"Still Goth It"

by Cameron Adams

Robert Smith’s head is in as much of a mess as his trademark bed-hair and wonky lipstick.

He’s juggling three Cure projects, spanning the legendary British band’s past, present and, most importantly to
Smith, their future.

Smith is on the phone to promote Trilogy, a new Cure live DVD filmed in Berlin last November. But it’s no
ordinary concert. The band played three of their albums – 1982’s Pornography, 1989’s Disintegration and 2000’s
Bloodflowers – in their entirety.

Smith always saw the albums being linked due to their bleak sound: hence the DVD’s title.

"Some bands play their new album all the way through in the one concert, but I don’t think anyone’s done three
back to back, particularly three albums that are so intense."

"We’ve played three hour shows quite regularly, but we throw in some pop songs and light moments. This was
pretty unrelenting from the moment we went on stage. It’s only during Lullaby and Lovesong we were able to smile
at each other. I wanted to create something with emotional intensity but it was incredibly draining."

Draining Smith’s time and energy now are other Cure projects: he’s pouring through old tapes for a B-sides and
rarities "five or six" CD box set out in October, and unearthing unreleased songs for bonus discs to go with
remastered reissues of every Cure album, which start surfacing next February. Then he’s racking his addled brain
to write liner notes for each album.

And all that has to be done by September, when the Cure start recording their new album in L.A.

"It’s a weird juxtaposition for me," Smith says. "One day I’m thinking about new songs and the next I’m
remembering anecdotes from 1983. But the 25th anniversary of the band’s first release is looming, and all these
re-releases are geared up towards that so I can’t really defer any of it."

Smith, 44, says while being hands-on is tiring, it’s also essential.

"I’m tied into it by choice: the only way to make sure it’s done right is to be involved. The other reason is that no
one has been there all the time apart from me."

"We’ve got more than 2000 official tapes in our tape store and they’re saying no one can understand what’s
written on the boxes from between 1978 and 1985 because everyone was stoned!"

After Bloodflowers the Cure’s record contract ended. As part of their exit negotiations the label released another
Cure greatest hits if Smith got "concessions in regard to packaging and pricing on the B-sides album".

It’s because Smith is realistic about who’ll buy the B-sides/rarities box set. "I realise it’s aimed at an essentially
disenfranchised core audience, so there’d be very little point making it all big and glossy and expensive".

"But at the same time it’ll be a five or six CD set so it will have to cost something, but I’m happy for people to
bootleg it!"

He’s living every Cure obsessive’s dream: listening to 25 years of rare tapes – and says there’s countless songs
no one’s ever heard before.

"Just to listen to the number of tapes I’ve got that aren’t marked would take me a year. So I’m relying on
scribbled bits of paper that I find in boxes with cassette tapes and trusting my judgement wasn’t severely
impaired by, er stimulants when I wrote ‘This is the best version’."

Smith says each Cure studio album will be reissued with a bonus disc of unreleased or rare material that
corresponds to the correct time period.

Three reissued albums will be released at a time, spread over an 18 month period from February.

"It’s hugely time consuming. I’m getting perilously close to doing the new album and I’m only up to (tapes from)
1990."

"My nights are getting shorter and shorter at the moment. There’s so much stuff to do. They want to do a Cure
on TV DVD: I’ve got enough in my own personal collection to fill 10 two hour DVD’s. But there’s so many
aspects that have made me feel nostalgic, so I’m looking forward to doing something new."

Which is where the new Cure album comes in. The band have signed to I Am Records, run by producer Ross
Robinson, best known for his work on nu-metal albums by Korn, Slipknot, Limp Bizkit as well as At The Drive-In.

He’s also a massive Cure fan. "I’d read things about how he said he’d die to make the Cure album," Smith says.
"I didn’t expect we’d get on, a lot of what he’s been involved in I haven’t liked, although sonically it sounds
amazing. It might end up in tears but it might end up being the best thing we’ve ever done."

During the interviews on Trilogy Smith boasted the new Cure album would be ‘the heaviest album in the history
of music’.

"Ah well, I think I’m going to live to regret that. But I’ll probably write that on the wall in the back of the studio.
I’d like to achieve that. I like setting myself unachievable goals, but, yeah, ‘the history of music’ is a pretty big
claim."

"I know in my mind it’ll be heavy and dark, but at the same time a really immersing and entertaining experience."

Another dark Cure album, and the mainstream-unfriendly Trilogy album would seem to provide ammunition for
those who see the Cure as miserable and gloomy.

"It reinforcs that but I don’t care. I went through a period where I was worried about how we were perceived but
it’s immaterial. We’re more well known to the wider world as the band who did Lovecats, Lullaby and Friday I’m
In love. Most people have never heard of Pornography.

"We’ve been tagged a gloomy, doomy band but cab drivers think I’m someone who used to jump around in a
bear suit. They’d be surprised to find out I used to be an angst-ridden artist!"

(Thanks to Les Barker for typing all of this up!)