Lol Tolhurst

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Lowll Tolhurst is the drummer and co founder of The Cure. He first met lead singer Robert Smith when they were just five years old. Together with their other Catholic school friend, Michael Dempsey, they went on to make dark, brooding music that reflected the isolation they felt as the only punks living in their small English town. As the Cures sound developed in the eighties, they released a string of three albums that Loll now defines as the band's quote unquote goth period. Today, we'll hear Loll talk in detail about the making of those records. He'll also discuss the book he just released last month called goth a History, which explores the architects of the post punk genre bands like Susie, The Banshees, Joy Division, and Bauhaus. In addition to the book, Lol is also releasing a new album with his old friend Budget, the drummer from the Banchees. The album's called Los Angeles and it features an all star list of guests including You Two's The Edge and LCD Sound Systems James Murphy. On today's episode, Lea Rose talks to Little Tollhurst about growing up an outcast in post World War two England and how he and Robert Smith first bonded over a Hendrix record. Lowe also gives a window into the creation of the Cures three goth albums. That's seventeen seconds, Faith and Pornography. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Ritchman. Here's Lea Rose's interview with Lowell Tollhurst. Let's start talking a little bit about the books. So you've written two books. The first is a memoir called Cured, the Tale of Two Imaginary Boys. The newest book goth a History. And I found the writing. I've been listening to the audio book of Cured, which you read, and it's just excellent. And it's been my walking partner now. I go on long walks and listen and the writing is so simple and straightforward and feels very uncluttered, and there's not a lot of ornamentation, and it struck me that it's sort of similar to your style as a drummer. Yeah, well, yes, thank you. You're the first person that's noticed that. And it's and that's why you're right. It's like i'd like to be. I wouldn't say minimalistic, but I but I don't have. I don't have a desire to make things heavily, you know, ornamented. I suppose it is the word, you know, and that's true in writing. I mean, you know, if I think of the writers that I really admire, they pay great attention to the sentence. And that's that's how I do. I don't you know. It's funny. I love notebooks, you know. I obsessively collect notebooks because I think they're beautiful. And I write stuff in it, and then you know, two weeks later, I look at it and I can't one of my right well, I can't read my own writing. So I type everything straight away. But what I do do is as I type it out, and I do it like music, I just let it flow, get the idea out, and then maybe two weeks later, I come back and I have a look at it and go, oh, okay, take that out, put this in, and I edit it. In drumming, you know, I loved Jackie Libbitts from Can because he would say, you have to play monotonous. And I understand that because it's like the mantra, and that's what I wanted to get. That's what I wanted to do with the drums. I wanted to make you feel that you're part of the whole thing, and that required it to be precise and minimalistic. The same thing with the writing. So writers that I really liked were like for this current book, goth it was hard for me to find my initial voice because I'm writing about the people. I'm not just writing my own experiences. I mean, there's a lot of my own stuff in there, but I'm writing about other people. I wanted to project the other people's stories in a way that wasn't just purely journalistic. I didn't want to do that because I'm not a journalist, And the way I personalized it was I'd been reading a lot of California writers Joan Didion from the sixties and seventies, and I love the way that all of her sentences are crafted very precisely, you know. So I thought, Okay, there's my template, you know. So that's very cool. But I'm glad that you actually you're the first person I know that said that to me. So yeah, I've really been enjoying it, and I highly recommend the audio book. A lot of times with audiobooks, you get sort of like a narrator who has no connection to the story, and they can put on voices when they're reading dialogue and it can be very distracting. So I really enjoyed hearing your voice because your story. Yeah, it's funny because at the beginning when I did Cured, and I actually recorded both Curd and the current book Goth in the same studio because I loved the place that I recorded in and also it's very near my house. But I remember the recording engineer at the end of one day said to me, Oh, I said that, you know, normally I'm not really involved with what's going on, you know, just like listening for you know, pops and clicks and stuff. He said. But he said, is there lights at the end of the tunnel with this? I said, yes, don't worry. The next couple of days you'll hear that, you know. Okay, it was funny. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay. So I wanted to start off by talking about the Cures Goth period as you outline it in the book goth A History. So the Cures Goth period, as you lay it out, consists of three consecutive albums. The first is seventeen Seconds, released in nineteen eight, Faith released in nineteen eighty one, and Pornography in nineteen eighty two. And these are all albums that you said you were deeply involved with making. Right, So let's start with seventeen Seconds. It's a cure second album. Do you remember any of the conversations within the band that led up to developing the sound for that album, because it was quite different than the sound from the first album. Well, I don't want to make up a story, because I don't. I don't think, you know, It's like when you when you write conversations in a book. A lot of the time, you know, I challenge anybody in the world to remember conversations for Betam, even from like yesterday. You can't. It's impossible. You know. Most of the time I would know, okay, I know how these people speak about things. I know what we talked about roughly. So I'm going to you know, I'm going to construct a conversation from that which will be in their voice and will be correct. I think with seventeen Seconds, we had our first album was really a live set that we had played for you know, a couple of years, and so that seemed the most obvious thing we go and record that we can do it quickly, we know what we're playing, and it happened. But for the second album, we finally realized that we had you know, we weren't just going to record one album and that was it. We had a chance to another record. You know, most people will tell you in bands that they sort of put everything into the first album and then suddenly think what are we going to do next? Because we you know, and usually it's like, you know, you have your whole life to make your first album, like they say, and six to do your second album. And we were kind of not really in that position, but we thought, okay, we better do what we really want to get out now what we were feeling at that time, because you know, maybe number two is it and that's all, well, we'll have the chance to do you know. We felt lucky with the first one and people liked it enough to say, well, let's start thinking about the second one. And that was really a great idea that Robert had because he said to you know, our manager Chris Parry would come in the studio for the first album. And for the first album, you know, we were fairly young, we didn't really know what we were doing. We would look at things and you know, sort of let them get on with it. Him and Mike Hedge as the engineer. So for the second album we said, well, you know what, we've seen enough of what goes on and how to do it. We'd like to do it ourselves. And Robert was very insistent about that, we'd like to do it ourselves. And you know, it's a credit to Parry that he went, yeah, okay, that's fine. You know, his offices were in the same complex as the studio, so you know, once a week he would come down and just have a little listen, you know, so he left us to our own devices, and as I say in goth you know, to me it was a very creative time because we were allowed to do it ourselves. You know, we were given the key to the kingdom and like we can go in and do it. So that leaves you to be a lot more experimental. In fact, I was. I was telling somebody the other week that a lot of bands, when they start making you know, the second, third, fourth albums, they get this idea in their head that they have they will have separate roles and they have you know, I do this, you do that, and you know, that's how we make it work because sort of like the roles in a household or in a marriage or yeah, yeah, it's any kind of partnership, because you know, and not unreasonably, the theory goes, well, if it worked once, this is this is a formula, this is how we do it. And I think that's kind of misguided for two reasons. Because one, music's really modern. Music is really the only sort of art form where people are required to reproduce what they did before in the same way but slightly different. You know, they're like, you know, it's like a painter. You wouldn't say to a painter, well, paint me that portraits again, but from this different angle, that's what I want to see. You know, you let them do whatever they want to do. So for seventeen seconds. There was one session where we said, hey, let's just swap instruments. So you know, I played guitar and Robert played drums, and we recorded a couple of things. Most of them were terrible, so we decided that we go back to what we will do, but we kept some little snippets of it, and they're actually on the album in a way, you know, you don't really know where they are, but they're there. So that's also freeing in your mind. You don't have this thought process that, oh, you know, I have to just do this. You can put input into different areas and that's you know, if you trust each other, that's a good good way to do it, because then you've not just got, you know, one mind on one thing, You've got everybody's mind on everything, and that works, you know. And then Garthie wrote that over the years, there have been a lot of assumptions that have been made about The Cure's creative process, and I took that to mean that people just assumed that a lot of the songwriting came from Robert. But now you're saying that, inspired in part by your sobriety, that that wasn't always the case. No, I mean, you know, as things got further on in the Cure, you know, and to the point where I wasn't well enough to contribute like I was used to, you know, at the beginning, especially for those first, the second, third, and fourth album, they were much more democratic in their approach. And it's funny. I was talking to Paul Thompson a little while back, and I said, Oh, it tells you how far it was back because I just finished could and I said, he said, well, you know, I've always known you were a writer. You were a writer when we were fifteen or sixteen. And so I thought about it and I thought, well, yeah, you know a lot of the times, well Rober's going to sing the words, right, so you know, he has the final say on what he's going to sing, because you can't sing stuff that you don't believe. But there was a lot more collaboration and just you know, general molding of things back then, and that you know, I would put some words in, Simon put some words in now and again it's really guarantees to make things stronger now as things progress and people start, you know, it also happens, you know, for people that manage bands and stuff. It's a lot easier if you don't have to deal with everybody in the band. You just have to deal with one person. So you know, things things become that way, and you know, all credit to Robert is a great songwriter, and he's got a lot of good ideas. Personally, I think for the Cure, the best version of the three piece band was for those those albums, I mean, the first one was a four piece, but it's like the most pure and condensed of that band, and that was much more collaborative, you know. So you know that's the thing. It's like, I don't want to turn around and oh no, he never wrote anything, because that's not true. He's obviously the songwriter, but that doesn't mean that anybody else didn't do it. I mean, and it went on. We tried different formats of that. You know, when we did kiss Me, we had so many songs because we'd all by this time. We didn't do stuff together. We did it separately, you know, so we will have little studios at home and go, okay, six months and then we'll come back together and we'll see what we've got. And that's the reason that you know, Kissed Me was like a double album. I mean, it could have been a triple album. We had one hundred bits of songs to start with, and then we whittled that down to like thirty five and then finally to seventeen or nineteen something like that. You know, So everybody had some creativity, you know, and that was what was pretty good about the curt because when you put that all together, it's unstoppable, you know. Yeah, I was curious about the song play for today. Yeah, so that's the second song on seventeen seconds, and it's a pretty substantial mood shift from the intro. Do you remember how that song came together? And I seem to remember that we had a sort of rough version of that when Michael Dempsey was around. But anyway, but I know for the lyric, it was the first time that I'd felt like I could write a lyric that was accessible to my feelings, you know, because the previous things like Three Emery Boys and Fire in Cairo and Another Day, they were they were far more impressionistic, you know, in the way that I presented things. So that's it. That's why there's a difference, because it's much more to the point and less flowery, I suppose is the world And that's a breakthrough I imagine as a writer. Well, yeah, I mean I don't think that at however old I was then twenty that I even thought about that. I didn't. I just sort of instinctively felt, oh, well, this this is a better kind of thing, This is a better this is more what I want to say. It's just the only way I knew how to deal with it, you know, write it down so Robert liked it, and so off if it went you know, so is that like you, you wrote the entire lyrics, gave it to him and then he interpreted it as gave him sort of like the basis for it all, and probably chopped and changed a few things around, because you know, people forget, you know, like songs are not it's not poetry writing and it's not pros it's this weird hybrid in between lyrics and lyrics A lot of the time work better if they're on a matter pig and some lyrics work better sometimes if they're not quite grammatically correct or or you know, certain words, certain words you just can't sing or you could try. But you know, so that decision was always left, you know, obviously to the singer. So that's how that worked. Really, I imagine you must find it interesting to see what songs resonate with a really wide audience after you release album. And do you have these theories why a forest caught on the way it did. Yeah, it's like audiences don't buy and large. I mean, obviously there are exceptions to the rule. Audiences are not looking at you thinking or listening to you thinking, oh, that was good the way they played that, or that was good, the way that's put together. That it's much more visceral than that, you know. They it's like it's like it's like drums, right, Most people other than drummers don't really notice what's going on with the drummer. But if something's wrong, if something goes bad, they might not even know what it is. But oh no, something's not right, something's off. It doesn't feel right, and they don't know what it is. So the point where it works for an audience is when they understand completely that it's you and your expression. Right. It's not to do with how well you play or how bad you play. No, it's it's a terribly overused word lately, but it's authenticity, you know, and that's what they feel. Do you remember why you decided to bring the drums in when you did? In a forest? You know, we'd we had liked to a lot of like the early sort of crowd rock bands, you know, Can and NOI, And like what I always liked about them was was things feel like they're going forward with that motoric beat, but they also seem to stay in the same place as well. You know, it's like it's static but it's but it's moving, you know, and act seemed like the thing that we really wanted to express with the drums. So Mike Hedges was instrumental in getting that sound. You know. He used a lot of different techniques which we'd never seen before, and I don't think a lot of people used him at the time even so, and he was young like us as well, you know, so we had open minds about what you do. You know, he wasn't stuck with like, oh no, this is how you recall drums, you can't do anything anything else. We we were open to doing it a different way. I think also, like somebody said to me the other night, it's you know, the lyric. I thought the title, Robert did the lyric, but the actual lyric, if you think about it, is the sort of encapsulation of everything goth and romantic. If you think about it, it's like there's this sense of mystery, there's this sense of you know, loss at the same time, and it's all there in one very succinct lyric. So I think that's what we respond to. You know. Yeah, you described your drumming style on album. Is you play monotonous half Man, half Machine? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's Jackie Levi from Can that's his quote. Yeah, okay, yeah, I thought that it was a drum machine to Yeah, that seems sort of like it would be hard to keep up, especially playing live. Yes, very hard, But you know the thing is, it's it's like practicing. People think sometimes they watch drummers who are very flammby and they think, oh, that must be very hard, and sometimes it is, but most of the time that's a bit like a sort of a sideshow trick. You know. It's like I once sort of thing with Ginger Baker and he said, you know, people think I'm playing things really fast, but what I'm doing is I'm playing lots of quite simple things but on different limbs, slightly shifted from each other, and it gives the impression of going really fast. And you know, I know that's very difficult to do because you you've got to think about everything all at the same time. But in terms of physicality, you know, it sounds faster than your body is actually kind of doing. It's hard to explain, but it kind of it sounds like that in drumming. I always tell people. If you're doing it right, you could play for hours and you'll just feel elevated. You know, you can walk off stage three or four hours and you'll feel fine. If you're doing it wrong, it's like running the worst marathon. If you're like and you know at the end you're like, you can't sit up. It's really like dancing. You know, you just have to remember, okay, well that wasn't right, but it has to move to here now that has been there, and as long as you can get in that, yeah, you'll be fine. You know. But that's the trick. The trick is to learn how to do that. It's like, you know, I watched guitarists a lot, and I think to myself, how do they know just instinctively their fingers are going, They're not looking, and it's but it's just that, you know, you have to. It's like Malcolm Gladwell in his book out Outlet as he said, you know, some people think it's a bit dismissive, but I don't think it is said, like, you know, the difference between being good and being great is like ten thousand hours of practice. He's got a point, you know, because if I think about it, at the beginning when we started to kill. We spent the first three years at Robert's house just playing like three times a week. It was more of a social thing. We just meet their you know, play, go down the park, come back, play a bit more. But that's where we got a ten thousand hours, you know, before we move on from seventeen seconds. Is there any other stories you want to share anything from that period overall? That's important to know. I don't know. I think I think more than anything, like saying in goth it was for me, but I think, you know, I think I can say it for everybody else. It was it was a discovery of our own ethos. Really, you know, it was a discovery of who we really were and that we could be who we really were and do something with it, you know, whereas before we felt a bit more constrained. That's really why when I talked about it, when Robert, you know, it's a bit dismissive of the first album, it's because you know, it wasn't wholly our involvement. It was like, yes, it was us, but it was us put through this filter of you know, a different different things, mainly through the manager. So yeah, and he had just signed like the Jam, you know, to PolyGram, so he was like that was in his mind, I'm going to do another version of this three piece band and it's going to be a pop band. And yeah it's kind of different. But you know, I think the other good thing is it was a time where there was you know, I don't discount the fact of being in the right place at the right time either. You know, there there was much more of an openness to to letting things it evolved, rather than like, Okay, we've got to do that this year and then work then we have to try something completely different. You know, there was there was more time to do things. I feel we have to pause for a quick break and then we'll come back with more from Lea Rose than Lowl Tallhurst. We're back with more from Lea Rose and low Tollhurst. Speaking of evolution, when you were going into Faith the next album, Yeah, what was the thought on how the sound would build or change? I think for Faith, we wanted it to be you know, at first, it just we wanted it to sound a bit more well like. It ended up sounding a bit a bit more not dramatic, but a bit more glacial. I suppose really, And it didn't really do that at first. You know, we'd have some sessions and it was like, you know, we've been on the road a lot. And that was the problem for a lot of bands, you know, like you have a successful album and then you have a successful second album. Then you're on the road ever and ever, and then you're committed to do another album, like, okay, we're better do another album. Now, well, how are we going to you know, where are we going to find the time to do it? I don't know. People say, oh, they write on the road. I never found the time to write on the road. You know, you're probably exhausted. Well, you know, road time is a whole different world, right, you know, like people would say to me, oh, I'll call you next Wednesday, and I'd say, yeah, I'm going to be on the road then. So it may happen or it may not. You can't really organize that that kind of thing. So, if you know, for Faith, Faith started off being a bit rushed, and then some things happened. You know, my mother got very sick and it was she was going to pass away. Robert's grandmother as well, and so that focused on our mind a bit more on what ended up to be the main sort of topic about it, you know, and you have to think that me and Robert and my I don't see but you know, by that time he wasn't there. Me and Robert grew up Catholic, you know, which is kind of a different proposition in England because you have to remember that Henry D eighth dissolved all the churches because you know, the Pope wouldn't let him get divorced for his sixth wife or whatever. So he decided, well, I'll come out, I'll just form my own church, you know, which sounds kind of familiar about things that are happening, you know, in the world now. But anyway, that's what he did. So consequently, all the Catholic churches in England was sort of taken over at that point, and it was it was sidelined, really Catholicism in England. So one of the reasons that the cure even started was, you know, I met Robert at school, but I didn't go to school in the town I grew up in because I had to go to the next town because I wasn't a Catholic school in the town I grew up in. So, you know, I kind of knew Robert because he used to live next door to my grandmother at first, but then him and his dad and his family moved like one town on, so I went to the same school, and that's how, you know, we started everything. But you know, I think, like I'm saying, God, not only did I feel an outsider because of the things I was thinking about and the way, you know, I think most teens feel a little outside of stuff, it was exacerbated by the fact that I was already an outside and to most English people, you know, because I didn't go to Church of England in the town. You know, So in summer vacation from school, you know, when I was fourteen, I didn't know any of the kids in my town because I didn't go to school with them, and I wasn't old enough to drive, and I wasn't old enough to really take you know, the public transport myself and get around and stuff, and it was too far to ride on my bicycle. So I'm stuck in my town for the whole summer with nobody. The library was my friend because in England back then, you had you got one ticket for the and you could take three things out on that ticket. Well, I had somehow I for enabled three tickets, so I I got nine items every week, you know, and I would get like a bunch of books. And they also did records records, so I got records and I listened to every I didn't care what record it was. I just take an X three records and ex three records. I just listened to everything that summer while reading. So summer vacation in English schools at the time was nearly three months. You know. It was like, you know, that's really what started me on the whole road to everything because I had this intensive self imposed course because I had nothing else to do. You know, I remember you talking about and cured that early on you and Robert bonded over Jimmy Hendricks record I both heard. So was he the first person that you were really able to talk about music too? Absolutely? I mean, you know, the good thing like a middle school, which I think in England was like from eleven till thirteen, right, so it was a little experimental instead of instead of keeping like you know, go to one class and then the bell rings and you go to the next class, they had to thing. Okay, well, you know certain guys, certain pupils. If you were at the top end of the class or whatever, you could go and do your own project in the library, which would be you know, sort of compilation of history, geography, English, and of course religion because it's a Catholic school so draw all those things together. We did the project, so me and Robert were in that and a few other people. I think Michael Dempsey was in it as well, and you know, we'd sit in the library and we'd do our work, but we'd also talk about stuff. And he was the first person I knew other than myself that had heard that record. So so I'm like, oh, you like Hendrix, right, So yeah, so we we sort of bonded over that, you know, and then then I was like, yeah, go back with some forward swapping records, back with some forwards, and just ideas from that. So that's really how that's how most bands start. I mean, I talked to a friend of mine, James Murphy from LCD sound System, and he said to me, when you start playing music, you'd try to make songs like the people you like. You know, like you like them. You're trying to make a song like that. And the way you get it wrong, because you'll always get it wrong because you don't have the same technique or the same influences or even the same understanding of how to play it. The way you get it wrong is what becomes your sound. You know. That's kind of how the Cure started. We would do songs that were like in the beginning, we did these like triptich songs, which were like ten minutes long, three different sort of intervals of stuff, and they were like really bad versions of stuff that we listened to. There was some like psychedelic stuff in there, and then bands like the Buzzcocks came along. There was some stuff that was a bit more, a bit simpler and things, but there was all kinds of things that we sort of threw in and that's really what influenced us. And we would write these songs. And then I think the change came when we thought about doing something like Boys Don't Cry. We're like, well, we can't do these minute epics anymore. We're going to do like try and write a three minute pop song, you know, And that's where it all came from. But obviously the basis of that is informed from the earlier stuff, and I think some of that stuff made it onto. I think we did a compilation Joined the Dots and something. I think some of that's on there, like like in rough form, you know, and they're quite embarrassing really listening to them. Now. Yeah, it's sort of like I think Winter, I think that's on there. That we did a whole seasons sections as well. You know, here's an interesting story. At one point. You know, it's a small town on the outskirts of the big city, Crawley. Yeah, so you know, it's like being in Los Angeles and living in the valley. There was only one other band in town, which was fronted by Neil Gaiman, the writer, right, and I remember, you know, he would have costume changes, like we're playing in the pub, but he would have costume changes and things. It was very exotic for the time. I read something recently where he said, you know, I decided to become a writer instead because you know, the only other band in our town was The Cure, you know, so we just stopped, you know. But he obviously went on to do something really really good, you know, but yeah, wonderful, you know, and he found his own creative force. But the whole thing about it was was that, you know, you take that stuff and it becomes your own right, your own sound, you know, and then you for us, especially because we weren't in London, we were able to sort of, you know, mature on our own without too many outside things coming in. You know. Yeah. I was watching when The Cure was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Trent Reznor said that you're your style is instantly recognizable and it's very sonically distinct. And I just wonder, like you're saying that, you try other things and then you settle on a sound and it just sort of comes to be. But it's really incredible if you think about it. Yeah, I have two ideas about that. You know, when we were doing asked to do the Hall of Fame. At first, you know, Robert wasn't too keen about it. It was like, wow, you know, what is it? What is it? You know, how does it work? Is it some kind of you know, it doesn't seem like it would be appropriate. And I said, no, you're wrong. I said, because I've lived here by that time, i'd lived here a culture of a century. And I said, you know all the you know, the goth kids that lived in a little town in the middle of nowhere. I said, they would love it for us to be on there, I said, because it would be vacation for them. You know. They would go, Okay, look see I was, I was, I was right about them. They did something good and eventually I sort of won him over and we did it and it worked. But the best thing for me was, you know, they said, well, who would you like to induct you? And we were thinking about what do ask Trent, because you know, he comes from that line in the way and understand it, and so he said yeah. And when he got up there, he said. The first thing he said was, you know, I grew up in small town USA, you know, Mercer, Pennsylvania, looking out over cornfields, you know, and this music coming through college radio was the way I escaped, you know. And I looked to Robert, I was like, yet, see, look that's what I'm talking about, you know. And so that's why when I got up on stage, gave a big hug, you know, because it's like, that's that's the truth. You know. Even today, you know, I spent forty years going around America. I can walk into any small town in the States and I can spot the five or six kids who are going to be goth straight away, you know, like if I walk into the cafe or something, I go, yeah, then what do you see? What do you what do you see in you say, it's a way of being, And you know they're usually reading a book or something, so they're not looking at their bones all the time. You know, I can see them. They don't have to, you know, they don't look goth. And that's why it pains to explain that in the book. Goth's not just you know, the way you look and the way your hair is and stuff. And it always amuses me as well if I'm passing through those places something and I do see some real goths, you know that look have got like now they've got the whole, you know, kids and kaboodle, as they say, they put everything, and they've got the uniform. And if I walk past them and they don't recognize me, that always gives me a little chuckle, you know, because you don't know, but you know, here's where it came from. And so, you know, which is a nice thing for me. But the thing for the cures sound like a few years ago, I was looking at like when Google Earth came out and you could go and walk around down the streets. I'm sure I did what a lot of people did. I went and walked around where I grew up, you know, and that amazed me as well. Yeah, I called her up and said or wrote to him or something. I said, you know, it is no surprise to me at all now on forty years later, looking at this stuff. The reason we sounded the way we did because it's all there in the in the dark, dank countryside, in the streets of the town we grew up, and it's yeah, you described the sleek, gray skies, and I was going to ask you what environmental factors, How does that seep into the music or what influence does that have on a sound, on a band sound, But that always makes things very soft focus. I had on my recent trip to London for goth I got off the plane and they had a card to pick me up, take me into town, which is about an hour's drive, and we're driving through the streets and it's like it's really gray. It's about five in the afternoon, really gray, and it starts to rain, and it's that sort of London rain that goes sideways and stuff, you know, and I was like, oh, okay, yeah, this is where it comes from. In both of the books, you talked about how you and Robert's home lives were so very different, and he came up in a happy, well to do home with very supportive parents who let the band practice early on, and your house was completely different. It was more disjointed, it was glum, Your dad was emotionally vacant. And you said that a lot of Robert's writing you thought was a combination of everyone in the band's, the early band's experiences. I think at that point in time, because we weren't cosmopolitan, we hadn't been around the world, we hadn't seen different places, you know, things become very focused. I always think it's like looking through the other end of the telescope, you know, instead of look like what everything gets out there, you become micro focused on what's in front of you, which is good and bad. Obviously, you know, if if that's your whole life, that becomes kind of sad, you know, because you don't you don't have any experience outside of it, you know. But I think, you know, initially we wanted to consider all kinds of things but when you're younger, you don't really know what that is until things happened to you like that. You know, so that's great. Until something like that had happened to us, it is such an abstract concept, you know, like, oh, well, what's it going to be like if this person is never there again? You know? They so during faith you had actually experienced death, when before it was more of a romantic idea. Yeah. Yeah, and it's completely different. And I mean, you know, as you get older, obviously more of that stuff happens to you, and so it becomes I think that's why. Also a lot of people have met recently who are probably my age and that and still would label themselves, you know, goth or whatever. They would say to me that for them it was a comfort to know that they understand, you know, more about those things, because a lot of people's first reaction to having somebody, you know, that they know close to them who's has somebody that's passed away is in a sort of embarrassment. They don't want to talk about it, you know, if they don't know them that well, they're like, oh well, I'll just mention this once and then let's carry on, you know. With life, which I suppose is kind of natural, you know, because hey, you know, I died tomorrow. The world goes on, you know, and it's always go on, but you kind of don't know what to say. And I think we were just looking for ways to say things a lot of the time, and now much more relevant and poignant. I think you also said that a lot of songs people it's sort of a misinterpretation that the Cure's music can be destructive or depressing. Yeah, but that's a false notion, and a lot of times, you know, people find solace in the songs and they find them comforting. And you wrote, we're not the problem or the cure, right, right, And I thought, you know, that's that's the obvious thing to say, but you know, which you know is a little hokey, but it's kind of fun to say. Yeah. That would always upset me, well, not upset me, but I was irritated by the fact people would go, you know, if your music's dark and depressing, then it's going to make people dark and depressed, and then they go, you know, maybe something bad will happen. You should write something that's uplifting and happy and jolly and kind of like, no, that's you've missed the point entirely. People that listen to us, a lot of them would come to say to me, you know, hey, this happened. It was bad, and I had a friend with your music, you know, I had somebody I felt there was understanding, so it made it less. It was like, you know, problem shared is a problem hard. So that was really the basis for it. And to me especially, I don't I can't speak for anybody else, but for me especially, that was that was my greatest reward in lots of ways that it would help somebody, you know, because I know how I felt doing those things, and it was good to be able to put that into music so that people could associate it and use it. Somebody told me recently, you know, the job of a musician is discovery, but it's also I think I could go further that it's not just discovery. It to bring back whatever you find for people. Because I don't know about you, but that's why I listened to music and like certain things. That's why I read certain things because I get I get a confirmation of my own. Yeah, a language really is an imperfect construct, you know, Like we're talking now, and I hope that what I construct in front of you gives you the ideas of what I'm thinking about and vice versa. But we're never quite sure, you know. And sometimes it amazes me that people, like I was saying with the Cures lyrics, you know, people get completely the opposite feeling. You know. Sometimes I will go into you know, they have those sites as websites online, you know, like Genius Lyrics or something, and I read people's interpretations of our lyrics and some are good, some some are off, and some are kind of frightening. But but you know, everybody has somewhere, you know. We have to take another quick break and then we'll be back with more from Leo Rose's interview with Lowell Tollhurst. We're back with the rest of Leah's conversation with Lowel Tollhurst with Pornography, which is the fourth album. Yeah, so on this one, you said the band really started to fully embrace bleaker themes in the songs. Yea, What was going on in the band interpersonally when that album was recorded. You know, my good friend Julia and Reagan from All About Eve said it very well. You know, we were talking about it and she said. You know, it's it's really unnatural idea of a band, you know, because you spend like, you put young people together for a lot of time, like twenty four to seven for months on end, you know, traveling around all the time, working together, and then spending all their off time together because you're you know, you're halfway across the world and you've got no other choice, and you know, you mix alcohol and any other things in with that, and it's a recipe for disaster, you know. And yeah, the cure were no different. You know, we had spent a lot of time together. By the time we got to Pornography, you know that the usual suspects were there floating around. And to me, I said this to budget the other week. The thing that's amazing to me is that as people making that record, I don't think we were very sane. I think there was a lot of insanity. You know if I look back at the events, and it's interesting. You know, we recorded mostly at night. Then by that time, you know, we'd been on this sort of nocturnal clock. Yeah that suits Robert Roberts always been a nocturnal kind of person. You know. We would finish a lot of sessions at Rack Studios, which had several studios and different people recording in there, and we would finish sessions at you know, the early hours and them all or a bit later. And some days, you know, we'd be leaving the studio as the day staff and people were coming in. You know that's a weird feeling. Oh yes, oh yeah, very weird. You know, like we weren't staying far away so we didn't have to get too much in the sunlight and watch everybody around with freshness. It really makes you feel like an outsider when you're not part of that early morning hustle and bustle people are going to work. Yeah, we just we just wanted to get get home and go to bed. And you know, I remember meet meeting Kim Wild. She was recording in the other studio and she came in one morning, you know, and I stopped her to talk to her. She must have thought, you know, it's like, how can I get away from this mad person, you know, as as possible. And actually, if I meet her again ever, I'm going to tell her that I'm going to say I'm sorry. You know, it was, it was It must have been very scary, you know, because I'm sure I was talking nonsense and you know, completely insane. But what surprises me for for us is like as far as we were like that, the music became ultra precise and played like with a with an intensity and a precision that we had never got before, you know, And that surprises me because like also I tell people, you know, if you're in a three piece band, you've got nowhere to hide, you know, because if one of you's a mistake, everybody notices that. You've got to be very sharp. And that was probably the sharpest as musicians we ever were. We were we were very very good at it, but you know, the rest of the stuff that went along with it was too intense. And so then we went on the tour. Something was going to break, you know, and I did. In Strasburg, you know, there was we went out to some club and Robert and Simon had this big fight and they both got on a plane that night and went home. I woke up and there's just me and the and the opening band in the in the hotel, and I knew in my heart of hearts at that point that was going to stop for a while. Then, in fact, I thought it was probably going to be the end of everything. And Robert came back and Simon came back, and we finished the sort of finished our obligations and went home, and I thought, well that's that, you know, And it wasn't. But it was a time for a very big change, you know. Yeah, you know, Simon left and it became just me and Robert for a while, and we made rather different music, very very different music. Yeah, that's right. There was another period. I was watching a Cure documentary and I believe it was your first major tour when you were opening up for Susie and the Bandshees, and then Robert eventually joined the band as a guitarist. And was that another point where it's seemed like maybe the band would break up? You know? I always knew, because I think I said in Kurd, I always knew in my heart of hearts, that Robert wasn't going to stay with the Banshees forever because just being you know, the side guy, the guitarist was never going to be enough for him. You know, he had his own ideas, his own stuff he wanted to do. But I also think that at that point, you know, him and Michael weren't getting on so well. So it was a nice It was a relief for him to go there and spend some time with them, do that in a different way, and I was open to that. I didn't have that in my head that said, oh no, you have to stay. I didn't feel that it would hurt things. I thought it would add to stuff. I thought, well, you know, if you'll go there, he'll find out a different way of doing things and he could bring that back to us. So that was what I always saw, well, he'll bring that back to us, which he did. But I think, you know, in retrospect, there's always that little bit of stuff like, well, you know this is this is what we're doing. You know that isn't air band, so you know you have to consider that. But it worked out. Are there any tracks on pornography that really stand out to you or have an especially interesting story about how the song was created? Well, I mean, you know, the first song was for one hundred Years was the first time that we did actually use, you know, a drum machine, because there's a drum machine on there, and I played keyboards and that was the first time I played keyboards on a Cure record. So that was something different to start off with, you know, and we had this tiny little boss drum machine, and we had to figure out how to sort of separate things because you can't really separate the sounds from it, so we put things for different amps and so that, you know. But for live we used to take a real to real tape recorder with the drum machine on for some reason. But it worked, so I like that. And then Cold is probably my favorite start to any cure song because you know, I had set the kit up in this huge room so that gives it this big sound. And I had bought this big Chinese symbols from a store in London, ray Man's, which is like all sort of exotic instruments. And you have to remember the symbols when they were first made, like you know, four hundred years ago, and were instruments of war. They were what they used to march across the top of the hills and frighten the hell out of their enemies, right. So, but some of the original ones are so loud, you know, I'm sure it's part of my hearing loss, you know, because every time I've hit this thing and I have to turn my head sideways. So I love the beginning of Cold for that reason, and also at the end the last the title track Pornography. We we did some interesting manipulations. I mean, it was a fun album to do in that respect, I say fun, you know, the sessions were a little strange, but it was fun. Also. You know, Phil Thornley, who produced it with us, was younger than us. I think it was like twenty one, which blows my mind. I talked to him occasionally now and I say, you know, do you realize how young we were when you did that record? You know, I don't know how, you know, how that happened? You know, it was. It was very, very strange. So, you know, it's like a lot of things, a lot of things in the qure's existence are happy accidents. You know, at what point during your time with a Cure did you start to see the audiences grow? Well, they were sort of increasing as we got up to Pornography. But with Pornography we went out on tour and that was probably another thing that contributed to it to it because we got put into a lot bigger rooms to play, but the album wasn't out. Yeah, and most of our set that we played for that too, was the new album, so people, you know, And so it was the first time that since we'd started that audiences hadn't got exponentially bigger every year we played, you know, and when you do it the first time, you don't even understand how that works or it doesn't work. You just accept it. It's not being nonchalant or egotistical. I just sort of accepted, oh, well, you know, this is what happens. Now there's bigger audience. Yeah. And then with Pornography it started to be half full. I think that's weird. Why is that happening? You know, And so it added to thing. But then after that period where we'd finished the sort of singles, you know, with love Cats and the Walk and everything, it started to pick up again and it started to get bigger again from there and it's just sort of continued pretty much ever since, with a little dip in the middle, I think for Rip Hoop, which was like, you know, the end of everything for a lot of people. But then you know, yeah, he came around again, so we're fine. Do you ever think like if you had a different upbringing that you would have ended up in a different band, like being Duran Duran or something you know that's impossible. How do we know? You know, I have no looking glass or I can't tell you. I mean, yeah, I mean I nearly ended up in Adam and the Ants. But you know because Adam. I met Adam one night in London and he was just starting a new version of the band, you know, with the two drummers and Terry Lee, and so I'm like, he said, you know, I'm starting this new band, do you you know, new version of the Ants. Do you want to come along and try out? And I'm like, yeah, it's okay. I got this band, the Cure, so I'm going to carry on, you know, which I'm glad I did. But you know, so I could have ended up with the makeup and the hair, right right, right right? Yeah, speaking of makeup and the funny hair, I heard that Robert's image changed drastically, started teasing his hair, putting on lipstick after he joined the Banshees and saw Suzie Sue. Is that accurate? You know, it's easy to connect the dots when you look from afar, But I don't remember happening like that because there were a lot of people, you know, like we would go out, we'd always go out on the Thursday night to the Canada Palace in London, and you know, people always said the Batcave, but I remember the Palace has been pretty much sort of the center of the universe at that time, and there was lots of different people there with that look. Yeah, with that look. You know, obviously we all adapt everything you see around, you know, because this was our people. So this is like, okay, we want to show we're parts of this. And so it went from there. Obviously, Sue was a very pivotable person in that scene. I think six and one and half a dozen of the other you know, I never never really not exactly where it came from, you know, So it wasn't like one day it was, you know, one way, and then the next day it's like a whole new Well. No, he went through several permutations, including I said the word permutation. He had a poem at one point, sort of funny poem that was jagged. You know, it looks okay, but then you know, we changed, we did something else. I'm so glad perms are gone. Yeah, me too. How did it feel when you eventually left the band? How did it feel seeing this band go on without you? A band that you created when you were so young, and you were in for so long and had so many formative experiences in How did it feel to see it go on without you? Well, you know, I can't lie. It was painful in lots of ways in the in the beginning. Over the years, I've realized that there's two things. You know, the day I die my obituary, I know what it's going to say. You know, if I get one, it'll say, you know, like, yeah, co founder, and that's what it's going to say. That's going to be the headline. I can't escape that. So rather than trying to escape it, I'll acknowledge it and embrace it. So I'm very pleased with what we did. I'm very happy about what we did, and I'm very proud of what we did. You know, I still have a relationship with most of the people in the band, and there are people I've known most of my life, you know, so you can't not have a relationship. You know, it's like family, you know, at some point, Yeah, you've got to circle back. In fact, that's thet way to describe it. Family. I mean, a few weeks ago, the Cure were here in Los Angeles and I went to see everybody, and there's a couple of funny things. I took my niece, who's just in her last year at university, and you know, so she's like twenty one, and she'd never seen them play live before. Well she has, but she doesn't remember and because she's a little girl, and so I took her there and we were sort of all hanging out afterwards down in the dress room in the Hollywood Bowl, and it was for me, it was like being back in the pub in nineteen seventy seven, you know, because it was kind of strange because, like you know, I'm saying talking to Simon, we're talking about things, talking to Robert. Robert's wife was there. You know, she's very rarely on the road, so you know, I know her very well. So we're talking. And for me it was good as well, because they a lot of band members, you know, have children, and some of them I know and seen, and some of them I've never met, you know, so I got a chance to meet them and stuff, and it was very emotional, but it was also very healing in a good way, you know, because I get to realize, Okay, this is this is my family, and it's never going to change really, you know, things go up and down like most families, but it's always going to be there, you know. And it was a very bonding time and I think a lot of that's to do with the fact that we're all getting older and you know, yeah, there's not so many of us around anymore. Even so it's like, you know, people in the band have passed away, Andy passed away and stuff, so it's like, okay, we could we still have a lot in common. In fact, Roberts said that to me, he said, you know, we have a lot to talk about backstage the Hollywood Bols. Probably not the place too, but we do. We have a lot to talk about. And so you know, I'm sure things will carry on in some fashion or another, and that's fine by me. And I'm very happy with what I'm doing myself now. So yeah, I was going to say, it's a testament to you and to your personality or outlook that you're not just stewing in bitterness. You're moving forward. You've written these incredible books, you're making music, you have this wonderful relationship working relationship with Budgie, so you know, and that really is the only way that you're you're going to live through this life, you know. I mean that's one of the reasons I got on a plane and came to California because at the point where I came to California, my life had fallen apart. You know, my dad are gone, my first marriage was dissolving. You know, I had a lot of money to the court for a court sastress court case. So you know, I arrived here. You know, I wasn't really a stranger in a strange land. I kind of was, and I kind of wanted to be that. But I knew California a bit from you know, working here a lot, and I liked the place and what was really good for me, and I tell people this all the time, was you know a lot of people think of California, you know, and this is true in England. People think this as well, you know, like you come here to be discovered or destroyed or both. You know, both things can happen, you know, and sometimes they do it. And that wasn't my experience. My experience was I found love, I found acceptance, and I found my tribe. You know, I found people that I've been able to connect with and work with and do things over the years, and it's been much more healing experience, so I was ever expecting, you know, And so therefore it's become home and I feel a great affection for the place, and it's been great. And if I think about it, it's been like over thirty years now, so you know, it's like it's like I've lived two lives, two complete lives, you know, and you know, it's beyond my my, my sort of wildest expectations. It's incredible. Yeah, well, thank you so much, Thol for talking today. I really appreciate it. I loved your books. I highly recommend them to everybody listening, and best of luck with the new album. Thank you, Thank you so much, and we'll talk again. Thanks to Lord Tallhurst for sharing his experience with the Cure. He's written two excellent books that are out now, and you can hear our favorite songs from his days with the Cure and just solo work. I'm a playlist a Broken Record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and you dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help from Lea Rose and Eric Sandler. Our show is engineered by Echo Mountain. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin and Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and adfree listening for four to ninety nine a month. To look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. A theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Rischmand