Mick Tarrant was sat in his office at the Midnight Express nightclub in Bournemouth one afternoon in July 1983, dealing with beer deliveries and other mundane admin chores, when he received a surprising call.
Crowd chatter: “Let’s see if we can see Ross. ROSS!” https://youtu.be/yIP-f9CDqvs The surviving tape of the first night of the Picture Tour is incomplete, but given what remains, we’re not missing out on much. The sound is pretty dodgy at the start but I can’t work out if that’s a fault of the recording which … Continue reading 18 April 1981: The Picture Tour, Aylesbury Maxwell Hall
In 1992, The Cure seemed unstoppable: the biggest cult band in Britain, huge in the US, enormous in Europe, able to fill arenas with ease and dependable festival headliners. After the huge success of Disintegration, the band’s next studio album would need to be exceptional to top it. But it did - and here’s how. … Continue reading 21 April 1992: The wonderful world of Wish
As it's RS's birthday today, here are some quotes from the archive about his childhood, school and upbringing. “I was born in Blackpool and the first few years of my life were spent up there. When I came down South, I actually had quite a broad Northern accent and the piss was taken out of … Continue reading Robert Smith: The early years
An annoying autobiographical entry... Tomorrow I’m flying to Bucharest to see The Cure perform at the Piața Constituției, in front of Ceausescu's enormous parliament building. The significance of this is that the date of the show - 22 July 2019 - is exactly 30 years to the day that I first saw The Cure at … Continue reading 22 July 1989: The Prayer Tour at Wembley
While we’re still basking in the critical acclaim that has surrounded The Cure since their Glastonbury set, let’s have a look back to what was probably the peak of their popularity in the run between The Head On The Door in 1985 and Wish in 1992: the Prayer Tour. As we’ve seen, the setlists were … Continue reading 8 July 1989: The Prayer Tour hits Paris
Fiction FIX 1, Friday 11 May 1979Confirmed in Fiction press release c. June 1979; Melody Maker (5/5/79); NME (5/5/79); Pop Star Weekly (5/5/79)
Crying For Yesterday 