The Cure: Classic or Dud?

otm

Tbh he probably doesn’t like Famous and Rockers either but the middle word no doubt cut the deepest.

no real goth band

important distinction.

no true gothsman

No son of mine

So then, a supposedly uncirculated concert from the short US tour of 1983 (Beverly Hills) has popped up, it's a decent - if a little roomy - recording, but it has this very odd portmanteau version of Let's Go To Bed and Forever that I've never heard before and it's kinda cool, so I thought I'd share for any interested parties.

https://www.fromsmash.com/VrU5ampcRN-bt

Thanks!

oh that is some good shit! tyvm!

rereading cured and the recollection of lol drunkenly sitting around listening to the first playback of disintegration mixes and loudly proclaiming the album to be shit in front of everyone is absolutely brutal.

i did find it interesting that he says, very off hand, that he had "one or two ideas that made it onto the record" - i had just assumed he didn't have any input after the top.

also kind of a bummer to hear him talk about andy anderson in the present tense.

but yeah, it's really good. i always took his glossing over of the band's activity in the 86-89 period as more of a self-aware comment on his own descent into full-blown addiction than an intentional shot at roger.

it has this very odd portmanteau version of Let's Go To Bed and Forever that I've never heard before and it's kinda cool

You know...I wonder if this is the version my friend ML heard live. He was an LA guy in the 80s/90s and mentioned seeing them around this time and that when they did "Let's Go To Bed" they did it as a weird bizarro version that confused all the people there who had only heard that song. I'll have to ask him if this is it!

Would that be the redoubtable ML Compton?

The very same.

Thanks for the link! I have a peculiar fascination with that period around the time that Andy was in the band, the early shows are really weird in places. Also the 1980 shows where they are figuring out the Seventeen Seconds material, I can't think of another band heading out with that much of their set in flux, Smith was singing different lyrics almost every night.

i did find it interesting that he says, very off hand, that he had "one or two ideas that made it onto the record" - i had just assumed he didn't have any input after the top.

"homesick" started out as one of lol's demos, but the rest of the band heavily rewrote it. roger has said lol's demo was ok but didn't have much going on and he figured the band only really spent time working on it so that lol didn't feel like he was completely left out.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130816025529/http://www.rogerodonnell.com/disintegration/

that's from this piece which is quite an interesting read from roger about the making of disintegration. he further clarifies that all that all they really kept from lol's "homesick" demo was the chord progression and that the final arrangement came from the band jamming over the progression, which was fairly unusual for them as most songs generally arrived with nearly-complete arrangements on their demos. roger's description of the many ways lol was bullied at the time is pretty uncomfortable though

the who-wrote-what is interesting too, i'd read that simon wrote "lovesong" but didn't know he wrote "the same deep water as you" and "untitled" as well, and roger takes credit for two of the b-sides from that era, "out of mind" and "fear of ghosts". are there any other cure tracks that it's established that anyone other than robert wrote most of? they're one band that i feel like there's never been a whole lot of insight provided into their internal creative dynamics.

that's awesome info, thank you!

always loved "fear of ghosts" and just assumed roger had taken the lead on that arrangement - nice.

i think they keep the credits pretty democratic on purpose, but i've long suspected simon has a lot more involvement than it would perhaps appear on the surface. i've seen it mentioned multiple times that "lovesong" was one of his demos that robert wrote lyrics to. i seem to recall "fascination street" being a similar thing. also know that at least half of the material that ended up on kiss me kiss me kiss me came from not robert/mostly simon.

Maresn3st: really enjoyed that live recording, btw - thank you again for sharing!

You're welcome!

i don't think "fascination street" was one of simon's, robert's home demo of it was on one of the disintegration reissues

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/cure-robert-smith-disintegration-interview-886034/

this more recent interview with robert is funny - he talks about passing notes to roger to give him feedback as a silly acid-inspired attempt to create a certain atmosphere, while roger's memory of it was thinking maybe he was too hungover to speak properly? he also recalls that only one of simon's demos made the album apart from "lovesong", but doesn't say which

he also recalls that only one of simon's demos made the album apart from "lovesong", but doesn't say which

― ufo, Monday, January 17, 2022 3:38 PM

ahh! i must have gotten it confused. would be rad if his other contribution was the title track.

seems like as good a time as any to link this. full info.

(that's technically on my youtube channel; sorry not trying to self-promote. i also have the complete dallas starplex set from the disintegration deluxe edition-era website. lmk if anyone's interested; youtube gave me a © block when i tried to put it on there.)

roger did credit simon with both "untitled" and "the same deep water as you" so who knows really if simon wrote both or only one since there's differing accounts. he has "disintegration" listed as one of robert's demos too, it seems like robert wrote everything else that made the album. porl's only main song writing contribution mentioned is "delirious night" which was an outtake only released on one of the deluxe reissues.

YOU MEAN ROBERT SMITH WASN'T A MILLION PERCENT TRUE AND ACCURATE IN AN INTERVIEW???? SHOCK AND OUTRAGE ARE WHAT I CURRENTLY AM EXPERIENCING.

but not really.

maybe i'm a cynical jerk (okay, definitely i am) but i'm more inclined to hold stock in roger's recollections. simon will probably never do a proper interview ever.

this is one where i figure he probably just forgot the details rather than totally making stuff up but i agree that roger's recollections are likely to be correct - he even had notes backing some of those details up.

i've been digging around reading some old interviews too and found this one from 1991: http://www.musicfanclubs.org/cure/press/I12.html

where of course robert was even back then making grand declarations of plans for upcoming albums that don't resemble what ended up happening at all: partway through making wish (before proper recording but after they'd figured out demos) his plan was for two albums, a short pop album in the vein of head on the door with working title higher, and an instrumental record titled music of dreams. also mention of an acoustic robert solo album that never eventuated.

that instrumental EP that came out after Wish was pretty great

I have memories of Robert interviews where he has suggested that High and The Perfect Girl were Simon demos - I think maybe Snakepit was Porl/Boris?

When that 2004 s/t album came out I remember there was a bit of chat about who was responsible for which track - "never" is based on a Jason demo and maybe 'Anniversary' was Perry?

It's definitely something that would be interesting to discover more details about - I remember re one of the albums RS described an anonymous demo submission process where they all rated each other's tapes - whether what actually happened or not, who knows!

it sounds like the whole band submitting demos & then individually rating them all in order to decide which ones to record has been fairly standard practice for them from kiss me kiss me kiss me onwards, there's an interview from 1987 where robert said he insisted on that process because the rest of the band hadn't contributed many ideas to the head on the door and he wanted them to be more involved.

no idea how often that process has been anonymous or not though

Yeah, I seem to remember KMx3 being the apex of the democratic songwriting process. U think it's in 10 Imaginary Years that they attribute some of the songs, eg the eastern-ish sounding tracks being Porl/Boris submissions (Snakepit, If Only Tonight, Cockatoos). In general, Simon's contributions seem to be on the poppier side: High, Perfect Girl, Mint Car, Lovesong.

yeah i found another interview where robert praises simon's talent for pop melodies and says that a lot of the head on the door's poppiness was his work - but it's also been well-established in a lot of other interviews that head on the door was still all robert's songwriting so to fit those together i'm assuming simon just made some key contributions to some of the arrangements. "high" was also again mentioned as another simon track, and "friday i'm in love" was mentioned as starting off as a slow demo by robert that simon helped rearrange to be an upbeat pop song.

still casually digging through interviews and perry was apparently regularly contributing to songwriting too during his tenure in the band too - "trust" was specifically mentioned as his composition

Was The Cure up until The Top a virtual autocracy then?

Unlike any other Cure album to that point (or the next couple) all the songs on The Head on the Door are sole credit to Smith.

xp no all the previous albums were credited to all members (altho I think Smith brought all the ideas until Head)

are there any other cure tracks that it's established that anyone other than robert wrote most of?

I think he said "Fight" was a Porl song.

THOTD is the first and last time Robert Smith claims the entirety of the songwriting credit.

oh ooops matttkkk made that point lol

general impression i get is that before kiss me kiss me kiss me, robert wrote all the songs but the others still contributed to arrangements to varying degrees, and then things opened up to others contributing whole instrumental from kmkmkm onwards because robert got tired of that arrangement.

the most autocratic albums seem to be the top (obviously) and the head on the door, which was the one time robert took all the songwriting credits and was pretty vocal about how little everyone else contributed ideas-wise. the only time anyone else's contributions to it seem to have really been mentioned at all is the one wish-era interview where he praises simon's pop melodies on it. there's even a kmkmkm-era interview where boris says he enjoyed working on that album much more because he got to be much more creative with his drum parts, while on the head on the door robert already had the general ideas for most of the parts figured out.

*whole instrumental demos

here's lost wishes if anyone's never heard it. it's very lovely. they repurposed the first track for "underneath the stars" many years later.

Did they? Never made that connection!

Flashes of brilliance, but ultimately not as interesting as their contemporaries (Joy Division/New Order, Depeche Mode, the Smiths). Saw them in 85 on the Head on the Door tour and they were dull as dishwater (compared to New Order the same year, who were brilliant). On balance, neither classic nor dud, just . . . an enduring part of the landscape.

a bit like ILM

i don't think they were really as consistently good at making albums as many of their contemporaries - after pornography their strength was clearly as a singles act - but their highs were still pretty high. even disintegration drags a little in places though

What are you heathens posting here, out, out!

Flashes of brilliance, but ultimately not as interesting as their contemporaries (Joy Division/New Order, Depeche Mode, the Smiths)

they have the most amazing bank of b-sides of any of these assholes

really wish they'd saved "2 late" for wish

i don't think they were really as consistently good at making albums as many of their contemporaries - after pornography their strength was clearly as a singles act - but their highs were still pretty high.

― ufo,

They even have a song about it!

I was wondering: is there a really solid, scholarly, serious biography or history of The Cure?

I know that there are popular books - I still have TEN IMAGINARY YEARS on a shelf - I'm thinking more of the kind of biography that a major author gets, where really thorough work has been done on archives, correspondence etc.

The Smiths have attracted such attention, as with Tony Fletched's massive LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT.

If we had a book like that - not just a brash cash-in book - for each major band then they would add up to a huge cultural history.

Most of the members of JD/NO have written their own books. I haven't read any of them yet. The podcast "Transmissions" is pretty fantastic, as are the short interviews they gave several years ago around the reissue of Movement, all of which are on YouTube.

I'd probably read a Robert Smith book, if nothing else because he's been around for so long and has doubtless seen so much.

Robert plays his cards close to the chest. The closest thing we're getting yet is Tim Pope's documentary, but when I talked with him a couple of years back it's clear that it all depends on what Robert lets out from the archives and when, he operates on his own random timetable.

I've written the first couple of chapters for what *might* be something of a book on the Cure, maybe, via Patreon, and even then it's more an initial draft from a strictly personal perspective.

I had bought "Never Enough" and I've sadly never opened it, don't know if it's any good.