JANUARY
04th
Rehearsals for the Seventeen Seconds studio recording
at Robert's parents house : A Forest, Seventeen Seconds, Play For Today, M,
In Your House, Another Journey By Train, At Night. All instrumental versions.
11th
More rehearsals at Robert's parents house : Secrets,
The Final Sound, Untitled (A Reflection). Both rehearsal sessions were recorded
on a two-track reel to reel.
13th to 20th
London, Morgan studios
11 songs were recorded with Mike Hedges as producer. The band actually lived
and slept in the studio because of the limited time that was booked. The budget
was very tight indeed as proved by the recording of the Final Sound (meant
to be a long instrumental piece but the tape reached the end !). Once the
backing tracks were recorded, the band browsed through pages and pages of
lyrics to sort out which ones would fit the music. At Night was largely inspired
by a short Kafka novel with the same title.
FEBRUARY
04th to 10th
London, Morgan studios
Another week in the same studio, but mixing the album this time. Most the
songs were actually mixed "on the second-to-last day" and A Forest
(most produced track) took a large part of the final day.
Boys Don't Cry album release :
a compilation put together by Chris Parry for the American market and consisting
in most songs from Three Imaginary Boys + the singles (Killing an Arab, Boys
Don't Cry, Plastic Passion, Jumping Someone Else's Train) + the unreleased
1978 track World War.
MARCH
3rd
John Peel Session - Maida Vale Studios, London
The band recorded A Forest, Seventeen Seconds, Play For Today, M for the radio
show. A good session with Robert Smith's voice pretty low on the mix to give
to the music all its dimension.
06th
London, Marquee Club
First of the three consecutive nights the band would play in the club and
first show of the year. It was also Secrets' live debut, that song would be
quickly put aside.
The live repertoire from this era consisted in Seventeen Seconds, Play For
Today, Secrets, In Your House, A Forest, M, At Night, Another Journey By Train,
Killing An Arab, 10:15 Saturday Night, Accuracy, Grinding Halt, Subway Song,
Fire In Cairo, Three Imaginary Boys, Boys Don't Cry, Jumping Someone Else's
Train.
14th
Nogent sur Marne, Eurock Festival
A festival held in Paris' suburb. The Cure shared the bill with The Specials
(whom most of the audience came to see). Robert dedicated At Night to Mary
(who probably made the trip).
18th
Crawley, The Lakeside
The band played there for free to try to save one of the places Easy Cure
often played at. Porl Thompson and Frank Bell got on stage for an unsual encore
: I'm A Cult Hero and I Dig You.
23rd
London, Marquee
The Cult Heroes (the Cure + Frank Bell, Porl Thompson...) played their first
and last show. Mostly top 10 covers (T-Rex, Slade, David Cassidy, Gary Glitter)
from the previous years : Do You Wanna Touch Me, 20th Century Boy...
APRIL
5th
A Forest / Another Journey By Train single released on Fiction (FICS 10).
A video for the song was filmed (along
with Play For Today on the same day)
with the group looking quite disaffected.
10th
Short American Tour started (just the East Coast). In
New York, the Punk scene welcomed the Cure that instantly acquired a "cult"
band status there. Debbie Harry (from Blondie fame) also made an appearence
backstage but Robert Smith avoided being pictured with her ! She had quite
a humourous reaction apparently ("your credibility is gone now").
Another "incident" while playing in New York was related in the
local press : In Your House was stopped because of some loudmouth in the audience.
Robert wondered if that was an insult or not and admitted "we come from
England, we don't understand... [americanism]".
20th
Allston, Underground Club
Last night of the tour and a few hours from Robert's birthday. The show was
filmed by local art students.
On the last encore, Robert played some chords from Object to please somebody
in the audience requesting the song. He also improvised the lyrics on Seventeen
Seconds refering to his own birthday ! "21 years / A measure of life".
The song was also dedicated to Mission Of Burma (on the same bill).
The odd facts of the night were the problems with delay pedals on 10:15 Saturday
Night and especially on A Forest vocals, the echo not fading at all. After
the show, Robert broke his thumb while changing a van's wheel on the way to
the airport !
24th
Top of the Pops : A Forest
Simon convinced Robert ("you can't change things if no-one knows who
you are") to appear on the famous TV show where A Forest entered the
chart. Robert Smith had no other choice than to mime the song with a huge
bandage on his finger and everyone looked completely bored on TV. The beginning
of that "us against the world" attitude.
25th
Beginning of the UK Tour (16 dates) supported by The Passions. The Seventeen
Seconds album was also released (FIX 004).
MAY
11th
London, Rainbow Theatre
Final date in the UK. The beginning of the show was a bit weird with an approximative
version of A Reflection - probably not rehearsed enough to this point. It
could also be the first time the band tried it live.
13th
The next five following weeks were spent touring in France, Belgium, Holland,
Germany and Scotland. The live set became slightly different
and M's intro was changed (now starting with guitar instead of bass). The
group also started to play Three with different lyrics whenever they did the
song.
In Berlin, Robert changed the line "Killing An Arab" to "Killing
Kevin Keegan".
Keegan was an English football player part of the Hamburg SV team competing
for the European Championships title against Nottingham Forest on the same
evening.
31st
Herford, Scala
A classic great night on stage. In Your House was for "depth in stereo"
and 10:15 for "everybody English and the squaddies" as apparently
there was an English army base around there. The most interesting part was
Three, played in the encores, dedicated to Simon for his 20th birthday ("in
half an hour"). The party atmosphere in the air brought the band to perform
four encores in total (playing some songs twice).
JUNE
05th
Paris,
Bataclan
Another mythical concert including three encores. On
Three, Robert sang "the other feels grown / How much difference with
me."
The following night in Rouen only included a single
encore but Robert insisted on playing Three again. Calling that night's version
"I Hate Discos" in reference to the place they were playing at. An odd fact was the backstage being right under the
stage ("Get up / Get down").
Then, the group returned to Paris on the 09th and recorded
a live session in RTL radio's Grand Studio (most of the show would be broadcast
on the radio). According to Robert, this concert was filmed. The songs labeled "live in France" on the Seventeen Seconds remaster
bonus CD were taken from this concert.
18th
Glasgow, City Hall
Robert apologised several times to the audience for the sound which wasn't
the best and frustrated everybody on stage. Three Imaginary Boys was dedicated
to "Michael Mc Clusky and his million letters". A local fan, which,
according to the legend, had the nerve of stealing all the band's drinks backstage
!
28th
Veenendaal, Zomer Pop Festival
Part of the show was broadcast on Dutch radio. Fire In Cairo was "dedicated
to God" and 10:15 "not dedicated to God". A Forest was medleyed
with Three for a unique version.
GO TO 1980 PART 2
