By
summer 1981 and after being on tour for so long playing songs from Faith,
gradually falling into a depressing life style was certainly inevitable.
Recording Charlotte Sometimes and Splintered In Her Head appeared like
a transitive phase. The sound of those songs was already heavier than
before and the b-side gave a taste of what was to come musically : tribal
and hypnotic.
More touring in late 1981 certainly aggravated the feeling of desperation. That would start an era of miscommunication in the band leading to loneliness and self-hatred for Robert Smith. Drugs would do the rest. Everything extreme would serve the inspiration for the new record like a hopeless fight against reality and time.
The question being what's the point in living a meaningless existence ? With an aspiration to an absolute, but being disheartened by the world's superficiality and the impossibility to believe in an abstract creator.
Depicting mankind as corrupted creatures suffering the weight of guilt gave the idea for the visual concept for the Pornography cover : the band would wear masks including some red make-up symbolising the ugly side of people, what's underneath nice faces... On stage during the Pornography tour, they would also wear red make up and as it melted because of the heat, that gave the illusion their eyes and mouths were bleeding.
The fourth Cure album writing process destroyed everything around it : the group itself, the friendships... Hallucinogenic drugs added a warped vision that served the apathy and the inspiration. Basically every aspect of life is sick and empty. And that's with some kind of "stream of consciousness" that the final lyrics were finished around January 1982.
Calling the album "Pornography" was Robert Smith's idea. The word certainly sums up the grim side of man both on the immediate and aspiring level. Would it be physical or spiritual or both. One can't listen to this record without thinking about its mythical title. A bit later, Robert would say that title was just a "cheap gimmick" to grab everyone's attention. But Polydor went concerned at the time, as well as some music critics strangely.
Of course, it would be stupid and caricatural to think the band lost their sanity for artistic reasons. As the sentence closing the record proves anyway. In retrospect and with age, they had to leave that romantic struggle behind them but that gave the band's most legendary record and both Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst their favorite album.
Thanks to Sophie for pushing me to write this and to Jean Christophe for the pic.
More touring in late 1981 certainly aggravated the feeling of desperation. That would start an era of miscommunication in the band leading to loneliness and self-hatred for Robert Smith. Drugs would do the rest. Everything extreme would serve the inspiration for the new record like a hopeless fight against reality and time.
The question being what's the point in living a meaningless existence ? With an aspiration to an absolute, but being disheartened by the world's superficiality and the impossibility to believe in an abstract creator.
Depicting mankind as corrupted creatures suffering the weight of guilt gave the idea for the visual concept for the Pornography cover : the band would wear masks including some red make-up symbolising the ugly side of people, what's underneath nice faces... On stage during the Pornography tour, they would also wear red make up and as it melted because of the heat, that gave the illusion their eyes and mouths were bleeding.
The fourth Cure album writing process destroyed everything around it : the group itself, the friendships... Hallucinogenic drugs added a warped vision that served the apathy and the inspiration. Basically every aspect of life is sick and empty. And that's with some kind of "stream of consciousness" that the final lyrics were finished around January 1982.
Calling the album "Pornography" was Robert Smith's idea. The word certainly sums up the grim side of man both on the immediate and aspiring level. Would it be physical or spiritual or both. One can't listen to this record without thinking about its mythical title. A bit later, Robert would say that title was just a "cheap gimmick" to grab everyone's attention. But Polydor went concerned at the time, as well as some music critics strangely.
Of course, it would be stupid and caricatural to think the band lost their sanity for artistic reasons. As the sentence closing the record proves anyway. In retrospect and with age, they had to leave that romantic struggle behind them but that gave the band's most legendary record and both Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst their favorite album.
Thanks to Sophie for pushing me to write this and to Jean Christophe for the pic.
