October 2001 by Paul Cantin
Jam! SHOWBIZ
The Cure's upcoming best-of set will be the band's last major label release, as the group experiments with making its music available through the Internet.
Leader Robert Smith told JAM! Music that The Cure's major-label contract has expired and he's in no hurry to climb back into bed with a big record company.
"I have grown pretty tired of having to ask six people (at a label) whether I can do something," Smith said by telephone from his home in England.
"I am in my 40s. It is starting to grate. The spontaneity has disappeared. I thought with the state of the Internet, it is the perfect opportunity for me and the band to do stuff, without consulting."
Once promotional obligations for The Cure's "Greatest Hits" set (released by in Canada by Warner Music on Nov. 13) have been met, Smith and company will experiment with using the 'Net for releasing new material.
"I think that is a fantastic thing to be able to do," he explained.
"I don't want to just sign to someone for the sake of it. Everything is too slow. Too corporate. I will see how things go. We will have a year away from (the labels) and see how things go," he said, adding that the group hasn't worked out the specifics of how the official website (www.thecure.com) will make the music available.
"We are in the process of thinking how we are going to work it ... we are thinking we could remain unsigned, but do our own music on a very small level, for people who are into it," he said, adding that he's fortunate enough to be in a position where there isn't a strong need to make money off a Net-only release.
"I am in a position materially where it doesn't make a difference if I put up free music. It is not going to make or break what I or the band does," he said.
"I am not sure in the long term if anything will remain that free, because the more you read about how they are going to send the Internet along cables, it is who controls the cable and who controls the flow of information that determines it. You can have whatever you want at your website, but if no one can get there without paying, it isn't free."
Smith traces his disenchantment with the big record companies to a gradual change in thinking that climaxed with the label's handling of the group's last studio album, "Bloodflowers," which he says was "tragically under-promoted."
"Last year, we played to over half a million people, but the record companies did not know where we were on any given Friday, you know? They were not that interested. We made them money, and that was it. There was no one genuinely enthusiastic," he said.
"The music business has never been that great a business, but when I started out, it was more dysfunctional. It was much more fragmented. You could do things relatively fast and get away with it. Nowadays, it is pretty horrendous. The way everything is niche-marketed drives me mad."
As an example of how the industry has changed, Smith says he doesn't own any of The Cure's past recordings in North America. Rights to the music in other territories revert back to the band over time, but North American rights to his music are owned by the label "in perpetuity, because of some f--king ridiculous law they passed a few years ago."
"It was something the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association Of America, the major labels' lobby group) put through. It is so anti-artist, it is incredible. It almost defies belief. I don't own any past Cure material, full-stop, in North America. It reverts back in the rest of the world, but that doesn't help me."
What exactly will constitute Smith's next recordings is also up in the air. He says the group has recorded four new songs, but he has also been working on a solo project that will see him collaborating with a handful of outside artists (although he declines to name them).
Smith said he has prepared two versions of each song earmarked for the solo project, with each version set in a different tempo.
"I'm not sure whether to mix and match them or pick one and discard the other," he said. "It is so easy. I am doing it inside a computer, so that part is good fun. I can just slow the tempo down using different sets of sounds and tweaking things. You kind of get lost in it.
"And I don't have to ditch any of (the music). I can just upload it if I think it is good enough. We don't have to schedule a release four months in advance. It will be quite weird for me to drop the habits of that life."
He likened the competing solo and Cure projects to "a three-legged race -- whoever crosses the line first" will be the next release.
Whatever releases Smith and The Cure come up with in the coming year, the group is hoping to hit the road by late summer next year -- just for the fun of it, because they won't be tied to a major-label release schedule.
"We can just play festivals or small shows. It allows us to be more flexible."