November 1992 by Jean & Mad
French fanzine Three Imaginary boys
Translated in english from french by Mad
TIB interviews are privileged moments, and insights deeper than we can find in the media. These interviews often take place outside of normal promotional periods , and try to present a different side of The Cure. Bercy's backstage provided the starting point for these series of rendez-vous. From the tentative meeting in the fascinating atmosphere of The Prayer Tour, an irrepressible attraction to this exercise lead us to renew the experience, first in the recording studios during the Wish demos, then on the following tours. You'll read in this chronicle, extracts from the most significant words gathered as the years go by... (http://www.thecure.com/tib.html)
Madrid, near the end of the tour, Robert looks over the assessment and draws the conclusion. With calm and serenity he comments the different events which happened during the eight months of the Wish Tour, and talks about the secret sides of travels and gigs, his feeling towards the audience, his thoughts about fans, the way he's working out the set lists drawing the portrait of a year on the road with its details and secrets
After more than 50 concerts what is your overall feelings at this point of the tour?
I think it's been distinctly 4 different tours. It hasn't felt like a world tour. The British dates, the American dates, the Australian dates and then the European have been four very distinct tours, they had their own nature. I think it's partly because of the nature of the countries and the nature of the fans and the venues and also the nature of the crew and what I just been saying particularly on the European Tour because of what happened to Simon. When we start on the British dates, there was this kind of energy level, just going on and playing small places and turn around in the bus, it was just exactly like it was ten years ago, it was a really good atmosphere.
In America, that was actually my favourite tour that I've ever done, the American tour, I really really enjoyed it. Obviously there were some things I didn't like, some nights but overall, generally the atmosphere for me was very good. Here's an awful lot, in a tour of that length, there's always gonna be things going wrong, there's always arguments on people sort of falling out and tension and stuff... but I found that I prepared for that tour really well mentally, I just ignored everything that was going wrong apart from one or two nights when I felt like giving up and going home, that was really good, certainly in the first couple of weeks...
Mexico was a sort of weird mixture, a bit like South America. I was a memorable experience but all the time I was there I was just thinking I'd be laughing of this once that we get out of Mexico. I must admit it wasn't as enjoyable as I thought it would be. I suppose as being hit on the face on stage. If that hadn't happened, I'd pretty would have better memories but even the audience didn't seem... In South America, the audience seemed that they generally want to see us... And I think in Mexico it's much more the feeling that very few groups play there so they are going to see anyone which was also the case obviously in Argentina and Brazil. The people on the audience on the photographs were wearing Elton John, Queen, Iron Maiden T-shirts, the people that had been there before. They looked like they had more into it. I don't know in Mexico, they are strange race, it's a very difficult country to live in it I imagine. And there's always the kind of weird feeling of guilt going to places like South America or Mexico, you're going to play a concert and taking money of them, it doesn't matter how good you are, you still feel, I feel certainly guilty, but then we have been asked to go and play there, we sold a lot of records so ...
And the audience enjoys seeing you...
Yeah, I'm not trying to make it sounds bad but the reaction was really good, it's just how I felt. It probably would have been better if we determined to play in Mexico that we had taken a week and we played like three concerts, maybe two in Mexico City and one in Monterey or three smaller places. I think it would have been better because what happened is that we played to 40000 but at least 10 maybe 20000 had to travel from Mexico City to Monterey. So I supposed looking back we should have cancelled one or two Southern American states dates and to play like a couple more nights in Mexico.
Australia which happened in between was actually the turning point, I think because I went out a lot in Australia. I went out most on every single night playing pool, I went out drinking, because I knew we had three weeks that I tried to cram everything in, I thought that however bad I might feel I'll be going home in three weeks. That was actually quite an emotional three weeks. I got very tired and some of the shows suffered I think because of that, which is just proved the reason why I don't go out because if the concerts suffered, it doesn't make very much the point, it doesn't make sense, I can't no longer stay up to like 7 on the morning drinking and expect the next day to be a good show because I just feel like I want to die. A lot of Australia was superficially really good fun but there was a strange kind, there was something missing in Australia, I don't know, the atmosphere at that point I think, that's when I realise it started to deteriorate a little bit.
I think in a bigger picture of what happened this year, is that definitely with all that been going on outside the group or around the group with the personal traumas had been going on, we've lost it..., on the Prayer Tour it was much more a sense of a family as we travelled around the entourage never drop off a dozen people and sometimes it was up to sixteen people. That side of touring is not really being there this year, I think everyone else is quite happy for that to have gone in a strange way, they don't really miss it but I really do miss it. I miss that. It was like an excitement, not to do with playing concert but just like travel on the bus or going out for meals you know. It isn't really there I start to realise in Australia that it's quite an important part of what The Cure do, for me anyway; I don't think that is pretty true for everyone else.
So I think that when we start this tour in Scandinavia, when we came back from the short break from Australia, it was obvious that Simon was getting really ill, right from the first concert. I couldn't believe how bad he looked when we started. I knew, I imagine to be honest on this very early on, I thought something is going to happen probably before we even reach Germany because we had a lot of long journeys. I thought something would happen that would cause someone to go home. I didn't know who it's gonna be, I knew it wouldn't be me because I'm not allowed to go home but there has been through the tour a kind of simmering conflict it's never really been good. It's born out of frustration. It's like frustration manifests itself in strange ways and from certain amount of the entourage, the frustration with basically with what Simon was doing to himself. He showed himself in very aggressive ways because I wish I could from time to time I've sympathised with because it's really difficult when there is someone that you like, that you love a lot, and you try to make them do something, you try to make them see what they're doing is wrong and they pay no attention to you. Then eventually your patience went out and you just feel like hating that person because that's almost like they're throwing everything good back at you. You know it's like everything that you might have had that was good they're just denying that it was over there. I don't know in one way I think I should have probably brought things ahead earlier. I shouldn't have wait for Simon to be so bad that he had to be flown home to hospital but my relationship with Simon is different to anyone else's in the group. There is a feeling in the group that we, maybe certainly more professional in the way I approached the group. I don't know, I'm not sure... Teddy would probably feel the same as me, probably the closest to how I feel. The Cure means more than just going on stage and performing well. It has to be something more otherwise it's boring for us, we become less than I think we are but it has to be an element of that. You can't think just because we are The Cure we can go on stage and just fuck about for an hour because I wouldn't find it acceptable so it's just like a difficult marriage of the two ideas and I was trying to deny that side of it was slipping away and in fact, we were going on stage and maybe the half of two hours and a half wasn't really that good. And everyone has saying "we know why it's not good" and I knew why it wasn't good and I knew why it was getting worse but I didn't want to admit it which maybe I should have done. I don't know this probably would have been the shock that Simon needs and has needed for a while... I hope it hasn't...
So it has coloured this tour really there'd been some fucking brilliant nights, haven't said all that. I think that some are probably the most intense concerts that we've done all year, being on this particular tour, on the European tour. Not the three nights in Paris, the three nights wouldn't have happened if everyone in the group have been happy or in a good mood all the time, I don't think we would have been tempted to do what we've done in Paris, I don't think it would have been that kind of intensity on stage. Some good comes out of it, but it's an awful price to pay really. I like the America product because I think we've reach the point as a group we were playing on stage, when we did Texas Stadium in Dallas I thought it was a really fucking brilliant concert, just the way that we managed to play to that many people in the way that we did and still play a good concert. I admit that I feel like I've done something, I really enjoy that feeling. I suppose that's the two ends of the aspects of the three nights at the Zenith and the Texas Stadium and I enjoyed both at a very very different reasons.
But overall since April, I just feel it has been a very long time. It seems much longer than six months or seven months. It seems like about twenty.
What is still the most difficult thing for you when touring?
I felt the two most difficult things are not drinking on my days off and everyone else does because I know that the next day I'll suffer or the concert will suffer and that and getting up, I hate getting up, it's still what I hate more on tour and also the feeling that you never really get very much time, you never really get enough time to actually do anything. Even days off are spent travelling and it's just an unsettle feeling. I have my inside a journey like 90 percent of the time on tour just through, a kind of mild stress, really. It's free choice so...
Touring could be the routine, what makes you feel fresh and motivated?
Various things I supposed. Try to introduce new songs from time to time but even that kind of told of ???, it is a real struggle for me to say to the others "let's do some new songs". But I don't know really but I don't complain.
In a strange way it's about to football really 'cause on this tour, I had the all American football and the English football and sports nights sent out on videos that keep me up and I just got a sofa in which I watch that for an hour or two hours in the bus in a six hours journey. I feel like I'm keeping track with what's going on in the outside world. We get the papers, the newspapers, the Sunday's papers, and magazines sent over. I don't know there's various like just small ways of trying to break up the routine but ultimately you can't because the routine is there. We get a call an hour before we have to leave our hotel then we have to be on the bus, and then we go to the next place and we usually go straight to the venue, we do a soundcheck; it's all similar, in one way the routine is the only thing that keeps you sane. For me arriving in a place and having like a few beers and just trying to work myself up for the concert is part of the routine which if I didn't have if we stayed in the hotel until half nine and then arrive to the concert at ten and I made up to go on stage, I would hate that. It would upset my routine. So there is certain parts of the routine that I think is beneficial but the tedium is just the travelling, but I mean that's touring. If you didn't have to travel it would be fucking excellent. All things would be brilliant fun, I still despise travel, the occasional Journey it can be really exciting in a right company. We travel luxuriously, we're on the bus with everything we want but there's still a sense that it's a wasted day, it's dead time, the time we spent travelling.
What are you usually thinking before going on stage? Any rite?
I still try imagine if I was in the audience.
So what do you think?
If we're playing on a Monday night somewhere and I'm feeling a bit miserable I try to imagine that we haven't been to that place maybe for years and there's people who have never seen us and I try to put myself in a ??? just because it's on Monday and I'm feeling hangover, it doesn't matter. It's a way of combating a kind a lethargy, really. But it's difficult. I don't try to sight myself up thinking "this is it, this is it" because I take it for granting, everyone goes on stage with the idea it's gonna be a good concert, it would be fucking tragic. There are occasions when you must know there's a very difficult atmosphere backstage, there have been occasions on this tour, that everyone can't wait to get the concert over with and get back to the hotel or go to a bar or something. That really makes me angry but the only thing that really makes me very angry on tour is that people are trying to get the concert out of weight. Because for me, it's the only reason why we're here. If the concert is bad, it affects me so much because I think because everything had been a complete waste of time, the all journey there, getting ready for it, having the crew set and everyone come to the concert and then it's a bad concert and you've got to get to the next place, the whole day is just ruined. So I hate if anyone shows the attitude like "Oh, I'm a bit tired, let's get home, let's not play too many songs", it really makes me angry. But I don't know, I don't really have to work myself up for the concert because it's the only thing of the day that I do that is physical. I'm very slovenly during the rest of the day. It's also a nice feeling of release being up to that scream and shout for a couple of hours, it's why I really don't get that stressed too much. Everyone should try two hours of screaming.
But I guess you don't have the same feeling if you played in Paris for example?
That's like an extra feeling if you're playing like a particular concert, in a particular city and you can feel that it's gonna be a special concert. We knew that the all three nights in Paris, it would have been very difficult for us to not have made them good because everyone wanted them to be good. The other good thing about the Zenith which is why it was a really good choice of venue because whole of the backstage area was open, you could feel the atmosphere as a whole, you're actually part of the atmosphere, some like this, that's why I like going out to see the Cranes most every night. It's partly because I like listening to them but it's also because it gives you a sense of the atmosphere of the whole, rather than just walk or something like this straight on stage, it can be quite a serial experience and sometimes it can take all night to go over it. You don't feel like a part of it, you feel like you have been looked at all the time. Unless if you really watched someone else on stage performing you feel like a part of the audience a bit more. It's another way I'm trying, I see the way the Cranes perform and I think I can do that.
And on stage, what is the best moment for you usually?
I think, singing the last verse in "End", it's my favourite moment. And I like when it goes into Porl's guitar solo in "From The Edge of the Deep Green Sea", because all the lights on stage just make me... it's a really good feeling. But singing the last verse of "End" because I sing so hard that I can't see, that's my favourite.
The end of "A Forest"
The stuffs on the encores, I still feel that when we've done "End", when we come off, the next part of the concert is always feel completely different to me. Almost all of my emotional release comes in "End" and after that, a lot of the songs that we do generally are like the up songs and they're like encore songs and I become much more aware of the audience and I feel, I suppose I had some help after drinking a bottle of red wine I feel much more relax on stage. I sort of enjoy it in a more idiot manner. But sometimes the most intense stuffs come towards the end of the encores when everyone is getting tired and everyone let's start to let go a bit, that can be really good feeling. We've done a couple versions of "Forever" which have been brilliant I think, and a couple versions of "A Forest" which have been brilliant on this tour. We've got everything on tape but I've never listened to it. But I'm glad that we taped Paris, because I think there is some forms on there that it would be difficult for us not necessarily to be but to ever catch that, that kind of feeling again. I'm glad we did the film in America and not in Europe because we would have looked fucking dreadful if we have done it in Europe. At least in America, it sounds like if it was a lie.
But you played less old songs in America.
Yeah. I think it's partly true that the audience in America is younger than it is here.
Here too...
But I think there's greater a part of the audience that is still in love with The Cure in Europe than there is in America. I think in America, we tend to attract a younger audience that loves The Cure and the old ones sort of like they remind of the days gone by, but now they're into like REM, they sort of move on, they still like us and listen to us but the main age group of people that would die for the group is generally younger like in Europe. It's like twenties or older, the people that are around backstage waiting outside and asking for autographs tend to be older in Europe than in America. In America, they looked like they are about 13, or maybe they have their face changed by the time they're 25 but they do seem younger. Maybe it's because there's so many of them.
It's strange because they began to listen to The Cure in 1987 and now they want to hear more old songs?
In a strange way, I suppose it's difficult as being part of the group to understand people who want to hear the old songs, they didn't necessarily have to being born when we released those songs, it's like when we went to see the Rolling Stones in 1974, I wanted them to play all their old stuffs, that when I was about 7 years old I've heard it and I supposed it's the same kind of things, I suppose people who come to see The Cure they may want to hear what we play before they were going to concerts, before they knew who we were, but that's very difficult to grasp that because most of the time, if you ask anyone in the group immediately who wants to hear the old songs, they'd said the old fans but it probably isn't true, it's probably the younger fans who wants to hear the old songs. But generally the question about old and new, it's about where you draw the line, I think that generally our songs, I think the better songs that I ever write later or.... From The Head On The Door onwards, we've made better music and far better songs that we did up to The Head On The Door. There are occasional really good songs from the old days but at the time of doing it, they were done for a reason and they couldn't have been any better. Seventeen Seconds works as an album because it's very naïve, but the songs writing on it, I mean for me now if I wrote those songs now, I would be really disappointed in half of them. They would never get passed the demo stage. I'll play them at home and say no. Not because I have done it before but because I think there's not enough there. But when we were doing the album, I didn't want anything to be there, so partially the way that I think of what we do and how I think how I've progressed lyrically as much as anything else. But I think it's also true. The group which have existed rather with Michael or with Simon, Matthew or even the three pieces of Simon and Lol, we could never have written or performed a song like "The Deep Green Sea", it'd been completely beyond us. I couldn't have written it and we couldn't have played it, I mean Simon and me probably could have played it but not Lol.
What do you feel when playing old songs, do you have the same pleasure like when you sing the pop songs?
No it's a balance. It's a difficult balance to make like doing the set and decide for the encores, the first three songs that we learned with Roberto for the encores in Marseille were "Primary", because he liked it and wanted to play it, "Boys Don't Cry" and "A Forest", so all three were old songs and they're like established favourites and the next three we learned were "Lovesong", "Close To Me" and "Why Can't I Be You" because they are also liked and I think not just because of the songs, but because people know that in that part of the set, I can wander about, I'm not tied to the microphone, so this is much for live performance of the group and for me to wander about singing as it is for the song. I sort of feel that maybe it isn't that important what song we do, as long as I walked about with the mike and it's got to make me feel good, for just like five or six minutes. If we tried to play old songs in the sense of "you must listen to this, this is important", it would be really boring, it will be boring for the audience as well. There might be handful of people who would find it very intense, very rewarding. But I don't think as a group to do that night after night, we would just loose it, that was just going with emotions, I think it's good that there's few and far between, but there are occasions, and there have been occasions through all the concerts we've played, that we were suddenly throwing out an old song and if you're there, you hear it and if you're not, it's tough but... Before the end of the tour, we will do "The Drowning Man" but when we will do it and where? We will do "The Same Deep Water As You" probably in a next concert, but now Roberto, after few nights feel like settled in, we would probably learn a couple of songs that maybe we haven't done before like "The Upstairs Rooms" songs that maybe more suit to like his style of bass playing, so we would all have to learn a couple of new songs because I thought it'll raise the temper of the group, raise the atmosphere on another notch, if everyone else think of what they are doing. It's a good opportunity to end the tour positively rather than everyone just think: "Oh no, let's just get to the end of the tour..." because we're going to get to the end of the tour so you rather enjoy it so we should start doing some weird stuffs. I think which is probably again a positive way of looking of what's happened because if Simon was there and struggling to get through, we wouldn't be adding any new songs, we were just trying to get to the end of the tour, hopping that Simon was not going to collapse. Also it's only fair if Roberto has learned all that songs in a day that Teddy can learn the keyboard line to "The Same Deep Water As You" and I can remember the words, that the least we can do.
Today, the Cure's music is various but there's still people thinking you're a gloomy band.
The media always will, no matter what we did. I could wear a clown's hat, and a red nose and they'd still think that we're a goth band. I doesn't matter, it's like a convenient root criticism, it's a very simplistic view of the group but it will always be there. I've always considered that the NME's attitudes towards The Cure was easy to dismiss because they've never really be quite sure why people like us or what we do. There are things about the group, particularly about me, about my public persona, which I could myself find really irritating. And I've said I've done some very embarrassing things but no more than anyone else. If you imagine if you were me and you were reading something in the NME, and you could read Morrissey was like the saver of the world and in the same page I was a complete dick head, you would have to make up your mind whether it was true or not, I'm sort of thinking, well given the choice having what I have read about me and what I've read about him, I would apply for me. So then you have to decide the person who write is being unfair. That's the sort of attitude of the media towards the group and towards me but I think a lot is directed at me. I don't think it is directed at the group. I don't think a lot of the people who criticise The Cure had bothered to listen to The Cure. They just look at me or a picture of me or they've read something I've said, they decide that I'm an idiot and then they say "Oh The Cure... is this gloomy band". But I actually get quite a lot of enjoyment out of that. ...They rely on 75 per cent of what they have read about the group and they just recycled it with maybe a couple of new quotes and couples of observations on the concerts but rather than upset me, it makes me laugh, they're so... pompous is not the right word, they're so foolish.
But it must bother you if people say a lot of wrong things because it gives a wrong image of you?
I supposed but I think with the advent of television particularly, well having reached the level where I had access to do television interviews, I mean I could do a lot more, I could do it all the time, when I'll do them, if people see those that's the only way they could get an accurate picture of what I'm like because it can't be distorted. Usually people are surprised when they see me in an interview on a television interview, when they see me talk. At least if I say something stupid, if I go wrong in a television interview, it's me going wrong but no one else... but doing a press interview it's like doing a television interview behind a screen with someone else's out front and making faces, because you can make someone sound or look whoever you want. I feel sorry more for people that don't have that kind of access because the written media particularly got much more power, once you break through in a certain level, unless it doesn't really matter that much if you're criticise? It doesn't to me.
This image of Goth band!
But that was if I wasn't able to do television interviews. If I had always refused it, people may have believed that. I can't even remember how I'm supposed to have manage to cultivate that particularly. Apart from my brief time with The Banshees when I was wearing a crucifix...
Do you feel sometimes going round and around especially now that you have a long career ? Do you try to do always something else ?
I felt for the first time this year that we've been subject exactly to exactly the same routine that we did around The Prayer Tour and Disintegration which is why I know that I won't do this again because there are others things I want to do. When we were doing the Wish album, whatever I said it doesn't mean I would have done it differently because doing an album and what follow down for me is one of the best part of being in a group or one of the best part. Just all that happened. There's been so much going on. It's been really interesting apart from anything else. But, I didn't want to tour with this album. I was the lone decenting voice in the Manor before Christmas, and I tried really hard for us not to go on tour and the others wanted to go on tour. But it's funny 'cause it ends up I'm to blame 'cause it's too long. Once we decided, a democratic decision, that we were gonna tour, I was more than happy about it and I tried to enjoy it and probably I've enjoyed it more because of that, because I know that I'm here and I haven't set it all up and a lot of that pressure has been taken of me. I know what you mean, we're always visiting the same places. We've tried to make a different bite, by going to Mexico, by going to Australia introduced an element we've never done before.
Do you have the same feeling when you're writing music ?
No. I think it would be difficult. I thought this after Disintegration, I thought it would be difficult, I thought it would be the last album. I supposed in some ways it was because it took like two and a half years to get to the point where we were happy to record the new album but what is difficult is that you sort of looking to do something and you can't find what you want to do or you sort of half perform it but you can't get there and you can't understand why and that kind of difficult there never being apparent. The songs from Wish didn't all come from me. When we were listening do each others demos like "High" was Simon's demo, "Trust" was from Teddy's demo, and "Apart" from Boris' demo so there was things going on outside what I was doing which like intends for me to do. So it wasn't difficult, whatever I do I won't stop playing. I'm still gonna have some home writing and sit and record things, I won't not have a music room at home just because...
Next year, the nature of the group is going to change anyway. There's people in the group who won't be in the group next year whether the group exists at all again, it won't be with this line up anyway. So things will change. Next year, we've decided between five of us that the next year we will have off.
I think it's really good. It would be sad if we had been selfish about it, if there was no courage in the group to decide you want to try to do something else, it'd be awful, if we were stuck together and "what shall we do now ?"..."Oh let's do an album..." because what other options have we got ? What else can we do ? It's much healthier like for everyone to say it's a good point like to stop working and this kind of life and for everyone to decide what they want to do and next year, we will be there for everyone to decide at the end of next year, we will see who has left. If anyone wants to carry on, but we definitely won't carry on without being doing it anyway, because I don't want to and it would be impossible for them to do it without me so... But when I said that around the time of The Prayer Tour, it was born out of real anger and this time isn't, it's just actually I want to try to do something else. I personally want to see if I can do something else, I think it's a very natural instinct. I know I can do it, if I can't do this, I'll fucking die, I don't really want to...
...the group has been everything since I left school, I've never done anything else. I've read a lot of books but I've never actually attempted to do anything else. It's just pretty tragic really, I think. It isn't really because what I've done is...
But if you like what you are doing...
I do but I don't necessarily have to stop because the part I really love more than anything is the part where I sit at home and I'm able to just write a piece of music which I'll never stop. I couldn't, even if I'd certainly not recording music. I'd really like to be involved and do another album, I'd really love the group to finish the Music for Dream's album, I think it would be really good but I don't expect everyone just falling behind me to finish it. I'm sure that Teddy would be happy to because he's just started.
I don't know I think it's time that we had like a sabbatical, because we could like just carry on next year, we could pick up from this point, you've got people like Bill saying: "Oh, you're at your pick, you sell more records, you've got to play for more people, you can only get better and get bigger" but all the bases are the same it's like, "you can make a lot of money"...
You think now that your are successful, you don't have anything to prove...
I don't think I ever had anything to prove really. I would have been quite happy to have stopped at the time, apart after Three Imaginary Boys, I would have been disgusted if it has been my only testimony to music but after Seventeen Seconds, if it had been the only album we were able to make, I'd still think to myself "Alright, I was the one who did the album Seventeen Seconds", I'd be really pleased to have just done that. There hasn't really been the case of proving things to anyone else, I suppose, it had just been only proving things to myself and I've reached the point where I don't need to prove to myself: I can do this and I can do it well; and it sounds complaisant and it sounds big headed but I sort of know, I think particularly since the Kiss Me album, Disintegration and the Wish album, those three albums put together are really good albums...
I've also think to be in the position that we're in after this amount of time, to actually still have this nebulous think of credibility, in varying degrees in varying countries but still not considered like an old group. That is really good. We could never had dream we've been able to achieve that, that always mean to me as much as the music, the way that I perceive us when I think about it but I think we're in great danger of loosing that side of the group if we were just to carry on and carry on, it would be you know, everywhere we go this is the same to me "Oh please don't stop, please come back" but there has to be a point where you've got to be selfish about it. We now have to be selfish about it because I don't want to spend the next year writing songs for a new album with then it will take a year and then we'll spend the next year and I'll be like 35 or 36 and it'd be 1995 and we will be on tour again. It could make myself really depressed to think I could just let myself do that.
Is it the final split ?
What do you mean by split ? This line up of The Cure with or without Roberto, with or without Simon won't play again, no, so in that sense, the group will split, yes but amicably which is usually use as a pretend word but in this instance it's true. Between us we've talked about why we were doing it and what we want to do next and there was like just differences, there are ambitions in the group which are outside of music and mine was one of them. I'm not the main reason why the group will or won't split. But I know I won't stop playing music, we do must guaranty that there will be another Cure album but it won't be this line up, it probably won't follow on from the obvious progression from the Kiss Me, Disintegration, Wish album. There would be something completely different and it would be probably hated by ninety percent of our fans, so we won't be able to go on tour anyway because no one would want to come to see us, because we would be sitting in a circle on a carpet playing sitar and acoustic guitars. We could just like book the dressing room while someone else is on stage.
You used to say since 87 at the end of each tour that it will be the last, so what are you going to say at the end of this one ?
I think before, the great motivated reasons behind why I've been so depressed and why I've said I'll never do it again it's because I've hated what happens to me on the tour, which is I drink far too much and I take drugs and I get very depressed and usually it's because something going on within the group or a member or a couple members of the group, make an atmosphere so bad and no longer think it worthwhile and now as the things happened this year, I haven't taken too many drugs and I haven't drunk too much and there's no one in the group that made a bad atmosphere, by the time we'll get to Dublin, we'll all be as friendly with each other as we were as the start of the tour, I guaranty that because everyone knows that my reasons for not wanting to tour again are not base out of anger or frustration or depressing, it's just that I just want to try to do something else and I know that if I commit myself to The Cure continuing in this present form that effectively means the next three years are planned out for me. This is a pretty horrible thing in one way is very reassuring and I've always had that and in some way it's undermined probably what I started out as, which is not ever wanting to know what I was gonna do even the next day but it turns like such a big things as I have to know what we will do even next year and I can't imagine knowing what I will be doing in three years time, that would makes me really depressing, very angry, very frustrated, so that is turned completely in this head so I know that I won't be doing this again but not for the same reasons, there are absolutely different reasons. At this point, on The Prayer Tour, I was hysterical, I was tiring my hair out at the end of the tour but I feel quite unhappy of what happened to Simon.
It's the first time that I'm aware of the fact that I'm getting older. Just in the sense that what we are doing I think there are ways of performing on stage, ways of playing that it doesn't matter how old you are, and you can do it, and you can put out and even you can get better but there are certain things which can only work when you're young. What's wrong with most groups who are just trying to keep going despise their age it to try to pretend they're still young and that's when it gets really embarrassing.
I have to realise that I've reached the point, in three years time, when we'll be on tour, I'll feel horribly uncomfortable trying to pretend that I'm the same as I was even now, or when we did The Prayer Tour. I would just not feel right. We're in a position we are able to choose what we do, we don't have to worry about if it's going to work or not, whether I suppose a lot of groups just keep going because they 're not enough honest to think "we're not only do it because we're enjoying it, we're doing it because we don't know how to do anything else" and that's what I don't want us to get of doing. I don't want The Cure who just does it because we're good in what we do but don't dare to try to do anything else whether if it'd be individually or just like. But again I think it's a positive think because I think everyone in the group realise that choice is there, we're not sort of brain damaged, like Bill he seriously imagined that we're listening to him "You're at your pick now, you can only going on up" and everyone just say "Oh Fuck off", everything about this is really positive I don't have any bad feelings about the notion of us stopping to tour apart from the ones that Mary has which are..., there is a side of it which is really good, it's like being on school holiday for like weeks of a time, with people you like and you can do what you want , all the good sides of touring, it's like this, it isn't like when you're on your own, you don't have to worry about anything, people look after you all the time, make sure you get somewhere, particularly me...
Madrid, November 6, 1992