Grinding Halt fanzine, interviews in Reading/Manchester April/May 1981

- Why did you go back to being a three piece ?

Simon: After the Australian tour, we'd been with Matthew for about nine months or so and things weren't really working out that well. They worked out pretty well at first, but Matthew wanted to become more of a keyboard player whereas in the band he was a keyboard player in the sense of Rick Wakeman, sort of, doing keyboard fills, just to add another texture to it.

Lol: Matthew joined the group just to be another instrumentalist, not necessarily just to play keyboards, anything, even a flute or something.

Simon: Anyway, he was a bit pissed off not being able to play the keyboards as such, so it all came down to musical differences I suppose..

- How did the Australian tour go ?

Simon: Really well. The company who promoted it were really surprised as we were as well, especially Sydney, where we played about 12 dates and there were about a thousand people each night. And each night it would sold out and we'd expect to play to maybe 100-200 people a night, as if it would be like starting all over again in London.

- How did your record sell there then ?

Simon: Really well. Seventeen Seconds got to number 2, or maybe number 1, I'm not sure.

Lol: We seem to be particulary popular in Holland.

- Was the change in style from the 1st album to the second deliberate or was it a natural change ?

Simon: Well, Robert should answer that but since he's told me I can tell you... At the time, we were on the Banshees tour, Robert was going through a lot of changes and a lot of things were happening to him emotionally and it changed him as a person and that was reflected in his music.

- What were these changes that come over you and why do you think they happened ?

Robert: There were a lot of things going on at the time and things were changing. It was a period of transformation and it was really intense as well. The Banshees were ever so much committed to what they were doing than I realised you could be. Also, for personal reasons, I gave up a lot of things at home when I did that tour and it really wasn't the music so much as it was just their committment and their ideals, which I sort of had, but never really took seriously. And those changes in me were reflected in the music. But I don't think we changed that much though. There's a thread that goes all the way through the records apart from the singles which are usually different but the records have links... somewhere!

- Lol, what was your reaction when Robert brought along these completely different ideas ?

Lol: I didn't think they were completely different. It was sort of the ideas we've had but perhaps we hadn't been able to realise at the time. They are similar kinds of ideas. Also that time was quite an upheval for us so it was bound to change a little bit, but it wasn't a huge shock or anything like that.

- Do you prefer being a three piece to a four piece ?

Lol: Yes, immensely so. Because I don't think there's another person that we get on with well enough for him to be part of the jigsaw. I mean, we might find somebody and if we do fair enough, we'll go as a four piece again. But at the moment, it doesn't seem likely.

- Why did you become a four piece in the first place ?

Simon: Because we thought we'd add a texture to the music, but when Matthew left, we discovered unnecessary keyboard bits and Rob and I could do them. Robert plays a bit of keyboards in five or six songs and I do a bit on a few songs, like A Forest. And Robert has written some songs around keyboards and he also plays them. The new LP isn't so much keyboards orientated but it has got a keyboard sound to it rather than a guitar sound. On Seventeen Seconds, all the keyboards work really well and those songs needed a different texture and dimension. But that was just one phase. Perhaps the next LP will have hardly any keyboards at all.

- Which is your favourite Cure LP ?

Simon: Faith.

Lol: Faith. Because it's got the traits that were on the first and realised a bit more on the second. And now they're really specific on Faith.

- Do you see it as moving back more towards the style of the first album ?

Simon: No.

- Not even Primary ?

Simon: No, 'cos that's sort of like a pop song in a way, but it's an experimentation as well 'cos it's played on a six string bass which Robert plays and I play chords on bass on it. So that was experimental as well, it wasn't that we wanted to write a catchy pop song to get into the charts, which we haven't with it anyway.

Lol: Not in song structure, because it's not a guitar song. In momentum, yeah, I suppose it is. But we're just trying to find songs that aren't rock'n'roll songs and that can be fast or slow.

- Why have you got a film instead of a support band on this tour ?

Simon: Well, if we have a support band and if we turn up late,and say the doors open at 7.30 and we don't get there until 5 and the crew are still setting up then it means one or two things : either we have a really long soundcheck and we get all the sound right, or we both have short soundchecks and nobody gets a particulary good sound and the audience suffers in the end 'cos it's a bad sound. Also who should say which band will be support ? And audiences are very partisan towards support bands, a lot of people will just go to the bar. People may go to the bar during the film but noone suffers then.

Lol: I don't think it helps any band really. a) you end up paying loads of money for the privilege of playing, which is wrong... b) most audiences are very partisan towards support bands. It's much better for small bands to do their own tour, even if it means only playing to fifteen people. On the last tour we put an advert in the paper and asked for local groups to support us. On the whole, it was quite a success but it didn't do any of them much good.We had a Christmas party with them and we've met them all since and they've said, you know, that it was nice to play but it hadn't really done them much good. Take the Passions who came with us once. Ok, a few more people knew about them but they've done far better since they started playing dates on their own. When we go to tour Europe we've got a theatre company instead. It doesn't have to be a film.

- What's the film about ?

Simon: It's not about anything. It's just images, music set to images. But you can make your own interpretation to it.

- Who made the film ?

Simon: A friend of mine, well my brother. We wanted a film and we went to these people about making it and they said it would cost £50,000 and Rick, who made it had always wanted to make a film. So we thought we'll chance him. He was really enthousiastic about it which was good.

- Why did you have eight longs songs on it rather than more short ones ?

Simon: Well originally there were eleven songs and there were two poppy ones and they stuck out so we thought we'd keep the LP consistent.

- Do you consider that being on a small label, but distributed by a major company is the ideal position to be in ?

Lol: I think it is in a lot of ways. Independants are coming up a lot, it's getting a lot better. When it started off, it was just the case of not being able to get your record in many shops, so in that way our position is best I suppose, all our output goes straight from us and nobody else can interfere with it. And Polydor have all the contacts, which is fine.

- How do you feel about being labelled as "futurist"?

Lol: I think when people write things, they've got to have some form of comparison, so they can say what a band is like. But I find it quite hilarious that we're called futurist, cos I mean, last year we were something else again and they've had to find a category for us, but we don't really fit into one like that.

- When we last spoke to you, you said that chart success meant type casting. Do you think you have been type cast ?

Lol: No, I don't think we've become type cast beause we haven't had that much chart success. All the singles seem to bob around the Top 30 and so people who come to see us know a lot more than just the singles.

- Why is Carnage Visors only on cassette ?

Simon: Well, it was going to be on the LP, but Polydor said if we put it on, it would have to be on a separate LP 'cos it wouldn't fit. So the price would have to go up, but on cassette it fitted. Originally, we wanted it as an extra LP but we were told we couldn't do it, but we could do it on the cassette. So we did.

- Why has World War never been released over here ?

Lol: Basically because we're not that pleased with it so we decided not to put it out. I mean, on the first LP we had 21 track and that was one of the spare ones we didn't use and the company in America said "why don't you put it out" 'cos they like it. So we thought why not ?

- What about all the English kids who will buy the import LP for that one track ?

Simon: They don't have to buy it.

Lol: We're under no obligation to release it. We'd rather give people the songs we want them to hear and then they can make their minds whether they like it not not. It was not designed to be imported into Britain. We didn't have control over that. I wouldn't want people to buy it for that one song, it wasn't a deliberate ploy.

- Do you enjoy doing long tours ?

Lol: Yeah, you can enjoy it if you keep yourself disciplined, 'cos you have to be careful. If you go out every night, drinking, you can't really put on the same kind of show every night which you should be able to do. Cos people pay their money to come and see you. And they don't know you've had 2 or 3 hours of sleep, so they expect you to be as good every time, and rightly so. I don't mind long tours. I think they're necessary because the idea of just playing one-offs is ok up to a certain extent. But you've got to play everywhere really 'cos the people who buy your records buy them all over the country.

- On this tour you've moved from the medium sized venues to the larger, mainly seated, venues. Which do you prefer ?

Lol: Both have their advantages. With the film you really need somewhere where people can sit down, 'cos to stand there for half an hour watching a film can be pretty tiring. We've tried to get places where you have a choice of sitting or standing and on the whole we succeeded. We've also tried to find different places to play that are perhaps a bit unusual. The only place where we've succeeded though is Norwich, where we're playing in an old church. In London, we tried for Regents Park Open Air Theatre and St Paul's Cathedral but they wouldn't have it.

- Did you expect Primary to be as big as A Forest ?

Simon: I didn't really think about it.

- Would you have wanted it to be ?

Simon: I think it should have been, everybody in Britain should have bought it, but we weren't crying because it didn't shoot up.

- What did you think of Top of the Pops ?

Simon: Well, if we didn't go on there, somebody else would have. And no matter what people say, a lot of people do watch Top of the Pops and I'd rather watch us than Bucks Fizz or whatever.

- You described Seventeen Seconds as a mood LP. How would you describe Faith ?

Simon: I don't think you can describe it really.

Lol: Faith is a bit more specific. I see Seventeen Seconds as being very low and shrouded in mist and I see Faith as being a sort of an affirmation of all that was on Seventeen Seconds. Seventeen Seconds was mostly about relationships with other people, but on Faith there's quite a few other things that come into it.

- If Seventeen Seconds is a mood LP, are you content that people will just listen to it whilst they eat their cornflakes or would you rather they paid more attention to the music ?

Simon: If people want to listen to it whlist they're eating their cornflakes, yeah, that's fine by me. I couldn't think of anything better to listen to whilst I'm eating my cornflakes !

Lol: I don't mind. To quite a few people if you have an LP that confronts you, you have to be involved in it or you have to turn it off. Whereas with Seventeen Seconds, you don't have to be involved with it if you don't want to. You could just leave it on and it would go on and on in the background , or you could be involved with it. I wouldn't listen to it whilst I'm eating my cornflakes, but then again why not ?

- How are you satisfied with Faith ?

Simon: 99% satisfied.

- Do you think your music has become less distinctive since Three Imaginary Boys ?

Lol: No, I think it's become more. Because there was such a variation of styles on Three Imaginary Boys. I think we have our own distinct style, though it's always changing. It's never completely the same.

- What's the significance of Faith ?

Simon: It's not faith as in religion, it's other sorts of faith : faith in yourself, faith in what you're doing, faith to the people you like...

(Photo : Grinding Halt fanzine in Reading - Thank you to J.C Moglia)