Grinding Halt fanzine, interview in Reading April 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..


- 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.


- 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.


- 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...

(Thank you to J.C Moglia)