May 17, 1986 - OOR (Netherlands) (Translation below)*
 Interview - Stuurkunst - Pink Pop 86

From filthy German clubs, where the sewers are running through the dressing rooms to Veronica’s Countdown-studio; this journey brings The Cure to a crossroad.  One side represents Pop, the new singles-album ‘Standing On A Beach’ and the other side Pinkpop 1986, where the group will be the final act. 

This one-off festival is great, says Robert Smith, cause then we get to take our entire entourage with us.  There will be about 30 people on our hired coach for the weekend.  It’s very Cliff Richard-like, but that’s how we started, isn’t it? Summer Holidays.

The dressing room of the Countdown-studio at Bussum seems a strange place to be talking to about the turbulent nine years of The Cure.  Robert Smith is happy to see none of the, what he calls, ‘frightful raincoats-people’; the fans who wallow in the ‘best of the depression’ period.  Any minute the teenagers with shining smiles and high haircuts can come charging in.    In the room next to theirs Princess is taking in a break after her rehearsals for the song ‘you’re my number one’.  But here, next to me, Robert Smith talks about existentialism.   And festivals.  And touring. And about staying independent.  And about waiting for planes, sound checks or trains. And money.  And about thirteen amazing, provocative, unpredictable, bizarre and brilliant singles. And why The Cure fluked, got up again, became better and bigger and still stayed very existentialistic.  Like we said, it is a strange place to be interviewing The Cure. 

The closing of a chapter

Robert Smith sighs: ‘that album is a sort of looking back on things we’ve created ourselves.  It’s like closing a chapter in the history of a band.  Therefore I had to listen to a lot of old songs again, compared them and thought about what we’ve done, how people experienced our music and all those things that we didn’t have time for’. 

But why now?  Thirteen singles, it’s an unlucky number. ‘Well, whatever we will be doing afterwards, it will be different, so the timing seemed right.  And another reason is that after six or seven years, our contract with Polydor is ending, and you can bet on it that if we don’t sign a new contract, they will be releasing a singles-album.  So we would rather do it know, while we still have artistic control over the album, the price, and make sure that it’s done in a good way.   That’s the only reason.  There’s actually no artistic reason’. 

Is the Cure standing on top of the stairs or are they at the bottom of new stairs? ‘I believe we are somewhere in the middle, but closer to the top than we were at the beginning.  Anyway, we will continue’. 

If the Cure would have decided instead of closing a chapter, to close the entire book, than popmusic would have lost its last alternative heroes.  We’ve just had a brief chance to see Standing on a Beach (named after the opening line from Killing an Arab, a quote from Camus existentialistic novel L’Etranger), but it is a catalogue of diabolic popmusic.  At certain times very frivolous and sometimes very aggressive and down. 

But let’s look at things chronologically; it’s an open door with all that talk about closing a chapter.   After Three Imaginary Boys and the flirty approach like Fire in Cairo, So What? (a very flamboyant style which they have never achieved again), The Cure became a sort of grey spot on the adrenaline-satisfied Punk scene.  A very demoralized, very British, holding on the depression, band who have made three emotional albums.  17 Seconds, Faith, Pornography,  all representing a crisis.  If melancholy is the pleasure that one derives from sadness, then what is to come forth from depression? 

Right now, Robert Smith, with buddy Lol (Tolhurst), Simon (Gallup, who left the band after Pornography, but resurfaced with The Head on the Door), and lets not forget Porl Thompson and Boris Williams, are stepping into the footsteps of Princess and are on their way to a number one hit.  There’s a relaxed atmosphere in the dressing room, while everybody gets a little drunk and starts bickering when they talk about the dark intermediate period.  Maybe that’s a result of the relief and confused happiness.  It’s as if Robert is saying: ‘this is it, this is our story; it’s absurd and a bit frightening.  We’ve had to make concessions in order to survive, but give me the benefit of the doubt.  I’m still in control’. 

Competition

Still, some will be wondering what The Cure is doing here.  What I mean is: is it true that the confused existentialist still want to have fun? The reason we’re here is, I think, the same reason as to why we still appear in public. It’s about entertainment.  We promote the singles we release because we’re competing with other bands, whether we like it or not.  Airplay, television-time.. I don’t see why we should ignore it.  In the old days we didn’t care and we let other people take up our time, but now, I think, we have to compete.  The Cure should try to be in the spotlights because of how we look, what we do and the songs we play.  Other people might think otherwise.  I hope the consider us something alternative.  A sparkle of hope.  If you look at certain bands on Countdown, you have to realise that the’re are people who like things a bit different, who don’t follow the same path.  ‘People who make this kind of programs don’t really like us.  They get nervous because we act like maniacs.  But to us it’s a day out.  A journey to Holland’. 

When you look at Robert at the rehearsals: a tin soldier trying to playback a trumpet solo, you know exactly what he means. 

Gigs

‘When we released Pornography I was sick of being Robert Smith.  Whatever we would have done, it would have been a compromise, so we had to end it.  I hated it, because I thought it would be the end of The Cure after four years, while I knew that we could have lasted longer.  My memories of the Faith tour are great, especially when we we’re playing in that circus tent in Holland and slept in trailers.  At the same time the concerts were…almost religious events.  They were very happy in a certain way.  But others were boring because both the audience and we were trying to be very depressed.  And we also experienced a lot of hostility; certain people in the audience were expecting pop songs and had paid for them’. 

Robert Smith closes a chapter, but he seems as a man who has been in the valley of death and witnessed his own dead.  It’s like a dream under influence of alcohol, very psychedelic.  Thirteen singles were played at once.  ‘We love gigs.  It’s still a weird feeling depending on who you play for and what you play.  I’m thinking about the lyrics I sing or perhaps about what I’m playing.  I would hate to forget the lyrics, because it could be someone’s favourite song.  Sometimes I think about how certain people in the audience look.

We also like festivals.  I feel much more at ease in front of a large audience which I don’t see because I’m so short-sighted.  If you would invite ten people and I would have to pick up my guitar and start playing, I would be very nervous.  But when it’s more than a thousand people, I relax.

I liked playing in clubs; it smells, it’s hot and the crowd is rude.  But I’ve never been to festivals, unless we had to play ourselves.  I can’t image going to one, because I don’t like the idea of being with a huge crowd with whom I share nothing but a common interest for the bands on stage.  Who else are playing at Pinkpop? Well, Jesus and Mary Chain have cancelled so that leaves Claw Boys Claw,  Cock Robin, The Waterboys, The Cult… AAAAAAARGH!’ 

Latest news

‘We’ve remixed Boy’s Don’t Cry because we had to find a song that could be played on the radio. It had to be one of the older ones, because they’re known to people.  But we’ve never made a video for that song and I didn’t felt like play backing that crow-like voice that I used before.  My singing is much better now   And if you would take that song out of its original context it would be very feeble.  The album contains the old version, but on the single it’s modernised, also because of the competition.   If I would have thought that everybody knew the Cure, it wouldn’t have mattered, because everybody would have recognised the old song.  But it isn’t like that: certain people could think ‘that sounds like crap’ or ‘god, that voice, what happened to this guy?’ 

Looking back part 1

If I imagine that I would be here as a fifteen year old and looking at myself like I am now, I probably think: ‘good, he stayed a normal guy’.  And if I would like that fifteen year old I would probably say: ‘you bastard, you’re so thin!’

 Looking back part 2 the singles

Killing an Arab
When I listened to this song for the compilation is had been a very long time since I last heard it and I was surprised at how lanky it sounded.  I couldn’t believe it.  It had just worn out.  It didn’t sound like it was in my mind, but we had to start somewhere and it was the best choice because it made us rather famous.  It’s based on existentialistic problems within the limits of a pop approach in two and a half minutes.  At that time it was rather unusual.  People didn’t know whether to believe it or not or whether we were all philosophy students.

Boys Don’t Cry.
It was an attempt at writing a pop song without making pop music, although it is my idea of what pop is.  When it was released it was considered the perfect pop song, which it wasn’t because it sold less than any other Cure song.

 Jumping Someone Else’s Train
It was a reaction to the Mod revival.  It was a success, although people at NME will tell you that they have never been part of it.  But we were old news because of the revival and this was our way of getting back at all those people who all of a sudden decided that they always loved The Who.

 A Forest
Just like Killing An Arab it made us a bit famous, especially here in Holland.  It describes an experience of me when I was 12 or 13. At first we wanted to release Play for Today as a single, but we thought it would be too obvious, so we decided to release A Forest to make it a bit obscure.

 Primary
We didn’t want to release a single for the Faith album, because it wasn’t that kind of album, but we had to, for the same reasons as now with Boys Don’t Cry.  We had to get the attention drawn to the album and Polydor wanted a single that could be played on the radio. And of all the songs, this was the least suitable.  It’s like a lost paradise, like a forest.  I went through a very melancholic period.

 Charlotte Sometimes
I got the title from another book, from Penelope Farmer. Even now I rather fall in love with a girl from a book than a real girl. They’re always perfect and they never change.  We were very proud of it when it was finished and I still think it’s one of the best things we’ve ever done.

 The Hanging Garden
I used to write a lot of songs when I was feeling a bit weird.  I had a lot of naturalistic, antique of religious images in my head and I used to combine animals or wild sex with religion.  Everybody knows you can’t combine religion and sex! Very confused.

 Let’s Go To Bed
And this is were religion got kicked out the door!  It had a double meaning.  I meant let’s go to bed like  I’m bored here, let’s go to bed – but separate beds.  But nobody understood it that way.  We never contradicted it because it helped to break down the myth that The Cure’s only gloomy and dark.

 The Walk
This is a true story. It happened to me when I was hanging out at a big lake near my house.  The Howling woman was a woman who was walking her dog.  It happened at about two o’clock in the morning and I wrote the song when I got back home.

 The Lovecats.
I was convinced we had to make a song that sounded like a Disney-soundtrack.  I wrote the lyrics in Paris and they don’t mean anything.  The idea’s from a book in which a guy puts all this cats in bags and throws them in a lake.  At first that was the opening line, but I felt I couldn’t sing that in a pop song.  Although it’s one of the least emotional things we’ve done, it’s one of my favourites.  But I can’t imagine us doing something like this again.

 The Caterpillar
This is again a stereotypical image, like Boys Don’t Cry.  It’s a typical relationship song.  It’s not about anybody I know, but about what could happen.

 Inbetween Days
I’m very attached to that song.  I think it’s the best single we’ve made.  Everything was right: the songs, the people who were working on it.  It was al very easy.  Actually it was not about days, but about nights, but I didn’t want to talk about nights. The’re were already enough nights on The Head on the Door.

 Close To Me
It’s about claustrophobia, but not about the physical form. It’s about wondering what you are doing in that room with those sorts of people.  Something about that.

A very BIG THANKS to: ANKE for the TRANSLATION.

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