November 2001 by Paul Cantin
Jam! SHOWBIZ
Up until very recently, The Cure's Robert Smith believed that best-ofs and greatest hits albums were suitable only as tombstones for dearly departed bands.
And for a while, he believed The Cure -- whose "Greatest Hits" set arrives in stores Nov. 13 -- was due to shuffle off this mortal coil.
"I am old enough to think (best-ofs) should come out when the band is dead and buried, and I have changed my mind ... about knocking the group on the head," Smith told JAM! Music recently via telephone from England.
"I imagined last year would be it. I fully expected (the label, Warner Music) to say (they wanted a) greatest hits. But by the time they said that, I was halfway thinking about what the next Cure record is going to be.
"It doesn't seem right, to have a Cure greatest hits. So now I have to think this is 'Greatest Hits Part One,' and the 'Greatest Hits Part Two' will be out in 2015 or something.
"It's not the most likely thing, but anything is possible, I suppose."
At least part of Smith's optimism about the future comes from his realization that he can imagine the group continuing to make music without the participation of a major label, but rather with a heavy reliance on releasing music through the Internet.
As he previously told JAM! Music, he has grown weary of the sluggish pace and unwieldy hierarchy at major record companies, and he now looks forward to moving quickly to make his music available directly to Cure fans.
Smith said when he was first approached about the possibility of the "Greatest Hits" set, he opposed the idea, because he wanted the group's two previous singles collections (1986's "Staring At The Sea" and 1997's "Galore") to stand as authoritative.
"I could have vetoed it, but there were other considerations," Smith said.
Chief among those considerations was the fact that the band's last studio album, "Bloodflowers," was their final release under their pact with Warner. Yet because the label will continue to control the band's catalogue, there was always the chance that, at some time in the future, the label could cobble together a compilation without their participation.
"I figured at some point, someone is going to try it. I thought, at least this way, I can pick the running order, we can put a few new songs on it, and we can ... make it a little more interesting and kind of enthuse fans a little more," he said.
First off, Smith insisted the set include two new songs. One of the new tracks, "Just Say Yes" was initially demoed for last year's album "Bloodflowers."
"I thought we might need it, as ('Bloodflowers') got too dismal, but that took away from the atmosphere we were building. I shelved it and then I went back to it, but I could not get it right," he said.
"Once you have demoed things and then discarded them, it is almost unheard of us to reuse them. That's why we did it as a duet, to attack it in a different way. We reworked it in a weekend. I called (Republica singer) Saffron. She was the most lively person I knew who could sing, and she made the song work."
The other new song, "Cut Here," was written about the late Billy Mackenzie, best known as singer of '80s U.K. act The Associates. Mackenzie, a friend of Smith's for more than 20 years, killed himself in 1997.
"I kept passing on the opportunity to sit down and have a drink with him, have a chat," Smith said. "I was very regretful. I had never used the words. I wrote them down to get it out of my system.
"I thought it might be a good opportunity to actually sing something with a bit more emotional weight. The singles are a bit glib, because I think they have a better chance of getting airplay.
"It is nice to sing a song that meant something, and to think it is going to be a single is a good thing. Strangely enough, it turned out to be the record company's favourite one (of the new songs)."
But simply adding two new songs wasn't enough. Smith wanted to sweeten the "Greatest Hits" deal by adding a limited-edition bonus disc. Initially, The Cure had hoped to make a new album filled with radical remakes of the singles.
"We were toying with the idea of doing something polished, doing reinterpretations of the hits; doing something modern or doing something in a different way," he said.
Instead, the idea evolved into a disc of acoustic versions of the hits, recorded quick and loose in a single day.
"We rehearsed for about a week before, to make sure everyone knew what they were doing and we were a little bit more relaxed," Smith said.
"We allowed ourselves two shots at each song ... It is a performance thing, so we end up with the two new songs, and it definitely peaks. The last three or four songs, it gets a little loose. It almost falls apart. For us, it was really fun to do. It reminded me of why I wanted to be in a group."
The process of going back through The Cure's singles has given Smith both a fresh perspective on the band's work and a new appreciation for their accomplishments.
"I thought it was going to sound like the worst kind of compilation, going through styles ... Quite a lot of it hasn't dated. It actually has stood up pretty well. 'Let's Go to Bed' sounds of its time, and 'The Walk.' The rest of them sound individual enough not to really sound of their time. That pleases me."
And did anything else jump out at him when he listened back to the collection?
"I realized we have been playing 'Let's Go To Bed' wrong since it has been released," he said. "The bassline has been played wrong for almost 20 years. I still haven't got round to telling them."