Re: Che album state ascoltando in questo momento
Things had changed in my head and heart now that my mother was gone. I was adrift. For a few months I didn’t do much but drink and feel sorry for myself. Things had also begun to change in the band somewhat. Parry had not been a great fan of Faith, as it hadn’t spawned any major hits. ‘Primary’ was the only single from the album and it only got to 43 in the UK charts. We had spent the previous three years working non-stop. When we weren’t on the road, we were recording, and vice versa. One reason Faith took a while to make was we didn’t have enough time to write on the road and get the material prepared before we went into the studio. We were just go, go, go. In the course of those three years of working and touring, my alcohol consumption steadily increased. Although I tried many different drugs, I was mostly a drinker. Parry decided that if we were going to fulfil his version of success for his label, he would have to get more deeply involved. He said that for our next record he didn’t really need to come to the recording sessions, as we were such a closed-up unit, which was true, but he wanted to make The Cure into a bigger concern. Pornography was a very difficult record to make. I feel that it represents the highlight of our sound as a three-piece. It also represents a creative peak for everyone involved, especially Robert. We operated a pretty closed studio, with only ourselves, our producer Phil Thornalley, and Mike Nicoto, the assistant engineer, in the room, with occasional visits from Gary Biddles. One night Siouxsie was allowed to visit, but most of the time the three of us were wrapped up in the fury of what became Pornography. It’s a big, monolithic slab of sound. We had hoped to get Conny Plank, Kraftwerk’s producer, to help us record it. In fact, Robert and I had a meeting with him at Fiction’s offices one afternoon. He was a great, brooding German man all dressed in black leather. He regaled us with stories of his last recording sessions, ‘where the sound was like a wild animal’. We were quite impressed with what he said he could bring to our music. Unfortunately, he passed away before it could happen. * We may not have generated as many hits as Parry would have liked, but the gigs were getting bigger and the audiences larger. Although we definitely grew at a slower pace than some of our peers, it was, I think, due in part to Robert’s steadfast but stubborn insistence on taking our time to make sure that what we did was the highest possible quality. I think time has proved him right on that score. In many ways Pornography is my favourite Cure album. I love the great big sound of the drums and the huge slabs of music used to make the songs. It’s the pinnacle of the three-piece Cure sound, though we incorporated a variety of instruments. On Pornography you’ll hear a smattering of keyboards, bass pedals and other things (cello, anyone?), but the main triangle of sound is created by the drums/bass/guitar structure, with Robert’s immense vocals on top. It represents one of my proudest accomplishments with the band. The circumstances surrounding its making were certainly intense, but that made it the album it is. It stands the test of time to me because it’s not a slave to whatever the current fashions of the day were. It was born out of our own desperation and peculiar madness. It was an unusual recording process, which at the time seemed perfectly normal. As our sessions progressed we would arrive at RAK Studios in St John’s Wood later and later in the day, until finally we settled into a groove of coming in late in the afternoon and emerging the next morning, having seen the dawn rise yet again through the control room windows. I think that Mickey Most, the studio owner, was as bemused by our schedule as everybody else seemed to be, but having been in the music business for many years and worked with many people, he knew enough to give us our space and not intrude too much. However, some days he’d bring us the occasional gift, like the guitar that Jimmy Page played when he recorded ‘Stairway to Heaven’, for Robert to use. The rest of the album continued in similar fashion. We made an arrangement with the owner of the off-licence across the street. Basically we would come in every day and place what we wanted on the counter, and his son would deliver everything in a box that night. We kept a tab going to be paid once a week, and must have doubled his income for those months we were there. We were living in the offices of Fiction at the time, which added another level of claustrophobia to the mix. We were with each other 24/7, which wasn’t a good idea, considering the amount of substances that were being consumed every day. I am grateful that Phil and Mike kept a sane and somewhat sober eye over everything, otherwise it might have ended in catastrophe. The drum sound was obtained by putting the kit in the large recording room and removing all the acoustic shields so there was an immense natural reverb. I had my own sticks made to my own specifications, so they were basically thicker in the middle and thinner at each end, giving them a great ‘throw’, or power, whichever way I chose to use them. For most of the album, I turned the sticks over and used the thicker end to play the snare, which I had bought from John Bradbury of The Specials. It was a military snare 10 inches deep, as opposed to the usual 4- or 6-inch deep snare drum. The combined effect of all of this was to make a huge crack with every snare beat. No ambiguity or ghost notes, just the metronomic mantra of the drums! Both Robert and Simon had new Peavey amps that were bigger and more powerful, so the combined effect produced aggression in the songs. Many of the cymbal crashes I overdubbed later in a separate room of the studio that had just been built. It didn’t have any acoustic padding or finished walls built in it, and was just a bare concrete box. Phil and Mike set up some microphones, and I put my new Ray Man Chinese cymbal in there to record. That thing was so loud when I played it that I had to turn my head sideways to avoid being deafened. You can imagine the noise it made in a concrete box! I think that was the start of my hearing loss right there. However, after we recorded Pornography, there was a sense of urgency to get the music out and then go on the road to promote it. The thinking was to keep things fresh and vibrant, which usually worked for us, but on reflection I think we should have waited a little bit instead of storming out of the studio and going back on the road so soon. Even a short break of a few months would have helped the band, and might have possibly avoided what was to become the death knell of the old Cure. *
Tolhurst, Lol. Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys (pp.153-156).
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