Robert Smith
Founding member, singer, guitarist and primary songwriter of The Cure
The Cure are an English rock band
that formed in Crawley,
Sussex in
1976. The band has experienced several lineup changes, with frontman, guitarist and main
songwriter
Robert Smith—known
for his iconic wild
hair, pale complexion, smudged lipstick and frequently gloomy and
introspective lyrics—as the only constant member.
The members of The Cure were barely out of their teens when
they first started releasing music in the late 1970s. Their first album
Three Imaginary Boys
and early singles placed them as part of the post-punk
and New Wave movements that had sprung
up in the wake of the punk rock revolution in the United
Kingdom. During the early 1980s the band's increasingly dark and
tormented music helped form the gothic rock genre. After the release of
1982's Pornography,
the band's future was uncertain and frontman Robert Smith was keen to
move past the gloomy reputation his band had cultivated. With the 1982
single "Let's Go to Bed"
Smith began to inject more of a pop sensibility into the band's music.
The Cure's popularity increased as the decade wore on, especially in
the United
States, where the songs "Just Like Heaven", "Lovesong" and "Friday
I'm in Love" entered the Billboard
Top 40 charts. By the start of the 1990s, The Cure were one of the most
popular alternative rock bands in the world
and have sold an estimated 27 million albums as of 2004.
As of 2007 The Cure have released twelve studio albums and over thirty
singles, with a thirteenth album in the works.
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Contents
- 1 History
- 1.1 Formation
and early years (1973–1979)
- 1.2 Gothic
phase (1980–1982)
- 1.3 Increasing
commercial success (1983–1988)
- 1.4 Disintegration
and worldwide success (1989–2002)
- 1.5 Recent
years (2003–present)
- 2 Musical
style
- 3 Legacy
- 4 Music
videos
- 5 The
Cure in popular culture
- 6 Discography
- 7 Members
- 7.1 Current
members
- 7.2 Past
members
- 8 See
also
- 9 References
- 10 Sources
- 11 Further
reading
- 12 External
links
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History
Formation and early years
(1973–1979)
The first incarnation of what became The Cure was The Obelisk,
a band formed by students at Notre Dame Middle School in Crawley,
Sussex. The band made their public debut in a one-off performance in
April 1973, and featured Robert Smith (piano), Michael
Dempsey (guitar), Laurence
"Lol" Tolhurst (percussion), Marc Ceccagno (lead
guitar) and Alan Hill on bass guitar.
In January 1976 former Obelisk guitarist Marc Ceccagno formed Malice
with Robert Smith —now also on guitar— and Michael "Mick" Dempsey
—switching to bass— along with two other classmates
from St. Wilfrid's Catholic Comprehensive School. Ceccagno soon left,
however, to form a Jazz-rock fusion band called
Amulet. Increasingly influenced by the emergence of punk rock,
Malice's remaining members became known as Easy
Cure in January 1977.
Smith and Dempsey had by this time been joined by Lol Tolhurst from The
Obelisk on drums,
and new lead guitarist Porl Thompson. Both Malice and Easy
Cure also trialed several unsuccessful vocalists before Smith finally assumed the
role of Easy Cure's frontman in September of 1977.
That year, The Easy Cure won a talent competition with the
German label Hansa Records, and received a recording
contract. Although the band recorded tracks for the company, none were
ever released.
Following disagreements in March of 1978 over the direction the band
should take, the contract with Hansa was dissolved. Smith later
recalled "We were very young. They just thought they could turn us into
a teen group. They actually wanted us to do cover versions and we
always refused."
Thompson was dropped from the band that May, and the remaining trio
(Smith/Tolhurst/Dempsey) was soon renamed The Cure by Smith.
Later that month the band recorded their first sessions as a trio at
Chestnut Studios in Sussex which were distributed as a demo tape to
a dozen major record labels.
The demo found its way to Polydor Records scout Chris Parry, who
signed The Cure to his newly formed Fiction
label —distributed by Polydor—in September 1978.
However, as a stop-gap while Fiction finalised distribution
arrangements with Polydor, on December 22, 1978 The Cure released their debut single "Killing
an Arab" on the Small Wonder label. "Killing an Arab" garnered both
acclaim and controversy: while the single's provocative title led to
accusations of racism,
the song is actually based on French existentialist
Albert
Camus' story The Stranger.
The band placed a sticker label that denied the racist connotations on
the single's 1979 reissue on Fiction. An early NME
article on the band wrote that The Cure "are like a breath of fresh
suburban air on the capital's smog-ridden pub and club circuit" and
noted "With a John
Peel session and more extensive London gigging on their immediate
agenda, it remains to be seen whether or not The Cure can retain their
refreshing joie de vivre."
The Cure released their debut album Three Imaginary
Boys in May 1979. Due to the band's inexperience in the
studio, Parry and engineer Mike Hedges took control of the
recording.
The band —particularly Smith— were unhappy with their debut, and in a
1987 interview he admitted that "a lot of it was very superficial – I
didn't even like it at the time. There were criticisms made that it was
very lightweight, and I thought they were justified. Even when we'd
made it, I wanted to do something that I thought had more substance to
it."
The band's second single "Boys Don't Cry" was released
in June. The Cure then embarked as the support band for Siouxsie & The
Banshees' Join Hands
promotional tour of England, Northern Ireland, Wales, and the
Netherlands between August and October. The tour saw Smith pull double
duty each night by performing with The Cure and as the guitarist with
The Banshees when John McKay quit the group.
The Cure's third single "Jumping Someone Else's
Train" was released in early October 1979. Soon afterwards, Dempsey was
sacked from the band due to his cool reception to material Smith had
written for the upcoming album.
Dempsey joined the Associates, while Simon
Gallup (bass) and Matthieu Hartley
(keyboards) from Horley post-punk/New
Wave band The Magspies joined
The Cure. The Associates toured as support band for The Cure and The
Passions on the Future Pastimes Tour of
England between November and December —all three bands were on the
Fiction Records roster— with the new Cure lineup already performing a
number of new songs for the projected second album.
Meanwhile, a spin-off band comprising Smith, Tolhurst, Dempsey, Gallup,
Hartley and Thompson, with backing vocals from assorted family and
friends, and lead vocals provided by their local postman Frankie Bell
released a 7
inch single in December under the assumed name of Cult Hero.
Gothic phase (1980–1982)