations of racism, insisting it was inspired by the Albert Camus’
L’Etranger. The following year they release their debut album, Three
Imaginary Boys, and support Siouxsie and the Banshees on tour. The guitarist
Mick Demsey leaves the band. He won’t be the only one.
1980-82
A trio of what one critic calls “oppressively disprited” albums — 17 Seconds,
Faith and Pornography — establish the band as the masters of the guitar
dirge.
1983-85
Pursuing a poppier, more snyth-driven direction, they enjoy mainstream success
with singles such as The Lovecats (1983) and Close to Me (1985).
1987
The sublimely melodic Just Like Heaven becomes their US first Top 40 hit.
1989-92
Rediscovering their dark side without losing their commercial touch, they
release the nightmarish Disintegration LP (1989), which sells more then
three million copies worldwide. Lol Tolhurst leaves the band in 1989 and
takes Smith to court for unpaid royalties, losing the case in 1994. Despite
the disruption of the Tolhurst case, they win a Brit award for Best British
Band and in 1992 release one of their most successful albums, Wish.
1996
Emerging with yet another reshuffled line-up, they release the disapppointing
Wild Mood Swings (1996) and the rather better Bloodflowers (2000) , which is
nominated for a Grammy.
2003- 04
The Cure makes the Top Ten on both side sof the Atlantic in 2003 and they
headline the Coachella festival in Calfornia the same year. In 2004, they
tour America with Smith favourites Interpol, Mogwai and the Rapture.
2005 - 2008
In 2005 Roger O’Donnell and Perry Bamonte become the most recent casualties,
fired after the best part of two decades with the band. The remaining
members play Live 8 in Paris and release thier thirteenth studio album, 4:13
Dream, in 2008.
2009
Win NME’s Godlike Genius award.
— The Cure play the O2 Arena, London SE10 (0844 8560202), on Wednesday
