Best Robert Dallas 1992

Best, Dallas, Texas Stadium, USA, 13 June 1992

Robert : This tour is better than the last one from 1989. At the time, I wasn't prepared for the importance it had. I was caught by surprise. I couldn't get used to the hysteria that surrounded the group. Lots of things I couldn't control : hotels, fans wandering all night. I couldn't get away, protecting and isolating myself. And there was all these problems in the group, personal ones...

Robert : I was sure the Cure no longer existed on the following months. And then we got an award and we played in some summer festivals. Six months later. It took me six months to make up my mind to go on. But I had decided we weren't going to tour again. Touring became worse and worse with time. Constantly moving, getting up, luggages, getting to the next town. You wake up exhausted. I needed to rest somewhere. I felt sick of it, it was torture. This time, it doesn't seem as disturbing. I feel much better.

Robert : No. It's easier in America. Everything is designed for consumption 24 hours a day. You can stop anywhere, to drink or to eat, hotels are opened day and night. It's physically harder to tour in Europe. There are language differences, customs... Here, I can keep a certain independance. I don't have to pretend I am somebody I'm not.

Robert : It's very weird to be here, to watch your feet in the sun and see people you don't know. As I said before. You have no privacy. It's not only a different mentality. Here or elsewhere, there are people who like the Cure and who understand who we are and what we do. But I suppose in America now, we reached a level where we are entertainers as well. It's Saturday night, people come, they drink beer. It's a challenge for us to do something like that. It's very good. It's a challenge to try to change people's perception of things. To try to get them into our style. People are going to come from nowhere and go back home after seeing the best band they ever saw. Something is going to happen and they'll remember for years. There's people who just come to have fun or to spend a Saturday night without knowing us and they're going to love us.

Robert : I changed my mind. I still think it's a warped and crazy country, like Japan, but at different levels. I don't feel as irritated as I was before here. I was fighting things, being afraid they would get me, but now I tend to laugh about it. I would never put the TV on in the past. I couldn't stand it. Now I watch religious shows. It's fascinating, it's so hopeless. And that's real life, reality in America. So, if I changed my attitude a little, America didn't change at all. I think it was also because we were a small band here and nobody noticed us. We had to prove things all the time. It was us against America. But now they know us, there's less distance and suspicion. I can talk more freely. But it should be a bit true as well in Europe too. In general, I don't feel as threatened as before.

- One can feel that in your music. But also more and more people moan about your poppy sound.

Robert : In tonight's set there's everything : End, Trust, Let's Go To Bed, The Walk. Everything. Because I like to play a variety of styles contrary to a few years ago when we would only play a part of our repertoire. Now it doesn't bother me to play what people want to hear, which never happened to me in the past. There are several songs we would never have played before and I realized people wanted to hear them.

Robert : Let's Go To Bed for exemple. Now I can play that song and assume it. It doesn't bother me to play the pop side of the Cure. But people take that and moan we've simply become a pop band. But the Cure is more than that. This tour is quite heavy. Songs like Cut or End are very "down".

- Friday I'm In Love and End on the same album. It's hard to follow for fans...

Robert : When Disintegration came out, people said it was a light album, not very well conceived and then a year later it was considered again. The same with Wish, people say it's a pop album but in a few months time, they will discover there's a lot of deep things with songs like End, Trust or To Wish Impossible Things. It's one of the saddest song I ever wrote. From this point of view, Wish resembles to Kiss Me or The Head on the Door.

- End makes me think about Killing An Arab, the Camus spirit, the useless side of things.

Robert : End finishes the set every night. But we do encores. I drink a glass or two, before going back on stage and I feel like another person. But the lyrics to End were written during the last American tour. When we recorded it in the studio, I understood what was my state of mind at the time. When we play now, I understand it even more. Singing "stop loving me" in front of thousands of people is delightful. All of a sudden, the audience is captivated. They don't move anymore. It's really good, very powerful. The lyrics were not written for the audience anyway, but for myself. I warn myself to not always believe in what I do, to resist to the public character I am. I'm tempted to write songs just because I'm a songwriter. Something that's admitted. Whereas when I'm writing I want to have people in mind. It would be too easy to write and simply turn this into a song. That would be a betrayal to everything I wanted to do with my life, just writing lines and make them to rhyme. So I warn myself : "Stop loving yourself. Love what you do instead".

- It's quite far from Faith anyway. The style that comes to people's mind when talking about the Cure.

Robert : Yes. It's quite weird how people's minds work. It's really different here in America. Because people like success in America. When we did Lovecats and Let's Go To Bed, it was played on the radio and on MTV and it didn't damage our image, but in Europe, and more specifically in Britain, success and credibility don't match together. But we've always written pop songs since Boys Don't Cry or Jumping Someone Else's Train. Those who criticize us forget we have made hundreds of pop songs in the past.

- But you deliberately played with this pop star image saying you weren't interested in being famous and being on MTV, while writing singles for the radio...

Robert : I'm not a pop star. The group has another dimension. I'd hate to go on stage and sing Let's Go To Bed or Friday I'm In Love all night long. It wouldn't be surprising. We would get applause like any other bands. But playing From The Edge of the Deep Green Sea, it's a different result. It justifies me. And I wouldn't mind if people would boo us at the end of a song like that. What matters is playing it. Another thing in America : they like entertainment. There's going to be 30,000 people tonight and at least 10,000 only come because it's Saturday night. It's inevitable. This balance is necessary to the band. We can be sad or happy. And another thing, what ever we play, we're not self-indulgent, we don't do pop songs for the audience to feel better. It's essential there's a form of beauty in what we do. A Cure concert isn't just a big show.

Robert : I only went out three times for now. I only go out when I'm sure I'll have fun. You have to consider the advantages and the inconveniences. I know if we go out in a public place, there will be Cure fans there and I'll get disturbed during the entire night. Most of the times, it's not worth it. All we do is getting drunk and it's annoying to get drunk in front of other people who look at you and come to talk to you about your music with a lot of respect. But I don't miss this. I went out enough times on the last 15 years. I've probably become cynical about it. I know exactly how it's going to be like before we even go out. Unless it's to go and see another group play. I saw Ride in some New Orleans club and it was very good.

Robert : Sometimes people tell me. Because I read books, I can't drink beer or play football ? Sometimes people see football as a game where 22 blokes just follow a ball, and it's true, you can't blame them for that. I felt that kind of pressure 8 or 9 years ago. I almost felt guilty for loving football. When I was with the Banshees, they would say "Look, he's going to watch his football on TV". And I thought "But what are they going to do ? Probably light their fucking candles." There's a whole subculture around football : fans, comics who are really funny actually and quite clever. To be in the middle of the crowd can be funny. It's not like saying "Yeah, you see, we're just dickheads like the others"... I like watching cricket too, which must be a big mystery for a French person. It's one for me too. It's a new pastime.

- In Paris, you chose to play several nights at the Zénith instead of one night in Bercy...

Robert : Yes. In France, it was mass hysteria in 1985/86 and I think people prefer to see us in smaller venues. The atmosphere will be much better and I hope that'll bring back the some of passion that was missing the last time we came. Things were a bit flat.

Robert : No, each night is different. Because people come to several shows. But generally people don't care if we change the songs or not. I don't know why. Maybe because we only go on tour every 3 years. But for our own sake we change at least 5 songs a night.

Robert : It's difficult to not play them. They represent an album and because people remember them, they remember more intensively the show. It's also because we play very gloomy things. It would be too much without the singles.

- It's your first tour with the Cure. How is it to be all the time with them ?

Perry : I was on tour with them in the past, just as a guitar technician. But now I can read books and write letters to friends.

Perry : I'm ashamed. But on the other hand, people bringing bootles of wine spend the night in my hotel room and then ask for pizzas at 6 in the morning. Have mercy, pleeeaase !

(Interview : Gilles Ribberolles - Translated from French)