Things don't look good.A couple of days after two extraordinary sold-out
concerts at Paris' 15,000-seat Bercy Auditorium,the Cure is getting ready
to play a glorified gymnasium in Reims to a crowd of only 4,500.Even at
8:30 in the evening,when the band hits the stage,it's not yet dark;the sun
streams through the skylights,turning the place into a muggy greenhouse and
overpowering the band's extensive lighting rig.

But that isn't the worst of it.Earlier,the band's leader,Robert Smith, took
about an hour to get off the tour bus,and then shuffled backstage,puffy
faced,ashen and bleary eyed,looking barely human.He stopped,grinned
sheepishly at the rest of the band and crew and lurched to the bathroom.
Everyone smiled knowingly,assuming it was a hangover,but in fact Smith is
suffering from a vicious stomach virus,probably not helped much by his
drinking until 5 in the morning.

Smith takes the stage and paces like a zombie back and forth-the kids
(most of them are well under 20) must think it's part of the act,because
they go berserk.Without so much as a perfunctory "Hello, Reims!" the band
launches into the set.

Even out here in the provinces,Curemania lives,and the audience quickly
turns into a heaving throng;girls who can't withstand the crush against the
crowd barriers are hoisted out of the teeming mob by an alert team of
security men.Unlike their rough American counterparts,the French security
men gently cradle barrier victims,even dispensing an occasional sweet,
reassuring peck on the cheek.They actually pour Evian water on the
sweltering kids,who open their mouths for it like feeding chicks.

The songs from the band's new album, "Disintegration," get lots of cheers,
and the response seems to energize Smith.Amid copious dry-ice fog,he pulls
off a strong performance despite waves of staggering nausea.After the band
leaves the stage,Smith shambles over to an equipment case and buries his
face in his hands,saying nothing for several minutes.A crew member says,
"He might make it," and laughs sardonically.But the Cure does go on for a
five-song encore,and although the show falls well short of the three-hour
set that's the norm on this tour,the audience seems to go home satisfied.

With his trademark stand-up hair,moon-pale face and red-lipsticked mouth,
Smith is a post punk icon;his fever-dream lyrics,awash in minor-key angst,
are at the forefront of a genre somewhat disparagingly tagged "mope rock."
Smith is a virtual messiah of melancholy.

Over the years,the Cure has amassed a vast cult following,if that's not too
much of a contradiction in terms,and today millions of teen-agers strongly
relate to Smith as a kindred spirit-so many that the band is playing
exclusively large arenas and stadiums on its current American tour.

"Sometimes I feel really smug and contented," Smith says, "thinking that
we didn't really try,and we made it anyway."
Indeed,though Smith can write a catchy tune when he wants to,the Cure makes
unlikely stadium pop-the sound relies on subtle seduction and the lyrics
are profoundly self-absorbed.

One would hardly expect such a tortured,self-interested soul to believe so
fervently that the show must go on.But that night in Reims,Robert Smith
proved himself to be something of an iron man,a real trouper.Actually,his
stoutheartedness should come as no surprise,since the Cure has been around,
in one form or another,for 12 years,and always with Smith at the helm.Much
of the reason for the Cure's growing collection of gold and platinum discs
is the band's longevity.

Yet Smith is adamant that this is the band's final tour.He also insists
that "Disintegration" is the band's last album-of course,he's said the
same thing about the previous two efforts.But this time he sounds serious.
"I've actually reached the point where nothing in the world will make me go
out and tour again," he says resolutely.

Since Smith practically is the Cure,that's a serious threat,especially
since he's already begun work on a solo album.Smith plays down the solo
effort's importance,saying it will be a folkie album in the vein of the
late British cult favorite Nick Drake,but the rest of the group is
apparently a little upset anyway.Smith says he may invite bassist Simon
Gallup and drummer Boris Williams to play on the record "to lessen the
blow."

Smith claims that his record won't be released any time soon and that there
won't be much of a fuss made when it is.But such a low-key release is
unlikely,for much to his apparent chagrin,Smith's odd teddy-bear cuteness
has made him a genuine teenybopper heartthrob.

According to keyboardist Roger O'Donnell,all the breakup talk is just a
bluff to fight complacency in the band and,by extension,the audience.
"Robert likes to say that;he likes to keep us nervous," O'Donnell says.
"But of all people,I think Robert doesn't like change.Then again,he doesn't
like things to be settled,either-it's a very difficult contradiction."

Smith repeatedly ducks any suggestion that he dislikes change but finally
admits that "when I find someone I like,I try to hold on to them." Since
1982,the band's only video director has been Tim Pope.The band's only
manager has been Chris Parry,who signed the band to his Fiction Records
label in 1978.Smith's wife,Mary,became his girlfriend when they were 15
years old,and Laurence "Lol" Tolhurst,the band's recently departed
keyboardist,has known Smith since they were 5.

Of course,there are times when even Smith is open to a change-as the saga
of Tolhurst suggests.It was Tolhurst who made up the band's name,and
besides Smith,he has been the only person to survive all of the band's
incarnations.But from a musical standpoint,Tolhurst was always iffy at
best-when O'Donnell joined the band in 1987,he was mystified that Lol,
with his one-finger keyboard technique,was in the band at all.But as
Gallup explains, "It was fun to have him around,even though he didn't
contribute much to the music.He was a part of the Cure."

Increasingly,Tolhurst's part in the Cure was being the butt of the band's
jokes.The others say Tolhurst used to give back as much as he got.That
changed,though,when he gave in to drink. "He was like a safety valve for
all our frustrations," O'Donnell says. "Which was really sick.By the end
it was horrible."

During the band's 1987 "Kiss Me,Kiss Me,Kiss Me" tour,the situation got
way out of hand. "Lol just drank his way through the tour," Smith says,
"to such a degree that he didn't bother retaliating.It was like watching
some kind of handicapped child being constantly poked with a stick."
Tolhurst hadn't participated much in the "Kiss Me" album,so Smith told him
he had to shape up immediately,and Tolhurst promised to do better.

But the "Disintegration" sessions were the same,with Tolhurst spending most
of his time watching MTV,drinking and killing the morale of the band.

Smith says he's positive that if Tolhurst had stayed in the band,he would
have drunk himself to death or "Simon would have thrown him off a balcony.
And then my best friend would be in jail and Lol would be dead.It was much
easier for him not to be in the band."

Cure fans dress exactly like the band-black,black and more black,topped off
by haystacks of hair that must require a small fortune in hair gel.When
they somehow sense that members of the band are about to leave the hotel,
the fans press their pallid faces against the front windows like a scene
from "Night of the Living Dead."

The other members of the Cure tease Smith about his clones and often ask
for his backstage pass.But after initially being bothered by this sincerest
form of flattery,Smith says,he's come to like it. "They can recognize each
other in the street-these kids know another Cure fan," he says. "It's like
a big gang.It's quite good."
Most of the kids are in their midteens,which means they were scarcely out of
diapers when the Cure recorded its first album in 1978.But unlike so many
of its contemporaries,the Cure has not lost its muse. "Disintegration," the
band's 10th album,may be the Cure's best yet.

Figuring that the previous two studio albums had provided the band with
enough pop tunes to last awhile,Smith began writing what he hoped would be
"the most intense thing the Cure had ever done." After his 29th birthday,
Smith says,he became anxious about hitting 30 and had a "bad patch." "I had
wanted to get it all done before I was 30," he says. "So I could start
something else,but I ran out of time.So I'm living on borrowed time at the
moment."

It should come as no surprise that Robert Smith's childhood was not a
particularly happy one.He grew up in Crawley,Sussex,then a stultifying
suburb south of London.

He began playing in bands to beat the boredom and joined the nascent punk
movement.He met Gallup in the minuscule local punk scene (which consisted
of Smith's band and Gallup's band);they hit it off and resolved to be in a
band together someday.With Tolhurst on drums and Michael Dempsey on bass,
the Cure made its United States debut in 1980 with "Boys Don't Cry."
Dempsey didn't share Tolhurst and Smith's passion for punk,and Gallup
replaced him on "Seventeen Seconds" and "Faith." On these albums,the Cure
went from being a sprightly pop band to being downbeat moodists,with songs
such as "The Funeral Party" and "The Drowning Man" exuding a dark radiance.

Smith himself entered a very dark period,and the band recorded its morbid
masterpiece,"Pornography," a monumentally depressing album that mentioned
death in almost every song.
Right about then,the Hair made its first appearance,inspired,Smith says,by
"Eraserhead." He horrified his legions of clones when he gave himself a
buzz cut in 1986,saying at the time,"The fans were beginning to look more
like me than I do." He's since grown it back.

"I'd find it difficult to sing some of these songs without this hair," he
says. "I'm always unhappy about my physical appearance,and I feel most
comfortable looking like this-it's my way of facing the world."