PART 1 “INSULAR, INTENSE”
Drummer Lol Tolhurst recalls monomania, hoarding beer cans and the act of finally being birthed into adulthood…
“SOMEONE SAID, ‘THERE’S A BIG FIGHT, IT’S SIMON AND ROBERT.’”
“Icould have ended up in new romantic warpaint. Just before The Cure began our ascent, Adam Ant asked me to join The Ants. On reflection, I think I prefer the Pornography. When we recorded the album it was pretty insular – just the three of us in the band [Lol plus singer/ guitarist Robert Smith and bassist Simon Gallup]. With the Seventeen Seconds [1980] and Faith [1981] albums we’d managed to take control of making records, but we wanted something more extreme. The whole thing was pretty mono-focused. We collected every single used beer can and wine bottle and wouldn’t let the cleaners take them out. We piled them in a corner and made a huge structure which I’d quite often sleep in. I think we got our vitamins from wine. There were other things… there wasn’t heroin. It was pretty intense. There wasn’t really anyone else in the studio [RAK] apart from the band and [producer] Phil [Thornalley] and the engineer [Mike Nocito]. I remember Siouxsie [Sioux] and [Fiction label boss] Chris Parry came by once… it was Mickie Most’s studios and he brought
down a guitar Jimmy Page used on Stairway To Heaven. Robert used it on our album – it’s there somewhere in that big mix. To record the drums we took out all the acoustic shields in the main studio so it was like playing in a large village hall, with all the natural reverb. It did feel like the hammer of the gods. Kim Wilde was in at the same time as us, she’d arrive when we’d be leaving. We went down the pub with her a couple of times, she was pretty cool. With the album before, Faith, we’d rented hotels. With Pornography we thought it might be good to be with each other 24/7. So, we stayed in the offices of Fiction. Robert had a little tent arrangement, involving one of the couches. He could climb in there and escape, which made it a bit strange when people came to the office. It was a bit like a den or fort from childhood. With Robert, I think the time in his life he’s always looked to is that point where you go from being a teenager into adulthood and all the emotion you go through at that time, when you suddenly discover it’s not all as rosy as you imagined, but you still have that romantic longing. When he doesn’t feel like that, it can produce the opposite – self-absorption and introspection. Maybe that’s what happened with Pornography. I’m proud of it, absolutely. In the period when I was involved, there were two versions of The Cure – the original three-piece and then the happier six-piece. For me, Pornography is the ultimate three-piece Cure. When I hear Pornography, I hear us being birthed into adulthood. We did the album and went straight out on the road. By that time it was a bit removed from when we’d be on tour in Australia and we’d all go jogging on Bondi Beach. The Pornography tour became intense, emotionally. This came to a head in Strasbourg. We’d gone out to a club and I was hanging out with Paul from Zerra 1, our support group. I was dancing with this girl… Then somebody came over and said, ‘There’s a big fight upstairs, it’s Simon and Robert.’ For once I made a really good decision and decided not to intervene, because maybe I could have become the focal point of whatever discontent there was. I carried on dancing and drinking and didn’t know anything about anything until the next morning
when the tour manager told me that both Simon and Robert had flown home to Britain. I was stuck in Strasbourg, but I decided to just travel on to Montreux. After two days’ break they came back and we finished the rest of the tour. I have a photo from the last night, at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, and that’s where that version of The Cure fell apart. We went home and I knew in my heart that was the end of that version of The Cure. It was a time of loss – the loss of our innocence.”
Lol Tolhurst’s book Cured: The Tale Of Two Imaginary Boys is published by Quercus.