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The Ultimate Cure Imagine being in a band that is constantly full of chaos. There�s always fighting with fellow band mates, and someone always has something negative to say whenever you come out with a new album. Well, for the past twenty years, that is what The Cure has had to deal with. However, after all this time, they�re still together. With various problems The Cure has managed to persevere through 20 years of internal disputes,controversial records and songs, and several ex-band members, even though at times they felt like giving up. In April of 1977, there was an ad in Melody Maker: Hansa Records, Germany�s largest independent music label, was looking for new bands. �Wanna Be A Recording Star?� the ad asked. Easy Cure, a newly formed band consisting of recent graduates, did. They were writing their own songs; so guitarist Robert Smith assembled drummerLaurence �Lol� Tolhurst, bass player Michael Dempsey, lead superstar guitarist Porl Thompson, and singer Peter O�Toole into his parents� dining room to make a rough tape for Hansa. The band auditioned in London and signed for one thousand pounds, which they spent on equipment, allowing them to play their music at local venues such as The Rocket in Crawley, England, the band�s hometown. Soon, Peter O�Toole quit the band to join a kibbutz, a collective settlement in Israel. Robert was left to sing lead vocals. Hansa wanted the band to do cover versions of songs; songs written and made popular by other musicians. Robert refused. Therefore, in 1978, Easy Cure was dropped from the label without releasing even one record. Hansa hated the song that the band wanted as its first single. That song was the controversial �Killing An Arab,� inspired by a passage in Albert Camus� book The Stranger. Easy Cure�s members went back to where they started: broke and melancholy but not defeated. Porl left the band, and the group went on as a trio. During this time, Robert changed the name of the band to The Cure because it sounded �less hippie.� In a few months, they were able to raise fifty pounds to record four tracks. They sent a tape to all major record companies. By July of 1978, they had received a rejection from everyone but Chris Parry, an A&R man at Polydor Records who helped sign Siouxie and the Banshees. Chris was looking for bands to form his own Fiction label and was interested in The Cure. Chris met the band, liked their attitude, and signed them. In December, Chris produced �Killing An Arab,� which was released on Small Wonder Records because Polydor would not market any Cure products before Christmas. 1979 was a full and interesting year for The Cure. They gained much notoriety in February when the National Front showed up at a performance at The Nashville, convinced that �Killing An Arab� was a racist anthem, which it was not, of course. In April, Three Imaginary Boys/Boys Don�t Cry, The Cure�s debut album, was released. Instantly, there was controversy because there were no song titles, just symbols, and the cover showed a fridge, a vacuum , and a lampshade. The critics were totally baffled by the album. The Cure hated the cover and the album. However, Melody Maker praised the album and said, �The Eighties Start Here.� At a concert in August, Robert met Steve Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees. The two got along well, and The Cure was invited to play with the Banshees on a national tour in September. Just hours before the Aberdeen show, two members of the Banshees quit. The Banshees looked for replacements but could not find a guitarist, and so Smith was asked to join. He accepted, but only if he could play in both Siouxie and The Banshees and The Cure. |
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