The Cure GTS Transcript

Host: Dave Anthony 

Guest: Ian Gittins author of The Cure: A Perfect Dream

[00:00:05] Dave Anthony: Hi there. I'm Dave Anthony and this is The Garage to Stadiums podcast. On each episode, we tell you the story of how one of our music legends rose from obscurity to fame, and play some of the songs that marked that journey Welcome to Garage to Stadiums. Today's episode is the story of The Cure. From the quiet suburbs of Crawley, England, an hour and a half south of London, came a shy young man who would become one of the most distinctive voices in rock history.

[00:00:37] Dave Anthony: Armed with a mop of wild black hair, smeared lipstick, and a gift for turning emotion into melody, Robert Smith led The Cure from school gymnasiums and tiny clubs to arenas and stadiums around the world. But their story is far more than gothic makeup and melancholy songs. It's the tale of a band that survived breakups, reinventions, and changing musical eras, while [00:01:00]creating some of the most beloved songs in alternative music history.

[00:01:03] Dave Anthony: From the haunting depths, songs like A Forest or 100 Years, to the pure joy of poppier tunes like Friday I'm In Love, The Cure proved that darkness and beauty could coexist in the very same catalog. And according to our guest, The Cure's history felt like a, quote, "fantastical pop fable," unquote, because it survived immense internal instability, including severe substance abuse, alcoholism, frequent lineup changes, and a bitter high-profile court case between original members over the band's name and royalties.

[00:01:36] Dave Anthony: But despite the chaos, The Cure inspired generations of artists, helped define the sound of alternative music, and showed millions of outsiders that they weren't alone. More than four decades after they began, their music continues to resonate with dreamers, romantics, and misfits around the world. Our guest today to discuss The Cure is music writer Ian Gittins, [00:02:00] author of The Cure: Perfect Dream, a coffee table-like retrospective of The Cure's career, complete with album and song listings and rare photographs included.

[00:02:13] Dave Anthony: Ian is a music writer for the British paper The Guardian, and has also written for Melody Maker, Q, MTV, The Daily Telegraph, and New York Times, and has penned biographies of Bjork and Talking Heads. He's also the co-author with Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe of the New York Times bestseller, The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star.

[00:02:37] Dave Anthony: Ian joins us today from London. Welcome to Garage to Stadiums, Ian. Thank you. I refreshed myself on the catalog as to prepare for the interview, and, and it's a sprawling catalog that it's, it's cinematic, it's atmospheric, it's poppy. It's, it's many things, isn't it? It is. I mean, one thing people said about Robert Smith [00:03:00] is that he's working like in the same song since he was 17, 18.

[00:03:04] Ian Gittins: And there's some truth in that in terms of basically kind of core material in terms of, uh, the sense of melancholy and alienation that has always taken through his music. But at the same time, as you say, he's written these extraordinarily infectious, upbeat pop fireballs. These songs that MTV loved, and that were, were sort of pop 10 hits and getting in America, and the little kids sang along to.

[00:03:29] Ian Gittins: So it was just the real dichotomy, I guess, at the heart of what the band- Take us back and tell us about the childhood of key band members and how they met. Give us a sense of, uh, the family life of these people and where they grew up. Yeah. Well, Robert Smith, who obviously has always been the, the main, the main man, uh, came from a very comfortable middle-class background.

[00:03:52] Ian Gittins: He was born up north, uh, near a town called Blackpool, which is basically Coney Island on, on, [00:04:00] on the sea in North England. But at a really, really young age, his father moved the family down to Sussex, which is basically, uh, 30, 35 miles outside of London to a town called Crawley, Crawley, which is, um, really commuters.

[00:04:14] Ian Gittins: It's people who g- get a train each morning into London, uh, do their job, come home again. And that's what his dad did. His dad was an executive in a pharmaceutical company, and he had a very kind of, very comfortable middle-class upbringing. As indeed most of them did. I mean, the rest of them were all born in Crawley.

[00:04:29] Ian Gittins: He met Lol Tolhurst, um, on his first day at infant school when he was five. Uh, and the other people in the band he mostly met just through, uh, the, the local scene in that town through people that were in other bands. So it's all very much based around that one town. Robert Smith, he, he had quite an eclectic, uh, music palette, I'll say, that he grew up with and, and was in- you know, influenced by.

[00:04:52] Dave Anthony: Give us a sense of some of the bands that he liked or performers. Well, he had an older brother called Richard, who, as he got into his teens, he [00:05:00]called the guru, because Richard just knew everything about music and all fidelity of music, and he played in Captain Beefheart and Nick Drake and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

[00:05:09] Ian Gittins: Um, he took Robert Smith to the Isle of Wight Festival, uh, when he was 11 in 1970, which is the famous one where Jimi Hendrix came on and played at 2:00 in the morning and was, was dead three weeks later.

[00:05:32] Ian Gittins: So clearly quite a bohemian background. I mean, you know, how much my parents let me, let me go off to a rock festival in the company of my, of my older brother. Yeah. And then as he, as he, as he kind of, um, you know, going through sort of his teens, uh, well this one, one epiphany, it's almost compulsory for people in music over here, to see David Bowie, um, do Starman on Top of the Pops.

[00:05:56] Ian Gittins: Uh, there's a famous episode, uh, where he draped his arm over [00:06:00] Mick Ronson's shoulders while they played Starman, and he would... I remember he just got mesmeric. Before we continue with Robert Smith's story, it's worth pausing for one of those rare moments that change rock history. North Americans often point to two television broadcasts that altered the course of popular music.

[00:06:17] Dave Anthony: Elvis Presley scandalizing America in 1956 by daring to swing his hips on television, and The Beatles conquering The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. In our Beatles episode, author Bob Smith talked about how everyone changed their hairstyles the next day at school, the direct impact of the cultural shift that The Beatles ignited.

[00:06:42] Dave Anthony: Well, Britain had its own seismic moment. On the evening of July 6, 1972, millions of Britons watched Top of the Pops as David Bowie performed the song Starman. He is a starman waits-[00:07:00]

[00:07:05] Dave Anthony: It lasted barely four minutes, but it rewired a generation. Here's how. Bowie appeared in a glittering rainbow jumpsuit with flaming orange hair and vivid eye makeup. Beside him stood guitarist Mick Ronson, dressed in shimmering gold velvet and wearing eye makeup of his own. Together, they looked less like a rock band than visitors from another planet.

[00:07:28] Dave Anthony: Then came the moment that detonated into the memory of a nation. Bowie casually draped his arm around Ronson's shoulder. To modern eyes, it seemed almost innocent, but in conservative Britain of 1972, it was astonishing, and schoolyards buzzed the next morning. Kids who had never seen anyone like Bowie suddenly realized there was another way to be.

[00:07:51] Dave Anthony: Bono of U2 has called that TV moment as the pioneering Bowie being Britain's equivalent to Elvis. And back to the Cure, among the millions [00:08:00]watching that night was a shy 13-year-old named Robert Smith. The next morning, he wasn't talking about Bowie. He was going to become him. Said Robert about the TV appearance, "I immediately put on some of my older sister's makeup.

[00:08:15] Dave Anthony: I loved how odd it made me look and the fact that it upset people. You put on eyeliner and people started screaming at you. How strange and how marvelous." Unquote. So, and through that I got into glam rock, you like people like, uh, Bowie, um, Roxy Music.

[00:08:40] The Cure: What's in store. Love is the drug and I need to score Just sweet. Um, but then of course when you're 16, 17, punk rock came like. I mean, it's kind of the perfect age. We're the, your mid-teens were the perfect age for punk rock. It's just- Yeah ... you said, "You want rocks. I wanna be different. Want my own thing."

[00:08:56] Ian Gittins: And here it is. This is, this is music for kids. This isn't for [00:09:00]adults. It, this is, you know, all, all the music that came before is crap. All that counts is punk rock. Um, and I think he, he got quite heavily into that. He saw The Strandlers. What-

[00:09:18] The Cure: That you got some suntan lotion in that bottle of yours Playing around, you know, she had an echo out. Um, he loved the Buzzcocks

[00:09:40] Ian Gittins: Buzzcocks were his all-time favorite, favorite punk band. He said the hearing, um, Anarchy in the UK was revelatory. You know, he sort of realized this is what it's all about. Um, then by the time he was 14, he was forming bands. I mean, really rudimentary, you know, just bands with school friends, but he was, he was on his way.

[00:09:57] Dave Anthony: You know, we're gonna talk about the albums. Three Imaginary [00:10:00] Boys has 10:15 Saturday Night. Crying for yesterday

[00:10:14] Dave Anthony: grinding halt

[00:10:27] Dave Anthony: They even do a Jimi Hendrix cover, Foxy Lady I guess so. Well, the first album and the Imaginary Boys, Smith has basically disowned. He had an issue with it because they just signed. They thought they went behind his very naive, but they got a deal with this guy, Chris Parry, who had just left. He signed the Banshees.

[00:10:48] Ian Gittins: He signed The Jam to Polydor. And he was just starting his own independent label called Fiction Records. And when The Cure, The Cure sent him a demo, he liked it. He signed them up. [00:11:00] But then when they went into the studio, what happened was that The Cure had never been in the studio in their lives before.

[00:11:04] Ian Gittins: They didn't even know what they were doing. Chris Parry had been around the block a few times. He's quite an older sort of, he's quite, I guess, dominating sort of guy. And he produced the record and he pretty much took over the sound a bit. I know when they got the finished record, they didn't like it at all.

[00:11:20] Ian Gittins: Didn't like the production and didn't like the cover because they weren't consulted over the cover, which is just these three household objects. Because Parry had this thing, bizarrely, with The Cure in those days, had no image at all. So as they had no image, he put a cover with no image to reflect that.

[00:11:38] Ian Gittins: So Smith has basically disowned that record. He said nothing to do with what they were trying to do at the time. When they came to make the second album, 17 Seconds, he pretty much banned Chris Parry from the studio. And there's a guy called Mark Eggy, who's an old school producer over here. He worked with him and Smith had very much taken the reins and [00:12:00] producing things himself at that point.

[00:12:02] Dave Anthony: The 17 Seconds, which has an incredible song, A Forest

[00:12:18] Dave Anthony: play for today

[00:12:30] Dave Anthony: 17 seconds

[00:12:44] Dave Anthony: And a song called M which was interesting, which I wanna get to in a second. Here's a question for you, a mysterious question. I wonder if anyone's ever asked you this before. Do you think the song from the album entitled M[00:13:00]

[00:13:07] Dave Anthony: From Seventeen Seconds inspired the simple guitar riff of About a Girl by Nirvana

[00:13:28] Ian Gittins: I've played them both after you mentioned this to me, and they're certainly similar. I couldn't begin to say if Kurt Cobain was, you know, consciously or subconsciously adapting it By 1982, The Cure had evolved into a lineup with an extraordinary family connection. The Cure's classic lineup of the 1980s had one of the strangest family trees in rock history.

[00:13:49] Dave Anthony: Frontman Robert Smith was married to Mary Poole, and her sister Jan Poole was married to guitarist Porl Thompson. Meanwhile, [00:14:00] bassist Simon Gallup was married to Porl Thompson's sister Carol. That meant that Robert Smith, Porl Thompson, and Simon Gallup were all brothers-in-law in one way or another, a remarkably close-knit lineup that would go on to create some of The Cure's greatest music.

[00:14:17] Dave Anthony: Next, fueled by cocaine, alcohol, and creative exhaustion, The Cure in 1982 creates its darkest and bleakest album. But instead of ending the band's story, it convinces Robert Smith that The Cure must evolve or risk disappearing. Join the Garage to Stadiums nation, now listened to in over 100 countries. I'm Fred Schruers, former staff writer at Rolling Stone.

[00:14:44] Promo: I've covered acts like Billy Joel, Tom Petty, and Fleetwood Mac, and you're listening to Dave Anthony on one of my favorite music podcasts, Garage to Stadiums Music History Podcast. The Cure's fourth album, 1982's Pornography, [00:15:00]was The Cure at their bleakest nihilistic peak with dark songs like 100 Years.

[00:15:12] Dave Anthony: The Hanging Garden

[00:15:27] Dave Anthony: And a strange day drenched in despair, this album pushed Robert Smith to the edge before a radical reinvention was to take place. As the, uh, poppier songs emerge, what do you think sparked the emergence of the poppier songs? Like, why would Robert Smith suddenly kinda decide, "I need some radio-friendly things"?

[00:15:48] Ian Gittins: I initially think very, it's very, very obvious, easy trigger. He'd just released, um, Pornography, the third album, which even by their standards was a completely bleak [00:16:00] wallow in introspection and existential doubt and angst and what's it all about. Uh, and, and Chris Parry, the manager, actually challenged him.

[00:16:08] Ian Gittins: He wa- he wasn't a big fan of the record 'cause he likes earlier tracks like Boys Don't Cry.

[00:16:24] Ian Gittins: With, with the melody and, and that the radio played. So he didn't like this quite, what he saw as uncommercial record, and he challenged Robert Smith, "Um, okay, can you write a pop song? Can you write a chart hit? Can you do a single?" And which Smith took on as a challenge. I think at the same time Smith was thinking he'd only go so far down this route the band were going.

[00:16:44] Ian Gittins: Uh, I found a telling interview, "How do you bother to keep communicating a feeling of futility? You can only say so many times life is pointless and I, I don't like being alive." Yeah. So, and Chris said do something slightly more life-affirming and positive. He [00:17:00] was, he was up for the challenge. And the song that he wrote was- Yeah

[00:17:03] Ian Gittins: uh, Let's Go to Bed, which is completely, you know, so unlike anything on, on Pornography

[00:17:22] Dave Anthony: Porno- pornography was harsh, aggressive, gothic rock almost. It was gloomy, it was nihilistic. These songs are like, my goodness, you play them and you wanna just wallow in your mire here. Well, when I researched that album, they made it in such a, such an enormous amount. I think they had a 8,000 pounds cocaine budget, I believe.

[00:17:43] Ian Gittins: But, and, and they just, the amount of drink and drugs that went on during the sessions extraordinary. Uh, Smith said he didn't, he didn't remember making a lot of the album, he said. They'd often record all night, then they'd go and sleep on the floor in their record company office, which is just- Yeah

[00:17:57] Ian Gittins: around the corner. It was a very debauched [00:18:00] setup, and I don't, and I think it made a very kind of upbeat frame of mind, really. 'Cause the drugs do play a role, and, uh, alcohol, a, a, a lot of things that this band went through. In Love Told Us, but talking about Pornography, he said, "We wanted to make the ultimate intense album.

[00:18:17] Ian Gittins: I can't remember why, but we did it." The Cure seemed to understand outsiders better than most bands. Why did so many people who felt different connect so deeply, do you think, with this music? That's a good question. I think right from the off with The Cure, a big, a big motor for Robert Smith was always, "Nobody understands me," that teenage adolescent thing.

[00:18:39] Ian Gittins: "The world is against me," you know? "Oh, there's, nobody knows how deep and how profound I am." Uh, when, and they were making the sound for it, that was to a large degree the, the, the, the undercurrent. I think other teenagers picked up on it. I mean, it is, it's a massive... The, The Cure were a big band in suburbia here and in the provinces.

[00:18:58] Ian Gittins: People in nowhere... Tell, a lot like The [00:19:00] Smiths in a way. People heard this music going, "He gets it. He knows what it's like for me." Yeah. They had a lot of very precocious adolescent fans. I mean, some people might say Robert Smith's never quite grown out of that mindset, but certainly when, when The Cure started making records, they, they got a lot of, um, pleated suits following them.

[00:19:18] Dave Anthony: Yeah. It's interesting, 'cause if anybody in the audience went to high school in North America at the time, they would remember people, you know, with the overcoats and the goth look, and The Cure was a staple. Uh, you'd see them with The Cure T-shirts. You'd, uh, hear them playing the music. So it seemed to resonate with that kind of, uh, individual, to your point.

[00:19:42] Ian Gittins: Back, backcombed hair and, and the huge amounts of kohl around the eyes. Yeah, it was, and, and all in black, of course. In '79, Robert Smith was asked to fill in to play guitar on the British band Siouxsie and the Banshees tour in 1979, and even joined them in 1982 as a full member till [00:20:00] 1984.

[00:20:12] Dave Anthony: He has an interesting quote that I wanna read to you, "Being a Banshee really changed my attitude to what I was doing." What did he mean by that? What were the, what were The, the Banshees doing that he wanted to emulate? I'm not sure. I'm sure the maybe is might been the first time he had some fun in a band.

[00:20:28] Ian Gittins: 'Cause see, with The Cure, it was all about him. He was the, the principal songwriter, he was the guitarist, he was the singer. It really, it stood or fell on his efforts, and all the focus was on him. Um, I think with The Banshees, he actually for a while, not- and eventually he got tired, he tired of it, but for a while he liked being the hired hand.

[00:20:46] Ian Gittins: Uh-huh. He'd just go and sit and play the songs, and he wasn't the person... You know, Siouxsie was taking the limelight, and he was... I think that was the, you know. And also I think he just getting to work with other people. What was it about him that he kind of was the [00:21:00] enforcer, I'll call him? Like, he was the guy that kinda drove the band.

[00:21:04] Dave Anthony: He's the one who made the decisions. Is there something about him or that the others admired or were scared of? What, what do you think? I think he's just always been incredibly driven. Uh, he's always had a

[00:21:15] Ian Gittins: vision of exactly what he wants to do. And although when you meet him, when you talk to him, he's a very sort of quietly spoken, almost diffident q- you know, very likable, quiet character, but I think in the studio it's a different story completely. He just saw this as his mission, this as his life's mission, to make these records an incredibly deep, profound, um, uh, existentially questioning music.

[00:21:37] Ian Gittins: Okay. It's a one man, it's a one man mission. You, you wouldn't necessarily say to Simon Gallup, "Hey, do you wanna write a lyric?" I mean, I think, you know, he, he was the... It was his project, basically. Next, Robert Smith begins to write incredible pop songs that take over the charts, but we investigate why he was surprisingly ambivalent about them when discussing these songs with the press.

[00:21:59] Announcer: How do [00:22:00]we give you the real stories of music history? Because we talk to the insiders, rock journalists, authors, and filmmakers who live and breathe music. As they sort of evolve into the '80s, you talked about the, uh, poppier transition in between days. I could die, yeah

[00:22:27] Dave Anthony: Close to me

[00:22:40] Dave Anthony: "Just Like Heaven,"

[00:22:56] Dave Anthony: These poppier tunes emerge, yet Mr., uh, [00:23:00] Smith always seems to level self-criticism at himself saying, "Hey, these poppier songs are not Cure songs," quote-unquote. Selling Out by, uh, Pop Songs, In Between the Days, Love Cat, why did he say these things? What, what, what, were they not as intellectual in his mind? Did he think he was pissing off his normal audience?

[00:23:21] Dave Anthony: Like, what, what, his, his key audience? What, what do you think? I think he felt slightly ashamed of them, to be honest, even though it's a huge talent to write one of those songs. I think in, for a long, long time in his mind, great music or great art had to be, um, profound and deep and, and about examining the self and going deep into the soul, and not about singing, writing a song called The Lovecats and jumping about on MTV.

[00:23:45] Ian Gittins: So I think whenever he did that, yeah, you're, 'cause you're completely correct. Nearly every time he made a hit record, he'd do interviews with Smash Hits or NME, and he'd say, "It's not a really true record." He almost said, "Do not buy this song." You know, since you- "You, do [00:24:00]not buy this record." Uh, and of course, people ignored him and, and they were, they were really what broke the band and took them over from being this, you know, underground cult concern to, to stadium-filling band.

[00:24:10] Ian Gittins: It was the pop hits that- Sure ... took them over. And it, it's interesting 'cause, uh, Ian, it expanded, as you said, his, his audience to, uh, via the MTV and these poppier tunes. Did his original goth crew stick with him through this period? How did they react to these poppier tunes? I think so. I think so. I mean, his original fans adored him.

[00:24:31] Ian Gittins: They just thought he was this, you know, this wonderful messiah figure almost. Uh, and also, how can you, how can you not like The Lovecats or- Oh, what songs we know

[00:24:51] Ian Gittins: In Between Days[00:25:00]

[00:25:04] Ian Gittins: Such great songs that I think even, even his doubtest fans enjoy them. It can last any fans do. They must have been particularly doctrinaire and, and, and not a great last, I think really. I mean, they've won an album. They made this- There's the greatest hits album called Standing on the Beach in 1986, which, uh, I think in the book I say was the greatest hits album that broke America, because that was the one that really kind of took them over to, um, to huge success.

[00:25:28] Ian Gittins: Mm-hmm. And there's a se- the sequence of songs on site two, which is Let's Go to Bed

[00:25:45] Ian Gittins: to walk

[00:25:59] Ian Gittins: The [00:26:00]Lurkat, the caterpillar

[00:26:14] Ian Gittins: In Between Days and Close to Me. And a band like Duran Duran or the Human League would have killed for a sequence of songs like that. I mean, they're just wonderful '80s, um, electro pop songs. But Smith always thought he was different. He was the outsider. He was the, you know, the recluse. So I think he was fucking, he'd let himself down a bit by not writing those songs.

[00:26:36] Dave Anthony: Yeah. It's interesting when you think of the bands who've write the introspective dark songs in the history of rock. You come across the Pink Floyds, the, the, uh, you know, several bands come to mind. But to have that poppier side, that radio-friendly side, is very rare for those kind of bands. Yes, it is.

[00:26:57] Ian Gittins: That's true. And also, I think another relevant factor to that, [00:27:00] uh, I found over the years, 'cause I used to work as a music journalist on magazines like Melody Maker, and it's often the bands that you'd interview that, that make the darkest, bleakest music that are the biggest party animals. And they're just ones that are...

[00:27:14] Ian Gittins: New Order are a great example

[00:27:25] Ian Gittins: And yours is like going to the pub with him and talking about football. You know, I mean, um, and, and I, I, I've been ... On Interview, Robert Smith made ... He's exactly what he was like, you know? W- wh- when the tape went on for the interview, it was, you know, it was quite serious business. It was intense. It was profound.

[00:27:41] Ian Gittins: He was giving very thoughtful answers. Uh, when he went off and had a beer, we just started talking about football, and we started talking about people that we knew in TV programs. And, and you s- He's quite a regular guy for somebody as, as extraordinary introspective as he appears to be. Robert Smith was a deep literary man from a young [00:28:00] age.

[00:28:00] Dave Anthony: One of his first songs, Killing an Arab, was based on a novel by the French author Albert Camus. The first of Camus's novels to be published, the story follows a man named Meursault, an indifferent man in French Algeria who weeks after his mother's funeral kills an unnamed Arab man in Algiers. He is completely detached and discusses killing the man with absolutely no emotion.

[00:28:41] Dave Anthony: But because of the title Killing an Arab, the song has drawn controversy for what critics have described as promoting violence against Arabs, which songwriter Robert Smith has said stems from the public's lack of knowledge regarding the novel. Over the years, he's asked radio stations to stop playing [00:29:00]it, and he's changed the lyrics in concert to be called Killing Another.

[00:29:05] Dave Anthony: Beyond that example, he has several other literary influences in his songs. Authors like Penelope Farmer, who wrote the book Charlotte Sometimes about a boarding school girl who travels time to exchange places with another student, inspired The Cure song Charlotte Sometimes.

[00:29:37] Dave Anthony: He also based the song Hanging Garden on Joseph Conrad's famous book Heart of Darkness, which many listeners will recall also influenced Francis Ford Coppola in the writing of his Apocalypse Now movie. The vision of jungle chaos, terrified animals in the jungle, people wearing masks, and moral collapse reinforces the darkness themes that [00:30:00] Smith was so famous for

[00:30:14] Dave Anthony: The Cure song Piggy in the Mirror, the narrator, Smith, stares into the mirror and finds what Lewis Carroll described in Through the Looking Glass, a self that no longer resembles itself

[00:30:33] Dave Anthony: The mirror is a recurring Cure symbol, and in this song becomes a portal between identity and illusion, turning Carole's whimsy into psychological torment. Robert Smith was also inspired to write The Cure song How Beautiful You Are based on Charles Baudelaire's famous French poem, The Eyes of the Poor, that places a man and a woman in a cafe observing a poor family.

[00:30:59] Dave Anthony: The [00:31:00]man feels compassion for the downtrodden family, while the woman only feels contempt. And Smith translate this scene into confrontational lyrics like, quote, you wanna know why I hate you? Well, I'll try and explain, unquote. In The Cure version, Smith turns Baudelaire's social contrast into a breakdown of intimacy, resentment, and moral disconnection inside a relationship.

[00:31:42] Dave Anthony: You know, one of the things about Robert Smith that came across in my research, your book, uh, you know, other sources, was he's extremely well-read. He's adapted his lyrics and song concepts from many different literary figures. Did you get a [00:32:00] sense of this, his literary bent? And I guess my second follow-up to that would be, who inspired it, do you think?

[00:32:08] Ian Gittins: I think he was a very bookish teenager, and when he- I mean, the first song, the first song of note that he wrote, "Killing an Arab," was based on, uh, uh, The Stranger by, by, um, by Camus. Um, and I think he just saw, I think it is, it's certain sound too harsh. I think he partly liked showing how bookish he was by putting references into song.

[00:32:30] Ian Gittins: But also, the, the, the literature he was drawing from, the Kafkas that, uh, the people you're talking about, was, was very deep, you know, profound literature in the way that he wanted The Cure to have the same resonance in music. Right. So I think he had a very natural marriage of the two. Hmm. It's very interesting.

[00:32:49] Dave Anthony: Uh, he comes across as quite a complex character. The drama that struck the band in various ways, there's been a ton of, uh, confrontation, drama over the [00:33:00]years. There's been personnel turnover. There's been you mentioned the cocaine, uh, uh, the alcohol. Like, it is just, uh, debauchery at some levels. Um, what, what is it about this band that it can survive like a battered ship and continue to sail through the storms?

[00:33:22] Dave Anthony: What is it about Robert Smith that he can lead through such craziness? Well, first, I think you're right. I mean, this Hammer of the Gods stuff, it's, it's some of the stories of Led Zeppelin kind of levels, you know? To answer your question, I think you come back to Smith's character. He's incredibly driven, quite sort of, um, stubb- He wo- He won't be knocked off course.

[00:33:43] Ian Gittins: Whatever happens there, if he's, if it's, they've had fistfights on stage at one point, and he was sacking people that were walking out, falling out with Simon Gallup and coming back, but he never, ever lost sight of the vision. Even when the band was just him and Lol Tolhurst, and Lol was, you know, obviously scarcely functioning as [00:34:00] a musician or even as a human being, he was still producing great songs, still writing albums, and he just has that drive Next, this is the moment every garage to stadium story is building toward.

[00:34:13] Dave Anthony: It's 1989, Robert Smith is just 29 years old when he creates the album Disintegration, the critically acclaimed masterpiece with a slew of hit singles that elevates The Cure from alternative icons to one of the biggest concert draws in the world. If you enjoy Talking Heads, The Clash, or The Cars, check out our list of episodes on your favorite podcast platform or YouTube.

[00:34:41] Dave Anthony: Disintegration, that album, is considered, uh, I guess the masterpiece of, uh, of the catalog. Love Song[00:35:00]

[00:35:02] Dave Anthony: Lullaby

[00:35:16] The Cure: Shadow of the evening Fascination Street

[00:35:30] Dave Anthony: pictures of you

[00:35:42] Dave Anthony: The album reached number three in the UK, number 12 in the US. Universal critical acclaim, unanimously regarded by fans and journalists alike as the band's crowning achievement. Well, it's got a ponderous, magnificent, funereal beauty, that's for sure. And when he made that record, I think he was really trying to come back [00:36:00] to what he thought The Cure should be.

[00:36:02] Ian Gittins: 'Cause it was 1989, he was just after the whole, the, all the, all the hits that we talked about, all the American MTV chart hits. And, and he wanted to come back to The Cure's, um, Faith and The Cure of Pornography. Uh, and so he made this, this really sort of deep introspective record. And in fact, when, uh, when, um, American Jacket, when, when he was sent to the American label and they heard the first recordings, they, they, they wrote to him saying he's being willfully obscure and trying to commit commercial suicide.

[00:36:31] Ian Gittins: Yeah. And they tried to talk, bounce him into putting, you know, a Love Cuts type song or In Between Days type song on there. But he was not to be, again, back to your previous question, not to be budged. He had his vision, and that was for this to be the darkest album you can imagine. I mean, when he, when he came out, Melody Maker said this record is as much fun as losing a limb.

[00:36:51] Ian Gittins: Right. And that paper was a big supporter of his, you know? Um, and yet they went on tour in America, and he played to four, 4,000 people in, in the, in the John Stadium. Played [00:37:00] to 50,000 in LA, and he went double platinum in America. So this really bleak record was a vast success. He talked about the, um, drugs and alcohol.

[00:37:11] Dave Anthony: One of the fallouts of the recording of the album was the continued alcoholism of Lol Tolhurst, one of the founding members. He had been displaced as the band's drummer. He'd been put on the keyboards in the '80s, early '80s. Mm. And he'd been battling the drink. Uh- Mm ... on tour, he was even sometimes replaced with another keyboardist.

[00:37:30] Dave Anthony: And You, you got into some things in the book about the teasing and bullying that the guy endured. Um, I found that kind of sad. What, what- is that just a, what is that, just taking the piss? Or what, what were they doing to this guy? Um, I think they just, they just, I mean, when they made particularly that, that album, Disintegration, um, by all accounts, Lol was getting, because they get to the studio, started drinking the second he got there.

[00:37:55] Ian Gittins: And because he was, God, then he's essentially an alcoholic, he'd be drunk within 20 minutes. And they'd, they'd [00:38:00] put him in a cabin, sending him home even before they, they started recording for the day. Uh, and some of the band just thought, "What the hell is he doing here?" I mean, he was, he was Smith's childhood friend from the age of five, so he had loyalty towards him, but he didn't do anything, you know?

[00:38:13] Dave Anthony: Right. Right. I think although, although Smith was loyal for him, I think he was also incredibly nasty to him. When they're working hard, they're gonna resent this guy that's being, being carried by them. But when, and the court case, yeah, uh, Lol sued them for unpaid royalties was, was, was the reason. But he basically said in his own, his own biography, he said he, he wanted revenge.

[00:38:34] Ian Gittins: They'd kicked him out, he wanted to come back and get what was his, you know? But it's a very, very unpleasant court case. Really nobody came out of it well, because the whole, the whole mentality of, uh, Lol's alcoholism was laid bare, and the sort of state he was in. But also, as you say, just how nasty the, the rest of the band were too.

[00:38:52] Ian Gittins: And they'd, uh, when he passed out, they'd, they'd, they'd paint rude words on his face. I mean, I, I interviewed at quite great length for the book Boris [00:39:00]Williams, who was The Cure's drummer at the time, and he said, looking back, he really feels guilty about the way they treated Lol. Lol clearly needed help, and what he got was kind of mockery and, um- Yeah

[00:39:10] Ian Gittins: he seen, he never went so far as physical bullying, but he said they, they had no respect for him and, um, and they treated him accordingly. Yeah. So he went to court, battled, uh, the band over the name, the, the royalties. Well, he was, he was advised very badly that he was entitled to unpaid royalties. Um, he lost, he lost the whole case.

[00:39:30] Ian Gittins: What was fascinating for me was when I was writing this book, um, 20 years after the court case already, yeah, 20, 23 or four years afterwards, I went to a festival that Lol was doing. He'd just published his own life story, doing, he was doing a Q&A interview of the festival, and he said that, um, he and, he and Robert Smith had, had reconciled a few years earlier, and Robert Smith had completely unprompted given him all the money that he'd lost, all the money that Lol Tolhurst paid in legal fees, which was over £1 million for the court case that he [00:40:00] lost.

[00:40:00] Ian Gittins: Right. Robert Smith gave it to him Yeah. It's, that's a, it, it's such an happy ending to that sort of, I guess they were friends as kids, and then the battle, and then Robert makes that gesture. I think it also speaks to how guilty Robert probably felt about the way he treated him. He's on record as saying he behaved appallingly towards him.

[00:40:18] Ian Gittins: Right. Right. Um, you interviewed the band at Jane Seymour's mansion. The actress had a mansion in Bath during the mid-'90s while they were recording the next album, My, uh, Wild Mood Swings. What was the atmosphere like in that house, and how did that specific environment shape the music they were making at the time?

[00:40:37] Ian Gittins: I do remember Robert saying to me that, that he said we were a bit confused as to what we thought of it at the minute because, well, 1996 was the height of Britpop. It was their first album for four years. In the meantime, um, you know, grunge had been and gone, and, and now everything over here was Oasis and Blur and Pulp.

[00:40:57] Ian Gittins: And The Cure could seem a bit of a throwback, you know, this [00:41:00] gothic band from the '80s. It could seem, you know, a bit old hat, really, I suppose, which is very, which is new for him because he was always used to The Cure being seen as, as the cutting edge and extremely hip. So he was kind of, he was getting used to that, I think.

[00:41:12] Ian Gittins: And, um, I thought, I don't think Wild Mood Swings is a great album, really. I mean, there's one or two nice things on it, but there were tracks like, um, Mint Car, which seemed like an attempt to write another Lullaby or Friday I'm in Love. It didn't really come off, and it was one of the, one of the lower charting albums when it appeared.

[00:41:30] Ian Gittins: But then they went on tour and they played the stadiums again. So the fans are still with them. They just weren't buying the new records. They'll stay with you, you know, and they're not gonna get... And also they, they were aging with the band. So, you know, by now Robert Smith is in his mid-30s, maybe a lot of the fans are in their mid-30s as well.

[00:41:45] Ian Gittins: They're, they're, you know, they're growing up with them. Um, and in fact, the fact they're still, two years ago, played enormous, you know, stadiums and arenas, and yeah, they've got a huge following. Next, we analyze the personality of Robert [00:42:00] Smith and his leadership style with The Cure. Garage to stadiums, where the stories just keep on coming What would you say about him if you had to describe him to somebody?

[00:42:12] Ian Gittins: That's an interesting one. To me, he's always partly an eternal adolescent. He's never quite shaken off that teenage mindset that first made him start with The Cure. Um, he's definitely got a sense of personal exceptionalism. Um, but at the same time, he's a really nice guy. And I don't want to emphasize some kind of arrogant prick 'cause he's not.

[00:42:32] Ian Gittins: He's a really, he's a really nice character. But I'm gonna come back to the same thing again, just so driven. Just so driven to make this music, so driven to make this art, and he'll do whatever necessary. If, if it means, uh, sacking friends in the band, if it means losing, you know, really, really long relationships, he'll do it for the music, and that's just the way he is.

[00:42:51] Dave Anthony: Hmm. What did the key members of the band bring to the table in terms of the sound and approach in the studio, or to the culture of the band [00:43:00] even offstage, I guess? What would you say that, uh, you know, Simon Gallup on bass guitar, Lol Tolhurst on keyboards, Porl, Porl Thompson, man, that dude played some heavy guitar.

[00:43:11] Dave Anthony: What would, what would you say about these different members and what they brought? I think that's an interesting one because I think The Cure has always been so much Robert Smith's vision and a vehicle that he shared almost ... I mean, Porl Thompson, I should say, is a very, very good gnarly guitarist for sure.

[00:43:30] Ian Gittins: Uh, and Simon Gallup's a very, a very proficient, uh, bassist. And, you know, I mean, obviously Lol wasn't doing too much in his later days, but he's always surrounding himself with good musicians, but always playing his music. I mean, the way you can say that New Order, their peak was defined by, um, Peter Hook's bass, or the early days of Depeche Mode were all about Vince Clarke's keyboards, or Johnny Marr's guitar in The Smiths.

[00:43:54] Ian Gittins: I don't think you can say that about any of those other members because it's all Smith's creation. It's almost like [00:44:00] David Bowie. I've just finished writing a book with, uh, with Ric Wakeman, who, who worked with Bowie in the really earliest years, and he said he actually got invited to join the, the Spiders from Mars when Bowie did Ziggy Stardust.

[00:44:11] Ian Gittins: Uh, he called him up and said, "I want you to join the Spiders." And Ric Wakeman, I don't know, he draws ... he was just gonna ask to join Yes as well. Uh, and Ric Wakeman decided the thing with them joining, although he thought Bowie was a genius and, you know, b- beyond anybody he'd ever met before, he knew if he joined that band, he'd just be playing Bowie's music.

[00:44:29] Ian Gittins: Hmm. And there's a limit to what he could do. Whereas with Yes, he was involved in creating the music. He's a big kind of, you know, major influence in it. And I think The Cure was largely like that. Uh, and I wonder if partly that's why so many people have come and gone from The Cure. I mean, Porl Thompson's been in and out, doing the hokey cokey so many times.

[00:44:46] Ian Gittins: Um, uh, you know, Roger O'Donnell, um, Perry Bamonte, they've all, they've all been in the band. And I, and maybe there's a frustration there about, you know, I can only do so much because this is, this is Robert's show. But I think, you know, if you took Robert Smith out of The [00:45:00] Cure, what would be left? Because he's so much the creative force of it all.

[00:45:03] Dave Anthony: If someone had never heard The Cure, you're on a foreign planet somewhere, and the people say, "What was the band The Cure like?" Could you describe their musical style given the range of that catalog? I would say they were a kaleidoscope, a kaleidoscope of nearly all dark colors, um, with occasional flashes of just iridescent brilliance that lit them up.

[00:45:29] Ian Gittins: And they're often a, a swirl of, of, of grays, dark grays and charcoal grays and, and black, uh, and very mournfu- uh, very romantic, but in a very kind of doom and dramaticism kind of way. Um, but then they'd write these completely extraordinary upbeat, infectious pop songs. I'd probably say to the person, "Go and listen to them," because it's very hard to- Yes

[00:45:50] Ian Gittins: convey it in words. Hard to ... Yeah. Yeah, the range is incredible. Yeah. Which artist or band or musical movement owe a debt to The Cure? Well, a lot [00:46:00]really. I mean, the, the whole emo movement is not a million miles away from ... I'm not sure The Cure, I'm not sure Robert would like that many emo bands, 'cause they're often quite, you know, sledgehammer-y.

[00:46:09] Ian Gittins: But, but the, the sentiment to what they're doing is not dissimilar. Um, I mean, a lot of bands have openly said they're influenced. The Killers, uh, Brandon Flowers is a huge fan.

[00:46:32] Ian Gittins: Placebo? I mean placebo

[00:46:43] Ian Gittins: Very much in the same kind of musical area. Interpol also. Mogwai, the kind of heaviness and intensity of the Smiths, Mogwai definitely took into their music. Smashing Pumpkins. He's a massive Robert Smith fan.[00:47:00]

[00:47:03] Ian Gittins: And- Yeah ... uh, you know, I think he tried to take the s- the, the, the, the Smith's darkness and existential brooding and put it into Smashing Pumpkins. For me, it never quite arrived, but, you know, he certainly influenced. Yeah. Nine Inch Nails, would you say?

[00:47:29] Ian Gittins: Oh, Nine Inch Nails for sure, and also Marilyn Manson. Um, you know, I think of that whole kind of outsider thing, uh, they took, they took that from The Cure to a very large- Yeah. If you had to have people listen to three songs to get a sense of the range of this band from the darkness to the pop side, what would you choose so these people could, uh, see that kaleidoscope?

[00:47:52] Ian Gittins: Okay. It's obviously hugely subjective, as these things always are, but I would go with A Forest.[00:48:00]

[00:48:11] Ian Gittins: really early, like second album I think it was, Seventeen Seconds. Um, because it's got this weird, it's very, it's very sort of quite a skeletal song, but at the same time it's very intense, and it's got a great melody. And it's almost on the cusp of the two things The Cure did, you know? It was their first chart hit.

[00:48:26] Ian Gittins: Got on top of the pops over here. Right. Um, the poppy side of things, I mean, there's so many. I, I'd probably go with Friday I'm In Love.

[00:48:47] Ian Gittins: It's just, it's brilliant pop song. Just like some- Yeah ... pure pop alchemy really. I mean, gossamer, it just sounds wonderful. And, and you've, you f- you think to Smith, how can you be ashamed of writing something like this? This is a, a talent, [00:49:00] you know? For sure. Um, and in time for the, of the darkness, I'd probably go with Love Song from Disintegration.

[00:49:20] Ian Gittins: It's got this beautiful descending melody, uh, and it's just a song you can really just lose yourself. I mean, sometimes I can find the, the, the melancholic stuff a bit too much of a wallow. You feel like sort of shaking him, saying, "Come on, pull yourself together, man." But The Love Song is very beautiful, I think.

[00:49:37] Dave Anthony: Okay. Three good picks. Today we've been talking to Ian Gittins, and he's the, um, author of The Cure: Perfect Dream, and it's a coffee table book, I'll call it, with some beautiful photos, and it really goes over the retrospective of the career of this incredible band. And Ian, I think you've described them well today.

[00:49:59] Dave Anthony: This is a [00:50:00] kaleidoscope of sounds that this band has managed to put out through some ups and downs and chaos offstage and on, and we wanted to thank you today for bringing it to light, and, uh, congratulations on the book. Thank you. I enjoyed talking to you. Thank you very much. Some closing notes on The Cure.

[00:50:20] Dave Anthony: The Cure was kicked off a tour supporting Generation X in 1978 after their drummer, Lol Tolhurst, urinated on Billy Idol. Here's the details. The incident took place backstage at the Locarno Ballroom in Bristol. Tolhurst rushed into the men's room and found Idol in a compromising position with a female fan in a stall.

[00:50:43] Dave Anthony: Unable to hold it, Tolhurst accidentally sprayed Idol's leg instead of hitting the urinal. The Cure was dismissed from the tour the following day. Robert Smith has consistently applied his own makeup since 1981 because [00:51:00]he loathes having others touch his face. His go-to lipstick is MAC Ruby Woo. One of The Cure's biggest pop hits, The Love Cats, was entirely inspired by watching Disney's The Aristocats Despite forming in 1978 and achieving massive international fame, The Cure didn't win their first Grammy Award until 2026 for the album Songs of a Lost World and the song Alone.

[00:51:37] Dave Anthony: We discussed in our Paul McCartney episode how Paul was a master of many instruments. Well, Robert Smith of The Cure may be his alternative music jack-of-all-trades rival. On The Cure's fifth album, entitled The Top, Smith wrote every single song and played every instrument [00:52:00] except for the drums and saxophone.

[00:52:04] Dave Anthony: The Cure has had a revolving door of band members. At last count, this was 13 different players over their 50-year career, and at one point it even included a man named Frank Bell, who was Robert Smith's local postman. Bell was pressed into action to provide vocals, and to this day, people apparently debate whether Postman Frank, wait for it, delivered the goods in his new singing gig.

[00:52:30] Dave Anthony: During the making of The Cure's chart-topping 1992 Wish album, album producer Dave Allen took apart Robert Smith's trademark six-string guitar to figure out the root cause of its unusual and influential tone. Well, it turns out the vintage Fender guitar had been wired wrong from the day it entered Smith's possession.

[00:52:53] Dave Anthony: Smith has since ensured it remains uncorrected. South Park creators Trey Parker and [00:53:00] Matt Stone are massive fans of The Cure. The creators reached out to Robert Smith and had him voice his own animated cameo in the legendary first season episode Mecha-Streisand, in which Barbra Streisand uses an ancient relic to transform into a giant Godzilla-like robot.

[00:53:19] Dave Anthony: Robert Smith plays the hero as he transforms into a giant Mothra-like monster to fight her, eventually tossing Streisand into outer space and saving the world from her tyranny. Apparently, Robert's many nephews and nieces were far more impressed with his inclusion in a cartoon than being a world-famous rock star.

[00:53:41] Dave Anthony: The Cure song Lullaby was inspired by the disturbing songs that Robert Smith's father apparently would sing him when he could not sleep as a child Says Robert, "He would always make them up. There was always a horrible ending. There would be something like, 'Sleep now pretty baby, or you [00:54:00]won't wake up at all.'"

[00:54:02] Dave Anthony: Given this description, what are the chances his dad wore goth makeup while reading it to him? Robert Smith always solemnly vowed that The Cure's music would never, ever be used in advertisements. Well, Mr. Smith broke his promise in 2003 when In Between Days was licensed for use in a Fiat ad, and in 2007 Pictures of You was used in an ad for HP digital cameras.

[00:54:27] Dave Anthony: Robert Smith and The Cure pop up in the BBC comedy series The Mighty Boosh in an episode entitled Nanageddon, where goth styling goes absurdly surreal. Character Vince Noir is helping character Howard Moon transform into a goth so Howard can impress some goth girls. To complete the transformation, Vince unveils his secret weapon called Goth Juice that will hold Howard's hair in place, and he explains that the spray is made from the tears of Robert Smith of The Cure [00:55:00] and is so strong that it will hold an orange thrown up in the air.

[00:55:06] Dave Anthony: Up the orange goes, and sure enough, the super hold nature of Robert Smith's tears freezes the orange in midair. Even the credits of the episode have a nod to The Cure with the song Love Cats sung by a bizarre moon-faced character. The joke became so popular among fans of the show that the cosmetic brand Lush actually released a real-life limited edition purple hair gel called Goth Juice as a tribute.

[00:55:34] Dave Anthony: Robert Smith has such poor eyesight he can't focus beyond the end of his hand. He wears glasses when not on stage. He explains, "I've had really good eyesight before. Suddenly it started to deteriorate. It was around when I turned 30, so it was probably stress-induced." Robert Smith anxious? Who would've thought?

[00:55:54] Dave Anthony: Join the Garage to Stadium's nation. Listeners in more than 100 countries and one of the world's top 5% [00:56:00] podcasts. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and follow us on Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and X for bite-sized music history that'll surprise you every time you scroll. Special thanks to our production crew, Scott Campbell, Chad Raymond, Amelia Mariang, and Nigel Campbell.

[00:56:19] Dave Anthony: I'm Dave Anthony. Thanks for listening. See you next time for another Garage to Stadium story.

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