PRIMARY
SOURCES
LolonTheCure’s
literaryinspirations“T
herewereveryfew
opportunitiesin the
late’70stohavewhat
I wouldcalla dailycommune
withcreativity.Ouroutletswere
eithermusic,mostofwhich
camefromouroldersiblings,
orgoingtothelocallibraryand
gettingbooksout.Wenaturally
gravitatedtothatdarkerside–
MervynPeake’sGormenghast
novels,Camus,Kafka,some
sciencefictionaswell,likeBrian
Aldiss’sBarefootIn TheHead.
Wegenerallylikedanythingthat
wasunusual!Wewerelucky
becausewithquitea fewpeople
weknew,theirparentswerea
bitlikethattoo,sotheywould
encourageus.It wasalmost
a perfectstorm– wewere
unwillinglyorwillinglybeing
mouldedintosomething!”78 • UNCUT• JULY 2019
FEW years ago I went back to The
Rocket, the pub in Crawley where
The Cure started playing. Our
first bassist, Michael Dempsey,
met me at the airport and
asked, “Do you want a trip
down memory lane?” The
biggest thing that ever
happened to The Rocket
was The Cure – but there’s
nothing on the walls, nothing to commemorate us at all!
There were just three very dour-looking people sitting in
there on a Sunday night. It was super-depressing, but I
suppose it was fitting in a way. Then I walked past
another pub we used to go to – and saw the same type of
angry, pissed-off-looking people sitting outside.
Not much had changed in darkest Crawley. It’s still the
same place. Being there reminded me why we needed to
get out 40 years ago! We were on our own, we felt very
isolated. In some ways that worked well, though – it was
us against the rest of the world. In May 1979, we released
our first album, Three Imaginary Boys. Based on our
age, the time and what we were trying to achieve, I’m
pretty proud of it. I think one of the reasons Robert’s not
that keen on the album is because the production was
taken out of our hands. Back then, we didn’t really have
that much of a clue about what we were doing!
All the same, it was our introduction to the horrible
music business – and, at the time, we were pretty
excited. We were friends and we’d started making music
because we wanted to do something just so we didn’t
have to go down the pub. We recorded all the songs we’d
been playing for two or three years, since the band
started coming together. We were at Morgan Studios,
working pretty quickly. It was a good studio, but we
didn’t have any money so we slept on the floor, working
thenightshift.Youdon’tcareaboutthatwhenyou’re
young.Yes,youcanhearourinfluences,likewiththe
coverofJimiHendrix’s“FoxyLady”.Butnobandcomesfully formed into the world, it’s naïve to think otherwise.
Trent Reznor summed it up very well at the Rock And
Roll Hall Of Fame recently. Punk was filtering from
London down to deepest Sussex, and of course that was
a huge influence, but we were also fans of American
psychedelia. The Cure came out of that melting pot.
I still love Three Imaginary Boys, but I see Seventeen
Seconds, Faith and Pornography as a trilogy in sound
and in mood. You can hear our evolution from the initial
awakenings on Seventeen Seconds all the way through
to the bitter end in Pornography. If somebody asked me
to explain The Cure, I’d present them with those three
albums. But Pornography was also the end of The Cure
as a trio, that powerful triangle. It was just getting too
intense to survive.R
OBERT has always had two sides to him. On one
hand, he’s definitely the person that people hear
in the music and that they see on stage – the
esoteric guy who reads Mervyn Peake. But Manchester
United are playing City tonight, and he’ll probably be
watching that. People didn’t always know what to make
of him. So we had trouble at some of the gigs, early on.
Provincial gigs were always a little like that. I’ve never
understood it... in more isolated places, you’d think
audiences would be happy to see you – but instead they
were intent on chasing you away. All the satellite towns
of the capital were like that, Crawley, Hemel
Hempstead... there was this undercurrent of violence.
As we reached the end of the Three Imaginary Boys
tour, we’d come up with the start of “A Forest” and the
start of “Play For Today”. We were rehearsing three
times a week in the Smiths’ extension, which really
must have enamoured us to the neighbours! I remember
sitting in Robert’s house one day and he played us these
new songs he’d been working up – more skeletal,
atmospheric compositions. Robert and I had been
listening to David Bowie’s Low, but Robert had also
rAy been listening to Nick Drake, so these influences fed
StevenSOn/reX/ShutterStOCK; AFP/Getty IMAGeS
THE CURE
The Cure, with
Michael Dempsey
still on bass, play “a
dose of Sundays” at
the Marquee Club,
March 4–25, 1979Albert
Camus