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Interview conducted
in July 2004
LATEST RELEASE:
"The Cure" |
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| |  | |   | | By Olivier Hartmann | | Photos Olivier Hartmann |
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The Cure releases of the past years have had the flavour of a glorious legacy. The commemorative quality of such dazzling collections as the "Trilogy" DVD and the "Join the Dots" box set, together with Robert Smith's recent collaborations with a set of artists as eclectic as Junkie XL, Blank & Jones, Blink-182, Junior Jack, Earl Slick and Chris Vrenna, looked like the end of the road. But the bullish persistence and unyielding enthusiasm of producer Ross Robinson (Korn, Slipknot), a Cure fan himself, seduced Robert to go back to the studio and resulted in a self-titled studio album unanimously acclaimed by the critics. We met Robert Smith in early July at a press conference in Paris in-between the Rock Werchter and the Voix du Gaou festivals.
The rest of this page is not the English version of the corresponding French article but the full transcript of the entire press conference.
Journalist #1: The album sounds like you have been looking to the past and tried to take the best out of it and mix it up to turn the page... Would you agree with that?
Uhm, yes, I would. (laugh) I think that the idea of calling it "The Cure" came from Ross Robinson, that we produced the album with. He felt that we should approach the album with the idea that it had taken us twenty five years to get to this point, which is a novel way of looking at what we do. Because he wanted to make the definitive Cure album. And so in order to achieve that, I felt that I needed to draw on what we'd done in the past. And there are echoes, on this record, of other things we've done. I'm more aware than anyone that I'm drawn to the same themes but I think that all artists are. So the intent was to create something that sounded like The Cure but that sounded like something we'd never done before, which I think we've managed. There's a certain sound to the record, there's a certain passion and intensity that comes from playing the songs live that's probably missing on some of the other Cure albums. But I think that "Bloodflowers" is a very... A lot of the mainstream media currently are able to re-introduce The Cure into the world kind of thing and acknowledge the fact that we still exist. I'm beginning to notice that the trade-off is that "Bloodflowers" wasn't such a good record and at last here's a good Cure record. That's bollocks! "Bloodflowers" is a really good album. It seems strange - it's the only time we've ever had a Grammy nominated album, "Bloodflowers". And I still think it's one of the best things we'll ever do. But the new album is totally different to "Bloodflowers". The mistake people make is to compare one to the other, because it's a bit like comparing the "Kiss Me" album to "Pornography". There is no comparison, they're both Cure albums. I think the urge to denigrate one in order to elevate the other is slightly bizarre because I think that the new record contains a lot of stuff that... If you didn't like anything on the new Cure album it would be almost impossible, I think, to like anything else that we've done so it serves as an introduction, for me. I made it into a much more accessible record, with the song choices, than Ross would have liked. Because we have left off three or four songs that are incredible morose, very very downbeat but they are the songs that Ross really liked most. But thankfully I got to choose the songs.
J#2: Do you get inspired by your past material? Will you actually put it on and listen to it so that you can write new stuff and stay in the same vein?
I won't do it on purpose but by default I have been listening to a lot of old stuff because on the back of the "Join the Dots" B-sides box set, which took me about... I'm trying to think actually in hours how long it took me to put together and remaster... I convinced Universal that they should remaster the entire Cure back catalogue and it's given me an opportunity to put an extras disc with each release, as it happens. I've compiled the first four. I've gone back to... 1977 actually is the first track in it. From 1977 I have got to "The Top" album so I am seven years down the line. So I have been listening to a lot of stuff but I don't know whether it... I mean, in a way, the extras discs are quite funny because they're the flip side of what I do because... I'm pleased to see, with hindsight, that the quality control has been exercised at a quite high level. Because there are reasons why things don't get released.
J#2: So there's nothing you wished you had not released?
No, I'm comfortable now, twenty five years down the line. Particularly the first extras disc, it's just interesting, I think anyone who has ever been in a band would be intrigued to see how we developed from being a really really crap band into a band that was able to make a reasonably good first album over quite a short period of time just by sort of keep playing keep playing. If that had been released with our first album we would have ended there because people would have thought we were rubbish. There are occasionally things that don't make it onto albums because they are just strange one-off experimental songs and those are the things that I've put in the extras discs, things that wouldn't have fit otherwise. I mean some of them are bit odd, you know.
J#3: First quick question: when will these first four remastered albums actually be re-released?
Good question. Well, they were scheduled originally... Because we signed with Geffen for this new record - they're part of the Universal group so actually swapping around the re-release schedule has been relatively painless. If we'd signed with one of the other majors I think it would have been very difficult because they were scheduled to be released now, the same week as the new album. So I think they've been put back to October, probably. Because I think there will probably be a second single off this record. It's all to do with "don't confuse the buyer" - because they might not know the difference between the new single and "Three Imaginary Boys"! The first four will be out this year and then the next four - but I need about a month to do the next four because obviously I have to listen to the stuff in real time. There's a lot of boxes of tapes. I think I end the cassette years with the "Kiss Me" album and after that everything moves on to DATs, that's how I'm thinking of it. I should hopefully leave the 1980s behind sometime in January 2005!
J#3: Another question about the new album: I have read somewhere that the sound of the new album, especially with the guitars, which is very different from your sound before, has not so much to do with the guitars but with the amplifiers. Could you tell us more about that?
Ross is a real fan of vintage gear. Everything was recorded analogue through an old EMO board. And I've never thrown a guitar away so I've got a lot of guitars. Usually I have a particular guitar for a particular album and then I usually play it on the tour and then I put it away. And he made me revisit a lot of guitars. In fact I did use them for the "Trilogy" film that we did. When we did the "Pornography" set I would use the "Pornography" guitar, the Fender Jazzmaster. I used the National when we did "Disintegration", and the six-string bass. When we did "Bloodflowers" I used the Gibson. But Ross looked at them all and I admired this in that he actually picked the ones that had the best look and shape and that's how I pick guitars as well. But the amplifiers he is a bit more professional about. We bought a couple of vintage Fox amps and an old Selmer, which I thought actually sound pretty crap. What he does really well is actually piece the sounds together. We would spend a long time and in his head he would hear what we would end up with. The individual sound of my guitar at times I'm thinking that this is so wrong but when I've gotten into the control room and listened to the whole band playing that would be good. The first week there was a lot of that going on and I wasn't sure how much control to hand over. Because always in the studio part of what I do is pick the guitar sounds. All these things lend themselves to the experience being something different, for me, in the studio. Eventually I ended up just being the singer and the guitarist. I actually had very little say in anything going on. I mean obviously the songs were mine and it wasn't like I was going to sing cover versions of something. Essentially the way of working, the entire structure of what we did, was down to Ross and then, included in that, was the choice of equipment. Except for Simon. Simon resisted entirely. He ended up using exactly the same bass as he was going to be using.
J#4: How's Roger doing, by the way? He didn't look too well yesterday.
He didn't, did he? He had a really rock'n'roll plastic bucket on hand in case he threw up. I told him if he was going to throw up he should throw up on stage. It was the only time in his life he would look like a punk. He's all right. Unfortunately Jason's got it today, I think. Perry had it two days ago. So I should be throwing up sometime in Lyon on Sunday night! (laugh) And they've gone, so I'm here on my own. That's the reason I'm doing this on my own because I don't think it's a good idea for me to sit very close to them at the moment so they've gone already to Marseille.
J#4: How did it feel to play acoustic or semi-acoustic songs at the Olympia the other night? Was it fun? Or difficult?
It was difficult to pick the songs, actually, because a lot of the songs that we thought we would do acoustically - we've done it once before: a couple of years back we came to Paris and did an acoustic set based around the "Greatest Hits" and that was much easier because the pop songs lend themselves to an acoustic interpretation much more easily because they're pretty much up tempo and they're melody driven. You also have the advantage that everyone knows them so if they sound a little bit weird your brain fills in the gaps. But I wanted to do something different. It was good, doing Shake Dog Shake acoustic was a very good moment, it was hilarious, actually. (laugh)
J#4: That's pretty daring!
I don't know, a lot of the songs do work on acoustic guitar because I often just play them backstage anyway when we run through stuff. The hardest part was actually to translate keyboard parts into piano parts. We realized how much we use sustained notes. We had a run-through backstage for half an hour when we did this mariachi stuff with chords and it just sounded really stupid, so... It was really good fun, it was nice to play in an intimate place without playing a club because we have done a couple of club shows in the last few months in London for charity things and I haven't enjoyed them at all. They were oppressive rather than intimate. Everyone was too close. If I had to sing now I would be really really embarrassed. Honestly, that might sound stupid after all this time but the closest I am the more self-aware I am and the least comfortable I am. But it was nice, the Olympia. We played there a long long time ago, twenty or more years ago, so it was a strange feeling of deja vu as we walked on stage. And it had a good knock-on effect with the band because when we went on stage yesterday in Werchter in front of 70,000 people with the world's biggest light show it was good because we retained some of that sort of intimacy on stage. It's how we recorded as well so I'm trying very hard to maintain that feeling on stage, the eye contact and talking to each other and not slipping back to what I think was wrong with us as a band for the last few years. It's a very subtle thing; we can't let everyone in so we all actually feel like we're playing with each other rather than face the audience. It's that idea of us trying to create something on stage rather than just presenting the show to people. And the Olympia was good because by default we were so close and Roger was sitting down, it felt like an intimate show. It's not something that I would like to do the whole time; I think it was nice because it's unusual.
J#4: Speaking of intimacy, of sharing feelings with other band members, it sounds like the early studio sessions with Ross were traumatic for the others. Was it really that difficult?
(chuckle) It was, actually. The first week was very fraught because in order for us to make the record that Ross wanted us to make we had to be a lot more passionate about things. He felt that's what we were lacking. He'd seen us on stage and he'd seen us play really well and he'd seen us actually achieve what he wanted us to achieve but when we were doing pre-production stuff I could see he was getting more and more frustrated. The first time in the studio he asked me to explain the first song - it was Lost - and he asked me to stand up in front of everyone and talk through the words and explain why I'd written the song, what I wanted people to feel when we did the song, which was strange for me because I'd never done anything like that before. And it led to a discussion about sense of self and it was weird because normally we would just be running through the song, checking that we are all in tune, you know, the usual stuff that you do when you record, and Ross wasn't interested in any of that. Essentially he was just trying to get everyone to occupy the same head space. So once we did start playing we all knew why we were playing. It sounds really hippyish, I found that I had to fight some innate cynicism thinking "this is not going to make any difference", but it did. In the course of that week we started to talk about things that we would never have normally talked about. As five middle-aged Englishmen in a room there are certain things that you don't talk about. And Ross created this environment where everyone felt really comfortable but there was a lot of nonsense to get through before we reached that point. The end of the second week was so different to the end of the first week. At the end of the first week Ross was on the point of going home because the others were so resistant to what he wanted to do. By the end of the second week everyone had decided to try it out and then it was good. But it did affect everyone in different ways. It affected the band much much more than I would have imagined it would. And I think that since it has ended they have reacted against it and bounced back against it and forgot how good it was and are actually going to say how bad it was. It definitely worked at the time. It felt like a band making an album. That's the first time I've ever felt that in the history of the band.
J#5: Being produced by Ross Robinson was a way to put yourself in danger because he's known for his extreme methods with the artist.
(laugh) Which I can't believe! I thought "what's the matter with people?" Because he's so sweet, most of the time. He's very demanding. I mean he's incredibly enthusiastic and passionate about what he does. And he needs very little sleep. I actually really relished working with him because it's the first time I have found anyone who could maintain... When I'm in the studio I get very obsessed by what we're doing and I'm happy just to stay there all the time and real life becomes unimportant for a period of time and Ross is the same, in that way. So I actually found my kindred spirit, really. And all he wants you to do is just give everything. And people are not supposed to say no to him but there is a natural resentment because you are brought up to not do that, you need to develop trust. You're going to the studio with someone and even if you have not spoken to them in a period of months - and in total the hours have been less than a day and yet I was there talking about every subject under the sun - there is a feeling you have to get over, that you shouldn't really be doing this because you don't go up to complete strangers and pour your heart out. Well, most people don't. Complete strangers come up to me and pour their heart! Ross has told me his side of some of the stories that I had read and heard about from other bands and he paints a very different picture. As for many things, it's been exaggerated for the sake of... this room, for example. Most of the time Ross is a very reasonable human being. There's a side to him which is slightly weird, he is one of the few people that I have met who is genuinely weird. He's very naturally awkward around people and yet he's engaging the way that some kids are, he has that about him, and people, adults, find it very hard to deal with, I think, when it's coming from another adult. There's a defence mechanism that kicks in. And I would do the same, I did the same and probably would now but while we were there I felt myself just let go, it was nice, it was a good feeling. Then my natural reserve... That sounds foolish because I get on stage and sing but in normal every-day human interactions I'm not a forthcoming person. Hard to believe...
J#6: I would like to know what was most difficult: recording your first album in live conditions or making the second one that way twenty five years later?
The second one. The first one we had the advantage that we'd been playing those songs for at least six months, any of those songs. We recorded about twenty three, twenty four songs for the first album. Some of them are on the extras disc. Some of them are extraordinarily bad, they really are. We did this really funny concept set of songs called spring, summer, autumn and guess what? And thankfully by the time we had three days or three nights in the studio to do the first album - we used to go in at ten o'clock after The Jam and finished recording in the day so we didn't have to pay for the studio time because we knew some people who could get us into the studio so we used their equipment as well - Chris Parry, who was producing it, said "the third night we'll mix it and the first two nights just record everything you did, everything you ever played" and thankfully in the back of my mind there's this voice that says "don't do these four songs!" But in the end we did do Winter. It was the only time that Michael Dempsey was drunk in the studio. It's the very last thing we did on the second night and that is going to be on the extras disc and it's so awful, it really really is, it's embarrassing. It was easy because everything was a first take because we just treated it as if we were doing them on a show. I was slightly put out by the first album, that's why we never had a producer again for twenty five years because I actually hated the control being taken away from me as to what went on the album. Because I agreed that we would play everything on the understanding, I thought, that I was to pick which songs we did. Like Foxy Lady has always been my most hated Cure song because that's Michael singing and he'd never sung before in his life up until that point! It's like David Beckham taking an England penalty! (It's kind of sensitive) And then it was on the album and everyone thought it was me, which was even worse. (laugh) But I've forgotten that.
J#7: This is getting back to Ross Robinson's group therapy, the one he put you through. Did that inspire you to change the way you write your lyrics? Because these lyrics are more introspective than anything you've written before, you express a lot more of the inner you.
I think that I've written songs that are as introspective in the past. I'm probably very honest on this record. More so than I would otherwise have been. I think in that way Ross influenced me because when we did the pre-production of the songs in December I didn't have a lot of the words finished. I had the ideas of what the songs were going to be and he just said "just sing, sing anything you want" and so I did. And then some of them are really odd because they are just stream of consciousness kind of things and I forgot about rhyming and everything else. And we are actually going to put some of those up on the currently lamentable secret site, which hasn't very much going on, we are probably going to stick some of those up. Ross said he wanted to keep some of those original lyrics and asked. "No no no you can't. No-one should ever hear these." But when I went home and I started to put the words together I was listening to what I had done I thought well maybe I should keep them as it is because, although it is less poetic than I would normally be, it resonates with what we're trying to do. He encouraged me to be more forthright, I suppose. Again it's paradoxical because I appreciate more than anyone that the fact that I'm writing a song presupposes an interest in who I am if I'm writing an introspective song but the trick, if it is a trick, for me, has always been to tap into someone that I know, someone else's who I connect with, and to keep it always slightly broader. And Ross has encouraged me to be more specific, which I think I did resist, in a way. I just felt, as a songwriter, for a number of reasons, that songs are more interesting if you feel that they're written for you rather than about the singer. I've always felt that. The creepiest ones were much more about me. I was actually naming people, which was odd, and Ross said "keep that, that's really good, tell us about it!" He just created an environment where I felt very very comfortable and the others did, really, even though they started going into denial.
J#8: Now that The Cure is approaching a whole new generation, and an MTV generation, at that, I was just wondering if you've seen the video clip remix they've done on MTV where it's based around rapping? Have you seen it?
I have had the pleasure.
J#8: I just wanted to get your thoughts on that.
They sent it to me a while back - it's called mash-up - they didn't send it for approval, they sent it for a response, and I couldn't frame a proper response and I cannot now, I just watched it. I didn't have any great desire to watch it again. I honestly didn't understand what the point of it was.
J#8: It was so bizarre.
The idea of it is basically quite a good idea but I couldn't quite see what the concept was or whether there was one. Or maybe they had just got the rights to the same songs on the same day.
J#8: To play them at the same time!
Yeah, or maybe someone with much broader taste in music than I have.
J#7: Is it difficult to remain relevant after twenty five years?
I have no worry about being relevant.
J#7: Are you still a rebel?
I think that what I do, in the context of the group, I only ever worry as to whether it's relevant to me, that's it. Beyond that it is a passion. We've never really been perceived as a political or a socially aware group. The music that we make is what's important to me and how we do it. And if I thought that we were doing it in a way that felt uncomfortable for me in any real sense I would just not do it so the relevance comes from that. I understand what you mean, I take the point that it's unusual that a band our age has the audience that it has, it's kind of odd. To most people, and particularly more so in the UK than anywhere else, that's a problem. Because we haven't crossed over, haven't become adults or whatever the genre is, adult orientated rock, and hopefully we never will, because I fucking hate adult orientated rock. Why you would want to play it is always beyond me. And it's always identified with the pejorative idea that we have a young audience so therefore we have not grown up and it's a bad thing. Whether or not we've grown up I just let that go because it's quite funny the idea that I'm a child. Considering what I do, it would be pretty hard pressed to remain a child. But I think the idea of growing up in the conventional sense is something that I fight against all the time, I hate the idea that when you grow up spontaneity disappears, that's what I react against, really. But experience has changed me hugely; I am not the same person that I was when I started out. I'm a much better person now. (grin)
J#1: Since you're on your own I have got a more personal question. You've been talking about a solo album for decades now, always postponing it. Do you think it is necessary for you to release a solo album? Is The Cure's not enough?
Well, obviously it hasn't been that necessary for me to release as I haven't done it yet. I will do it. The difference between what I am proposing to do as a solo project and The Cure is that the instrumentation is completely different. That is not drum and bass and guitar. And in that sense making a Cure album without the band would seem to me more bizarre than doing a solo album without the band. I mean I don't feel like I am The Cure. The Cure is and always will be a band. I've always enjoyed making music with other people. I wouldn't dream of going on stage (alone) - I have done it very very occasionally with a guitar and in the end I always panicked: "what the hell am I doing on my own?" Because playing with a band it's very easy to overcome that self-consciousness and to think that we're actually creating something really good and I can understand why people like it. But it's a strange thing that most people become solo artists because they don't enjoy the band environment. And the other way I think that most bands with this kind of stature or longevity usually have two main protagonists. Certainly in the public perception when you think of most bands there's usually two people. And we're unusual in that within the group and to most Cure fans Simon is an integral part of what we do but to the media he isn't, he never has been, he's never taken that step himself, he's never wanted to, actually, through a combination of shyness and laziness, I suppose, to become the other person. And so if we were the same as most other bands I would have taken that step and become a solo performer years ago. The fact that I have actually stayed in a band context is strange. But I like it. I just like the idea of being in a group called The Cure as opposed to me becoming a completely public person. The name Robert Smith is actually not something... He's someone that does something. There's always the qualifier Robert Smith of The Cure, which I like. As opposed to Robert Smith who goes shopping. It is a kind of pretence. It eases me into the idea that when I am doing something in public then I am part of a group. Also this solo album, there is very little singing on it. So it would be weird to do an instrumental album with string players and call it The Cure - I would feel very short changed, actually, I suspect. I'd come along and there would be sixteen people on stage and none were in the Cure. That's going to be odd. But yeah, I will do it.
J#6: The Cure has continuously been around for the last twenty five years. What do you think of 80s bands like Duran Duran or Tears for Fears coming back, trying to recapture something that maybe is gone?
Or was there in the first place? (laugh) I don't mind, I really don't. We played at the end of last year in California on a bill with them and the Furs and Echo & the Bunnymen and some of the new bands like Interpol and The Rapture and it was the idea of the 80s and now. And we were, I suppose, at the top, notionally holding it all together. And Duran Duran were on the bill that day as well. Strangely enough Simon Le Bon has been to see The Cure over the years. He's been backstage. The first time I ever saw him backstage I thought he had taken the wrong turn or something. But he's all right. He knows that they represented in the 80s everything that I fucking hated. Duran Duran videos, I used to seat and seethe, watching them. So I was never a big fan. Tears for Fears were all right. I never really liked them, I never really disliked them, they just were there. It doesn't matter to me anymore. I used to be upset about things. I think as I got older I appreciate people doing anything, even if I don't like that, at least these people get up and do something, that's better than people who don't, so even if they make the most horrible noise at least they're doing something. Because if you start to wonder about what reasons they do it for it's a very slippery slope because why am I doing that? Why are my reasons any more valid than Duran Durans's? I've got convincing arguments as to why they are (laugh) but there are flaws in the arguments because essentially it's got to do... At the core of it you would hope that, even in the most awful band and awful performer, there is a sense of self-expression, however banal, it is there. Having the urge to do something and creating something rather than destroying something is good. I haven't been to see them but I did watch them when they played, from the side of the stage. And I seethed.
J#9: Speaking of Interpol, could you say in which way you recognize the Cure sound in the bands you've had influence on?
I think that taken individually a lot of the bands that have been name-dropping The Cure, particularly in the last year, have been lumped together and I don't think it is very fair. Like Interpol, as an example, I cannot really hear very much of The Cure in them at all. When they're on stage, the way they look, the way they present themselves, it's not The Cure-like at all. I think they reference Joy Division much more than they do The Cure, it's a completely different thing. When The Rapture - he sounds occasionally a bit like I did when I was younger and so does Hot Hot Heat and there's a couple of others. I think that vocally and also in some of the sounds they use, in a funny way, they're using what is now called vintage-retro gear, which is what we used, and still do, actually. So they sound a little bit sullen. It's a really difficult one because I'm not sure how... I mean Mogwai like The Cure, and I think Mogwai is the best band on the planet, and people say "oh yeah, I can hear The Cure in them" but I can't, really. There's a sensibility about what they do, which I connect with, and I think that with a lot of the bands that name-drop The Cure I find that I am drawn to them and I am not because they're like The Cure but because I like something about what they do. I don't think it is as easy as just to say the singer sounds like Robert Smith therefore they sound like The Cure. I think they're drawn to The Cure for different reasons. I haven't spoken with them. It's not necessarily a musical thing. It's also the idea that The Cure attained a certain success and one has to maintain that success by doing things in a slightly different way. We're part of the machinery; we're not one of those bands that pretend to be fighting the system while releasing the album with Universal. But the impetus to do what we do comes from within the band. There's a strong sense that we do what we want when we want it and how we want it. And I think that appeals to a certain type of young bands. Because they think "if The Cure can do it in their own way, we possibly could as well". I think, with some of them, they've mentioned The Cure and everybody goes "oh yeah, they sound like The Cure" but they don't at all. The Rapture on stage don't sound like The Cure. On record there are certain similarities, I think, between them and things that we've done. But on stage I can't see it at all. The bill that we have put together for the American concerts, everyone on the bill, there is a mutual respect between all the bands. I know that all the bands that I have asked to play like The Cure otherwise they wouldn't have said yes. But there is very little similarity between Muse and The Cure and Head Automatica and Mogwai and Melissa's new thing. There are huge differences musically but I think everyone shares something in common. But as to what that is, being able to actually verbalize what that is, it's just a feeling, it's just the way they go about what they do. It's important to me, how things are done. So I think it's on that level we adhere to a certain type of artist.
Host: Encore deux dernières questions et puis on arrête. (Two more questions and then we stop.)
J#7: Three questions in one.
(laugh) Question 1-A!
J#7: The Curiosa Festival, is that going to become an annual event and how did you put together the bill, are they bands that you like, and what are your five favourite bands? That's pretty compact!
The Curiosa Festival arose out of the show that I was talking about earlier, that we played with The Rapture and Interpol, that's the first time I'd seen them. I was really taken with them and I thought that if we were going to play concerts this summer in America, I wanted us to have a different experience as a band and so I thought taking other bands that we would push out, and we'd also create an experience for Cure fans, would be a better thing than doing a Cure tour with a support band, which is what we've always done over the years. And I'm surprised that they both said yes straight away because I thought they would feel that maybe they would be... I thought that we should call it something other than just the Cure Tour because that way it would broaden the appeal. And then I asked Mogwai because I thought "if I'm going to do twenty five shows in the summer I won't get to see my favourite band". And they said yes, which surprised me even more. And then we thought that we could do more than just one stage and added a second stage and it's the reason that I asked... There's only two bands that we asked that said no. Should I say their names?
Everyone: Yes!
Well, we asked PJ Harvey to be on it. For her own reasons she wanted to do her own things and she could only pick what day she did so she ended up committing to a couple of other things that obviously she is going to do. I understood that. I would have understood for all the bands if they had said no. I wouldn't have taken it personally. Because I know it is important, in a lot of ways, to create your own identity and I thought it might worry some, to be involved. Bright Eyes were another band that wouldn't do it because they refuse to play Clear Channel venues. Which I think is very laudable but I tried to convince them that the best way to have an impact would be to actually play the Clear Channel audiences. Not because I take responsibility, they haven't got the choice: if they joined in the Curiosa Festival it would actually give them a platform to say what they want to say about Clear Channel and the way they work in America in particular. But they wouldn't buy my argument. We asked everyone at the same time and it was actually going to be a bigger event and the fact that they dropped out I asked Thursday and Melissa and Head Automatica. I picked all the bands; I'd like all the bands. There was a lot of pressure to add other bands in different territories in order to up the hype. I wanted to pitch the whole thing as if we were doing a Cure show and just adding lots of other bands so we haven't really overstretched what we're doing in the way that perhaps Lollapalooza did by putting together lots and lots and lots of named bands but they're only playing at half the shows each and if you find they're not playing in your city then you're not going to buy a ticket. So the Curiosa show is The Cure playing with a lot of... I think every band on the bill is worth going to see on their own. So I'm hoping the overall day, as an experience, will be a really powerful thing. And my five favourite bands are in the line-up. But I'm not going to be horrible about the other ones. Actually, the most surprising one is Muse. They are at the point where in America they could be doing huge shows; they're just at that point. So it's very good that they're playing, I think they're playing ten shows with us. We end up playing with Muse every year in Europe, it's become a tradition! I think we're playing with them in two weekends' time. I'm looking forward to it; it could be a very enjoyable summer. It's very selfish, the whole thing, it's really just me getting my favourite bands playing all on stage, standing on the side with a cold beer, watching. Why not? I wish I hadn't said that. It's not true.
J#9: In the previous albums you often got inspirations from books or your dreams. And since maybe "Disintegration" it seems not to be the case anymore. I mean it seems to be more and almost only your every day life. Do you think that artistic stuff is less interesting than it was before or...?
Or it could be that I am less forthcoming about literary references. The album was going to be called "The View from Nowhere", which is a book by Thomas Nagel. That book inspired the opening song Lost. There are a couple of literary references, actually, Truth Goodness and Beauty is one. But I'm less forthright about it because I think it's more interesting when people discover it whereas in the past maybe it grew out of an insecurity I had that I had to prove that I read books. (laugh) Or maybe I was just more forthcoming. I don't know, I think also I became aware that I was reading books and making notes in the margins and that it was taking some of the enjoyment out of reading so now if I go back to something, I'm away and I'm going to go back and think "Oh I could use that"... And also you said "just my own life" but as my life gets longer I find that there is more I can draw on whereas I suppose when I was in my twenties I hadn't done as much. It's four years since I wrote the songs for "Bloodflowers", it's four years of stuff. But yeah, I do still read, honestly. (laugh) | | | | | | | |
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