AUGUST

Lovesong / 2 Late was released as a single and it became the band's most important hit in America : number two at the Billboard charts and leading them to play in baseball stadiums there. A video was made for the song, Robert admitted it looked "cramped and posed". It was shot in a warehouse in Wandsworth, London. Originally, they wanted to make it at the Cheddar Gorge but didn't get the permission to.

The group then crossed the Atlantic ocean travelling on the Queen Elizabeth II as Robert Smith wouldn't take a plane, to play in North America. They arrived to New York to perform in front of 50,000 screaming fans. Quite a shock with the Cure's singer declaring he didn't know what to say to so many people.

The live repertoire in the US was lighter than the one in Europe : The Perfect Girl would often replace Charlotte Sometimes and Faith was only played once. The regular set list was the following (including the encores) :

Plainsong, Pictures Of You, Closedown, Piggy In The Mirror, A Night Like This, Just Like Heaven, Last Dance, Fascination Street, Lovesong, Charlotte Sometimes, The Walk, A Forest, In Between Days, The Same Deep Water As You, Prayers For Rain, Disintegration - Lullaby, Close To Me, Let's Go To Bed, Why Can't I Be You ? - Homesick, Untitled - A Strange Day, Hot Hot Hot, Three Imaginary Boys, Boys Don't Cry, 10:15 Saturday Night, Killing An Arab.

Overall the tour was good (although the set lists wouldn't vary much) but backstage the atmosphere wasn't the greatest. Robert would write the lyrics to Open there, too much pressure, too many things he didn't want. He declared later that it was never the band's intention to get so big.

On stage, Robert would often point out that Last Dance was about "meeting a woman you haven't seen for years in a Chinese restaurant". But more or less admitted, towards the end of the tour, that it was a bit of a lie. Just like his story of the band attacked by a dog in the lift backstage.


SEPTEMBER

06th
Los Angeles, Universal Ampitheatre, MTV Awards
The Cure played Just Like Heaven live for the MTV awards ceremony. Robert was drinking to kill the time until they got on stage (late). One can wonder how he managed to make it through the song as he ended up quite drunk. The band also bumped into Paula Abdul dancers backstage. Later, Robert would mention her album of remixes as music he listened to.

08th
Los Angeles, Dodgers Stadium
The most attended show of the tour with 55,000 people. Robert explained to the media the motivation behind playing this huge stadium : seeing if they were able to do it. He also revealed later that they stayed in Newport Beach ("where the old people come to die") having ice-creams, playing football and hiding from the fans.

Also in Los Angeles, a group of teenagers arrived to the venue in a limo pretending to be the Cure ! This quite illustrates the level of popularity the group reached in North America.

23rd
Mansfield, Great Woods Amphitheatre
That was supposed to be the last concert of the band ever and it was supposed to be filmed too. But it didn't happen. Rare songs were played that night : Catch, Cold, Faith, The Figurehead, One Hundred Years, M, Forever. For that last track, Forever (a premiere that year) the members of Shelleyan Orphan joined the Cure on stage, Caroline Crawley doing back vocals. At the end of the show, Robert told the crowd : "I'll never see you again" with relief, thinking he was done with touring.


DECEMBER

Robert Smith spent the end of the year editing and mixing the tracks that were recorded live in London the past summer. This would eventually turn into a live album later (Entreat). While being in the studio, Robert also recorded a cover of Wendy Waldman's Pirate Ships for an Elektra's 40th anniversary compilation (the band's US record label). The recording was never used actually but a very rough mix was uploaded to the Cure's official website in 2001, before being released (in a more polished mix) on the Disintegration remaster bonus disc in 2010.

And Also The Trees also asked Robert Smith for a remix of their next planned single : The Pear Tree. This USA-only EP was an attempt to export the band there and sadly it didn't really worked out although Robert & Mark Saunders' remix was good.


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