The Cure recently started their much-anticipated North American tour. In honor of this darkly decadent occasion, I dusted off a couple the Cure pieces I did back around Y2K that aren’t online, centered around 2001’s Greatest Hits (Elektra) and an interview with Robert Smith. In hindsight, it’s funny to hear him talk about a solo album—still very much unreleased—but also presage the DIY nature of the Cure circa 2023.
Further reading on the Cure by me: a 2004 alt-weekly feature around the release of a self-titled Cure album featuring another interview I conducted with Smith and a 2016 Salon piece in which I rave about the band’s live show.
Alternative Press magazine: SELF ANALYSIS with the fluffy haired wonder, Robert Smith
This singles set has been described as The Cure "sung with a smile." Was this in reaction to the darker Bloodflowers?
There's a more prosaic reason—it's the first project that we've ever undergone that hasn't been driven by us. It wasn't suggested by me; it was actually the record company. And we were right at the end of the contract—we only had to deliver one more album—so I kind of reached an agreement that the greatest hits would be that record. I'm out of contract with the major labels, everywhere, for the first time since I was 19. It pleases me immensely. I've been free for the last month.
What are you doing with the new-found freedom?
I'm undecided, really. I was intent on pursuing the line that “I look forward to these next 25 years of the band. And it's been a great part one." I'm traditionally expected to wrap the group up with every release. I thought this time around I'd probably aim for like at least another decade of The Cure. I have no idea. I was determined to enjoy some kind of creative freedom because I think, particularly with the Internet, there are some great opportunities. I fear that it's going to be closed down very rapidly, a lot of the opportunities. So I thought I'd better do it now or I'll never get a chance.
Makes sense. Your official website was pretty funny—you guys seemed a little exasperated trying to get the news out about the album.
Now it's hardware manufacturers trying to run the software, is effectively what the music business has become, and it's pretty soul-destroying if you don't fit into the niche. We've kind of escaped it to a degree because we're left alone, we sell X amount of records, we're always making them money [laughs], and so they sort of think we're just this kind of like anomaly. But it's been frustrating, really.
The greatest-hits thing... I think it's a really good record. The last two years of the band, I've really, really enjoyed it. I thought the shows that we played last year around the Bloodflowers stuff, dusting off some of the really old songs that we haven't played for a long time, it was such good fun. And the band got on really well, and we pretty much sold out everywhere we went. And it's funny, because we're still genuinely an alternative band. It's quite bizarre; we're kind of going around and yet we don't get that much attention. And yet a lot of the songs on this record are—especially when people look at the track listing--there's a few kind of genuine hits on there.
Have you done any more work on your solo record?
It's all done, actually, apart from the guest artists' putting their bits on. I mean, it's not mixed, but the basic tracks are all recorded. Ten songs; that's what I was doing earlier this year. There is a Cure album kind of half-written as well. I still am undecided. I suppose in the back of my mind I'm waiting to see how the greatest-hits album does, which is being brutally honest. I figure if it does well the profile of The Cure's name will go up and it will probably be a good time to bring something out rather than wait. But at the same time, the part of me that thinks that would be a fantastic way to do something on my own, because it would completely fly in the face of reason.
The solo stuff... Jason [Cooper]'s playing drums on it, and Simon [Gallup]'s playing bass on a bit of it. It's a blurring of lines; in my mind there isn't that clear line there probably was when we were doing that Bloodflowers thing. I thought, "Right, this is a Cure album; now I'm going to do my own stuff." It's kind of become slightly more blurred, the divided line between the two projects, 'cause when it comes down to it The Cure is kind of driven by me anyway. It's sort of like a sidecar, I suppose, this solo project. I feel like I'm still steering the motorbike.
The Boston Phoenix: Feature, January 4-10, 2002
Greatest-hits retrospectives from bands who are very much still in the thick of their recording careers are often ominous signs. Even if they weren’t hastily culled in order to fulfill a contractual obligation, they can signal the flagging of a group’s creative energies as the members cash in before an impending commercial nosedive and a quiet break-up. And when it comes to the Cure — a band whom leader Robert Smith has been hinting at breaking up for almost a decade now — it’s hard not to see the new Greatest Hits (Elektra) as a signal that he may finally be through with the moniker that’s seen him through close to three decades.
Especially since this is the third official Cure collection — following Staring at the Sea in 1986 and Galore in 1997 (both on Elektra) — and it marks the end of the band’s contract with their long-time label. The future of the Cure would seem to be mired in the same gray murk as Smith’s miserable masterpieces Disintegration and The Head on the Door. Not that Greatest Hits conjures much of that bleakness itself. Despite the presence of brooding moments like “A Forest” and “Boys Don’t Cry,” the album is heavy on tracks that reveal the playful, sensual, silly side of the band. Even the two new songs, “Cut Here” and “Just Say Yes,” have a fizzy exuberance, and the latter is a veritable dance-floor romp.
What’s more, in conversation the bed-headed majordomo appears devoid of the mope-rock image for which the band are known in alternative circles. Although it’s evident that their lack of a label places them at a career crossroads, he clearly doesn’t consider this a fatal development.
“It pleases me,” he remarks about the first musical independence he’s had since age 19. “I’m determined to enjoy some kind of creative freedom because I think particularly with the Internet, it’s at that point now where there are some great opportunities. I fear that it’s going to be closed down very rapidly; there are teams of lawyers working, trying to close down people’s options. So I thought I'd just have a brief taste of freedom before they cut the entire thing.”
Although Smith refers to distributing his future musical output over the Internet merely as “one option,” he seems eager to test the waters with tracks from his long-rumored solo album, for which he has the basics for 10 songs recorded. Originally he saw his own work as a separate project; now he says that there isn’t “that clear line” between his solo and Cure music. “There will be a mixture of vocal and instrumental tracks,” he reveals of the still-untitled set, on which current Cure bassist Simon Gallup and drummer Jason Cooper play. “Some of them to me just work better as instrumentals. I toyed with the idea of having guest singers, but then I kind of thought that was pretty stupid really. Not just to end up having guest singers, but to have a solo album where everyone else sings except for me would be conceptually a step too far.”
Smith emphasizes that the solo album isn’t meant to signal any major internal rifts in the Cure. For one thing, another proper Cure album is, as he puts it, “half-written.” And the first copies of Greatest Hits include a limited-edition bonus disc with acoustic renderings to parallel Greatest Hits’ plugged-in originals. Sounding spontaneous, loose and fresh, these new recordings bespeak a band having tremendous amounts of fun. “We were just sitting around, thinking, ‘Cure fans will probably buy this hits album because it’s got the couple new songs.’ That’s the marketing man’s idea. But we were thinking, ‘We've got to counteract that somehow.’ So the acoustic idea came out of that conversation. We allowed ourselves two takes of each song. That’s it. It was quite tense, there was kind of an underlying hysteria to the sessions, because we didn’t really know if we knew some of the songs!”
Smith has always left plenty of room for the Cure to grow, as the “unplugged” experiment attests. “The band to me has never been about just going through the motions. That's why we’ve done less and less over the years, so that it remains something special and exciting. If I just kept kind of banging on, it would have lost its attraction and I probably would have burned out and just given up. I actually write more music now than I ever have done, but the actual performing side and the group going out there and doing something, I’d like to keep it . . . so there’s a real sense of anticipation, for the band as much as for the audience.”