Speaker 1: Pushkin. Lowll Tolhurst is the drummer and co founder of
Speaker 1: The Cure. He first met lead singer Robert Smith when
Speaker 1: they were just five years old. Together with their other
Speaker 1: Catholic school friend, Michael Dempsey, they went on to make dark,
Speaker 1: brooding music that reflected the isolation they felt as the
Speaker 1: only punks living in their small English town. As the
Speaker 1: Cures sound developed in the eighties, they released a string
Speaker 1: of three albums that Loll now defines as the band's
Speaker 1: quote unquote goth period. Today, we'll hear Loll talk in
Speaker 1: detail about the making of those records. He'll also discuss
Speaker 1: the book he just released last month called goth a History,
Speaker 1: which explores the architects of the post punk genre bands
Speaker 1: like Susie, The Banshees, Joy Division, and Bauhaus. In addition
Speaker 1: to the book, Lol is also releasing a new album
Speaker 1: with his old friend Budget, the drummer from the Banchees.
Speaker 1: The album's called Los Angeles and it features an all
Speaker 1: star list of guests including You Two's The Edge and
Speaker 1: LCD Sound Systems James Murphy. On today's episode, Lea Rose
Speaker 1: talks to Little Tollhurst about growing up an outcast in
Speaker 1: post World War two England and how he and Robert
Speaker 1: Smith first bonded over a Hendrix record. Lowe also gives
Speaker 1: a window into the creation of the Cures three goth albums.
Speaker 1: That's seventeen seconds, Faith and Pornography. This is broken record
Speaker 1: liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Ritchman. Here's
Speaker 1: Lea Rose's interview with Lowell Tollhurst.
Speaker 2: Let's start talking a little bit about the books. So
Speaker 2: you've written two books. The first is a memoir called Cured,
Speaker 2: the Tale of Two Imaginary Boys. The newest book goth
Speaker 2: a History. And I found the writing. I've been listening
Speaker 2: to the audio book of Cured, which you read, and
Speaker 2: it's just excellent. And it's been my walking partner now.
Speaker 2: I go on long walks and listen and the writing
Speaker 2: is so simple and straightforward and feels very uncluttered, and
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of ornamentation, and it struck me
Speaker 2: that it's sort of similar to your style as a drummer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, yes, thank you. You're the first person that's
Speaker 3: noticed that. And it's and that's why you're right. It's
Speaker 3: like i'd like to be. I wouldn't say minimalistic, but
Speaker 3: I but I don't have. I don't have a desire
Speaker 3: to make things heavily, you know, ornamented. I suppose it
Speaker 3: is the word, you know, and that's true in writing.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, if I think of the writers
Speaker 3: that I really admire, they pay great attention to the sentence.
Speaker 3: And that's that's how I do. I don't you know.
Speaker 3: It's funny. I love notebooks, you know. I obsessively collect
Speaker 3: notebooks because I think they're beautiful. And I write stuff
Speaker 3: in it, and then you know, two weeks later, I
Speaker 3: look at it and I can't one of my right well,
Speaker 3: I can't read my own writing. So I type everything
Speaker 3: straight away. But what I do do is as I
Speaker 3: type it out, and I do it like music, I
Speaker 3: just let it flow, get the idea out, and then
Speaker 3: maybe two weeks later, I come back and I have
Speaker 3: a look at it and go, oh, okay, take that out,
Speaker 3: put this in, and I edit it. In drumming, you know,
Speaker 3: I loved Jackie Libbitts from Can because he would say,
Speaker 3: you have to play monotonous. And I understand that because
Speaker 3: it's like the mantra, and that's what I wanted to get.
Speaker 3: That's what I wanted to do with the drums. I
Speaker 3: wanted to make you feel that you're part of the
Speaker 3: whole thing, and that required it to be precise and minimalistic.
Speaker 3: The same thing with the writing. So writers that I
Speaker 3: really liked were like for this current book, goth it
Speaker 3: was hard for me to find my initial voice because
Speaker 3: I'm writing about the people. I'm not just writing my
Speaker 3: own experiences. I mean, there's a lot of my own
Speaker 3: stuff in there, but I'm writing about other people. I
Speaker 3: wanted to project the other people's stories in a way
Speaker 3: that wasn't just purely journalistic. I didn't want to do
Speaker 3: that because I'm not a journalist, And the way I
Speaker 3: personalized it was I'd been reading a lot of California
Speaker 3: writers Joan Didion from the sixties and seventies, and I
Speaker 3: love the way that all of her sentences are crafted
Speaker 3: very precisely, you know. So I thought, Okay, there's my template,
Speaker 3: you know. So that's very cool. But I'm glad that
Speaker 3: you actually you're the first person I know that said
Speaker 3: that to me.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I've really been enjoying it, and I highly
Speaker 2: recommend the audio book. A lot of times with audiobooks,
Speaker 2: you get sort of like a narrator who has no
Speaker 2: connection to the story, and they can put on voices
Speaker 2: when they're reading dialogue and it can be very distracting.
Speaker 2: So I really enjoyed hearing your voice because your story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny because at the beginning when I did Cured,
Speaker 3: and I actually recorded both Curd and the current book
Speaker 3: Goth in the same studio because I loved the place
Speaker 3: that I recorded in and also it's very near my house.
Speaker 3: But I remember the recording engineer at the end of
Speaker 3: one day said to me, Oh, I said that, you know,
Speaker 3: normally I'm not really involved with what's going on, you know,
Speaker 3: just like listening for you know, pops and clicks and stuff.
Speaker 3: He said. But he said, is there lights at the
Speaker 3: end of the tunnel with this? I said, yes, don't worry.
Speaker 3: The next couple of days you'll hear that, you know. Okay,
Speaker 3: it was funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome. Okay. So I wanted to start off
Speaker 2: by talking about the Cures Goth period as you outline
Speaker 2: it in the book goth A History. So the Cures
Speaker 2: Goth period, as you lay it out, consists of three
Speaker 2: consecutive albums. The first is seventeen Seconds, released in nineteen eight,
Speaker 2: Faith released in nineteen eighty one, and Pornography in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two. And these are all albums that you said
Speaker 2: you were deeply involved with making. Right, So let's start
Speaker 2: with seventeen Seconds. It's a cure second album. Do you
Speaker 2: remember any of the conversations within the band that led
Speaker 2: up to developing the sound for that album, because it
Speaker 2: was quite different than the sound from the first album.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't want to make up a story, because
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't think, you know, It's like when
Speaker 3: you when you write conversations in a book. A lot
Speaker 3: of the time, you know, I challenge anybody in the
Speaker 3: world to remember conversations for Betam, even from like yesterday.
Speaker 3: You can't. It's impossible. You know. Most of the time
Speaker 3: I would know, okay, I know how these people speak
Speaker 3: about things. I know what we talked about roughly. So
Speaker 3: I'm going to you know, I'm going to construct a
Speaker 3: conversation from that which will be in their voice and
Speaker 3: will be correct. I think with seventeen Seconds, we had
Speaker 3: our first album was really a live set that we
Speaker 3: had played for you know, a couple of years, and
Speaker 3: so that seemed the most obvious thing we go and
Speaker 3: record that we can do it quickly, we know what
Speaker 3: we're playing, and it happened. But for the second album,
Speaker 3: we finally realized that we had you know, we weren't
Speaker 3: just going to record one album and that was it.
Speaker 3: We had a chance to another record. You know, most
Speaker 3: people will tell you in bands that they sort of
Speaker 3: put everything into the first album and then suddenly think
Speaker 3: what are we going to do next? Because we you know,
Speaker 3: and usually it's like, you know, you have your whole
Speaker 3: life to make your first album, like they say, and
Speaker 3: six to do your second album. And we were kind
Speaker 3: of not really in that position, but we thought, okay,
Speaker 3: we better do what we really want to get out
Speaker 3: now what we were feeling at that time, because you know,
Speaker 3: maybe number two is it and that's all, well, we'll
Speaker 3: have the chance to do you know. We felt lucky
Speaker 3: with the first one and people liked it enough to say, well,
Speaker 3: let's start thinking about the second one. And that was
Speaker 3: really a great idea that Robert had because he said
Speaker 3: to you know, our manager Chris Parry would come in
Speaker 3: the studio for the first album. And for the first album,
Speaker 3: you know, we were fairly young, we didn't really know
Speaker 3: what we were doing. We would look at things and
Speaker 3: you know, sort of let them get on with it.
Speaker 3: Him and Mike Hedge as the engineer. So for the
Speaker 3: second album we said, well, you know what, we've seen
Speaker 3: enough of what goes on and how to do it.
Speaker 3: We'd like to do it ourselves. And Robert was very
Speaker 3: insistent about that, we'd like to do it ourselves. And
Speaker 3: you know, it's a credit to Parry that he went, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: that's fine. You know, his offices were in the same
Speaker 3: complex as the studio, so you know, once a week
Speaker 3: he would come down and just have a little listen,
Speaker 3: you know, so he left us to our own devices,
Speaker 3: and as I say in goth you know, to me
Speaker 3: it was a very creative time because we were allowed
Speaker 3: to do it ourselves. You know, we were given the
Speaker 3: key to the kingdom and like we can go in
Speaker 3: and do it. So that leaves you to be a
Speaker 3: lot more experimental. In fact, I was. I was telling
Speaker 3: somebody the other week that a lot of bands, when
Speaker 3: they start making you know, the second, third, fourth albums,
Speaker 3: they get this idea in their head that they have
Speaker 3: they will have separate roles and they have you know,
Speaker 3: I do this, you do that, and you know, that's
Speaker 3: how we make it work because.
Speaker 2: Sort of like the roles in a household or in
Speaker 2: a marriage or yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's any kind of partnership, because you know, and not unreasonably,
Speaker 3: the theory goes, well, if it worked once, this is
Speaker 3: this is a formula, this is how we do it.
Speaker 3: And I think that's kind of misguided for two reasons.
Speaker 3: Because one, music's really modern. Music is really the only
Speaker 3: sort of art form where people are required to reproduce
Speaker 3: what they did before in the same way but slightly different.
Speaker 3: You know, they're like, you know, it's like a painter.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't say to a painter, well, paint me that
Speaker 3: portraits again, but from this different angle, that's what I
Speaker 3: want to see. You know, you let them do whatever
Speaker 3: they want to do. So for seventeen seconds. There was
Speaker 3: one session where we said, hey, let's just swap instruments.
Speaker 3: So you know, I played guitar and Robert played drums,
Speaker 3: and we recorded a couple of things. Most of them
Speaker 3: were terrible, so we decided that we go back to
Speaker 3: what we will do, but we kept some little snippets
Speaker 3: of it, and they're actually on the album in a way,
Speaker 3: you know, you don't really know where they are, but
Speaker 3: they're there. So that's also freeing in your mind. You
Speaker 3: don't have this thought process that, oh, you know, I
Speaker 3: have to just do this. You can put input into
Speaker 3: different areas and that's you know, if you trust each other,
Speaker 3: that's a good good way to do it, because then
Speaker 3: you've not just got, you know, one mind on one thing,
Speaker 3: You've got everybody's mind on everything, and that works, you know.
Speaker 2: And then Garthie wrote that over the years, there have
Speaker 2: been a lot of assumptions that have been made about
Speaker 2: The Cure's creative process, and I took that to mean
Speaker 2: that people just assumed that a lot of the songwriting
Speaker 2: came from Robert. But now you're saying that, inspired in
Speaker 2: part by your sobriety, that that wasn't always the case.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, you know, as things got further on
Speaker 3: in the Cure, you know, and to the point where
Speaker 3: I wasn't well enough to contribute like I was used to,
Speaker 3: you know, at the beginning, especially for those first, the second, third,
Speaker 3: and fourth album, they were much more democratic in their approach.
Speaker 3: And it's funny. I was talking to Paul Thompson a
Speaker 3: little while back, and I said, Oh, it tells you
Speaker 3: how far it was back because I just finished could
Speaker 3: and I said, he said, well, you know, I've always
Speaker 3: known you were a writer. You were a writer when
Speaker 3: we were fifteen or sixteen. And so I thought about
Speaker 3: it and I thought, well, yeah, you know a lot
Speaker 3: of the times, well Rober's going to sing the words, right,
Speaker 3: so you know, he has the final say on what
Speaker 3: he's going to sing, because you can't sing stuff that
Speaker 3: you don't believe. But there was a lot more collaboration
Speaker 3: and just you know, general molding of things back then,
Speaker 3: and that you know, I would put some words in,
Speaker 3: Simon put some words in now and again it's really
Speaker 3: guarantees to make things stronger now as things progress and
Speaker 3: people start, you know, it also happens, you know, for
Speaker 3: people that manage bands and stuff. It's a lot easier
Speaker 3: if you don't have to deal with everybody in the band.
Speaker 3: You just have to deal with one person. So you know,
Speaker 3: things things become that way, and you know, all credit
Speaker 3: to Robert is a great songwriter, and he's got a
Speaker 3: lot of good ideas. Personally, I think for the Cure,
Speaker 3: the best version of the three piece band was for
Speaker 3: those those albums, I mean, the first one was a
Speaker 3: four piece, but it's like the most pure and condensed
Speaker 3: of that band, and that was much more collaborative, you know.
Speaker 3: So you know that's the thing. It's like, I don't
Speaker 3: want to turn around and oh no, he never wrote anything,
Speaker 3: because that's not true. He's obviously the songwriter, but that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that anybody else didn't do it. I mean,
Speaker 3: and it went on. We tried different formats of that.
Speaker 3: You know, when we did kiss Me, we had so
Speaker 3: many songs because we'd all by this time. We didn't
Speaker 3: do stuff together. We did it separately, you know, so
Speaker 3: we will have little studios at home and go, okay,
Speaker 3: six months and then we'll come back together and we'll
Speaker 3: see what we've got. And that's the reason that you know,
Speaker 3: Kissed Me was like a double album. I mean, it
Speaker 3: could have been a triple album. We had one hundred
Speaker 3: bits of songs to start with, and then we whittled
Speaker 3: that down to like thirty five and then finally to
Speaker 3: seventeen or nineteen something like that. You know, So everybody
Speaker 3: had some creativity, you know, and that was what was
Speaker 3: pretty good about the curt because when you put that
Speaker 3: all together, it's unstoppable, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was curious about the song play for today. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's the second song on seventeen seconds, and it's
Speaker 2: a pretty substantial mood shift from the intro. Do you
Speaker 2: remember how that song came together?
Speaker 3: And I seem to remember that we had a sort
Speaker 3: of rough version of that when Michael Dempsey was around.
Speaker 3: But anyway, but I know for the lyric, it was
Speaker 3: the first time that I'd felt like I could write
Speaker 3: a lyric that was accessible to my feelings, you know,
Speaker 3: because the previous things like Three Emery Boys and Fire
Speaker 3: in Cairo and Another Day, they were they were far
Speaker 3: more impressionistic, you know, in the way that I presented things.
Speaker 3: So that's it. That's why there's a difference, because it's
Speaker 3: much more to the point and less flowery, I suppose
Speaker 3: is the world And.
Speaker 2: That's a breakthrough I imagine as a writer.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean I don't think that at however
Speaker 3: old I was then twenty that I even thought about that.
Speaker 3: I didn't. I just sort of instinctively felt, oh, well,
Speaker 3: this this is a better kind of thing, This is
Speaker 3: a better this is more what I want to say.
Speaker 3: It's just the only way I knew how to deal
Speaker 3: with it, you know, write it down so Robert liked it,
Speaker 3: and so off if it went you know.
Speaker 2: So is that like you, you wrote the entire lyrics,
Speaker 2: gave it to him and then he interpreted it.
Speaker 3: As gave him sort of like the basis for it all,
Speaker 3: and probably chopped and changed a few things around, because
Speaker 3: you know, people forget, you know, like songs are not
Speaker 3: it's not poetry writing and it's not pros it's this
Speaker 3: weird hybrid in between lyrics and lyrics A lot of
Speaker 3: the time work better if they're on a matter pig
Speaker 3: and some lyrics work better sometimes if they're not quite
Speaker 3: grammatically correct or or you know, certain words, certain words
Speaker 3: you just can't sing or you could try. But you know,
Speaker 3: so that decision was always left, you know, obviously to
Speaker 3: the singer. So that's how that worked.
Speaker 2: Really, I imagine you must find it interesting to see
Speaker 2: what songs resonate with a really wide audience after you
Speaker 2: release album. And do you have these theories why a
Speaker 2: forest caught on the way it did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like audiences don't buy and large. I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously there are exceptions to the rule. Audiences are not
Speaker 3: looking at you thinking or listening to you thinking, oh,
Speaker 3: that was good the way they played that, or that
Speaker 3: was good, the way that's put together. That it's much
Speaker 3: more visceral than that, you know. They it's like it's
Speaker 3: like it's like drums, right, Most people other than drummers
Speaker 3: don't really notice what's going on with the drummer. But
Speaker 3: if something's wrong, if something goes bad, they might not
Speaker 3: even know what it is. But oh no, something's not right,
Speaker 3: something's off. It doesn't feel right, and they don't know
Speaker 3: what it is. So the point where it works for
Speaker 3: an audience is when they understand completely that it's you
Speaker 3: and your expression. Right. It's not to do with how
Speaker 3: well you play or how bad you play. No, it's
Speaker 3: it's a terribly overused word lately, but it's authenticity, you know,
Speaker 3: and that's what they feel.
Speaker 2: Do you remember why you decided to bring the drums
Speaker 2: in when you did? In a forest?
Speaker 3: You know, we'd we had liked to a lot of
Speaker 3: like the early sort of crowd rock bands, you know,
Speaker 3: Can and NOI, And like what I always liked about
Speaker 3: them was was things feel like they're going forward with
Speaker 3: that motoric beat, but they also seem to stay in
Speaker 3: the same place as well. You know, it's like it's
Speaker 3: static but it's but it's moving, you know, and act
Speaker 3: seemed like the thing that we really wanted to express
Speaker 3: with the drums. So Mike Hedges was instrumental in getting
Speaker 3: that sound. You know. He used a lot of different
Speaker 3: techniques which we'd never seen before, and I don't think
Speaker 3: a lot of people used him at the time even so,
Speaker 3: and he was young like us as well, you know,
Speaker 3: so we had open minds about what you do. You know,
Speaker 3: he wasn't stuck with like, oh no, this is how
Speaker 3: you recall drums, you can't do anything anything else. We
Speaker 3: we were open to doing it a different way. I
Speaker 3: think also, like somebody said to me the other night,
Speaker 3: it's you know, the lyric. I thought the title, Robert
Speaker 3: did the lyric, but the actual lyric, if you think
Speaker 3: about it, is the sort of encapsulation of everything goth
Speaker 3: and romantic. If you think about it, it's like there's
Speaker 3: this sense of mystery, there's this sense of you know,
Speaker 3: loss at the same time, and it's all there in
Speaker 3: one very succinct lyric. So I think that's what we
Speaker 3: respond to. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you described your drumming style on album. Is you
Speaker 2: play monotonous half Man, half Machine?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's Jackie Levi from Can that's his quote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah, I thought that it was a drum
Speaker 2: machine to Yeah, that seems sort of like it would
Speaker 2: be hard to keep up, especially playing live.
Speaker 3: Yes, very hard, But you know the thing is, it's
Speaker 3: it's like practicing. People think sometimes they watch drummers who
Speaker 3: are very flammby and they think, oh, that must be
Speaker 3: very hard, and sometimes it is, but most of the
Speaker 3: time that's a bit like a sort of a sideshow trick.
Speaker 3: You know. It's like I once sort of thing with
Speaker 3: Ginger Baker and he said, you know, people think I'm
Speaker 3: playing things really fast, but what I'm doing is I'm
Speaker 3: playing lots of quite simple things but on different limbs,
Speaker 3: slightly shifted from each other, and it gives the impression
Speaker 3: of going really fast. And you know, I know that's
Speaker 3: very difficult to do because you you've got to think
Speaker 3: about everything all at the same time. But in terms
Speaker 3: of physicality, you know, it sounds faster than your body
Speaker 3: is actually kind of doing. It's hard to explain, but
Speaker 3: it kind of it sounds like that in drumming. I
Speaker 3: always tell people. If you're doing it right, you could
Speaker 3: play for hours and you'll just feel elevated. You know,
Speaker 3: you can walk off stage three or four hours and
Speaker 3: you'll feel fine. If you're doing it wrong, it's like
Speaker 3: running the worst marathon. If you're like and you know
Speaker 3: at the end you're like, you can't sit up. It's
Speaker 3: really like dancing. You know, you just have to remember, okay,
Speaker 3: well that wasn't right, but it has to move to
Speaker 3: here now that has been there, and as long as
Speaker 3: you can get in that, yeah, you'll be fine. You know.
Speaker 3: But that's the trick. The trick is to learn how
Speaker 3: to do that. It's like, you know, I watched guitarists
Speaker 3: a lot, and I think to myself, how do they
Speaker 3: know just instinctively their fingers are going, They're not looking,
Speaker 3: and it's but it's just that, you know, you have to.
Speaker 3: It's like Malcolm Gladwell in his book out Outlet as
Speaker 3: he said, you know, some people think it's a bit dismissive,
Speaker 3: but I don't think it is said, like, you know,
Speaker 3: the difference between being good and being great is like
Speaker 3: ten thousand hours of practice. He's got a point, you know,
Speaker 3: because if I think about it, at the beginning when
Speaker 3: we started to kill. We spent the first three years
Speaker 3: at Robert's house just playing like three times a week.
Speaker 3: It was more of a social thing. We just meet
Speaker 3: their you know, play, go down the park, come back,
Speaker 3: play a bit more. But that's where we got a
Speaker 3: ten thousand hours.
Speaker 2: You know, before we move on from seventeen seconds. Is
Speaker 2: there any other stories you want to share anything from
Speaker 2: that period overall? That's important to know.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think I think more than anything,
Speaker 3: like saying in goth it was for me, but I think,
Speaker 3: you know, I think I can say it for everybody else.
Speaker 3: It was it was a discovery of our own ethos. Really,
Speaker 3: you know, it was a discovery of who we really
Speaker 3: were and that we could be who we really were
Speaker 3: and do something with it, you know, whereas before we
Speaker 3: felt a bit more constrained. That's really why when I
Speaker 3: talked about it, when Robert, you know, it's a bit
Speaker 3: dismissive of the first album, it's because you know, it
Speaker 3: wasn't wholly our involvement. It was like, yes, it was us,
Speaker 3: but it was us put through this filter of you know,
Speaker 3: a different different things, mainly through the manager. So yeah,
Speaker 3: and he had just signed like the Jam, you know,
Speaker 3: to PolyGram, so he was like that was in his mind,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do another version of this three piece
Speaker 3: band and it's going to be a pop band. And
Speaker 3: yeah it's kind of different. But you know, I think
Speaker 3: the other good thing is it was a time where
Speaker 3: there was you know, I don't discount the fact of
Speaker 3: being in the right place at the right time either.
Speaker 3: You know, there there was much more of an openness
Speaker 3: to to letting things it evolved, rather than like, Okay,
Speaker 3: we've got to do that this year and then work
Speaker 3: then we have to try something completely different. You know,
Speaker 3: there was there was more time to do things. I
Speaker 3: feel we.
Speaker 1: Have to pause for a quick break and then we'll
Speaker 1: come back with more from Lea Rose than Lowl Tallhurst.
Speaker 1: We're back with more from Lea Rose and low Tollhurst.
Speaker 2: Speaking of evolution, when you were going into Faith the
Speaker 2: next album, Yeah, what was the thought on how the
Speaker 2: sound would build or change?
Speaker 3: I think for Faith, we wanted it to be you know,
Speaker 3: at first, it just we wanted it to sound a
Speaker 3: bit more well like. It ended up sounding a bit
Speaker 3: a bit more not dramatic, but a bit more glacial.
Speaker 3: I suppose really, And it didn't really do that at first.
Speaker 3: You know, we'd have some sessions and it was like,
Speaker 3: you know, we've been on the road a lot. And
Speaker 3: that was the problem for a lot of bands, you know,
Speaker 3: like you have a successful album and then you have
Speaker 3: a successful second album. Then you're on the road ever
Speaker 3: and ever, and then you're committed to do another album, like, okay,
Speaker 3: we're better do another album. Now, well, how are we
Speaker 3: going to you know, where are we going to find
Speaker 3: the time to do it? I don't know. People say, oh,
Speaker 3: they write on the road. I never found the time
Speaker 3: to write on the road.
Speaker 2: You know, you're probably exhausted.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, road time is a whole different world, right,
Speaker 3: you know, like people would say to me, oh, I'll
Speaker 3: call you next Wednesday, and I'd say, yeah, I'm going
Speaker 3: to be on the road then. So it may happen
Speaker 3: or it may not. You can't really organize that that
Speaker 3: kind of thing. So, if you know, for Faith, Faith
Speaker 3: started off being a bit rushed, and then some things happened.
Speaker 3: You know, my mother got very sick and it was
Speaker 3: she was going to pass away. Robert's grandmother as well,
Speaker 3: and so that focused on our mind a bit more on
Speaker 3: what ended up to be the main sort of topic
Speaker 3: about it, you know, and you have to think that
Speaker 3: me and Robert and my I don't see but you know,
Speaker 3: by that time he wasn't there. Me and Robert grew
Speaker 3: up Catholic, you know, which is kind of a different
Speaker 3: proposition in England because you have to remember that Henry
Speaker 3: D eighth dissolved all the churches because you know, the
Speaker 3: Pope wouldn't let him get divorced for his sixth wife
Speaker 3: or whatever. So he decided, well, I'll come out, I'll
Speaker 3: just form my own church, you know, which sounds kind
Speaker 3: of familiar about things that are happening, you know, in
Speaker 3: the world now. But anyway, that's what he did. So consequently,
Speaker 3: all the Catholic churches in England was sort of taken
Speaker 3: over at that point, and it was it was sidelined,
Speaker 3: really Catholicism in England. So one of the reasons that
Speaker 3: the cure even started was, you know, I met Robert
Speaker 3: at school, but I didn't go to school in the
Speaker 3: town I grew up in because I had to go
Speaker 3: to the next town because I wasn't a Catholic school
Speaker 3: in the town I grew up in. So, you know,
Speaker 3: I kind of knew Robert because he used to live
Speaker 3: next door to my grandmother at first, but then him
Speaker 3: and his dad and his family moved like one town on,
Speaker 3: so I went to the same school, and that's how,
Speaker 3: you know, we started everything. But you know, I think,
Speaker 3: like I'm saying, God, not only did I feel an
Speaker 3: outsider because of the things I was thinking about and
Speaker 3: the way, you know, I think most teens feel a
Speaker 3: little outside of stuff, it was exacerbated by the fact
Speaker 3: that I was already an outside and to most English people,
Speaker 3: you know, because I didn't go to Church of England
Speaker 3: in the town. You know, So in summer vacation from school,
Speaker 3: you know, when I was fourteen, I didn't know any
Speaker 3: of the kids in my town because I didn't go
Speaker 3: to school with them, and I wasn't old enough to drive,
Speaker 3: and I wasn't old enough to really take you know,
Speaker 3: the public transport myself and get around and stuff, and
Speaker 3: it was too far to ride on my bicycle. So
Speaker 3: I'm stuck in my town for the whole summer with nobody.
Speaker 3: The library was my friend because in England back then,
Speaker 3: you had you got one ticket for the and you
Speaker 3: could take three things out on that ticket. Well, I
Speaker 3: had somehow I for enabled three tickets, so I I
Speaker 3: got nine items every week, you know, and I would
Speaker 3: get like a bunch of books. And they also did
Speaker 3: records records, so I got records and I listened to
Speaker 3: every I didn't care what record it was. I just
Speaker 3: take an X three records and ex three records. I
Speaker 3: just listened to everything that summer while reading. So summer
Speaker 3: vacation in English schools at the time was nearly three months.
Speaker 3: You know. It was like, you know, that's really what
Speaker 3: started me on the whole road to everything because I
Speaker 3: had this intensive self imposed course because I had nothing
Speaker 3: else to do.
Speaker 2: You know, I remember you talking about and cured that
Speaker 2: early on you and Robert bonded over Jimmy Hendricks record
Speaker 2: I both heard. So was he the first person that
Speaker 2: you were really able to talk about music too?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? I mean, you know, the good thing like a
Speaker 3: middle school, which I think in England was like from
Speaker 3: eleven till thirteen, right, so it was a little experimental
Speaker 3: instead of instead of keeping like you know, go to
Speaker 3: one class and then the bell rings and you go
Speaker 3: to the next class, they had to thing. Okay, well,
Speaker 3: you know certain guys, certain pupils. If you were at
Speaker 3: the top end of the class or whatever, you could
Speaker 3: go and do your own project in the library, which
Speaker 3: would be you know, sort of compilation of history, geography, English,
Speaker 3: and of course religion because it's a Catholic school so
Speaker 3: draw all those things together. We did the project, so
Speaker 3: me and Robert were in that and a few other people.
Speaker 3: I think Michael Dempsey was in it as well, and
Speaker 3: you know, we'd sit in the library and we'd do
Speaker 3: our work, but we'd also talk about stuff. And he
Speaker 3: was the first person I knew other than myself that
Speaker 3: had heard that record. So so I'm like, oh, you
Speaker 3: like Hendrix, right, So yeah, so we we sort of
Speaker 3: bonded over that, you know, and then then I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: go back with some forward swapping records, back with some forwards,
Speaker 3: and just ideas from that. So that's really how that's
Speaker 3: how most bands start. I mean, I talked to a
Speaker 3: friend of mine, James Murphy from LCD sound System, and
Speaker 3: he said to me, when you start playing music, you'd
Speaker 3: try to make songs like the people you like. You know,
Speaker 3: like you like them. You're trying to make a song
Speaker 3: like that. And the way you get it wrong, because
Speaker 3: you'll always get it wrong because you don't have the
Speaker 3: same technique or the same influences or even the same
Speaker 3: understanding of how to play it. The way you get
Speaker 3: it wrong is what becomes your sound. You know. That's
Speaker 3: kind of how the Cure started. We would do songs
Speaker 3: that were like in the beginning, we did these like
Speaker 3: triptich songs, which were like ten minutes long, three different
Speaker 3: sort of intervals of stuff, and they were like really
Speaker 3: bad versions of stuff that we listened to. There was
Speaker 3: some like psychedelic stuff in there, and then bands like
Speaker 3: the Buzzcocks came along. There was some stuff that was
Speaker 3: a bit more, a bit simpler and things, but there
Speaker 3: was all kinds of things that we sort of threw
Speaker 3: in and that's really what influenced us. And we would
Speaker 3: write these songs. And then I think the change came
Speaker 3: when we thought about doing something like Boys Don't Cry.
Speaker 3: We're like, well, we can't do these minute epics anymore.
Speaker 3: We're going to do like try and write a three
Speaker 3: minute pop song, you know, And that's where it all
Speaker 3: came from. But obviously the basis of that is informed
Speaker 3: from the earlier stuff, and I think some of that
Speaker 3: stuff made it onto. I think we did a compilation
Speaker 3: Joined the Dots and something. I think some of that's
Speaker 3: on there, like like in rough form, you know, and
Speaker 3: they're quite embarrassing really listening to them. Now. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: sort of like I think Winter, I think that's on there.
Speaker 3: That we did a whole seasons sections as well. You know,
Speaker 3: here's an interesting story. At one point. You know, it's
Speaker 3: a small town on the outskirts of the big.
Speaker 2: City, Crawley.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, it's like being in Los Angeles
Speaker 3: and living in the valley. There was only one other
Speaker 3: band in town, which was fronted by Neil Gaiman, the writer, right,
Speaker 3: and I remember, you know, he would have costume changes,
Speaker 3: like we're playing in the pub, but he would have
Speaker 3: costume changes and things. It was very exotic for the time.
Speaker 3: I read something recently where he said, you know, I
Speaker 3: decided to become a writer instead because you know, the
Speaker 3: only other band in our town was The Cure, you know,
Speaker 3: so we just stopped, you know. But he obviously went
Speaker 3: on to do something really really good, you know, but yeah, wonderful,
Speaker 3: you know, and he found his own creative force. But
Speaker 3: the whole thing about it was was that, you know,
Speaker 3: you take that stuff and it becomes your own right,
Speaker 3: your own sound, you know, and then you for us,
Speaker 3: especially because we weren't in London, we were able to
Speaker 3: sort of, you know, mature on our own without too
Speaker 3: many outside things coming in. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was watching when The Cure was inducted into
Speaker 2: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Trent Reznor
Speaker 2: said that you're your style is instantly recognizable and it's
Speaker 2: very sonically distinct. And I just wonder, like you're saying that,
Speaker 2: you try other things and then you settle on a
Speaker 2: sound and it just sort of comes to be. But
Speaker 2: it's really incredible if you think about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have two ideas about that. You know, when
Speaker 3: we were doing asked to do the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 3: At first, you know, Robert wasn't too keen about it.
Speaker 3: It was like, wow, you know, what is it? What
Speaker 3: is it? You know, how does it work? Is it
Speaker 3: some kind of you know, it doesn't seem like it
Speaker 3: would be appropriate. And I said, no, you're wrong. I said,
Speaker 3: because I've lived here by that time, i'd lived here
Speaker 3: a culture of a century. And I said, you know
Speaker 3: all the you know, the goth kids that lived in
Speaker 3: a little town in the middle of nowhere. I said,
Speaker 3: they would love it for us to be on there,
Speaker 3: I said, because it would be vacation for them. You know.
Speaker 3: They would go, Okay, look see I was, I was,
Speaker 3: I was right about them. They did something good and
Speaker 3: eventually I sort of won him over and we did
Speaker 3: it and it worked. But the best thing for me was,
Speaker 3: you know, they said, well, who would you like to
Speaker 3: induct you? And we were thinking about what do ask Trent,
Speaker 3: because you know, he comes from that line in the
Speaker 3: way and understand it, and so he said yeah. And
Speaker 3: when he got up there, he said. The first thing
Speaker 3: he said was, you know, I grew up in small
Speaker 3: town USA, you know, Mercer, Pennsylvania, looking out over cornfields,
Speaker 3: you know, and this music coming through college radio was
Speaker 3: the way I escaped, you know. And I looked to Robert,
Speaker 3: I was like, yet, see, look that's what I'm talking about,
Speaker 3: you know. And so that's why when I got up
Speaker 3: on stage, gave a big hug, you know, because it's like,
Speaker 3: that's that's the truth. You know. Even today, you know,
Speaker 3: I spent forty years going around America. I can walk
Speaker 3: into any small town in the States and I can
Speaker 3: spot the five or six kids who are going to
Speaker 3: be goth straight away, you know, like if I walk
Speaker 3: into the cafe or something, I go, yeah, then what.
Speaker 2: Do you see? What do you what do you see
Speaker 2: in you say, it's.
Speaker 3: A way of being, And you know they're usually reading
Speaker 3: a book or something, so they're not looking at their
Speaker 3: bones all the time. You know, I can see them.
Speaker 3: They don't have to, you know, they don't look goth.
Speaker 3: And that's why it pains to explain that in the book.
Speaker 3: Goth's not just you know, the way you look and
Speaker 3: the way your hair is and stuff. And it always
Speaker 3: amuses me as well if I'm passing through those places
Speaker 3: something and I do see some real goths, you know
Speaker 3: that look have got like now they've got the whole,
Speaker 3: you know, kids and kaboodle, as they say, they put everything,
Speaker 3: and they've got the uniform. And if I walk past
Speaker 3: them and they don't recognize me, that always gives me
Speaker 3: a little chuckle, you know, because you don't know, but
Speaker 3: you know, here's where it came from. And so, you know,
Speaker 3: which is a nice thing for me. But the thing
Speaker 3: for the cures sound like a few years ago, I
Speaker 3: was looking at like when Google Earth came out and
Speaker 3: you could go and walk around down the streets. I'm
Speaker 3: sure I did what a lot of people did. I
Speaker 3: went and walked around where I grew up, you know,
Speaker 3: and that amazed me as well. Yeah, I called her
Speaker 3: up and said or wrote to him or something. I said,
Speaker 3: you know, it is no surprise to me at all
Speaker 3: now on forty years later, looking at this stuff. The
Speaker 3: reason we sounded the way we did because it's all
Speaker 3: there in the in the dark, dank countryside, in the
Speaker 3: streets of the town we grew up, and it's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you described the sleek, gray skies, and I was
Speaker 2: going to ask you what environmental factors, How does that
Speaker 2: seep into the music or what influence does that have
Speaker 2: on a sound, on a band sound.
Speaker 3: But that always makes things very soft focus. I had
Speaker 3: on my recent trip to London for goth I got
Speaker 3: off the plane and they had a card to pick
Speaker 3: me up, take me into town, which is about an
Speaker 3: hour's drive, and we're driving through the streets and it's
Speaker 3: like it's really gray. It's about five in the afternoon,
Speaker 3: really gray, and it starts to rain, and it's that
Speaker 3: sort of London rain that goes sideways and stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh, okay, yeah, this is where
Speaker 3: it comes from.
Speaker 2: In both of the books, you talked about how you
Speaker 2: and Robert's home lives were so very different, and he
Speaker 2: came up in a happy, well to do home with
Speaker 2: very supportive parents who let the band practice early on,
Speaker 2: and your house was completely different. It was more disjointed,
Speaker 2: it was glum, Your dad was emotionally vacant. And you
Speaker 2: said that a lot of Robert's writing you thought was
Speaker 2: a combination of everyone in the band's, the early band's experiences.
Speaker 3: I think at that point in time, because we weren't cosmopolitan,
Speaker 3: we hadn't been around the world, we hadn't seen different places,
Speaker 3: you know, things become very focused. I always think it's
Speaker 3: like looking through the other end of the telescope, you know,
Speaker 3: instead of look like what everything gets out there, you
Speaker 3: become micro focused on what's in front of you, which
Speaker 3: is good and bad. Obviously, you know, if if that's
Speaker 3: your whole life, that becomes kind of sad, you know,
Speaker 3: because you don't you don't have any experience outside of it,
Speaker 3: you know. But I think, you know, initially we wanted
Speaker 3: to consider all kinds of things but when you're younger,
Speaker 3: you don't really know what that is until things happened
Speaker 3: to you like that. You know, so that's great. Until
Speaker 3: something like that had happened to us, it is such
Speaker 3: an abstract concept, you know, like, oh, well, what's it
Speaker 3: going to be like if this person is never there again?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: They so during faith you had actually experienced death, when
Speaker 2: before it was more of a romantic idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and it's completely different. And I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: as you get older, obviously more of that stuff happens
Speaker 3: to you, and so it becomes I think that's why.
Speaker 3: Also a lot of people have met recently who are
Speaker 3: probably my age and that and still would label themselves,
Speaker 3: you know, goth or whatever. They would say to me
Speaker 3: that for them it was a comfort to know that
Speaker 3: they understand, you know, more about those things, because a
Speaker 3: lot of people's first reaction to having somebody, you know,
Speaker 3: that they know close to them who's has somebody that's
Speaker 3: passed away is in a sort of embarrassment. They don't
Speaker 3: want to talk about it, you know, if they don't
Speaker 3: know them that well, they're like, oh well, I'll just
Speaker 3: mention this once and then let's carry on, you know.
Speaker 3: With life, which I suppose is kind of natural, you know,
Speaker 3: because hey, you know, I died tomorrow. The world goes on,
Speaker 3: you know, and it's always go on, but you kind
Speaker 3: of don't know what to say. And I think we
Speaker 3: were just looking for ways to say things a lot
Speaker 3: of the time, and now much more relevant and poignant.
Speaker 2: I think you also said that a lot of songs
Speaker 2: people it's sort of a misinterpretation that the Cure's music
Speaker 2: can be destructive or depressing. Yeah, but that's a false notion,
Speaker 2: and a lot of times, you know, people find solace
Speaker 2: in the songs and they find them comforting. And you wrote,
Speaker 2: we're not the problem or the cure, right, right.
Speaker 3: And I thought, you know, that's that's the obvious thing
Speaker 3: to say, but you know, which you know is a
Speaker 3: little hokey, but it's kind of fun to say. Yeah.
Speaker 3: That would always upset me, well, not upset me, but
Speaker 3: I was irritated by the fact people would go, you know,
Speaker 3: if your music's dark and depressing, then it's going to
Speaker 3: make people dark and depressed, and then they go, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe something bad will happen. You should write something that's
Speaker 3: uplifting and happy and jolly and kind of like, no,
Speaker 3: that's you've missed the point entirely. People that listen to us,
Speaker 3: a lot of them would come to say to me,
Speaker 3: you know, hey, this happened. It was bad, and I
Speaker 3: had a friend with your music, you know, I had
Speaker 3: somebody I felt there was understanding, so it made it less.
Speaker 3: It was like, you know, problem shared is a problem hard.
Speaker 3: So that was really the basis for it. And to
Speaker 3: me especially, I don't I can't speak for anybody else,
Speaker 3: but for me especially, that was that was my greatest
Speaker 3: reward in lots of ways that it would help somebody,
Speaker 3: you know, because I know how I felt doing those things,
Speaker 3: and it was good to be able to put that
Speaker 3: into music so that people could associate it and use it.
Speaker 3: Somebody told me recently, you know, the job of a
Speaker 3: musician is discovery, but it's also I think I could
Speaker 3: go further that it's not just discovery. It to bring
Speaker 3: back whatever you find for people. Because I don't know
Speaker 3: about you, but that's why I listened to music and
Speaker 3: like certain things. That's why I read certain things because
Speaker 3: I get I get a confirmation of my own. Yeah,
Speaker 3: a language really is an imperfect construct, you know, Like
Speaker 3: we're talking now, and I hope that what I construct
Speaker 3: in front of you gives you the ideas of what
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about and vice versa. But we're never quite sure,
Speaker 3: you know. And sometimes it amazes me that people, like
Speaker 3: I was saying with the Cures lyrics, you know, people
Speaker 3: get completely the opposite feeling. You know. Sometimes I will
Speaker 3: go into you know, they have those sites as websites online,
Speaker 3: you know, like Genius Lyrics or something, and I read
Speaker 3: people's interpretations of our lyrics and some are good, some
Speaker 3: some are off, and some are kind of frightening. But
Speaker 3: but you know, everybody has somewhere, you know.
Speaker 1: We have to take another quick break and then we'll
Speaker 1: be back with more from Leo Rose's interview with Lowell Tollhurst.
Speaker 1: We're back with the rest of Leah's conversation with Lowel Tollhurst.
Speaker 2: With Pornography, which is the fourth album. Yeah, so on
Speaker 2: this one, you said the band really started to fully
Speaker 2: embrace bleaker themes in the songs. Yea, What was going
Speaker 2: on in the band interpersonally when that album was recorded.
Speaker 3: You know, my good friend Julia and Reagan from All
Speaker 3: About Eve said it very well. You know, we were
Speaker 3: talking about it and she said. You know, it's it's
Speaker 3: really unnatural idea of a band, you know, because you
Speaker 3: spend like, you put young people together for a lot
Speaker 3: of time, like twenty four to seven for months on end,
Speaker 3: you know, traveling around all the time, working together, and
Speaker 3: then spending all their off time together because you're you know,
Speaker 3: you're halfway across the world and you've got no other choice,
Speaker 3: and you know, you mix alcohol and any other things
Speaker 3: in with that, and it's a recipe for disaster, you know.
Speaker 3: And yeah, the cure were no different. You know, we
Speaker 3: had spent a lot of time together. By the time
Speaker 3: we got to Pornography, you know that the usual suspects
Speaker 3: were there floating around. And to me, I said this
Speaker 3: to budget the other week. The thing that's amazing to
Speaker 3: me is that as people making that record, I don't
Speaker 3: think we were very sane. I think there was a
Speaker 3: lot of insanity. You know if I look back at
Speaker 3: the events, and it's interesting. You know, we recorded mostly
Speaker 3: at night. Then by that time, you know, we'd been
Speaker 3: on this sort of nocturnal clock. Yeah that suits Robert
Speaker 3: Roberts always been a nocturnal kind of person. You know.
Speaker 3: We would finish a lot of sessions at Rack Studios,
Speaker 3: which had several studios and different people recording in there,
Speaker 3: and we would finish sessions at you know, the early
Speaker 3: hours and them all or a bit later. And some days,
Speaker 3: you know, we'd be leaving the studio as the day
Speaker 3: staff and people were coming in.
Speaker 2: You know that's a weird feeling.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, oh yeah, very weird. You know, like we
Speaker 3: weren't staying far away so we didn't have to get
Speaker 3: too much in the sunlight and watch everybody around with freshness.
Speaker 2: It really makes you feel like an outsider when you're
Speaker 2: not part of that early morning hustle and bustle people
Speaker 2: are going to work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we just we just wanted to get get home
Speaker 3: and go to bed. And you know, I remember meet
Speaker 3: meeting Kim Wild. She was recording in the other studio
Speaker 3: and she came in one morning, you know, and I
Speaker 3: stopped her to talk to her. She must have thought,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like, how can I get away from
Speaker 3: this mad person, you know, as as possible. And actually,
Speaker 3: if I meet her again ever, I'm going to tell
Speaker 3: her that I'm going to say I'm sorry. You know,
Speaker 3: it was, it was It must have been very scary,
Speaker 3: you know, because I'm sure I was talking nonsense and
Speaker 3: you know, completely insane. But what surprises me for for
Speaker 3: us is like as far as we were like that,
Speaker 3: the music became ultra precise and played like with a
Speaker 3: with an intensity and a precision that we had never
Speaker 3: got before, you know, And that surprises me because like
Speaker 3: also I tell people, you know, if you're in a
Speaker 3: three piece band, you've got nowhere to hide, you know,
Speaker 3: because if one of you's a mistake, everybody notices that.
Speaker 3: You've got to be very sharp. And that was probably
Speaker 3: the sharpest as musicians we ever were. We were we
Speaker 3: were very very good at it, but you know, the
Speaker 3: rest of the stuff that went along with it was
Speaker 3: too intense. And so then we went on the tour.
Speaker 3: Something was going to break, you know, and I did.
Speaker 3: In Strasburg, you know, there was we went out to
Speaker 3: some club and Robert and Simon had this big fight
Speaker 3: and they both got on a plane that night and
Speaker 3: went home. I woke up and there's just me and
Speaker 3: the and the opening band in the in the hotel,
Speaker 3: and I knew in my heart of hearts at that
Speaker 3: point that was going to stop for a while. Then,
Speaker 3: in fact, I thought it was probably going to be
Speaker 3: the end of everything. And Robert came back and Simon
Speaker 3: came back, and we finished the sort of finished our
Speaker 3: obligations and went home, and I thought, well that's that,
Speaker 3: you know, And it wasn't. But it was a time
Speaker 3: for a very big change, you know. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: Simon left and it became just me and Robert for
Speaker 3: a while, and we made rather different music, very.
Speaker 2: Very different music. Yeah, that's right. There was another period.
Speaker 2: I was watching a Cure documentary and I believe it
Speaker 2: was your first major tour when you were opening up
Speaker 2: for Susie and the Bandshees, and then Robert eventually joined
Speaker 2: the band as a guitarist. And was that another point
Speaker 2: where it's seemed like maybe the band would break up?
Speaker 3: You know? I always knew, because I think I said
Speaker 3: in Kurd, I always knew in my heart of hearts,
Speaker 3: that Robert wasn't going to stay with the Banshees forever
Speaker 3: because just being you know, the side guy, the guitarist
Speaker 3: was never going to be enough for him. You know,
Speaker 3: he had his own ideas, his own stuff he wanted
Speaker 3: to do. But I also think that at that point,
Speaker 3: you know, him and Michael weren't getting on so well.
Speaker 3: So it was a nice It was a relief for
Speaker 3: him to go there and spend some time with them,
Speaker 3: do that in a different way, and I was open
Speaker 3: to that. I didn't have that in my head that said,
Speaker 3: oh no, you have to stay. I didn't feel that
Speaker 3: it would hurt things. I thought it would add to stuff.
Speaker 3: I thought, well, you know, if you'll go there, he'll
Speaker 3: find out a different way of doing things and he
Speaker 3: could bring that back to us. So that was what
Speaker 3: I always saw, well, he'll bring that back to us,
Speaker 3: which he did. But I think, you know, in retrospect,
Speaker 3: there's always that little bit of stuff like, well, you
Speaker 3: know this is this is what we're doing. You know
Speaker 3: that isn't air band, so you know you have to
Speaker 3: consider that. But it worked out.
Speaker 2: Are there any tracks on pornography that really stand out
Speaker 2: to you or have an especially interesting story about how
Speaker 2: the song was created?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you know, the first song was for
Speaker 3: one hundred Years was the first time that we did
Speaker 3: actually use, you know, a drum machine, because there's a
Speaker 3: drum machine on there, and I played keyboards and that
Speaker 3: was the first time I played keyboards on a Cure record.
Speaker 3: So that was something different to start off with, you know,
Speaker 3: and we had this tiny little boss drum machine, and
Speaker 3: we had to figure out how to sort of separate
Speaker 3: things because you can't really separate the sounds from it,
Speaker 3: so we put things for different amps and so that,
Speaker 3: you know. But for live we used to take a
Speaker 3: real to real tape recorder with the drum machine on
Speaker 3: for some reason. But it worked, so I like that.
Speaker 3: And then Cold is probably my favorite start to any
Speaker 3: cure song because you know, I had set the kit
Speaker 3: up in this huge room so that gives it this
Speaker 3: big sound. And I had bought this big Chinese symbols
Speaker 3: from a store in London, ray Man's, which is like
Speaker 3: all sort of exotic instruments. And you have to remember
Speaker 3: the symbols when they were first made, like you know,
Speaker 3: four hundred years ago, and were instruments of war. They
Speaker 3: were what they used to march across the top of
Speaker 3: the hills and frighten the hell out of their enemies, right. So,
Speaker 3: but some of the original ones are so loud, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm sure it's part of my hearing loss, you know,
Speaker 3: because every time I've hit this thing and I have
Speaker 3: to turn my head sideways. So I love the beginning
Speaker 3: of Cold for that reason, and also at the end
Speaker 3: the last the title track Pornography. We we did some
Speaker 3: interesting manipulations. I mean, it was a fun album to
Speaker 3: do in that respect, I say fun, you know, the
Speaker 3: sessions were a little strange, but it was fun. Also.
Speaker 3: You know, Phil Thornley, who produced it with us, was
Speaker 3: younger than us. I think it was like twenty one,
Speaker 3: which blows my mind. I talked to him occasionally now
Speaker 3: and I say, you know, do you realize how young
Speaker 3: we were when you did that record? You know, I
Speaker 3: don't know how, you know, how that happened? You know,
Speaker 3: it was. It was very, very strange. So, you know,
Speaker 3: it's like a lot of things, a lot of things
Speaker 3: in the qure's existence are happy accidents.
Speaker 2: You know, at what point during your time with a
Speaker 2: Cure did you start to see the audiences grow?
Speaker 3: Well, they were sort of increasing as we got up
Speaker 3: to Pornography. But with Pornography we went out on tour
Speaker 3: and that was probably another thing that contributed to it
Speaker 3: to it because we got put into a lot bigger
Speaker 3: rooms to play, but the album wasn't out. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: most of our set that we played for that too,
Speaker 3: was the new album, so people, you know, And so
Speaker 3: it was the first time that since we'd started that
Speaker 3: audiences hadn't got exponentially bigger every year we played, you know,
Speaker 3: and when you do it the first time, you don't
Speaker 3: even understand how that works or it doesn't work. You
Speaker 3: just accept it. It's not being nonchalant or egotistical. I
Speaker 3: just sort of accepted, oh, well, you know, this is
Speaker 3: what happens. Now there's bigger audience. Yeah. And then with
Speaker 3: Pornography it started to be half full. I think that's weird.
Speaker 3: Why is that happening? You know, And so it added
Speaker 3: to thing. But then after that period where we'd finished
Speaker 3: the sort of singles, you know, with love Cats and
Speaker 3: the Walk and everything, it started to pick up again
Speaker 3: and it started to get bigger again from there and
Speaker 3: it's just sort of continued pretty much ever since, with
Speaker 3: a little dip in the middle, I think for Rip Hoop,
Speaker 3: which was like, you know, the end of everything for
Speaker 3: a lot of people. But then you know, yeah, he
Speaker 3: came around again, so we're fine.
Speaker 2: Do you ever think like if you had a different
Speaker 2: upbringing that you would have ended up in a different band,
Speaker 2: like being Duran Duran or something.
Speaker 3: You know that's impossible. How do we know? You know,
Speaker 3: I have no looking glass or I can't tell you.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I mean I nearly ended up in
Speaker 3: Adam and the Ants. But you know because Adam. I
Speaker 3: met Adam one night in London and he was just
Speaker 3: starting a new version of the band, you know, with
Speaker 3: the two drummers and Terry Lee, and so I'm like,
Speaker 3: he said, you know, I'm starting this new band, do
Speaker 3: you you know, new version of the Ants. Do you
Speaker 3: want to come along and try out? And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's okay. I got this band, the Cure, so I'm
Speaker 3: going to carry on, you know, which I'm glad I did.
Speaker 3: But you know, so I could have ended up with
Speaker 3: the makeup and the hair.
Speaker 2: Right right, right right? Yeah, speaking of makeup and the
Speaker 2: funny hair, I heard that Robert's image changed drastically, started
Speaker 2: teasing his hair, putting on lipstick after he joined the
Speaker 2: Banshees and saw Suzie Sue. Is that accurate?
Speaker 3: You know, it's easy to connect the dots when you
Speaker 3: look from afar, But I don't remember happening like that
Speaker 3: because there were a lot of people, you know, like
Speaker 3: we would go out, we'd always go out on the
Speaker 3: Thursday night to the Canada Palace in London, and you know,
Speaker 3: people always said the Batcave, but I remember the Palace
Speaker 3: has been pretty much sort of the center of the
Speaker 3: universe at that time, and there was lots of different
Speaker 3: people there.
Speaker 2: With that look.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with that look. You know, obviously we all adapt
Speaker 3: everything you see around, you know, because this was our people.
Speaker 3: So this is like, okay, we want to show we're
Speaker 3: parts of this. And so it went from there. Obviously,
Speaker 3: Sue was a very pivotable person in that scene. I
Speaker 3: think six and one and half a dozen of the
Speaker 3: other you know, I never never really not exactly where
Speaker 3: it came from, you know.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't like one day it was, you know,
Speaker 2: one way, and then the next day it's like a
Speaker 2: whole new Well.
Speaker 3: No, he went through several permutations, including I said the
Speaker 3: word permutation. He had a poem at one point, sort
Speaker 3: of funny poem that was jagged. You know, it looks okay,
Speaker 3: but then you know, we changed, we did something else.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad perms are gone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2: How did it feel when you eventually left the band?
Speaker 2: How did it feel seeing this band go on without you?
Speaker 2: A band that you created when you were so young,
Speaker 2: and you were in for so long and had so
Speaker 2: many formative experiences in How did it feel to see
Speaker 2: it go on without you?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I can't lie. It was painful in
Speaker 3: lots of ways in the in the beginning. Over the years,
Speaker 3: I've realized that there's two things. You know, the day
Speaker 3: I die my obituary, I know what it's going to say.
Speaker 3: You know, if I get one, it'll say, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: co founder, and that's what it's going to say. That's
Speaker 3: going to be the headline. I can't escape that. So
Speaker 3: rather than trying to escape it, I'll acknowledge it and
Speaker 3: embrace it. So I'm very pleased with what we did.
Speaker 3: I'm very happy about what we did, and I'm very
Speaker 3: proud of what we did. You know, I still have
Speaker 3: a relationship with most of the people in the band,
Speaker 3: and there are people I've known most of my life,
Speaker 3: you know, so you can't not have a relationship. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like family, you know, at some point, Yeah, you've
Speaker 3: got to circle back. In fact, that's thet way to
Speaker 3: describe it. Family. I mean, a few weeks ago, the
Speaker 3: Cure were here in Los Angeles and I went to
Speaker 3: see everybody, and there's a couple of funny things. I
Speaker 3: took my niece, who's just in her last year at university,
Speaker 3: and you know, so she's like twenty one, and she'd
Speaker 3: never seen them play live before. Well she has, but
Speaker 3: she doesn't remember and because she's a little girl, and
Speaker 3: so I took her there and we were sort of
Speaker 3: all hanging out afterwards down in the dress room in
Speaker 3: the Hollywood Bowl, and it was for me, it was
Speaker 3: like being back in the pub in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 3: you know, because it was kind of strange because, like
Speaker 3: you know, I'm saying talking to Simon, we're talking about things,
Speaker 3: talking to Robert. Robert's wife was there. You know, she's
Speaker 3: very rarely on the road, so you know, I know
Speaker 3: her very well. So we're talking. And for me it
Speaker 3: was good as well, because they a lot of band members,
Speaker 3: you know, have children, and some of them I know
Speaker 3: and seen, and some of them I've never met, you know,
Speaker 3: so I got a chance to meet them and stuff,
Speaker 3: and it was very emotional, but it was also very
Speaker 3: healing in a good way, you know, because I get
Speaker 3: to realize, Okay, this is this is my family, and
Speaker 3: it's never going to change really, you know, things go
Speaker 3: up and down like most families, but it's always going
Speaker 3: to be there, you know. And it was a very
Speaker 3: bonding time and I think a lot of that's to
Speaker 3: do with the fact that we're all getting older and
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, there's not so many of us around anymore.
Speaker 3: Even so it's like, you know, people in the band
Speaker 3: have passed away, Andy passed away and stuff, so it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: we could we still have a lot in common. In fact,
Speaker 3: Roberts said that to me, he said, you know, we
Speaker 3: have a lot to talk about backstage the Hollywood Bols.
Speaker 3: Probably not the place too, but we do. We have
Speaker 3: a lot to talk about. And so you know, I'm
Speaker 3: sure things will carry on in some fashion or another,
Speaker 3: and that's fine by me. And I'm very happy with
Speaker 3: what I'm doing myself now.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I was going to say, it's a testament
Speaker 2: to you and to your personality or outlook that you're
Speaker 2: not just stewing in bitterness. You're moving forward. You've written
Speaker 2: these incredible books, you're making music, you have this wonderful
Speaker 2: relationship working relationship with Budgie, so you.
Speaker 3: Know, and that really is the only way that you're
Speaker 3: you're going to live through this life, you know. I
Speaker 3: mean that's one of the reasons I got on a
Speaker 3: plane and came to California because at the point where
Speaker 3: I came to California, my life had fallen apart. You know,
Speaker 3: my dad are gone, my first marriage was dissolving. You know,
Speaker 3: I had a lot of money to the court for
Speaker 3: a court sastress court case. So you know, I arrived here.
Speaker 3: You know, I wasn't really a stranger in a strange land.
Speaker 3: I kind of was, and I kind of wanted to
Speaker 3: be that. But I knew California a bit from you know,
Speaker 3: working here a lot, and I liked the place and
Speaker 3: what was really good for me, and I tell people
Speaker 3: this all the time, was you know a lot of
Speaker 3: people think of California, you know, and this is true
Speaker 3: in England. People think this as well, you know, like
Speaker 3: you come here to be discovered or destroyed or both.
Speaker 3: You know, both things can happen, you know, and sometimes
Speaker 3: they do it. And that wasn't my experience. My experience
Speaker 3: was I found love, I found acceptance, and I found
Speaker 3: my tribe. You know, I found people that I've been
Speaker 3: able to connect with and work with and do things
Speaker 3: over the years, and it's been much more healing experience,
Speaker 3: so I was ever expecting, you know, And so therefore
Speaker 3: it's become home and I feel a great affection for
Speaker 3: the place, and it's been great. And if I think
Speaker 3: about it, it's been like over thirty years now, so
Speaker 3: you know, it's like it's like I've lived two lives,
Speaker 3: two complete lives, you know, and you know, it's beyond
Speaker 3: my my, my sort of wildest expectations.
Speaker 2: It's incredible. Yeah, well, thank you so much, Thol for
Speaker 2: talking today. I really appreciate it. I loved your books.
Speaker 2: I highly recommend them to everybody listening, and best of
Speaker 2: luck with the new album.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you so much, and we'll talk again.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Lord Tallhurst for sharing his experience with the Cure.
Speaker 1: He's written two excellent books that are out now, and
Speaker 1: you can hear our favorite songs from his days with
Speaker 1: the Cure and just solo work. I'm a playlist a
Speaker 1: Broken Record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Speaker 1: and you dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you
Speaker 1: can find all of our new episodes. You can follow
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Speaker 1: with help from Lea Rose and Eric Sandler. Our show
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Speaker 1: us on your podcast app. A theme musics by Kenny Beats.
Speaker 1: I'm justin Rischmand