The Cure 1987

When about three months had passed since their visit to Argentina, one can still hear echoes about the performances of the band in our country, part of their huge promotional tour in South America. This time we offer you with exclusivity the first comments that singer Robert Smith has done to the British press.

IT all started on a Saturday, march 14th, at 9:05 am. After a 4 hour sleep, Robert Smith, Simon Gallup, Porl Thompson, Laurence Tolhurst and Boris Williams left London heading to Heathrow airport, where a flight was on hold to fly them to Madrid. Once in town, the musicians got registered in a hotel in the midst of the Spanish capital to rest. The next flight, a 747 by Aerolineas Argentinas (Argentina Airways) would take them to Buenos Aires. The Cure was on their way...

"One of the things that impressed me the most when I arrived in Buenos Aires was the way that people treated us at the airport", confesses Robert Smith. "I understand it's their job, but it doesn't justify their brutality and prepotency. When we arrived at the bus, there where people everywhere; we really hadn't realized that we could be so popular... If one had to define what Buenos Aires was like, it would be that it was a typical "big city": a huge fusion of styles, where the new and the old get together, but the curious thing is that they would have stopped half way through.

The other thing that impressed us was the way that they received us. At the doors of the hotel there where around 500 kids waiting for us, and during the four days that we stayed at the Sheraton, there was a group of a hundred that never got out of the square in front of the hotel. On the press conference day, we almost couldn't manage to leave... Oh, that day... Honestly, we tried to answer every single question they did, even the ones that had nothing to do with us. There were people asking us about Thatcher, Maradona (the most famous Argentinean football player), and even one (reporter), with nothing better to ask than doubting about our mental sanity. Obviously this guy was too much concerned about what we could answer..."

While this was happening, there was a huge number of fans packed outside the hotel waiting for Robert and The Cure to leave. "We almost didn't make it", reveals the singer. "When we left the conference room, we went to my room to drink something and then we had to face again the ritual of hair pulling, pinches, autographs signing and pushing to get to the bus that would take us to the stadium. When we arrived at Ferro, we couldn't resist to the temptation of a football match against a group of Argentineans that asked us to participate. After this, the usual: walking around the field, recognizing the place, doing the soundcheck, talking to the people...

"The first strange experience that I remember from the opening day was the face of the massage guy...", tells Smith. "This bloke was truly special; I don't know, he resembled with Tootsie... Anyway, this wasn't the thing that shocked me the most; what happened after the show did. Apparently there had been a "misunderstanding". At first, they informed us that there had been sold 19 thousand tickets for the show, but the question was that the capacity of the stadium was only for 17 thousand people; of course all the ones that have paid would try to get in... The people got mad: they'd killed lots of police dogs, escaped from as many policemen they could, there were wounded, arrested and hurt people; all in all, a disaster."

"This night we got this unrest. Minutes before we got onstage, we nervously looked at ourselves, while the organizers tried to calm us down, saying that they wouldn't have to take care of another "confusion" with the tickets sells, so there wouldn't be any problems that night. But it wasn't that way. When we climbed to the stage, we saw bigger barriers than the previous day ones and more policemen. Despite this measures, or perhaps because of them, the audience started a battle camp. This happened around the beginning of the set...

Suddenly, the kids started throwing everything they had in their hands at the policemen: coins, stones, seats leftovers, pieces of glass, everything. We were safe until Porl got hit by one of these things. At this point we realized that we were in the middle of a war that we didn't understand and, ultimately, had nothing to do with us. When I saw that things were going out of our hands, I got hit by a Coke bottle right on my face, I stopped singing and looking at the people. As they responded well, we carried on with the show and finished with "Arabs a Go-go". For a moment I thought we were at some place near Beirut; it was horrible... I don't remember how many hours we slept at the hotel before we went to Ezeiza airport, but I know that were a lot. When we arrived, we said goodbye to the fans and many hours later we were in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The reception of the Brazilians was basically the same as we had in Buenos Aires, but impressed us as well. What we liked about Brazil the most? The food. To say the truth, there are few places that one can be served with such fresh and tasty food as theirs. And also the beverages: by the time we got to the second bottle, we were completely asleep"